untitled

Dorothy Johnson was born on August 21, 1919,
in Savannah, Georgia. She received her associate of
arts degree from Armstrong Junior College in
Savannah, Georgia, in 1938 and her bachelor of sci-
ence in nursing degree from Vanderbilt University
in 1942. She practiced briefly as a staff nurse at the
Chatham-Savannah Health Council before attend-
ing Harvard University, where she received her
master of public health (MPH) in 1948. She began
her academic career at Vanderbilt University School
of Nursing. A call from Lulu Hassenpplug, dean of
the School of Nursing, enticed her to go to the
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in

1949. She served there as an assistant, associate, and
      professor of pediatric nursing until her retirement
      in 1978. She passed away in 1999.
      During her academic career, Dorothy Johnson
      addressed issues related to nursing practice, nurs-
      ing education, and nursing science. While she was a
      pediatric nursing advisor at the Christian Medical
      College School of Nursing in Vellare, South India,
      she wrote a series of clinical articles for the Nursing
      Journal of India(Johnson, 1956, 1957). She worked
      with the California Nurses’ Association, the
      National League for Nursing, and the American
      Nurses’ Association to examine the role of the clin-
      ical nurse specialist, the scope of nursing practice,
      and the need for nursing research. She also com-
      pleted a Public Health Service–funded research
      project (“Crying as a Physiologic State in the
      Newborn Infant”) in 1963 (Johnson & Smith,
      1963). The foundations of her model and her be-
      liefs about nursing are clearly evident in these early
      publications.

Introducing the Theory

Johnson has noted that her theory, the Johnson
Behavioral System Model (JBSM), evolved from
philosophical ideas, theory and research, her clini-
cal background, and many years of thought, discus-
sions, and writing (Johnson, 1968). She cited a
number of sources for her theory. From Florence
Nightingale came the belief that nursing’s concern
is a focus on the person rather than the disease.
Systems theorists (Buckley, 1968; Chin, 1961;
Parsons & Shils, 1951; Rapoport, 1968; and Von
Bertalanffy, 1968) were all sources for her model.
Johnson’s background as a pediatric nurse is also
evident in the development of her model. In her

papers, Johnson cited developmental literature to

support the validity of a behavioral system model

(Ainsworth, 1964; Crandal, 1963; Gerwitz, 1972;

Kagan, 1964; and Sears, Maccoby, & Levin, 1954).

Johnson also noted that a number of her subsys-

tems had biological underpinnings.

Johnson’s theory and her related writings reflect

her knowledge about both development and gen-

eral systems theories. The combination of nursing,

development, and general systems introduces into

the rhetoric about nursing theory development

some of the specifics that make it possible to test

hypotheses and conduct critical experiments.

FIVE CORE PRINCIPLES

Johnson’s model incorporates five core principles

of system thinking: wholeness and order, stabiliza-

tion, reorganization, hierarchic interaction, and

Johnson’s model incorporates five core

principles of system thinking: wholeness

and order, stabilization, reorganization,

hierarchic interaction, and dialectical

contradiction.

dialectical contradiction. Each of these general

systems principles has analogs in developmental

theories that Johnson used to verify the validity of

her model (Johnson, 1980, 1990). Wholeness and

order provide the basis for continuity and identity,

stabilization for development, reorganization for

growth and/or change, hierarchic interaction for

discontinuity, and dialectical contradiction for mo-

tivation. Johnson conceptualized a person as an

open system with organized, interrelated, and in-

terdependent subsystems. By virtue of subsystem

interaction and independence, the whole of the

human organism (system) is greater than the sum

of its parts (subsystems). Wholes and their parts

create a system with dual constraints: Neither has

continuity and identity without the other.

The overall representation of the model can also

be viewed as a behavioral system within an envi-

ronment. The behavioral system and the environ-

ment are linked by interactions and transactions.

We define the person (behavioral system) as being

comprised of subsystems and the environment as

being comprised of physical, interpersonal (e.g.,

father, friend, mother, sibling), and sociocultural

80 SECTION II Evolution of Nursing Theory: Essential Influences