Gregoire Vitry
Precisely on this Palo Alto program, Wendel, again for people who knew little or nothing about Palo Alto, what can you tell us about the difference of this approach compared to what was done at the time?
Wendel RAY
This is a really important question!
The Bateson researchers tried to research interactions in the family context and what happens when people interact with each other.
The Bateson researchers tried to research interactions in the family context and what happens when people interact with each other.
They worked with male and female patients who were hospitalized at the Veterans Hospital. They could be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or chronic alcoholics, or both.
What distinguished the MRI from other institutes in this type of work was the fact that the MRI used family therapy while the other institutes worked only with the person complaining; either in individual psychotherapy or with medication
This is why the MRI differentiates itself from others in the world who work with emotionally very affected patients.
What happened from then on, during this period when there was a transition between the Palo Alto group of Bateson and the MRI of Palo Alto, is that we are no longer only interested by individual problems but by the interactions between different people and the context that surrounds them.
Gregoire Vitry
Finally, can you tell us about the company? Why is the Palo Alto approach effective in business, as it is for people with schizophrenia?
Wendel RAY
Palo Alto approaches issues with a non-pathologizing, non-normative view.
Gregoire Vitry
Can we say somewhere that this vision was a revolution concerning mental illnesses of course but also concerning relational illnesses in the company?
Wendel RAY
I would even say that it was really the beginning of a radically different period offering the world an alternative way of thinking about problems; resulting in a new perspective on training and problem solving developed at MRI that is relevant to all possible problem types and to reduce problem complexity to simple interactional concepts.
What matters is how to solve the problem.
What they discovered is that by allowing people to interrupt what they usually do to try to fix the problem then the problem goes away on its own.
In fact, we no longer need what was considered essential before: awareness.
Once the Palo Alto concepts are used in business, all that is needed is simply to apply this way of thinking to the business frame of reference.
It's really the genius side of the Palo Alto model.
