Family Systems Theory

Family Systems Theory is another important underlying, foundational theory that fed into the development of family constellations. The persons below were pioneers themselves of what eventually evolved into family systems therapy.

Gregory Bateson
Bateson was trained as an anthropologist, but had an extraordinarily wide-ranging mind. His interests covered cybernetics (self regulating systems), communication and the wider social sciences. In the late 1940s he worked for two years at the University of California medical School. Here he became interested in psychiatry with his focus of interest on communication within the discipline.
His interest in systems theory and in communication led him later, 1952 at Stanford University, to the work that he entered into with colleagues, Jay Haley, Don Jackson, John Weakland and others, eventually exploring the psychotic condition of schizophrenia.

They looked at how disturbed communication in families resulted in enormous pressure being felt by one or more members of that family system. The contradictory messages result in the ‘victim’ feeling powerless and trapped in a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ double bind.  In 1956, Bateson, Jackson, Haley & Weakland published a paper, Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia, in Behavioral Science, vol.1. The theory generated much debate, and allowed other ways of seeing and understanding a patient and their problem. The usefulness of becoming aware of the reciprocal interactions between family members, planted the seeds for the formation of family therapy.

RD Laing
The work that Laing did in the 50s particularly with schizophrenic patients led him to look more closely at their life context, the families that they came from. He made use of Bateson’s double bind theory in exploring the interactions of members of a family, and how these interactions affected the ‘sanity’ of the one or other members.

Both Laing and Bateson saw the individual and their symptom in the wider context of the family; they looked at the manifesting symptom as a possible indicator of dysfunction with the family.