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(Marcin) #1

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



  1. 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

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