This clip of Stephen Madigan’s TC12 conference keynote sets out to give participants a historical context to Michael White’s narrative therapy practice ideas. He touches on how Michael was influenced by second order cybernetics and the work of British Anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Bateson was most interested in how communication and ‘things’ are both restrained, and relationally connected through information. Bateson began the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California and was also home to Jay Haley, John Weakened and John Watzlawick (to name a few). MRI proposed several key ideological and practice turns in family therapy. Discussed are Bateson’s ideas on restraint, double description and relative influence.
