Awards & Accomplishments:

Following is a chronology of significant milestones, awards, and accomplishments of Dr. Jackson's career.

  • 1944 -- Graduated Stanford Medical School
  • 1944 -- Publishes first article. Topic: Clinical Hypnosis
  • 1944 -- Entered U.S. Army. Serves as Chief of Neurology, Letterman Hospital, San Francisco, California
  • 1947 -- Honorable Discharge from U.S. Army as a Captain
  • 1947 -- Enters training at Washington School of Psychiatry and Chestnut Lodge under the tutelage of Harry Stack Sullivan, Freda Fromm-Reichmann, and other leaders in Interpersonal Psychiatry
  • 1951 -- Completes Training and returns to San Francisco Bay Area entering private practice in Palo Alto. Begins to train interns at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital.
  • 1951 -- Begins to experiment with seeing a schizophrenic patient conjointly, first with the young adult and her mother, then later with the mother, father, and young adult.
  • 1952 -- Introduces the concept of Family Homeostasis into the professional literature in an article entitled Office Treatment of the Ambulatory Schizophrenic.
  • 1954 -- In the article Some factors influencing the Oedipus Complex, Jackson introduces the idea that current parent - child triadic interaction is a principal causal dynamic involved in emotional upset.
  • 1954 -- Gives lecture on The Question of Family Homeostasis at the American Psychiatric Association.
  • 1954 -- Bateson invites Jackson to join his research group as a consultant
  • 1956 -- Landmark article Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia, co-authored with Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, & John Weakland is published
  • 1957 -- Revolutionary article The Question of Family Homeostasis is published
  • 1958 -- Mental Research Institute is founded
  • 1959 -- First federally funded Family Therapy Program founded at the MRI
  • 1960 -- First Book - The Etiology of Schizophrenia is published
  • 1962 -- Receives the Freda Fromm-Reichmann Award for contribution to understanding Schizophrenia
  • 1962 -- 1st Family Therapy Journal, Family Process, founded by Don Jackson, Nathan Ackerman, and Jay Haley as first Editor.
  • 1962 -- Science & Behavior Books Publishing house established with Jackson as first Editor
  • 1964 -- 2nd book - Myths of Madness is published
  • 1964 -- Publishes article on Family Dynamics and Ulcerated Colitis co-authored with Irving Yalom, which was among the earliest articles connecting physical illness with family interactional patterns
  • 1965 -- Publishes two landmark articles: The Study of the Family, and Family Rules-Marital Quid Pro Quo.
  • 1967 -- Named Salmon Lecturer, by the American Psychiatric Association and the New York Academy of Medicine
  • 1967 -- 3rd book, Pragmatics of Human Communication co-authored with Paul Watzlawick & Janet Bavelas is published
  • 1967 -- Seminal articles Schizophrenia - The Nosological Nexus, and The Individual in the Larger Contexts are published
  • 1967 -- 4th book, Bulls, Bears, & Dr. Freud, co-authored with Al Haas, is published
  • 1968 -- January 28th, Don D. Jackson dies after many months of chronic illness
  • 1968 -- 5th and 6th books are published posthumously, Therapy & Communication, Jackson, D. (Ed.) Communication, Family and Marriage (Human communication, volume 1), and Jackson, D. (Ed.) Therapy, Communication and Change (Human communication, volume 2). Palo Alto, CA: Science & Behavior Books.
  • 1968 -- 7th book by William Lederer & Don D. Jackson is published posthumously. Mirages of Marriage. NY: W.W. Norton & Co.
  • 1970 -- Jackson named one of the top ten most influential psychiatrists of his era by his peers in the field of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences (Rogow, 1970).
  • 1979 -- 4th Don D. Jackson Memorial Conference held in San Francisco. With more than 1200 participants, this conference was one of the largest gatherings of family therapists ever held up until that time.
  • 1998 -- "The sick, the sad, the savage, and the sane" an original paper by Don Jackson is published as a chapter in Defining the nature of relationships - The Interactional Therapy of Don D. Jackson, by Wendel Ray and Jay Haley.
  • 1998 -- This Homepage honoring Dr. Jackson contributions to family theory and therapy is launched on the world wide web.