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<h3><b>
<a href="http://www.change-management-blog.com/2007/04/obituary-paul-watzlawick.html">
Obituary: Paul Watzlawick (*1921, Villach - 2007, Palo Alto)</a>
</b></h3><i>"This is the secret of propaganda: To totally saturate
the person, whom the propaganda wants to lay hold of, with the ideas of
the propaganda, without him even noticing that he is being
saturated." <br><br>
</i>Paul Watzlawick has died. Few people have had such a deep impact on
the theory of communication, and in a broader sense, on Change
Management, and nobody has written such compelling and at the same time
entertaining books. I rarely deliver a training workshop without citing
one or two of his anecdotes. My generation grew up with his book "In
Pursuit of Unhappiness".<br><br>
After he graduated from high school in 1939 in Villach, Paul Watzlawick
studied psychology and at the University of Venice and graduated in 1949.
He then worked at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. In 1957 he
continued his researching career at the University of El Salvador. In
1960, Don. D. Jackson arranged for him to come to Palo Alto to do
research at the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Research_Institute_of_Palo_Alto">
Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto</a>. Beginning in 1967 he has
taught psychiatry at Stanford University. He died, aged 85 in
California.<br><br>
In Palo Alto, Watzlawick and his colleagues (most notably
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson">Gregory
Bateson</a>) developed the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Bind">Double Bind</a>
theory. Other scientific contributions include works on
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology#Radical_constructivism">
radical constructivism</a> and most importantly his theory on
communication. Both he and Gregory Bateson have been a very important
inspiration in the field of family therapy. He defines 5 basic axioms in
his theory on communication that are necessary to have a functioning
communication between two individuals. If one of these axioms is somehow
disturbed, communication might fail.<br><br>
<b>1. One Cannot Not Communicate:</b> Every behaviour is a kind of
communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no
anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.<br><br>
<b>2. Every communication has a content and relationship aspect such that
the latter classifies the former and is therefore a
metacommunication:</b> This means that all communication includes, apart
from the plain meaning of words, more information - information on how
the talker wants to be understood and how he himself sees his relation to
the receiver of information.<br><br>
<b>3. The nature of a relationship is dependent on the punctuation of the
partners communication procedures:</b> Both the talker and the receiver
of information structure the communication flow differently and therefore
interpret their own behaviour during communicating as merely a reaction
on the other's behaviour (i.e. every partner thinks the other one is the
cause of a specific behaviour). Human communication cannot be desolved
into plain causation and reaction strings, communication rather appears
to be cyclic.<br><br>
<b>4. Human communication involves both digital and analog
modalities:</b> Communication does not involve the merely spoken words
(digital communication), but non-verbal and analog-verbal communication
as well.<br><br>
<b>5. Inter-human communication procedures are either symmetric or
complementary, depending on whether the relationship of the partners is
based on differences or parity.<br><br>
</b>I will always think of his Seattle story (from his book: "How
Real is Real"): In his book ‘How Real Is Real? : Confusion,
Disinformation, Communication’ he describes a phenomenon which occurred
in Seattle at the end of the 1950’s. Many owners of vehicles realized,
that their windscreens were full of small scratches. A commission sent by
President Eisenhower investigated the phenomenon and found out that among
the citizens of Seattle there were two persisting theories about the
causes of that phenomenon: one part attributed the damage to a suspected
Russian nuclear test, and the other to a chemical reaction of the fresh
tarmac which had been put on the State of Washington’s highways. After
the investigation was completed, the commission concluded that there was
no significant increase of scratched windscreens in Seattle.<br><br>
We will miss him a lot, we lost one of our strongest sources of wisdom
and humanity.<br><br>
Holger Nauheimer<br><br>
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