Bradford Keeney

Bradford Keeney
Born	1951 Granite City, Illinois, US
Fields	cybernetics, psychology, brief therapy, radical constructivism, Systems theory, ecstatic healing traditions
Known for	family systems therapy , brief therapy, systems psychology, Creativity in Therapy, Resource Focused Therapy, Recursive Frame Analysis, Psychotherapy as a Transformative Art
Influences	Gregory Bateson, Heinz von Foerster, Francisco Varela, Carl Whitaker, R. D. Laing, Olga Silverstein, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, Salvador Minuchin

Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. (3 April 1951) is a creative therapist, cybernetician, anthropologist of cultural healing traditions, improvisational performer, and spiritual healer. Bradford Keeney has served as a professor, founder, and director of clinical doctoral programs in numerous universities. He is the originator of several orientations to psychotherapy including improvisational therapy, resource focused therapy, and creative therapy. He is the inventor of recursive frame analysis, a research method that discerns patterns of transformation in conversation. A Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, he received the 2008 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

As an ethnographic fieldworker, Keeney has been called the Marco Polo of psychology and an anthropologist of the spirit by the editors of Utne Reader. He spent over a decade traveling the globe, living with spiritual teachers and healers who trusted him to share their words with others – modern cultures in need of elder wisdom. The result of Keeney's work is one of the broadest and most intense field studies of healing, chronicled in the critically acclaimed book series, Profiles of Healing, an eleven-volume encyclopedia of the world's healing practices.

Bradford Keeney was born in Granite City, Illinois, and grew up in Smithville, Missouri. In May 1969, he won a merit award from the American Medical Association, and later first place at the international science fair with a project called “An Experimental Study of the Effects of Hydrocortisone, Insulin, and Epinephrine on the Glycogen Content of Hepatic Tissues Perfused in Vitro.” This award earned him a scholarship to M.I.T. where he was first introduced to cybernetics and systems thinking. Fascinated by cybernetics, Keeney sought out Gregory Bateson, one of the world’s leading cyberneticians, who became his friend and mentor. Keeney’s doctoral dissertation (Purdue University, 1981) became the book Aesthetics of Change (1983), considered a seminal work in cybernetic theory and heralded by the likes of cybernetician and systems theorist Heinz von Foerster.

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