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Paul Watzlawick | |
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| Born | (1921-07-25)July 25, 1921 |
| Died | March 31, 2007(2007-03-31) (aged 85) Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Philosophical work | |
| Main interests | Communication theory andradical constructivism |
| Notable ideas | "One cannot not communicate" |
Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician incommunication theory andradical constructivism, he commented in the fields offamily therapy and generalpsychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at theMental Research Institute and lived and worked inPalo Alto, California.
Paul Watzlawick was born inVillach, Austria in 1921, the son of a bank director.[1] After he graduated from high school in 1939, Watzlawick studiedphilosophy andphilology at theUniversità Ca' Foscari Venice and he earned aPhD in 1949. He then studied at theCarl Jung Institute inZürich, where he received a degree inanalytical psychology in 1954. In 1957 he continued his research career at theUniversity of El Salvador.
In 1960,Donald deAvila Jackson arranged for him to go toPalo Alto to do research at theMental Research Institute (MRI). Starting in 1967 he taughtpsychiatry atStanford University.
At the Mental Research Institute Watzlawick followed in the footsteps ofGregory Bateson and the research team (Jackson,John Weakland,Jay Haley) responsible for introducing what became known as the "double bind" theory of schizophrenia. Double bind can be defined as a person trapped under mutually-exclusive expectations. Watzlawick's 1967 work based on Bateson's thinking,Pragmatics of Human Communication, with Don Jackson andJanet Beavin, became a cornerstone work of communication theory. Other scientific contributions include works on radical constructivism and most importantly his theory oncommunication. He was active in the field offamily therapy.
Watzlawick was one of the three founding members of the Brief Therapy Center at MRI. In 1974, members of the Center published a major work on their brief approach,Change, Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch).
He was licensed as a psychologist in California from 1969 to 1998, when he stopped seeing patients.
Watzlawick was married (Vera) and had two stepdaughters (Yvonne and Joanne). A cardiac arrest at his home in Palo Alto caused his death at the age of 85.
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Watzlawick did extensive research on how communication is effected within families. Watzlawick defines five basicaxioms in his theory on communication, popularly known as the "Interactional View". The Interactional View is an interpretive theory drawing from thecybernetic tradition. Watzlawick considered five axioms as a prerequisite for functioning communication process and competence between two individuals or an entire family. According to him, miscommunication happens because not all of the communicators are "speaking the same language". This happens because people have different viewpoints of speaking. With an underlying cybernetic structure, Watzlawick considered causality of a circular, feedback nature, with information as a core element. it is concerned with the processes of communication within systems of the widest sense and therefore also with human systems, e.g., families, large organizations and international relations.[citation needed]
Within the "Interactional View" communication is based on what is happening, and not necessarily associated with who, when, where, or why it takes place. He studied "Normal" as well as the "disturbed" family in order to infer conditions conducive to the approach of interaction-orientation. He believed that individual personality, character, and deviance are shaped by the individual's relations with his fellows. He saw symptoms, defenses, character structure and personality as terms describing the individual's typical interactions, which occur in response to a particular interpersonal context.[citation needed]
TheInteractional View requires a network of communication rules that govern a familyhomeostasis, which is the tacit collusion of family members to maintain thestatus quo. Even if the status quo is negative it can still be hard to change. Interactional theorists believe that a person will fail to recognize this destructive resistance to change unless he or she understand Watzlawick's axioms. The following axioms can explain how miscommunication can occur if not all the communicators are on the same page. If one of these axioms is somehow disturbed, communication might fail. All of these axioms are derived from the work of Gregory Bateson, much of which is collected inSteps to an Ecology of Mind (1972).[2]
Watzlawick,Beavin Bavelas and Jackson support these axioms to maintain family homeostasis.
Some interrelated notions that make up the Interactional View promoted by Watzlawick and colleagues at the MRI include:
A term that is used often in the theory of the Interactional View isenabler. An enabler is within addiction culture; a person whose non-assertive behavior allows others to continue in their substance abuse. An example of this would be a person letting their sibling continue to act in an immature manner because that is what the family is used to him doing.[citation needed]
Another word frequently used in the Interactional View isdouble-bind. Someone in a double-bind, is a person trapped by expectations; the powerful party requests that the low-power party act symmetrically. An example of this would be a person asking another person, "Why didn't you like the movie?" or "You like rock 'n' roll, don't you?" The first person is asking the second person to act in a way that is similar (symmetrical) to them.[citation needed]
Paul Watzlawick theory had great impact on the creation of thefour-sides model byFriedemann Schulz von Thun.
Michel Weber argues for a cross-elucidation and reinforcement between the worldviews ofAlfred North Whitehead and Watzlawick in his paper "The Art of Epochal Change".[4]
Watzlawick wrote 22 books that were translated into 80 languages for academic and general audiences with more than 150 scientific articles and book chapters. Books he has written or on which he has collaborated include:
