Timework Web wrote:
[snip]
> Back in the 1950s Gregory Bateson and his colleagues developed a theory of
> schizophrenia based on family dynamics and a communicational "double
> bind". On the basis of this work, Bateson predicted that there might be a
> genetically transmitted chemical imbalance, which was later confirmed by
> medical research. As a consequence of the confirmation of the chemical
> imbalance, "meds" have become the primary way of treating
> schizophrenia. Ironically, attention to family dynamics and communication
> has waned. We have this tendency to reduce complex social and
> psychological issues to a simplistic either/or dichotomy. EITHER there's a
> physiological problem OR a social dysfunction. There's no room in such a
> view for interaction between the physiological and the social.
[snip]
Gregory Bateson, like the architect Philip Johnson, was not
always consistent with himself. He tried lots of ideas.
In addition to his "double bind" theory, Bateson wrote
a far less well-known but very important book on psychiatry,
with Jurgen Ruesch:
_Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry_
(W.W. Norton, 1951). I have said before: psychiatry has yet to
"catch up with" this fine book.
Surely there is a "biological factor" in schizophrenia and
other "mental illnesses", for there are some persons who, no matter
what horrors befall them short of major brain damage, turn out
to be great successes in life. Maybe they are the Andrew
Carnegies (Horatio Algers?) of the second dismal "science"
(psychology).
The 10 words-or-less "net" of the Ruesch and Bateson book,
extrapolated to the workplace, would have every group of
persons who work together produce, along with whatever
the nominal [first-order] product of their activity, also
self-reflection on their work process itself as *a* key
component of that process (a co-product of all
work is the conditions of working life for the producers).
"Yours in discourse..."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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