Introduction
Gregory Bateson was born into a highly acclaimed academic family in England in 1904. Bateson’s father, William, was the founder of the prestigious Cambridge School of Genetics. Bateson was named “Gregory” by his father after the famous geneticist, Gregor Mendel who is known as the father of genetics. While Bateson received his undergraduate degree in biology, he is also known as an anthropologist, cybernetic theorist, and a philosopher. He was known as a great cross-disciplinary thinker. He had a profound impact on the field of mental health, particularly the incorporation of cybernetic and systemic thinking into the field that led to the birth of family therapy. Bateson died in 1980.
Career
Bateson obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology in 1925 from St. John’s College, Cambridge. He then went on to teach linguistics at the University of Sydney in 1928. He was recruited by the Anthropology chair at Cambridge to do field work in the South Pacific where he spent...
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Key Citations
Bateson, G. (1936). Naven: A survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture of a New Guinea tribe drawn from three points of view. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0520-8.
Bateson, G. (2000) [1972]. Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-03905-6. Retrieved 19 Mar 2013.
Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity (Advances in systems theory, complexity, and the human sciences). Hampton Press. ISBN 1-57273-434-5.
Bateson, N. (2011). An ecology of mind: A daughter’s portrait of Gregory Bateson. Oley: Bullfrog Films.
Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J. H. (1956). Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral Science, 1, 251–264.
Haley, J. (1981). Development of a theory: The history of a research project. In J. Haley (Ed.), Reflections on therapy and other essays. Rockville: The Family Therapy Institute of Washington, DC.
Lipset, D. (1980). Gregory Bateson: The legacy of a scientist. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Nichols, M. P. (2011). The evolution of family therapy. In The essentials of family therapy (pp. 7–28). Boston: Pearson.
Ruesch, J.; Bateson, G. (2009) [1951]. Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1-4128-0614-5. Retrieved 19 Mar 2013.
Stagoll, B. (2005). Gregory Bateson (1904–1980): A reappraisal. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 39(11/12), 1036–1045. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1614.2005.01723.x.
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Breunlin, D.C., Naatrajan-Tyagi, R. (2019). Bateson, Gregory. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_1029-1
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