Gregory Bateson: biography of this anthropologist and linguist.

A summary of the life of Gregory Bateson, one of the most important social scientists.

Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist, linguist, social scientist and cyberneticist, whose work touched on topics pertaining to clinical psychology, clinical psychology, social psychology, and social science.whose work touched on topics pertaining to clinical psychology, social psychology, psycholinguistics, biology and ethnography, among other disciplines.

In addition to being a very multifaceted person as far as academia is concerned, he was also quite peculiar, showing his rejection of how scientific rigidity was squaring the social sciences. Let's see his particular life through this biography of Gregory Batesonin which you will know his vital and intellectual trajectory.

Summary biography of Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson's life was characterized by, despite being a professor at several universities, having quite alternative views on how things should be done in research, moving away from the rigid way of viewing and researching the social sciences.

Early years and training

Gregory Bateson was born in Grantchester, UK, on May 9, 1904, into a family of aristocratic scientists. In fact, his father was William Bateson his father was William Bateson, a researcher in genetic evolution.who had studied the ideas of Gregor Mendel in depth.

Between 1917 and 1921 Bateson studied zoology at the Charterhouse School in London and later began his studies in biology at St. John's College, Cambridge.

Later, he would carry out fieldwork in New Guinea and Bali with his wife Margaret Meadtogether with whom he would publish Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis ("Balinese Character. A Photographic Analysis") in 1942. In this book he emphasizes the importance for the anthropologist of the use of physical supports, i.e., photographs and recordings, to be able to describe, in an analytical and objective way, the reality of other cultures, whether Western or non-Western.

Academic life

In 1939 he moved to the United States, where he would live for the rest of his life, deciding to become a naturalized American citizen in 1956. In 1949 he worked at the Langley-Porter Clinic in San Francisco, researching both in the field of psychiatry and communications. In 1951 he would publish with Jurgen Ruesch the book Communication: The Social Matrix of PsychiatryCommunication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry.

Later, as a professor at Stanford University, he delved deeper into the processes of animal communication between speciesstudying mollusks and cetaceans, among other animals. This allowed him to elaborate new theories about learning.

Final years

In 1964 he moved to Hawaii, where he was appointed head of the biology department of the Oceanic Institute of Waimanalo. Then, between 1972 and 1978, he was professor of anthropology and ethnography at the University of California, California State University.. He died on July 8, 1980, while a professor at the Esalen Institute in California.

Thoughts and contributions

Gregory Bateson is best known for his development of the double bind theory of schizophrenia, along with Paul Watzlawick, who worked at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto. Although Bateson was never associated with that institution, he always maintained good relations, which would cause Batesonian notions to influence the work of MRI. It should be noted that, in part, Bateson's contributions were renowned for the fact that he was the husband of Margaret Mead, considered one of the great anthropologists of the last century.considered one of the great anthropologists of the last century.

It is interesting to mention Bateson's opinion, which is quite striking in comparison with the paths that science was taking at the time. Although in his time, the social disciplines were opting for more scientific and objective criteria, both in style and in research, Bateson did not show much respect for the academic-scientific standards of writing at the time. In his works he often resorted to metaphors, even quoting ancient poets or ignoring recent scientific sources. His papers were more in the style of essays than scientific dissertations.

Another peculiarity of his work was that he wrote at a very abstract levelwhich is quite the opposite of the way scientific papers do. Despite this, the figure of Bateson is by no means ignored, and there are many academics who consider his work to be a great contribution of originality in times in which the square, so to speak, had acquired too much importance. Of course, his reading must be careful, because understanding him is no easy task.

Gregory Bateson carried out interdisciplinary work, collaborating with sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, biologists, linguists and other academics, researching communication. Although he was not given due recognition in more rigid circles, he came to exert a great influence on American thought.

According to Bateson, mind, spirit, thought and communication are conjugated with the external reality of the individual, which serves him to construct his own individual reality. The body, the material part of each person, manages to transcend this material dimensionality. thanks to harboring in him these psychological aspects.

One of the most interesting aspects of his thought was the way in which he analyzed society, from an evolutionary perspective but not without resorting to social Darwinism. He studied the changes that a society can manifest from human behavior and conduct. He confronted the passionate and intuitive dimensions of the human being with the struggle of opposites. For example, order vs. conflict, stability vs. change, the concept of good vs. evil. Communication is a fundamental phenomenon for the evolution of society.

Bateson devised a new experimental model, combining neurolinguistics with psycholinguistics, and seeking a common goal: to formulate a new model of communication.Bateson devised a new experimental model, combining neurolinguistics with psycholinguistics, and seeking a common goal: to formulate a systemic theory of communication and use it to create a systemic clinic. People, thanks to language, are capable of creating realities of meaning, through interactions, attributed meanings, behaviors and beliefs. These realities can mean well-being or, on the contrary, discomfort for each individual, depending on how these same elements interact.

For Gregory Bateson, the concept of communication should include all the processes through which a person manages to influence others. For him, communication was what made human relationships possible. A clear example to understand this is how the media become a determining factor in social configuration, since through their message they influence the minds of millions of people. These media should be analyzed if one wants to know and understand the structure of a given society.

It should also be said that it is the media where double morals are seen. The same television channel may proclaim, in one program, a moral value, such as the search for knowledge and being critical of the information one receives, while in another, it may proclaim ignorance, gossip or letting oneself be carried away by first impressions. A typical example would be the programs of the Heart that often precede those of increasing vocabulary or knowledge of historical milestones and various topics.

Batesonian terms

The genius of Gregory Bateson is that of a multifaceted person, who contributed to the reinvention of words in the academic context. Here are a few that have been modified or reinterpreted by him.

Abduction

Actually, the word "abduction comes from the vocabulary of Charles Sanders Peirce, but Bateson uses it to refer to a third scientific methodology.. If, traditionally, we have had induction and deduction, Bateson proposes the third: abduction.

The abductive method is the method of comparing patterns of relationship and their symmetry or asymmetry, especially useful for the study of complex organic systems, such as comparative anatomy.

2. Creatura and Pleroma

These two terms are borrowed from the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jungtaken from the work Septem Sermones ad Mortuos ("The Seven Sermons on Death").

Pleroma refers to the non-living world that is undifferentiated by subjectivity, while Creatura is the living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction and information.

3. Double bind of schizophrenia

Bateson, although not a clinical psychologist, proposed a theory for schizophrenia. According to him, this mental disorder arises in a context of dysfunctional and contradictory relationship patterns of communication, through which the subject performs, and is particularly linked to disorders. and contradictory patterns of communication, through which the subject performs, and is particularly linked to disorders.

The victim of the double bind receives contradictory orders or emotional messages at different levels of communication. To understand it better, the person receives contradictory signals through two or more channels, which induce him to, so to speak, "short-circuit".

For example, a child who is supposedly loved by his parents, receives love expressed in words, but his parents show a continuous rejection of him through non-verbal behaviors, which penetrate deeply into the child. As an adult, raised in an environment that tells him to do one thing that contradicts another, the person lives in constant mental contrariness.

For this double link to occur, in addition to there being two or more contradictory channels of communication, metacommunication must prove to be an impossible exercise, metacommunication must prove to be an impossible exercise.. That is, the person finds it impossible to know which of the two communication channels is the true one, and cannot understand why he or she is being given information that, in theory, is the opposite of the other.

In addition, to generate more tension, the person cannot fail to comply with the contradictory orders. That is, whether he does one or the other, he is punished, for example, by taking away his love.

4. Metalog

Given the somewhat eccentric figure of Bateson, at least in academic terms, it was not surprising that he was familiar with the work of Miguel de Unamuno.who also had his quirks.

He takes the term meta-analogue from the work of the Spanish writer, but applies it to educational texts. It refers to a dialogue on some problematic topicThe dialogue is not only discussed about that specific problem, but the whole structure of the dialogue is given according to the problem.

Bibliographical references:

• Bateson, Gregory (1936). Naven. Stanford University Press.
• Bateson, G., Mead, M. (1942). Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York Academy of Sciences. ISBN 0-89072-780-5.
• Bateson, Gregory; Ruesch, Jurgen (1951). Communication: the social matrix of psychiatry. Norton and Company.
• Bateson, Gregory (1972). Steps toward an ecology of mind: collection of essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Ballantine Books.