<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16414" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=750193707-04042007><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080>Thank you for posting this, Holger. Paul Watzlawick also had
a deep impact on me. In 1984, my husband and I attended one of the first
mult-field systems conferences sponsored by the Mental Research
Institute. It was my first experience having "coffee break conversations"
with biologists, psychologists, economists, sociologists, etc. which led me
to consider that nothing is random and that everything is
self-organized.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=750193707-04042007><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=750193707-04042007><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080>I am so grateful for all that I learned from Paul and his
collaborative work.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=750193707-04042007><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=750193707-04042007><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080>
<DIV><FONT color=#008080>
<DIV align=left><EM><FONT face="Bradley Hand ITC"
color=#000080><STRONG>Christine</STRONG></FONT></EM></DIV>
<DIV align=left><STRONG><EM><FONT face="Bradley Hand ITC"
size=1></FONT></EM></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2><EM>CWS -
Collaborative Wisdom & Strategy</EM></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2>Christine Whitney
Sanchez</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2>2717 E. Mountain Sky
Avenue</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2>Phoenix, AZ
85048</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2>480.759.0262</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Maiandra GD" color=#000080 size=2><A
href="http://www.christinewhitneysanchez.com/">www.christinewhitneysanchez.com</A></FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face="Maiandra GD"
color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> OSLIST
[mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Holger
Nauheimer<BR><B>Sent:</B> Monday, April 02, 2007 2:08 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<BR><B>Subject:</B> Obituary: Paul
Watzlawick<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV><A name=5824953109441513150></A><BR>
<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 1950s. 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 Washingtons 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>* *
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe,
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about
OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
</BODY></HTML>
*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist