The École of Palo-Viola is current of thought and research having taken the name of the town of Palo Alto in California, starting from 1950. One quotes it in Psychologie and Psycho-sociologie like in Information sciences and the communication. This current is at the origin of the movement of the family Thérapie and the short Thérapie.
History
1952 the Bateson Project
In 1952 the anthropologist Gregory Bateson obtains the financing of the Fondation Rockefeller for a study of the " paradox of the abstraction in the communication". Bateson joins together a team within the Veterans Hospital Administration of Palo Alto, made up of the student in communication Jay Halley, of the student in psychiatry William Fry and the anthropologist John Weakland. The team is interested in the Humor, with the Zen (they meet Alan Watts and Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki), with the Hypnose (many meetings with Milton Erickson).In 1954 Bateson obtains by Frank Fremont-Smith a financing for two years on behalf of the Fondation Macy for the study of the communication at the schizophrenic . This same year, William Fry leaves for US Navy and the group is joined by the psychiatrist Donald D. Jackson which has just published its article the question of family homeostasis in which it applies the concepts of " Intern" medium; of Claude Bernard and homeostasis of Walter Bradford Canon being studied of the family.
Bateson is extremely influenced by the current Cybernétique, born from the Conférences Macy in which it took part of 1942 to 1953. As showed it Yves Winkin, Bateson also forms part of an abstract network which it called the invisible college, made up people coming from different horizons, and which developed with blow of exchanges of students, conferences, and publications. In addition to the members of the Bateson Project, one counts in this network the anthropologists Ray Birdwhistell and Edward T. Hall, the doctor Albert Scheflen and the sociologist Erving Goffman.
When in Jackson, he learned how to observe the psychiatric disorders from the interactionnelle point of view during his work with Harry Stack Sullivan and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. It was also interested very early in its career in work on the Hypnose of Milton Erickson and Lawrence Kubie.
In 1956, the members of the project publish their common article Towards a theory of the schizophrenia which introduces the concept of " Double constraint ". The authors consider the mental disease like a mode of adaptation to a pathological structure of the family relations. This theory causes an upheaval of the traditional psychiatric designs and contributes to the development of the family Thérapie.
1959 the MRI
With an aim of studying the therapeutic implications of this approach, Don Jackson founds, in 1959, the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto with Virginia Satir and Jules Riskin. Paul Watzlawick, then Richard Fisch, Jay Halley and John Weakland join the MRI whereas Bateson leaves Palo Alto in 1963. In 1962, Jackson and Halley are the cofounders of the review Family Process with Nathan Ackerman.
1965 the Center of Short Therapy
In 1965, Richard Fisch creates the Center of Short Therapy within the MRI. He is joined there by Watzlawick and Weakland which will continue to work there until their death. Jay Halley leaves the MRI in 1967, Virginia Satir in 1968, the year of died of Jackson.Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch develop the clinical approach of Palo-Viola, the grid of intervention " classique" short Therapy. In 1974, it publish their book Changements: Paradoxes & psychotherapy .
1976 constructivism
In 1976, Heinz von Foerster, which as Gregory Bateson had taken part in the Conférences Macy, binds to the MRI at the time of the second conference with the memory of Donald D. Jackson during which it makes a talk on the range of the bases of the radical constructivism on psychotherapy.The epistemology constructivist becomes gradually one of the bases of the approach of Palo-Viola, as the publication into 1981 to it to the invention of reality testifies, Contributions to the constructivism under the direction of Paul Watzlawick, which includes/understands contributions of von Foerster and Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Theory
August 1stInfluence of cybernetics
The influence of the “first Cybernétique” on the School of Palo-Viola resulted in the fact that the therapeutist does not consider more his patient as a isolated individual on whom it should pose diagnostic psychiatric but is interested in the current interactions of the patient with his environment which maintain its problem. In other words, the therapeutist wonders how the system maintains the Homéostasie. One passes from an individual and diachronic explanation to a systemic and synchronic explanation.
In a second phase, according to work of the “Cybernetic second ” of Humberto Maturana, which studies how the systems evolve/move far from their point of balance and create new structures (morphogenesis), the therapeutists were interested in the possibilities of change which the crisis situation conceals (see also the dissipative structures of Ilya Prigogine). As Prigogine underlines it, if various modes are possible with molecules, modes more varied much and more are possible in the human communities. This vision led the therapeutists to think the situation of Crise as one privileged moment of the intervention contrary to the generally allowed idea according to which one does not work with people in the urgency and the crisis (the suffering should initially be alleviated). Thus, the “customer” of the therapeutic intervention is a person in suffering, i.e. far from his point of balance, and prette to do something to reach a new balance.
Lastly, influenced by work of Heinz von Foerster on the “Cybernétique of second order”, where the observer includes itself in the system observed, the therapeutists took more into account of the existence of the observer in the observation. From this point of view, one will underline, for example, that if the patient “resists”, it is that the therapeutist is exerting a pressure on him.
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