Watzlawick’s theory of human communication suggests that communication problems between people are due to the fact that we do not always have the same point of view as our interlocutors. Lack of compliance with certain communicative rules causes failures in mutual understanding and pathological interaction patterns.
Watzlawick’s contributions are part of the interactional approach to psychotherapy, which has its greatest exponent at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. There, Watzlawick developed and systematized the work done by leaders such as Don Jackson and Gregory Bateson. His efforts were decisive in the emergence of systemic and family therapies.
Paul Watzlawick (1921-2007) was an Austrian psychotherapist who was part of the Palo Alto Interactional School He and other theorists at the Mental Research Institute developed a theory on communication that constituted a fundamental contribution to the future of this area and of family therapy.
Watzlawick earned 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 focused on communication that would later be 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 rest of the members of the Palo Alto School.
The Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto
The Mental Research Institute, commonly abbreviated as “MRI” , was founded by Don Jackson in 1958 in the city of Palo Alto, California. In many cases the MRI therapeutic tradition is referred to as the “Palo Alto Interactional School.”
During the following decades the MRI became a very prestigious institution. A large number of influential authors in systemic, family and existential therapies collaborated there, such as Richard Fisch, John Weakland, Salvador Minuchin, Irvin Yalom, Cloé Madanes, RD Laing and Watzlawick himself.
The Palo Alto Interactional School promoted the development of brief therapies based on scientific research that focus on the interaction between people, especially at the family level. Over the years, the orientation of the MRI has evolved to approaches close to constructivism.
Axioms of communication theory
According to Watzlawick, Jackson, Beavin and Bavelas, Adequate communication depends on fulfilling a series of axioms If any of them fail, communication misunderstandings may occur.
1. It is impossible not to communicate
Any 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 are silent, as well as when we use disqualification techniques, among which the symptom strategy stands out
Watzlawick calls “disqualification techniques” the anomalous modes of communication through which some people invalidate their own messages or those of others, for example by leaving sentences unfinished. The symptom strategy is to attribute the lack of communication to physical and mental states, such as drunkenness, sleepiness, or headaches.
2. The content aspect and the relationship aspect
This theory states that human communication occurs on two levels: one of content and another of relationship. The content aspect is what we transmit verbally , that is, the explicit part of the messages. This communicative level is subject to non-verbal communication, that is, to the relationship aspect.
The relational aspects of messages modify the recipient’s interpretation of their content, as happens with the tone of irony. Metacommunication, which consists of giving information about one’s own verbal messages, depends on the relational level and is a necessary condition for the communication between the sender and the receiver to be successful.
3. The analog and digital modality
This basic principle of Watzlawick’s theory is closely related to the previous one. In a synthetic way, this author proposes that communication has an analogue and a digital modality; The first concept indicates a quantitative transmission of information, while At 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 transmitted), the relational aspect occurs analogically; This implies that its interpretation is much less precise but potentially richer from a communicative point of view.
Watzlawick believed that verbal and non-verbal 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 events as well as sharing information with the interlocutor satisfactorily.
People often focus only on our point of view, ignoring that of those with whom we speak and understanding our own behavior as a reaction to that of the interlocutor. This leads to the mistaken belief that there is a single correct, linear interpretation of events, when in reality interactions are circular.
5. Symmetrical 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 (eg 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 a different informative power. There are several types of complementary exchanges: one of the interlocutors may try to neutralize the exchange, dominate the interaction, or facilitate the other person to do so.
