John H. Weakland

The double-bind theory: some current implications for child psychiatry.

Abstract The behavioral-interactional view of problems in the original statement of the double-bind theory is outlined, and the broad significance of this viewpoint for treatment is discussed. Recent emphasis on the cybernetic causal model is noted, and its implications for family therapy in general and for child-centered problems in particular are reviewed. A case example of brief treatment of hyperactivity based on this approach is described.

Conjoint Family Therapy

The paper presented here is a product of the Family Therapy in Schizophrenia Project of the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation, and thus reflects the ideas and experience of the entire project staff and associated therapists.1 In it we should like primarily to report some observations based on this particular experiment in conjoint family therapy with schizophrenics—that is, in treating the identified patient and other members of his family together as a functioning natural group. We shall have little to say about the work of others, except by way of acknowledging and illustrating a growing trend toward this form of treatment. There is still only a limited amount of such work being done, and less published, so perhaps the best way to introduce something that is bound to be somewhat new and strange is to have the reader accompany us on our own voyage of exploration and discovery, in part. As we go, we shall also attempt to formulate more systematically what we ourselves have been learning along the way.

2. Real and Reel Life in Hong Kong- Film Studies of Cultural Adaptation?

culture little affected by the culture of the upper class. The pseudo-urban character of the ceremonial centers, if it is true that they had not a large resident population and that some of the functions of real cities were lacking, and strong class barriers might have been the factors preventing the cultural influence of the ceremonial centers from filtering down to the rural masses, transforming their folk culture into peasant culture. If this view is correct, the world outlook and moral order of the Maya sophisticated aristocracy and the rural people must have been sharply different. In this light the collapse of the classic Maya civilization was in fact the disintegration of the pan-Maya upper stratum of society, leaving practically intact the underlying local folk cultures. That this actually happened has bccn made very apparent by Longycar’s report on Copan, and the hypothesis is not in contradiction with the scanty data we have on this collapse from other places.’