The Don D. Jackson Archive is a collection of documents upon which much of the field of systemic marriage and family therapy and brief therapy are based.  The Archive contains thousands of original audio recordings, video recordings, original paper documents including unpublished research materials from numerous completed research projects; collections of published writings by key members (Jackson, Bateson, Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, Satir, Haley); hundreds of rare photographs, first edition books and original articles, etc. Significant collections from other leading family theorists and therapists are also housed in the Jackson Archive, including Carl Whitaker, Gianfranco Cecchin, R. D. Laing, Heinz von Foerster, Bradford P. Keeney, Steve de Shazer and others.

About the Archive:

Students studying counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work, and other related fields benefit from accessing the Archive’s documents.  The Archive supports students’ and others’ efforts in preparing assignments, competing assignments, writing articles and books, and completing dissertations.

Thus far approximately 20 dissertations have been written based on materials in the Archive, 12 here at ULM and additional dissertations by researchers at other Universities including Harvard, Virginia Tech, Syracuse University and Nova Southeastern who traveled to ULM to study materials preserved in the Archive.

The Archive was founded at the MRI by Dr. Wendel Ray in 1987. Since joining the ULM MFT Faculty in Jan. 1990 the Archive has been a joint research project of the MRI and ULM.  As a working archive, rare documents are constantly being preserved and duplicated in digital format, and used as the basis for publishing/research.  Expansion of documents and expenses incurred by operating this working Archive has been funded by donated and external funds.  The founder expects the continued growth of the Archive will be funded through future donations and external funds.