Jay Haley (1923-2007)               Family therapy lost of one its best known pioneers when  Jay Haley died on February 13, 2007.  Haley, born July 19, 1923, in Midwest, Wyoming, was Scholar in  Residence at California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in San Diego at the time of his death.  A strong figure in the evolution of the field, Haley studied and worked with  other important pioneers including Gregory Bateson, Milton Erickson, and Salvador Minuchin.  Students and colleagues alike praised him as a brilliant therapeutic strategist who not only was a driving force in formulating a communications model  in the 1970s but also developed his own model of brief therapy, strategic family therapy. He earned a BA degree (University of California, Los Angeles) in 1948, a BLS degree from the University of California Berkeley) in 1951, and an MA degree (Stanford University) in 1953.  While Haley was working on the latter degree, Bateson invited him to join in the Project for the Study of Schizophrenic Communication at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Stanford University) in Palo Alto, California, that Bateson was directing. Besides the director the staff consisted of Haley  and John Weakland, Research Associates; and Don D. Jackson and William F. Fry, Consultants. Subsequently (1962-1967), Haley worked on research at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto.   From 1967 to 1974 he was director of family research at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic and contributed to bringing together aspects of strategic therapy and Minuchin’s structural therapy.  After serving as co-founder and director of the Family Therapy Institute in the Washington, DC area until his retirement in 1995, he subsequently accepted the Alliant International University appointment. Haley’s approach to therapy was strongly influenced by Milton Erickson, a master hypnotist, under whose supervision he worked for several years. Besides serving as the first editor of Family Process from 1962, when it was co-sponsored by The Mental Research Institute of the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation and The Family Institute (now the Ackerman Institute in New York City), through 1969, Haley wrote or co-authored some 20 books.  These included an interpretation of Erickson’s work: Uncommon Therapy: The Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, MD; The Art of Strategic Therapy; The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays; Strategies of Psychotherapy; Problem-Solving Tactics; Ordeal Therapy: Unusual Ways to Change Behavior; Learning and Teaching Therapy; Changing Children and Families; Leaving Home, and his last book, co-authored with his wife Madeleine Directive Family Therapy; as well as others and a number of audio and video cassettes; and journal articles.  Haley’s approach to therapy is best grasped by reading, listening to, and watching his presentations instead of going through the interpretations of others.