[1] At the time of his death, he was a senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, co-director of the famous Brief Therapy Center at MRI, and a clinical associate professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
[2] Weakland was a native of Charleston, West Virginia He was a brilliant student who entered Cornell University at the age of 16 and received a degree in chemical engineering.
He worked as a chemical engineer with the DuPont Company before a chance encounter with Gregory Bateson led him to pursue anthropology at Columbia University.
[5] Joining the Mental Research Institute in the early 1960s, Weakland was a founding member and co-director of MRI's Brief Therapy Center (along with Paul Watzlawick and Dick Fisch).
He wrote in a letter to the Family Therapy Networker that: While not always easy, one of the strengths of the field from its earliest days has been constructive reflection and discussion of its diversity.