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WHAT IS THE DON D. JACKSON ARCHIVE?

A large and growing collection of rare, historically significant materials, principally from the research of the Palo Alto Group are preserved in the Jackson Archive. The Palo Alto Group refers to 60 years of research projects that took place in Palo Alto California conducted during three overlapping eras, by three related and overlapping groups: The Bateson Team, from 1951-1962 (Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, John Weakland, Jay Haley, Bill Fry); The Early Mental Research Institute (MRI), 1958-1968) (Jackson, Virginia Satir, Bateson, Weakland, Haley, Paul Watzlawick, Richard Fisch, Janet Bevin Bavelas, Lynn Hoffman, Irving Yalom, Antonio Ferreria, and others); and the MRI Brief Therapy Center (BTC) 1965-present (Fisch, Weakland, Watzlawick and team).

The Archive was founded at the MRI by Dr. Wendel Ray in

1987. Since joining the ULM MFT Faculty in Jan. 1990 the

Archive

has been a joint research project of the MRI and ULM.

The Archive collections constitute the documents upon which much of the field of systemic marriage and family therapy and brief therapy are based. The Archive contains thousands of original audio record

ings, video recordings, original paper documents including unpublished research materials from numerous completed research projects; collections of published writings by key members (Jackson, Bateson, Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, Satir, Haley); hundreds of rare photographs, first edition books and original articles, etc. Significant collections from other leading family theorists and therapists are also housed in the Jackson Archive, including Carl Whitaker, M.D., Gianfranco Cecchin, M.D., R. D. Laing, M.D., Heinz von Foerster, Ph.D., Bradford P. Keeney, Ph.D. Steve de Shazer, LCSW and others. A WORKING ARCHIVE, rare documents are constantly being preserved and duplicated in digital format, and used as the basis for publishing/research.

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