The art of psychotherapy in Bateson’s thought

Abstract

Is psychotherapy science or art? Moving from this question, this paper addresses the Batesonian epistemology set forth in Toward an Ecology of Mind.

Beginning with the observation that 'in the natural history of the living human being, ontology and epistemology cannot be separated,' I focus on 'interconnected circuits of contingency,' that is, those circuits in which matter and thought are not split, but complementary components of a mental process, whose boundaries do not coincide at all with the boundaries of the body, ego or consciousness.

A concepts such as the “conscious purpose”, described as man's position with respect to life processes in front of which we can only interact by preparing the conditions as well as keeping in mind that the whole process does not depend on the willingness, is considered. The concept of “conscious purpose” is closely related to the concept of 'I,' a false reification of a larger system of interconnected processes. 

In the psychotherapy setting, these concepts interrogate us and conjugate in the clinical setting. What changes can be hypothesized, starting from a position of wisdom, to distinguish what cannot be changed from what is possible to change ?. Finally, the paper dwells on the concept of 'double-bind' considered not as a diagnostic observational tool, but as a guide in therapy that allows the reification of the 'I' and familiar recognition processes to be processed.