Communications Theory and Family Therapy: Communication, Family, and Marriage, Vol.  1; Therapy Communication, and Change, Vol.  2. Don D. Jackson (Ed.). Palo Alto, California:  Science and Behavior Books, 1968.  289 + 276 pp. (Paperback).

These volumes contain thirty-two papers, spanning the period 1956-1965, written by eleven members of a new “school” of behavioral science that is concerned with the family as a basic unit of study. So large a number of papers in just nine years are necessarily more repetitious and exploratory than a textbook, but they have, nevertheless, been reprinted in their entirety in order to document the development of the present position.

The group's original work with families of schizophrenics yielded two working postulates—family homeostasis and the double-bind hypothesis. Family homeostasis is a concept analogous to dynamic equilibrium in physical mechanics and signifies that the family is a dynamic system of interacting psyches (similar to forces) which maintains a steady state by virtue of “the individual characters of family members and the nature of their mutual interactions.” This is consistent with the well-known observation that as one family member who is in individual psychotherapy improves, other family members may become somewhat disturbed and may attempt to hinder or interrupt the progress and further therapy of the original patient.

The double-bind hypothesis, first formulated by Gregory Bateson, is a “communication sequence” which Bateson, Jackson, Haley and Weakland believe to be a significant part of the etiology of schizophrenia. A double-bind relationship, conceived originally as between