IGB Colloquium

Jean-Jacques Wittezaele: can you give us a "summary" of Gregory Bateson's thinking

The difference between Gregory Bateson and other thinkers: a lifestyle. He had consideration for others, for everything else, even the rain forests, the whole environment. The almost invisible dynamics that hold the social structure together. This consideration was the basis for a form of perception, investigation, questioning, which was very precise, attentive. In today's world, we pay particular attention to a rigorous, scientific approach. To the degree to which I have become interested in the work of Gregory Bateson, I discover that between the lines, at the bottom of it all, there is a very deep consideration which underlies a quite different quality of precision and rigor, which is deals with interrelationships.

What are these delicate interrelationships, and how do we manage not to destroy them.
Is it psychological, artistic, ecological. Behind everything Gregory Bateson does there is this concern.
  The question is that everyone participates. We must take everyone into account, a process of perpetual learning, a process of mutual and reciprocal learning.

JJW: What relationship did Gregory Bateson have with psychiatry at the time (which he had mixed feelings about)?

I was at a conference last week and no one mentioned the issue of perception. The perception of perception is a construction of our collective system. The way we see even the way we see is part of our educational structure. The question: “how do we perceive the question of psychology”. Gregory was interested in how this set worked. If we look at life as a set of dynamic interactions; if we think about how to establish relationships, this is the basis of an ecology. The dynamic interactions between different parts of a system.

When something goes wrong, any questions like "where is the problem?" is a bad question.

When we try to say what a painting is, the answer is in the painting as it appears, in the time, in the subject, in the viewer - same with the Beattles, what should we describe when trying to describe the Beatles?
is it the band, is it in the music that is written, is it in Paul McCartney, in the recording? So when it comes to interacting with something that we think is something, like a forest or a poem, we are faced with the question, "how do we describe this thing?"
". In this process of description the question is: “how do we perceive? »

For the question of the relationship between Gregory Bateson and psychology, his idea was that psychology is just psychology, everything is part of a system of
perception.

JJW: What is the history of the concept of the double bind?

Difficult because I was not there. But I am here now. Let's think together.

The concept of the double bind was developed in a context. But the seeds of this concept preceded the advent of the MRI. When reflecting on this, we must remember what has been said about cultural construction. The double bind papers were published with a dead line. In a particular movement of a given movement. And it's very difficult if not impossible to see what those circumstances were. What I'm sure of is that Gregory was disappointed with the way this concept was understood. Because for him this concept was not the cause but an evolving structure. It was a necessary structure in relation to all nature. Everyone who studied his work understood that there was no cause and effect. Those who were familiar with his work understood that there was something wrong. What Gregory Bateson most hoped for was that our way of thinking would have a little more leverage.

This is a story.

I have a son who is 15 years old. When he was 14, in class with his teacher. He had an experience and said, "My teacher put me on a double bind." Really ? But I wanted him to really explain his understanding of the structure. The story: there was a scapegoat in his class.
The professor put my son next to this scapegoat, hoping that this student would be sucked into a good spiral (thanks to my son).

My son Trevor understood that his job was to befriend this child. Suddenly Trevor began to have difficulties because he was talking with the other student. So if he speaks he has difficulty, and if he doesn't speak he also has difficulty.

"But professor you want me to talk?" ". Indeed he was in a double bind. What is interesting here is that he recognized the structure, which allowed him to get out of his double bind. He had a reading of the broader context which helped him solve his problem. Which gave him a broader environment to understand the situation. As a mother I was very proud.

JJW: in conclusion, we can clearly see that it is not always easy to overcome this double constraint. It's our job, we know that in interactional situations there can be great suffering. How do my interactions with ourselves, with others, with the world come into play?

After Gregory Bateson, there was Don Jackson (founder of the MRI).

Then came another very important person for psychotherapy: Milton Erickson. Betty Alice Erickson tells us about her father and how Milton Erickson worked directly with people. There is with the school of Palo Alto a double look on the individual and the environment.

Between the global approach of Gregory Bateson and the operational approach of Milton Erickson, there was the school of Palo Alto which developed the concept of attempted solutions.

In Palo Alto we discovered that there was no need to find explanations on the origin of the problem, but that it was enough to look at how the person behaved in his environment.

The use of attempted solutions can help to see what is causing the problems.

Especially in the case of schizophrenia. At the time, we encountered difficulties in approaching these situations in order to be able to find solutions.

The meeting with the work of Giogio Nardone was essential because it allowed to establish a distinction in the different typologies of interactions.

These distinctions made it possible to see how to find solutions for different types of disorders, neuroses and psychoses. This led to many other thoughts. See also Dezsoe Birkas who talks about psychosomatic disorders.