Blackwell Reference Online

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Towards a theory of communication 1  The success of the double-blind concept may perhaps derive from the favourable reception which Kurt Lewin's interactional psychology had been accorded in the United States in the 1930s. Applying the model of the dynamics of forces, Lewin proposed a vector psychology based on the representation of the play of the various emotional tensions and forces within the life-space and the social field. Similarly, Jacob Levi Moreno attempted, with his notion of roles and psychodrama, to link individual behaviour and interaction within the social group. The ground was prepared for a theory of psychical extra-territoriality to be established. For a reasoned account of the various contributions to the development of family therapy, the reader is referred to Jackson and Satir (1961), which contains a bibliography of forty-five titles. Jackson and Satir, two Palo Alto pioneers, acknowledge as ancestors Freud, for his study of the Schreber case (1911), Rubin for his initial genetic research into the families of schizophrenics, Moreno for his attempts at group psychotherapy with hospitalized patients, Sullivan for his insistence that, as the patient's new family, the hospital team should behave differently from the expected by the schizophrenic from experience of his or her own family, Kasanin for the emphasis he puts on the parent-child relation as a specific ... log in or subscribe to read full text