Haley, Jay

In a career that began as an original member of Gregory Bateson’s Palo Alto team of researchers in the 1950s, Jay Haley (1923–2007) is among a handful of indispensably important people in the creation of communication theory, strategic family theory, and systemic family therapy. Contagiously inquisitive and committed, Haley devoted his life to establishing a radically alternative way of understanding human behavior as a product of interaction taking place in the present moment between people in intimate relationship with one another. He was involved with the development of many of the earliest and most influential observation-based theoretical concepts about the relationship and contextual basis for understanding human behavior and the development of effective and efficient methods for promoting constructive change by seeing the patient and ...