MA

thesisMy thesis derives its impetus and its structure from the work and thought of Gregory Bateson. My aim is to demonstrate the ongoing vitality of his ecology of Mind by tracing the connections between his work and that of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Alain Badiou. Part I represents a broad overview of Bateson's major works, emphasizing his theories of abduction and recursivity as critical philosophical concepts. Bateson's notion of abduction as a third investigatory methodology suggests a means for connecting his work to that of other theorists. A pioneer of cybernetics, his probing of the recursive role of information feedback and of the pragmatic interface between organisms and their environment can be read as a meta-model for a multiperspectival approach to environmental issues and texts. Part II explores the differences and the reiterative similarities in the work of Bateson, the French writing team of Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, and contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Using mathematical notation as metaphoric semiotics, I argue that a theoretical multiplicity moves rhizomatically between and across the very permeable boundaries that may be drawn between these theorists, and that the emerging connections describe a pregnant holism. Part III moves to employ the insights of this theoretical analysis in a more pragmatic application of these shared insights and concerns. In a recent journal article. Dr. Robert Cox urged the environmental communication community to define itself as a crisis discipline. Bateson's vision for ecological holism was predicated on respecting the dangers inherent in ad hoc intervention in systems whose interconnectivity may be little perceived when defined in causal and linear terms. The dangers of rhetorically limiting the semantics of environmental communication to a heuristic rather than a holistic approach are further explored using the work of Deleuze, Guattari and Badiou. This section provides a discursive and diacritical response to Dr. Cox's proposals. My thesis concludes with the recognition of the depth of Gregory Bateson's vision and of the contemporaneity still vibrant in his perspectives. Bateson is in many ways the exemplar of an environmental humanities scholar, and I weave that thread into my concluding remarks

Systemic therapy – A practical implementation of systemic thinking

A summary presentation of the historic development of systemic therapy as the follow-up to family therapies, with the usage of new metatheoretical thinking from the constructivist point of view is followed by a description of the material theoretical conditions of this psychotherapeutic approach, with particular consideration for the theories of cognition and autopoiesis by Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana as well as the sociological system theory according to German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This is followed by an understanding of interaction systems with respect to the theory of therapy, as developed by the author – the member concept, as well as a system-theoretical adequate conceptualisation of psychical systems. The work ends with a short presentation of the implementation of the described theoretical concepts in systemic therapy practice.A summary presentation of the historic development of systemic therapy as the follow-up to family therapies, with the usage of new metatheoretical thinking from the constructivist point of view is followed by a description of the material theoretical conditions of this psychotherapeutic approach, with particular consideration for the theories of cognition and autopoiesis by Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana as well as the sociological system theory according to German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This is followed by an understanding of interaction systems with respect to the theory of therapy, as developed by the author – the member concept, as well as a system-theoretical adequate conceptualisation of psychical systems. The work ends with a short presentation of the implementation of the described theoretical concepts in systemic therapy practice

Entre escuchar y sonar: explorando los límites de los instrumentos aumentados

This paper explores some of the changed relationships between body and environment that occur when instruments are augmented by electronic or digital circuits. Taking Gregory Bateson’s theorisation of the schizophrenic body (1973) as its starting point, the paper explores situations in which the relationship between the performer, body, and instrument takes on increasingly separate communicational modes, in which the body and its meanings come to resemble the ‘unlabelled metaphor’ of the schizophrenic. A series of instrument/personas are brought before us, representing both the ‘norm’ of acoustic instrumental performances and the extreme limits of instrumental identity, offering critical insight into the space that augmented instruments occupy and transform.  In considering some of these changes, and in reaching towards their extremities, attention is paid to the friction or awkwardness that accompanies the metamorphosis. In the same way that the ability of a language to ‘point’ is fraught with inconsistencies and potentials for misunderstanding, so the transformation in instrumental identities does not happen in a smooth and transparent way. However, the changes do create the potential for new sensibilities and forms of critical and ethical awareness.Este artículo explora algunos de los cambios en las relaciones entre cuerpo y ambiente que ocurren cuando los instrumentos son aumentados por circuitos electrónicos o digitales. Tomando como punto de partida las teorías de Gregory Bateson sobre el cuerpo esquizofrénico (1973), este texto pone en escena una serie de situaciones donde la relación entre ejecutor, cuerpo e instrumento toma formas de comunicación cada vez más separadas en las cuales el cuerpo y sus significados pueden parecer una ‘metáfora no etiquetada’ de esquizofrenia. Para recorrer este proceso, una serie de instrumentos/personas se nos presentan como representantes de la ‘norma’ en la ejecución de los instrumentos acústicos y los límites extremos de identidad instrumental, y ofrecen una perspectiva crítica en el espacio que los instrumentos aumentados ocupan y transforman. Explorando algunos de estos cambios y alcanzando sus extremos, se hace hincapié en la fricción o incomodidad que acompaña esta metamorfosis. Así como el lenguaje tiene la habilidad de ‘indicar’ y el posicionamiento de una ‘auto-icona’ en su interior se revela un proceso complejo cargado de inconsistencias y potenciales malentendidos, la transformación de las identidades instrumentales no ocurre de una manera transparente y fluida, sino que deja vestigios importantes de estados previos latentes en los nuevos

Resonance, a step towards a fluency for complexity: The science, language, and epistemology of Gregory Bateson

This thesis confronts the urgency with which new language and vocabulary is required to move beyond linear assumptions in mainstream science and humanities, as well as global policy making. I examine Gregory Bateson’s body of work in history and philosophy of science, psychiatry and psychotherapy, anthropology, biology and ecology designed to communicate the necessarily interdisciplinary consideration for a nonlinear and recursive investigation of the self, other, and environment. Such intellectual forays cannot be dismissed as non-scientific. I offer definitions and contextualizations of key terms derived from cybernetics, new materialisms, and posthumanism (such as emergence, process, paradox, metaphor, fractality) to speak about the ramifying intricacies and pathologies in processes of knowing at various different scales. I conclude with a theory of resonance that may offer the epistemological groundwork with which to construct a metaphor of precarious intervention and to model a critical relationship between epistemology and ethics

Becoming a Sex Offender: A Study of Constitution at the Intersection of the Mental Health and Legal Systems

This research conceptualizes sex offender as an institutional category. The purpose of this research is to show how people become constituted as sex offenders in the context of the two systems that make demands of them: the mental health and legal systems. These systems view sex offenders in ways that contradict, in that they are viewed as sick by the mental health system and as criminal or bad by the legal system. As a result, the demands these systems make contradict and at times impose double binds on the people who have to navigate them. The data I collected demonstrate how these contractions and double binds occur, creating practices that are impractical (they do not do what they intend to) and unethical (they do more harm than good). There are three methods of data collection: field work, two focus groups, and interviews. In most research the voice of the sex offender is silenced, but this research makes a point to emphasize the voices of those participants known as sex offender

The ecology of stress in work-related human systems

Individual distress in the work-place has been cited as the cause of enormous loss of productivity and income, and has therefore attracted much attention from researchers and therapists alike. However, an extensive literature study reveals that in the field of work-related distress and its management, there appears to be discontinuity, a diversity of opinion and even confusion with regard to definitions, causes and possible remedies for the problem. It is suggested that this situation has been brought about and is being perpetuated by the Newtonian/Cartesian epistemological foundation on which most thinking in the field is based. It is further suggested that an epistemology informed by ecosystemic, constructivist principles could facilitate a way of thinking which would be more useful in this context. A case study was done in accordance with the above-mentioned ideas, which served as an investigation of their usefulness in a situation of reported work-related stress. On the basis of the information which emerged from the study, it is concluded that an ecosystemic approach can indeed provide a useful basis for understanding such situations. Furthermore, it is suggested that there are certain commonalities between such situations which are primarily founded in contexts in which the individual finds himself faced with contradictory demands which are not acknowledged as such. Finally, the point is made that if, in accordance with a constructivist viewpoint, "stress" is understood to be a social construction rather than an absolute condition, then the traditional way of thinking provides us with descriptions of man, society and the relationship between them, which are negative and may also be reflexively destructive. However, since constructivism allows for a different construction to be brought forth, we may utilise ecosystemic thinking to provide a more optimistic view.PsychologyD. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology

Cultural Anxieties and Institutional Regulation: Specialized Mental Healthcare and Immigrant Suffering in Paris, France

This dissertation looks at specialized mental healthcare expertise in France as a lens through which to address the institutional management and representations of cultural difference in France today. By specialized mental healthcare centers, I refer structures that provide culturally-sensitive mental health services to immigrants specifically. I identify and explore three contemporary expert approaches: namely, transcultural psychiatry, clinical medical anthropology, and ethnoclinical mediation. By providing a genealogy of specialized mental healthcare institutions, and by construing them as meta-discursive nodes --that is, as points of encounter between state, institutional, and individual ideologies--I provide an analysis of the cultural anxieties, contradictions and double-binds that arise from the opposition between a regulative, universalist republican ideology, and a field of expertise which strives to promote culturally-sensitive mental healthcare for immigrants. I argue that, as a product of the conflation of the immigrant issue : la question immigrée) and the social issue : la question sociale), immigrant suffering : Sayad, 2004) has become a medium that problematically couches immigrants\u27 difficulties -- whether they relate to mental health pathology or structural problems--in terms of cultural difference. As a result, generic cultural representations of immigrants are uncritically reproduced, making it difficult to identify and address the structural inequalities that do engender suffering

Shila Khan and Máire Stedman in conversation with Inga-Britt Krause

Inga-Britt Krause has challenged thinking and practice around issues of race, ethnicity and culture in systemic psychotherapy and has persistently, passionately supported their development. We were delighted to meet with her to share ideas, experiences and hopes

Complex methods of inquiry: structuring uncertainty

Organizational problem spaces can be viewed as complex, uncertain and ambiguous. They can also be understood as open problem spaces. As such, any engagement with them, and any effort to intervene in order to pursue desirable change, cannot be assumed to be just a matter of ‘complicatedness’. The issue is not just a need to cope with dynamics of system. It is also the perceptual ‘boundedness’ of multitudes of assumptions about scope of whole and limitations of organization as system. Furthermore, explicit attention to complexities of feedback loops is an extremely important aspect of any systemic discussion. How can we help teams of competent professionals to engage purposefully with such uncertain and ambiguous problem domains? The author suggests that we can only address this effectively through pragmatic efforts to incorporate a multitude of boundary-setting assumptions, explored as part of active (self-) reflection and practical engagement. This must be undertaken without resorting to an overly simplistic application of convergent thinking in our efforts to support problem solving. Instead, we need to pursue divergent thinking and ‘complexification’ in our effort to support problem resolving. The main contribution of this thesis is to present a collection of principles that taken together, provide support for this engagement ntervention. A core feature of this result is the framework for Strategic Systemic Thinking, which includes examples of pragmatically useful methods and tools