Paul Watzlawick’s theory of human communication

Family and systemic therapies owe much to this theory of interaction between people.

Watzlawick's theory of human communication proposes that communication problems between people are due to the fact that we do not always have the same point of view as our interlocutors. Failure to comply with certain communicative rules leads to failures in mutual understanding and pathological interaction patterns.

Watzlawick's contributions are framed within the interactional approach to psychotherapy, which has its maximum exponent in the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. There, Watzlawick developed and systematized the work carried out by such referents as Don Jackson and Gregory Bateson. His efforts were decisive in the emergence of systemic and family therapies.

Life and work of Paul Watzlawick

Paul Watzlawick (1921-2007) was an Austrian psychotherapist who was part of the Palo Alto was part of the Palo Alto School of Interactional Psychotherapy.. He and other theorists at the Mental Research Institute developed a theory of communication that made a fundamental contribution to the future of this area and of family therapy.

Watzlawick received a doctorate in philosophy and a degree in analytical psychology from the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich. He worked as a researcher at the University of El Salvador before joining the Mental Research Institute. He also worked as a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.

From his research with families, Watzlawick described a systems theory centered on communication that later became known as the "interactional approach". This model conceives communication as an open system in which messages are exchanged through interaction.

Watzlawick's work was based on the double bind theory developed by his colleagues Bateson, Jackson, Haley and Weakland to explain schizophrenia. However, Watzlawick's influence in the field of communication was probably greater than that of the other members of the Palo Alto School.

The Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto

The Mental Research Institute, usually abbreviated as "MRI", was founded by Don Jackson.was founded by Don Jackson in 1958 in Palo Alto, California. MRI's therapeutic tradition is often referred to as the "Palo Alto Interactional School".

During the decades that followed, MRI became a very prestigious institution. A large number of influential authors in systemic, family and existentialist therapies collaborated there, such as Richard Fisch, John Weakland, Salvador Minuchin, Irvin Yalom, Cloé Madanes, R. D. Laing and Watzlawick himself.

The Palo Alto Interactional School promoted the development of brief, scientific research-based therapies that focus on the interaction that focus on the interaction between people, especially at the family level. Over the years, the orientation of IRM has evolved to approaches close to constructivism.

Axioms of communication theory.

According to Watzlawick, Jackson, Beavin and Bavelas, adequate communication depends on the fulfillment of a series of axioms. Should any of them fail, communicative misunderstandings may occur.

1. It is impossible not to communicate

All human behavior has a communicative function, even if we try to avoid this. We communicate not only through words, but also with our facial expressions, our gestures and even when we remain silent, as well as when we use disqualification techniques, among which the strategy of the symptom stands out. disqualification techniques, among which the symptom strategy stands out..

Watzlawick calls "disqualification techniques" the anomalous modes of communication by which some people invalidate their own or others' messages, for example by leaving sentences unfinished. The symptom strategy consists of attributing miscommunication to physical and mental states, such as drunkenness, sleepiness or headache.

2. The content aspect and the relationship aspect

This theory states that human communication occurs on two levels: one of content and the other of relationship. The content aspect is what we transmit verbally.that is to say, the explicit part of the messages. This communicative level is subordinated to non-verbal communication, that is, to the relational aspect.

The relational aspects of the messages modify the interpretation that the receiver makes of their content, as happens with the tone of irony. Metacommunication, which consists of giving information about the verbal messages themselves, depends on the relational level and is a necessary condition for successful communication between sender and receiver.

3. The analog and the digital modality

This basic principle of Watzlawick's theory is closely related to the previous one. In summary, this author states that communication has an analogical and a digital modality; the first concept indicates a quantitative transmission of information, while at the digital level the message is qualitative. the digital level, the message is qualitative and binary..

Thus, while in the content aspect of communication the sending of information is digital (either a message is transmitted or it is not), the relational aspect is analogical; this implies that its interpretation is much less precise but potentially richer from a communicative point of view.

4. Punctuation gives meaning

Watzlawick believed that verbal and nonverbal communication have a structural component that is analogous to the punctuation of written language. By sequencing the content of the message, we are able to interpret causal relationships between eventsand to share information successfully with the interlocutor.

People often focus only on their own point of view, ignoring the point of view of those with whom they speak and understanding their own behavior as a reaction to that of the interlocutor. This leads to the erroneous belief that there is only one correct and linear interpretation of events, when in fact interactions are circular.

5. Symmetric and complementary communication

The division between symmetrical and complementary communication refers to the relationship that exists between two interlocutors.. When both have equivalent power in the exchange (i.e. they know the same information) we say that the communication between them is symmetrical.

On the other hand, complementary communication occurs when the interlocutors have different informational power. There are several types of complementary exchanges: one of the interlocutors may try to neutralize the exchange, to dominate the interaction or to facilitate the other person to do so.