Bateson as scientist and therapist: Steps towards ‘fourfold vision’

 Some thoughts (due to be published and presented later this year) on Bateson and therapy....

William Blake, 1825, Job Affrighted by a Vision of his God

Bateson was a scientist, he was precise and loathed ‘muddled’ thinking but he also advocated being human with patients (he actively treated patients between 1948 and 1963) and part of what he attempted to do was ’help them find valuable patterns in their lives’.

Whilst known more as a theorist than therapist, Bateson,  in this transcript of a patient interview in 1958, revealed a disarmingly transparent way of being with others, here in a conversation with a family about why they often moved location:

Bateson. I agree with much of what you say.
Mother. Moving is just for the birds
B. Having been an old –
Father. (laughing)
M. And even birds stay in the same nest (laughs).
B. – been an old mover myself. I spend time in New Guinea, in the Dutch East Indies, and God knows what else.
M. Well –
B. But –
M. It’s all right if you’re built that way. I mean each person has to do –
F. No.
B. I don’t know.
M. The reasons have to be voluntary. Mine are involuntary, I know –
B. I was frankly running away from all sorts of things.
(Bateson, cited in Lipset 1980 p. 220-221)

Jay Haley, in a personal letter to Lipset, suggested that Bateson would  ‘…stay up all night with alcoholics, to get them through…He felt that being human with people was good for them’ (Lipset, 1980 p. 215). R.D. Laing, who observed Bateson in 1962, considered that, like some of the best therapists, Bateson didn't regard himself as a ‘therapist’, suggesting that “....If I was the patient in the session, I certainly wouldn’t have felt there was anything to be frightened of...he never indicated that he thought in terms of actually actively adopting strategic, practical means to use to pry people out  of the entanglement they were in...” (Lipset, 1980, p.220) According to William Fry, Bateson was like an anthropologist with families; more of an observer than clinician or therapist, and would “...Switch between that role and a sort of friendly mother’s brother...raising tantalising and significant issues...They were very intuitive and hit the nail on the head, and would do all sorts of terrible things...creating insights and stirring family patterns up”. (Lipset, 1980, p.219-20)

Bateson showed compassion and intuition in his interactions, and he often emphasised the importance of therapists and doctors ‘being human’ with their patients, but was simultaneously able to also take on a more ‘scientific observer’ position, too and seemed to shift between these different positions. Eventually, he became disillusioned with psychotherapy, in part because of Haley’s inability to fully understand epistemological issues, particularly with regard to power, and left to study dolphins.

Haley again: “Bateson didn’t like power. He didn’t even like the word...anyone who said ‘I’m going to change this person’. If they said ‘I will offer this person some ideas, and if they change, it’s up to them,’ then Gregory would have no trouble with them. But if you take responsibility for changing people, then you would have a problem...Any influence outside the person’s range is odious to him. Any indirect manipulation is [also] out of the question”. (in Lipsett, 1982, p.226)

‘Power’ is a problem because we believe in it. Bateson agreed with Haley that power is a central human concern; he just wished that us humans would stop believing in power because the pursuit of power entails epistemological errors of thinking that always cause trouble.  At the very least, the extent of our power-seeking seems to be influenced by culture. Instead of thinking of power in human relationships, we would be better served by reflexive dialogue about the ‘metaphor of power’, and see ourselves as simply parts of a larger situation. (Harries-Jones, 1995)

Bateson talks of power and lineal control in the domain of scientific explanation, whereas, as therapists, when we talk of "power," are speaking in the humanist domains of experience and description.  “It is profoundly different to speak of power and lineal causality in the domains of experience or description as opposed to speaking of these matters in the domain of scientific explanation”. (Dell 1989)  We need to be able to move between these different positions of both punctuation and of abstraction – but how?

According to Charlton (2008), Bateson considered that psychology was evolving in two directions:
• Humanist – working with clients as one human being with another, intuitively responding from personal emotional resources to ‘act spontaneously out of his own integrity’.
• Circularistic – consciously scientific, articulate about methods and results, aiming for predictability and logical coherence.

Bateson saw a way forward as a compromise; a working together of both types of practice; between intuition and examination/description, each informing the other. Charlton adds to this:

“Humanist, scientist, artist and theoretician are all needed to form the cybernetic unity of healing” (Charlton 2008, p. 94)

In my opinion, therapy truly influenced by Bateson would involve moving between all four positions (Humanist, scientist, artist and theoretician) and having the wisdom to value them all.


Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight,
And threefold in soft Beulah's night,
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton's sleep.
William Blake, Letter to Thomas Butt, 22 November 1802.


A crude description of Blake’s fourfold vision might be:
• Single Vision –  ‘Newton’s sleep’ - linear thinking. Knowledge. Rational. Material.
• Twofold Vision – Appreciating our connection with nature and the environment.
• Threefold Vision – Unconscious processes, memory and intuition.
• Fourfold Vision – The delight of experiencing single, twofold and threefold vision, with constant twofold visioning in daily life.

I would like to offer this version for therapists (and others who are engaged in 'people work')

Single Vision – The Scientist: 

• Good observation skills. 
• Linear descriptions: 
• What is the issue? 
• Who is involved?
• When does it happen?
• Where does it happen?
• Consideration of non-systemic explanations
• e.g. physical illness, disabilities

Twofold Vision – The  Theorist:

• Consciously scientific observation of patterns within the family system. 
• Circular causality. 
• Relational aspects.
• Systemic theorising.
• First order cybernetics.

Threefold Vision - The Humanist: 

• Being human. 
• Connecting with personal experiences and intuitions, embodied aspects of practice. 
• Empathy. 
• Self of the therapist.
• Disclosure and transparency.
• Second order cybernetics. 

Fourfold Vision - The Artist: 

• The aesthetic delight of working with and between single, twofold and threefold experience.
• Self of therapist and family located and theorised in wider and wider contexts. 
• Higher levels of abstraction.
• Mystery. 
• Sparkling moments.

References
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press.
Charlton, N. (2008) Understanding Gregory Bateson: Mind, beauty and the sacred Earth. New York: SUNY Press.
Dell, P. (1989) Violence and the Systemic View: The Problem of Power. Family Process,  28: 1, 1-14.
Harries-Jones, P. (1995) A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lipsett, D. (1980). Gregory Bateson, the Legacy of a Scientist. Boston: Beacon Press

Functional medicine: A systems approach to medicine

Mark Hyman, MD has dedicated his career to identifying and addressing the root causes of chronic illness through a groundbreaking whole-systems medicine approach known as Functional Medicine

Bateson and Steve Jobs

“I think that cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years. But most such bites out of the apple have proven to be rather indigestible – usually for cybernetic reasons.” — Gregory Bateson.


 “From Versailles to Cybernetics”, 1966. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. University of Chicago Press, 1972.


This quote inspired Steve Jobs to come up with the Apple Logo.


Gregory Bateson, an English anthropologist,  was probably one of the most important thinkers of the last century, and much of what he wrote about is critically relevant for how we think about dealing with the major problems we face as a species. His main concern was for us to change the way we think; what he described as a 'cybernetic epistemology' in effect is challenge for us to not only think about systems and complexity but to think systemically.

A song for #occupy #ows #olsx

You don't have to take this crap

You don't have to sit back and relax

You can actually try changing it

I know we've always been taught to rely

Upon those in authority -

But you never know until you try

How things just might be -

If we came together so strongly

Are you gonna try to make this work

Or spend your days down in the dirt

You see things can change -

YES an' walls can come tumbling down!

Governments crack and systems fall

'cause Unity is powerful -

Lights go out - walls come tumbling down!

The competition is a colour TV

We're on still pause with the video machine

That keep you slave to the H.P.

Until the Unity is threatend by

Those who have and who have not -

Those who are with and those who are without

And dangle jobs like a donkey's carrot -

Until you don't know where you are

Are you gonna realize

The class war's real and not mythologized

And like Jericho - You see walls can come tumbling down!

Are you gonna be threatend by

The public enemies No. 10 -

Those who play the power game

They take the profits - you take the blame -

When they tell you there's no rise in pay

Are you gonna try an' make this work

Or spend your days down in the dirt -

You see things CAN change -

YES an' walls can come tumbling down!

Style Council - 1985

How to stop smoking AND lose weight

Many people will find the thought of stopping smoking means also contemplating gaining weight. This need not be the case. I stopped smoking and lost weight (two stone or 28 pounds in 12 weeks) at the same time.

So can you.

I was getting annoyed with myself for comfort eating and smoking to relieve the upset that other people were causing me (I had been experiencing a particularly bad time with a work related situation) and was drinking a little more than was probably good for me.  I decided to rebel against the crazy situation that I was in; smoking, drinking and over-eating to comfort myself because of how other people were making me feel.

It was time to begin my own resistance movement, and I suggest that you will need to do the same; instead of comfort eating and smoking, get angry at the reasons that you comfort eat and get angry with the reasons you smoke.

To be blunt, if you don’t want to stop smoking and lose weight, you won’t. Stop reading now, go and eat something, have a cigarette.

If you do want to stop smoking and lose weight then here is what I did. Three simple steps:

1 - Start the diet.

I chose the Dukan diet to start off with. This diet might not suit everyone, and to be blunt, there is no need to enrol on any of his fancy and expensive programmes, or even buy his book. I’ll explain the diet later.

2 – Stop smoking one week later

Give yourself about a week after starting the diet. By then you will have noticed some differences from the diet and will be feeling a little more positive because you will have lost some weight. Stopping smoking can be really hard, but having the focus of the diet helps. Feel free to use a nicotine substitute, but avoid Champix. I found nicotine lozenges most palatable.  Use the lozenges as often as and for as long as you want (within reason, probably no more than six months), but try to get down to using 1mg ones within a few weeks.

3 – Avoid alcohol

Yes, I know this is harsh, but there are two reasons to do this. The first reason is that alcohol is so full of carbohydrates that it will not help you lose weight, the second is that the association with smoking may be too strong. The third reason (yes, I can’t count) is that alcohol is bad for you.

The Dukan Diet for cheapskates like me

The Dukan diet is a low carbohydrate, low fat diet, a bit like the Atkins diet but with no fat. These diets work on the principle that if we take in little carbohydrate (sugars and starches) our bodies will burn off fat deposits instead.

Your body uses carbohydrates as its main fuel source. Sugars and starches are broken down into simple sugars during digestion. They're then absorbed into your bloodstream, where they're known as blood sugar (glucose). From there, the glucose enters your body's cells with the help of insulin. Some of this glucose is used by your body for energy and extra glucose is stored in your liver, muscles and other cells for later use or is converted to fat.

The theory behind most low carbohydrate diets is that insulin prevents fat breakdown in the body by allowing sugar to be used for energy and by decreasing carbohydrates we reduce insulin levels, which causes the body to burn stored fat for energy and ultimately helps you shed excess weight and reduce risk factors for a variety of health conditions.  I can attest to this as my cholesterol levels have significantly reduced.

Doing the Dukan means reducing sugar and carbohydrate. A lot.

Shopping list for your first week.

·       Oat bran. This stuff is amazing; it reduces cholesterol, and you will be eating it every day.

·       Skimmed milk

·       Fat free, unsweetened yoghurt

·       Fat free cottage cheese

·       Fat free quark cheese

·       Fat free fromage frais

·       Sucralose sweetener, like Splenda

·       Diet cola or similar diet drink

·       Low fat proteins, including:

o   Chicken

o   Ham

o   Beef (steak, mince)

o   Fish and seafood

o   Surimi (crab sticks)

o   Quorn (plain)

o   Tofu

o   Textured vegetable Protein(TVP)

o   Eggs – but no more than one a day

As you can see there is scope for someone who is a vegetarian to do this diet, although it is pretty limited if you are a vegan.

Week one

Dukan calls this the ‘attack phase’ and he recommends between 3 and seven days of only foodstuffs identified in the shopping list above.

You must drink plenty of fluids. Diet cola or tea and coffee are fine, made with skimmed milk and sweetened with splenda, but do try to drink plenty of water. Aim for two litres a day.

You should eat around two table spoons of oat bran every day. The oat bran can be made into pancakes (use some oat bran, fromage frais, an egg, and skimmed milk to make a thick batter, and them cook in a skillet sprayed with a little light oil) but to be honest, I found that most ways of preparing oat bran gave me terrible wind, and found the solution was easy; it is oat bran porridge.

I now start each day with a bowl of oat bran porridge, simply made by mixing two table spoons of oat bran, a good spoonful of splenda and skimmed milk, bunging the lot into a microwave and cooking on high until it bubbles up. Experiment until you get the consistency you like, just remember, the more you cook the oat bran, the less you will fart!

Eat as much protein as you like; I often have crab sticks for lunch, maybe with some wasabi (Japanese horseradish - very hot!) and a dash of soy sauce to add some interest. For my evening meal I might dry fry lean mince with some chopped up onions (onions and other things, like gherkin are ok in the attack phase to add some flavour) and eat with some cottage cheese on the side.

Another favourite of mine is to make a chicken tikka (marinade some chicken chunks overnight in yoghurt mixed with a bit of chilli powder and garam masala, then oven cook for 40 mins to an hour) served with  yoghurt relish with chopped onion, chilli and a bit of mint.

I also bake with oat bran and discovered that quark cheese with a bit of lemon juice and splenda makes a great topping for a cheesecake.

The rest is up to you, but feel free to experiment. There are plenty of recipes online.

Week two onward

By now, hopefully you will be feeling more positive. You are doing something to change your life for the better and will have already lost some weight.

Now it is time to stop smoking.  Use nicotine replacement therapy freely.

Whenever you have the urge for a cigarette, take in a deep breath of clean air, exhale it slowly, and relax a little.  That little tip helped me.

From now on, every other day you can add vegetables to your diet. Choose low carbohydrate, high fibre vegetables. Salad vegetables are pretty much a free food now.

A couple of months later

By now you will have lost weight, and still be free from cigarettes too.  This will be a massive achievement, and you will feel much healthier and be able to wear clothes that look good on you rather than hide you. Do remember though, that life will NOT be perfect!

By now you will be familiar (possibly even bored) with the low carbohydrate diet. It might be worth considering changing onto a low Glycaemic Index diet now, to incorporate more (slow release) carbohydrates into your diet.

Good luck!

Edit - November 2011.

Exercise

It is not necessary to exercise to lose weight, however, I recommend a half hour to an hour brisk walk every day, if you can.

Individualism and Collectivism: Schismogenesis and #occupywallstreet

Most social systems require a balance between symmetrical and complementary relationships or patterns.

A symmetrical pattern is characterised by ‘tit for tat’.  You hit me, I’ll hit you back. Obviously, this pattern has its uses, but unchecked would lead to the destruction of one of the parties in the relationship, and thus end the relationship too.

A complementary relationship is characterised, crudely, by a sadist and masochist, where the behaviour of one party complements that of the other. Again, this type of relationship can be useful, but unchecked, this pattern can lead to destruction as the sadist becomes increasingly sadistic and the masochist becomes increasingly masochistic.

Gregory Bateson (1972) referred to these runaway patterns that lead to destruction as ‘schismogenesis’ and argued that most relationships need to have a balance between complementarity and symmetry patterns. This balance could be thought of as a form of homeostasis. For example if a relationship is tending towards more ‘tit for tat’ (symmetrical) patterns, for example both partners becoming more violent, if one party becomes submissive (complementary), this would disrupt the runaway pattern and lead to a balance. Of course this new complementary pattern will, in time, need to be balanced by more symmetrical behaviour and so on.

In an earlier article I wrote about how privileging personal gain over co-operation can ultimately become self-defeating, and I wonder if there are parallels in the current political context where we might think of balancing patterns of behaviour on a societal level.

Short term, personal gain seems to be the raison d'être of the individualist culture; characterised by politicians whose policies are influenced by terms of office, popularity and benefitting themselves and where corporations are motivated by keeping profits up and shareholders happy. It has become increasingly evident with recent revelations regarding News International and the scandal involving Liam Fox and his friend Adam Werritty that politics and corporate desires are intimately connected, adding more weight to suspicions that there is small elite of people who conspire to serve their own needs.

The benefits of this culture are of course, competition (although sometimes this is faux), comparatively cheap prices and a reasonable standard of living for many people (in the developed world).

The downside to this type of culture is that the addiction to short term gains for the few is leading to future consequences that are self-defeating and destructive.

Cheap, unhealthy processed food has led to phenomenal numbers of people becoming obese, and diabetes is likely to be a massive burden on future health care services.

The environment is exploited without regard to the long term consequences of pollution and deforestation. The fact that global corporations sponsor climate change deniers is significant. Their addiction to short term profits over-rides any responsibility for future generations.  Automobile manufacturers and oil companies have a vested interest in lobbying governments to keep citizens dependant on cars rather than other forms of mass transit.

The developed world’s addiction to oil is almost certainly the reason for US intervention in the Middle East, with countless dead and injured. The concept of transgenerational trauma (Shevlin & McGuigan, 2003) indicates that relatives of people affected by trauma, including those born after traumatic events, have symptoms of post traumatic stress. This does not bode well for the future health of states so significantly impacted upon by conflict.  A dominant narrative of the developed world’s rapacity is likely to feed the emergence of more dissent and violence from poorer states.

A balance is required to counter what I believe is a runaway pattern of individualism, where a more collectivist, long term approach might privilege and prioritise differently, considering more closely the long term ethical and environmental consequences of behaviour. I hope that the #occupywallstreet movement is the beginning of this counter-balance. It is, so far, a peaceful and determined protest and it is to be hoped that it remains so.

I’d like to close with these words from Gregory Bateson’s daughter, Nora; words which I believe offer a wider understanding of the situation:

“When you peel back all of the lovely accomplishments of the great revolutionaries what do you find? At the center there is this: They did the impossible. They risked everything, and changed the unchangeable. Occupy Wall St...This is the exhale we have been waiting for. This movement is the release of all we have held back, and all we have deferred: the fatal complications of poverty, ecological disaster, and political injustice against. Until now, we have been betting away our futures to keep this monster from tipping over; we have been covering for it, nursing it, convincing ourselves we were even proud of it. Like children of abusive alcoholic parents-- we have been silenced for so long. Finally the unsayable is being said, giving the unmovable boulders of this illusion of subservience to economic structures an opportunity to crumble. We were as my father said, “double binded” by the loop of needing the corporate body to both employ us and then relieve us of our earnings for what we thought was survival, but is actually destroying our real survival in our environment and with each other. Now, the thing that has kept us rapt and bound is grotesque: oozing greed, eating its young, poisoning us, the earth and even itself. If we can remember, that these structures are constructs of our imagination, not forged in nature, we can begin to re-imagine the system. Ideas... are what we are working with, and they can grow, change, evolve. We can live better, but first, we occupy. Don’t be distracted by the deeds of the change-makers, the “what” in what they changed, really, the key is THAT they did not wrap themselves in the practicalities of reason. Of course it’s impossible, that is why we have to do it.”  Nora Bateson

 Shevlin, M. & McGuigan, K. (2003) The long-term psychological impact of Bloody Sunday on families of the victims as measured by The Revised Impact of Event Scale.

British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42: 4, 427–432.

Fixing a 'broken society'

 

“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose”. Tony Judt; Ill fares the Land

Salvador Minuchin, the originator of structural family therapy, considered that, in order to function healthily, a family needs structures, boundaries and rules.

Within the wider family system, sub-systems work together, and complement each others roles.  The boundaries of a subsystem are the rules defining who participates, and how. For example, the boundary of a parental subsystem is defined when a parent tells an older child, “You are not your brother’s parent. If he is watching something on TV he shouldn’t, tell me and I will take care of it”.

For proper family functioning, the boundaries of subsystems must be clear and defined well enough to allow subsystem members to carry out their functions without undue interference, but they must allow contact between the members of the subsystem and others.

In addition to clarity of boundaries, most families can be conceived of as falling somewhere along a continuum of whose poles are the two extremes of diffuse boundaries and overly rigid boundaries. These two extremes of boundary functioning are typically called enmeshment and disengagement.

Members of enmeshed subsystems or families may be handicapped in that the heightened sense of belonging requires a major yielding of autonomy.  In contrast, members of disengaged subsystems or families may function autonomously but have a skewed sense of independence and lack feelings of loyalty and belonging and the capacity for interdependence and for requesting support when needed.

The clarity and range of boundaries within a family are useful parameters for the evaluation of family functioning, but is this the case in a broader society?

Where does a society begin and end?  What sort of boundaries delineate any given society and its sub-systems and are they permeable or rigid?

If our society was a family, my sense is that we have an extremely small subsystem that is very much disengaged from the remaining subsystems. The extreme level of disengagement, along with the disparity in size and wealth between this subsystem and the remaining societal sub-systems is toxic.

This toxicity leads to what David Cameron described as a 'broken society'; lack of social cohesion, poor health, increased dependency on drugs and alcohol and crime. In contrast, societies that have more equality seem to do better.Richard Wilkinson   a researcher in social inequalities in health and the social determinants of health in a 1997 paper published in the British Medical Journal suggested that “one reason why greater income equality is associated with better health seems to be that it tends to improve social cohesion and reduce the social divisions”.

He later went on to suggest that “the psychosocial effects of relative deprivation are unlikely to be confined to health… where death rates from accidents, violence, and alcohol related causes seem to be particularly closely related to wider income inequalities, the predominance of behavioural causes may reflect changes in social cohesion”.

From a structural therapy point of view, a family that has serious problems needs to be restructured. If we think at a societal level, this would involve changing the structure of the society, making it more functional by altering the existing hierarchy and interaction patterns.In a recent TED lecture, Wilkinson argues for a fairer, progressive tax system to address inequalities.

However, a more comprehensive solution to the problem of restructuring our society has been addressed by Tony Judt, who argued that the whittled-down Left squandered a huge opportunity to show the mainstream that new ways of seeing and thinking are desirable. In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it’s pretty much impossible to argue that financial markets properly regulate themselves.

Judt advocates a revival of the central values of American liberalism or European social democracy. He calls for the beneficent authority of a welfare state (in one form or another) to redress the excesses of unregulated market forces; a course that emphatically rejects both dogmatic socialism and unrestrained capitalism.

His version of social democracy (or, for Americans, liberalism) envisages a society less materialistic, less individualistic and more community-minded than the present one, based on an economy in which capitalism, while by no means abolished, is on the other hand firmly tamed and regulated.

In light of these great upward shifts of wealth, Judt (who died in 2010) felt that, at that time, no civic movement had gained mainstream influence. Perhaps the #occupy protests are the beginning of this very movement?

Judt. T. (2010). Ill fares the land. London; Penguin.

Minuchin, S. & Fishman, H. C. (2004). Family Therapy Techniques. Harvard: Harvard University Press

Wilkinson, R. G. (1997). Socioeconomic determinants of health: Health inequalities: relative or absolute material standards? BMJ 314: 591