John H. Weakland (8 January 1919 – 18 July 1995) was one of the founders of
brief and family psychotherapy.
At the time of his death, he was a senior research fellow at the
Mental Research Institute
The Palo Alto Mental Research Institute (MRI) is one of the founding institutions of brief and family therapy.Nichols, M., & Schwartz, R. (2005). ''Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods'' (7th Edition), New York City: Prentice Hall. Founded by Do ...
(MRI) in
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was esta ...
, co-director of the famous Brief Therapy Center at MRI, and a clinical associate professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
A brief biography
Weakland was a native of
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and most populous city of West Virginia. Located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha rivers, the city had a population of 48,864 at the 2020 census and an estimated population of 48,018 in 2021. The Charlesto ...
He was a brilliant student who entered
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...
at the age of 16 and received a degree in
chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...
. He worked as a chemical engineer with the
DuPont
DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...
Company before a chance encounter with
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include ''Steps to an ...
led him to pursue
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
at
Columbia University. While at Columbia, he worked on the Cultures at a Distance Project with
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...
and
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Re ...
. Weakland never obtained his doctorate from Columbia; rejecting his adviser's criticisms of his thesis, he refused to rewrite it.
At Bateson's invitation, Weakland moved to California with his wife, Anna Wu Weakland to participate in research. Weakland was the first person Bateson asked to join a research project that would become known as the
Bateson Project
The Bateson Project (1953-1963) was the name given to a ground-breaking collaboration organized by Gregory Bateson which was responsible for some of the most important papers and innovations in communication and psychotherapy in the 1950s and early ...
that helped to give birth to family therapy and co-authored the seminal paper, "Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia" Weakland was also an early student and researcher of
Milton Erickson
Milton Hyland Erickson (5 December 1901 – 25 March 1980) was an American psychiatrist and psychologist specializing in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis and a fellow o ...
.
Joining the
Mental Research Institute
The Palo Alto Mental Research Institute (MRI) is one of the founding institutions of brief and family therapy.Nichols, M., & Schwartz, R. (2005). ''Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods'' (7th Edition), New York City: Prentice Hall. Founded by Do ...
in the early 1960s, Weakland was a founding member and co-director of MRI's Brief Therapy Center (along with
Paul Watzlawick
Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields ...
and Dick Fisch). This center helped to inspire many of the more influential psychotherapy approaches in brief and family therapy. Weakland mentored and befriended many therapists who would go on to make major contributions to the field.
Weakland died in Los Altos, California.
Quotations
Weakland has often been quoted as saying
When you have a problem, life is the same damn thing over and over. When you no longer have a problem, life is one damn thing after another.
Weakland's final appeal to the field was published weeks before his death from
ALS
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...
. He wrote in a letter to the Family Therapy Networker that:
While not always easy, one of the strengths of the field from its earliest days has been constructive reflection and discussion of its diversity. The emphasis on having things "my way" and needing something new each year has distracted us from serious and useful dialogue about what aids people in distress and facilitates change.[as quoted in Eron, J., & Lund, T. (1996)Narrative Solutions in Brief Thearpy. Guilford, Ny. p. vii]
Books
*Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, with Paul Watzlawick and Richard Fisch (WW Norton, NY, 1974)
*The Tactics of Change: Doing Therapy Briefly, with Richard Fisch and Lynn Segal (Jossey Bass, SF, 1982)
*The Interactional View: Studies at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, 1965–1974, edited with Paul Watzlawick (WW Norton, NY, 1979)
*Rigor and Imagination, Essays from the Legacy of Gregory Bateson, edited with Carol Wilder-Mott (Praeger, NY, 1981)
*Propagations: Thirty Years of Influence From the Mental Research Institute, edited with Wendel Ray (The Haworth Press, Inc., 1995)
References
External links
New York Times ObituaryThe Official Website of the Mental Research Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weakland, John
1919 births
1995 deaths
Cornell University College of Engineering alumni
American psychotherapists