ABSTRACT
It wou ld be mis leading to refer s imply to "the family therapy approach of the Men ta l Research Inst i tute , " since a number of approaches have been deve loped by M R I staff members, who have often been mavericks w i th interd isc ip l i - nary or unconvent ional tra ining and highly i n - d iv idual is t ic thinkers whose ideas cannot be compressed into a single approach under the monol i th ic label " M R I . " 1 This independence also character ized Gregory Bateson. Bateson and members of his research projects, as we l l as the early M R I staff, are referred to as "The Palo A l t o G r o u p , " a n ickname wh i ch has incorrect ly been assumed to be synonymous w i th M R I . These points w i l l emerge in more precise perspect ive i n the context of a history of M R I ' s first two decades only sl ightly modi f ied from the one wr i t t en by L e e - M e r r o w (1979).
