The book The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future 
is a book by Andrew Pickering. It traces the work of the British cyberneticians Grey Walter , Ross Ashbey , Stafford Beer , Gergory Bateson , R.D. Laing and Gordon Pask .
Pickering traces the influence of Ashbey's "Design for a Brain" on Christopher Alexander. He writes, that Alexander's PhD Thesis published as "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" draws explicitly on "Design for a Brain". > The details here are not important, but I want to note the distinctively Ashbynite way in which Alexander frames the problem in order to set up his own solution of it, a solution which is arguably at the heart of Alexander's subsequent career. He also claims this line of thought is developed further in Alexander's the pattern language.
Gregory Bateson and R.D. Laing are discussed in the context of Anti Psychiatry.