Palo Alto Group

The Palo Alto Group included the early members of the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California. Basing its work on the writings of Gregory Bateson, the group consisted of Don Jackson, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Janet Bavelas, Carlos Sluzki, and of course, Bateson himself. These authors produced major writings that sustained a highly influential perspective that forms the basis of much communication theory today.

The germinal ideas of the Palo Alto Group were introduced by Bateson in an anthropological book published in 1936, titled Haven. Three crucial elements advanced in this book form the basis of the Palo Alto Group's perspective, which involves (a) patterns of interaction, (b) the creation of relationships in communication exchanges, and (c) the power of cumulative interaction. Bateson identified two important patterns of interaction—symmetrical and complementary, defined later in this entry. Symmetrical interactions consist of similar moves, while complementary ones consist of opposing, but interdependent ones. These patterns of communication help us understand the regulation of interpersonal and intergroup relationships. This notion is bolstered by Bateson's second point, the idea that a system of relationships is an ongoing process revealed by moment-to-moment observable exchanges of communicative behaviors. The third idea was that cumulative interaction has power by creating a differentiation of behavioral expectations in a relationship over time. This Bateson called schismogenesis. Specifically, complementary and symmetrical relationships are established through forms of interaction that become ritualized over time.

The main theoretical implication of Bateson's ideas was a relational perspective on human communication that contrasted with the individualistic approach that was then dominant in social interaction studies. In other words, the behaviors of individuals derive from their interactions, not the reverse. Consistent with this principle, because social interaction patterns cannot be derived from individual behaviors or individual self-reports, relational communication researchers must study the systems of relationships by observing the sequences of specific reactions of one individual to another. Bateson stated that a double description is necessary to describe a relational pattern. He used the analogy of human binocular vision to illustrate the way in which a relational pattern is defined: As two eyes in combination generate a binocular view, the combined actions of two or more people interacting generate patterns of relationships.

Bateson's research association with the members of the Palo Alto-based MRI in the 1950s promoted his ideas in the fields of psychotherapy and systemic family therapy. Historically, the definition of a specific communicative situation, the double bind, was one of the better known applications of the Palo Alto Group's perspective on the complexities of human communication. A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which a person receives two or more conflicting messages; [Page 728]with such contradictory messages, the individual is seen as in error regardless of how he or she responds, unable to comment on the conflict, resolve it, or escape from the situation. A double bind generally includes different levels of meaning in a series of related messages, and these messages can be stated or implicit within the context of the situation or conveyed by tone of voice or body language. Convinced that serious complications exist when frequent double binds are part of an ongoing, committed relationship, some Palo Alto Group authors attempted to explain the development and maintenance of serious psychopathology, such as schizophrenia, based on double bind theory. Although abundant multidisciplinary research about schizophrenia disqualified the Palo Alto Group's explanation, the notion of a double bind was used to emphasize the power of context as well as the impact of simultaneous levels of meaning in human communication.

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