Jay Haley, 83; Family Therapy Pioneer Advocated Direct Approach

At Stanford, Mr. Haley worked with linguist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson on a team project investigating schizophrenia. The team developed the double bind theory of schizophrenia, which attributed the mental illness to a young person's participation in dysfunctional communication patterns within the family. Although the theory is now discredited as a cause of schizophrenia, it provided Mr. Haley with a model for exploring communication in families.

Bateson, who was once married to anthropologist Margaret Mead, was a filmmaker, as was Mr. Haley. Mr. Haley and his second wife, anthropologist and filmmaker Madeleine Richeport-Haley, produced 25 films together, including three that reexamined Mead and Bateson's 1930s-era study of trance and healing on the island of Bali.

Mr. Haley was director of family experimentation at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., before becoming director of family research at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, where he worked with Salvador Minuchin, a major figure in family therapy. With Minuchin, he did pioneering work in training lay people to work as family therapists. He also encouraged therapists to focus on the needs of underprivileged and ethnically diverse families.

In 1974, he co-founded the Family Therapy Institute, based in Chevy Chase. Under his leadership during the next two decades, it became one of the nation's leading training institutes. He also taught at the University of Maryland, Howard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1994, he moved to La Jolla, where he continued teaching, writing, lecturing and making films.

He was the author of more than 100 scholarly papers and 21 books, including "Strategies of Psychotherapy" (1963), "Uncommon Therapy" (1972), "Leaving Home: The Therapy of Disturbed Young People" (1981) and "The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays" (1999).

His marriages to Elizabeth Kuehn Haley and Cloe Madanes ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 12 years, of La Jolla; three children from his first marriage, Kathleen Haley of Richmond, Calif., Andrew Haley of Conshohocken, Pa., and Gregory Haley of San Diego; four grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.