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Gregory Bateson
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Gregory Bateson


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factoids
| birth_place = Grantchester, UK19800405|09}}| death_place = San Francisco, USA| influences = type theory in social sciences, Richard Bandler, Brief therapy, Communication theory, Gilles Deleuze, Ethnicity theory(1), Evolutionary biology, Family therapy, John Grinder, Félix Guattari, Jay Haley, Donald deAvila Jackson>Don D. Jackson, Bradford Keeney, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Neuro-linguistic programming, Systemic coaching, William Irwin Thompson, Visual anthropology, Paul Watzlawick| known_for = Double Bind, Ecology of mind, deuterolearning, Schismogenesis}}Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. Some of his most noted writings are to be found in his books, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979). Angels Fear (published posthumously in 1987) was co-authored by his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson.2) and then moved to the United States.">

Biography Bateson was born in Grantchester, UK on 9 May 1904, the youngest of three sons of distinguished geneticist William Bateson and his wife, [Caroline] Beatrice Durham. He attended Charterhouse School from 1917 to 1921. He obtained a BA in biology at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1925 and continued at Cambridge from 1927 to 1929. Bateson lectured in linguistics at the University of Sydney 1928. From 1931 to 1937 he was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge(3) and then moved to the United States.

In Palo Alto, Gregory Bateson and his colleagues Donald Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland developed the double bind theory (see also Bateson Project).(4) One of the threads that connects Bateson's work is an interest in systems theory and cybernetics, a science he helped to create as one of the original members of the core group of the Macy Conferences. Bateson's take on these fields centres upon their relationship to epistemology, and this central interest provides the undercurrents of his thought. His association with the editor and author Stewart Brand was part of a process by which Bateson’s influence widened — for from the 1970s until Bateson’s last years, a broader audience of university students and educated people working in many fields came not only to know his name but also into contact to varying degrees with his thought.In 1956, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Bateson was a member of William Irwin Thompson's Lindisfarne Association. In the 1970s, he taught at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco--which is now Saybrook Universityweblink--and also served as a lecturer and fellow of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1978, California Governor Jerry Brown appointed Bateson to the Board of Regents of the University of California, in which position he served until his death.

Personal life

Bateson's life was greatly affected by the death of his two brothers. John Bateson (1898-1918), the eldest of the three, was killed in World War I. Martin Bateson (1900-1922), the second brother, was then expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a scientist, but came into conflict with William over his ambition to become a poet and playwright. The resulting stress, combined with a disappointment in love, resulted in Martin's public suicide by gunshot under the statue of Anteros in Piccadilly Circus, on 22 April 1922, which was John's birthday. After this event, which transformed a private family tragedy into public scandal, all William and Beatrice's ambitious expectations fell on Gregory Bateson, their only surviving son.(5) Bateson's first marriage, in 1936, was to American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.(6) Bateson and Mead had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson (born 1939), who also became an anthropologist.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}Bateson decided to separate from Mead in 1947, and they were formally divorced in 1950.(7) Bateson then married his second wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Sumner (1919-1992), in 1951.(8) She was the daughter of the Episcopalian Bishop of Chicago, Walter Taylor Sumner. They had a son, John Sumner Bateson (born 1952), as well as twins who died in infancy. Bateson and Sumner were divorced in 1957, after which Bateson married his third wife, therapist and social worker Lois Cammack (born 1928), in 1961. They had one daughter, Nora Bateson (born 1969).(9) Nora is married to drummer Dan Brubeck, son of jazz musician Dave Brubeck.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}

Work

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The anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead contrasted first and Second-order cybernetics with this diagram in an interview in 1973.(10)

Double bind

In 1956 in Palo Alto Gregory Bateson and his colleagues Donald Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland articulated a related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from double bind situations. The perceived symptoms of schizophrenia were therefore an expression of this distress, and should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience. The double bind refers to a communication paradox described first in families with a schizophrenic member.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}Full double bind requires several conditions to be met:{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}
  1. The victim of double bind receives contradictory injunctions or emotional messages on different levels of communication (for example, love is expressed by words, and hate or detachment by nonverbal behaviour; or a child is encouraged to speak freely, but criticised or silenced whenever he or she actually does so).
  2. No metacommunication is possible – for example, asking which of the two messages is valid or describing the communication as making no sense.
  3. The victim cannot leave the communication field.
  4. Failing to fulfill the contradictory injunctions is punished (for example, by withdrawal of love).
The double bind was originally presented (probably mainly under the influence of Bateson's psychiatric co-workers) as an explanation of part of the etiology of schizophrenia. Currently, it is considered to be more important as an example of Bateson's approach to the complexities of communication.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}

Other terms used by Bateson