The Language of Change: Elements of Therapeutic Communication

184 Pages·1993·4.87 MB·English

by  Paul Watzlawick

Watzlawick* Paul*
The language of change : elements of
therapeutic communication / Paul
Watzlawick* ---- New York : Basic Booksf
c 1978.
xif 172 p* • i ll* y 22 cm*
Bibliography: p* 161—166*
Includes index*
#5779 Brodart $12*50*
ISBN 0-465-03792-5
1* Psychotherapy* 2* Interpersonal
communication* 3* Left and right
(Psychology) I* T itle
The Language of Change
BOOKS BY PAUL WATZLAWICK
An Anthology of Human Communication: Text and Tape
Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies
and Paradoxes (with Janet H. Beavin and Don D. Jackson)
Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (with John H.
Weakland and Richard Fisch)
How Real Is Real?
The Interactional View: Studies at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, 1965—74
(edited and with a commentary by Paul Watzlawick and John H. Weakland)
TECH
Elements of Therapeutic
Communication
PAUL WATZLAWICK
MENTAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
BASIC BOOKS, INC., PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The cartoon on page 53 is reprinted with the permission of Magi Wechsler, the
artist. The cartoon originally appeared in the Neue Ziircher Zeitung (NZZ)
49/70.
The advertisement on page 82 is reprinted courtesy of the Phillips-Van Heusen
Corporation.
The cartoon on page 85 is reprinted by permission of the Newspaper Enterprise
Association.
The excerpt on page 14 from “An Imperial Message” by Franz Kafka appears in
Parables and Paradoxes. Copyright © 1946, 1947, 1948, 1953, 1954, 1958 by
Schocken Books Inc. Copyright © renewed 1974 by Schocken Books Inc.
Reprinted by permission.
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint portions of the fol­
lowing material.
Max Frisch, The Fire Raisers, in Three Plays, trans. Michael Bullock (Lon­
don: Methuen & Co., 1962). Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, Inc.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, The Difficult Man, in Plays and Libretti, Bollin-
gen Series, vol. 33, no. 3 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), pp. 712-713.
Copyright © 1963 by Princeton University Press.
Jay Haley, Uncommon Therapy: The Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H.
Erickson, M.D. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973). Reprinted by permission
of W. W. Norton, Inc. Copyright © 1963 by Jay Haley.
Milton Erickson, “The Use of Symptoms as an Integral Part of Hypno­
therapy,” American fournal of Clinical Hypnosis 8 (1965): 57-65. Reprinted
by permission.
Milton Erickson and L. Rossi, “Varieties of Double Bind,” American four­
nal of Clinical Hypnosis 17 (1975): 143—57. Reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Watzlawick, Paul.
The language of change.
Bibliography: p. 161.
Includes index.
1. Psychotherapy. 2. Interpersonal communica­
tion. 3. Left and right (Psychology) 1. Title.
RC480. 5.W34 616.8*914 77-20416
ISBN: 0-465-03792-3
Copyright © 1978 by Paul Watzlawick
Printed in the United States of America
DESIGNED BY VINCENT TORRE
IO 9 8 7 6 5
To Dr. Milton H. Erickson
Who Heals With Words
CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
1. Overview 3
2. Our Two Languages
x3
Our Two Brains
3- 19
Experimental Evidence 28
4 -
World Images 40
5-
6. Right-Hemispheric Language Patterns 48
Condensations 49
Figurative Language 56
Pars pro toto 69
Aphorisms 73
Ambiguities, Puns, Allusions 78
7. Blocking the Left Hemisphere 91
11 est interdit d’interdire 99
Symptom Prescriptions 101
Symptom Displacements 106
The Illusion of Alternatives 108
Reframing ji8
8. Injunctive Language—Behavior Prescriptions 127
9. Anything, Except THAT 138
Speaking the Patient’s “Language” 139
Utilizing the Patient’s Resistance 144
Preempting 150
Vll
Therapeutic Rituals
Conclusion
WORKS CITED
INDEX
PREFACE
Similia similibus curantur.
(Like cures like)
The thesis of this book is simple; its practical application is not.
Monsieur Jourdain, the hero of Moliere’s comedy, he
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, wants to send his beloved a billet-doux
and enlists the help of his preceptor for this task. The latter wants
to know if it should be composed in verse or in prose. Monsieur
Jourdain at first rejects both alternatives. Upon being informed
that there is no third possibility, he cannot get over his astonish­
ment that for forty years he should have been speaking prose
without knowing it.
This book wants to show that very much the same holds true
for the language of psychotherapy. Not only were the ancient
rhetoricians fully aware of many of its essential properties, but
many other characteristics have for a considerable time been the
object of detailed studies in the most diverse areas of human ex­
perience—in childhood, language formation, fiction, wit,
dream, ecstasy, intoxication, and delusion. But what thereby
emerges from realms which on account of their sinister
strangeness are ascribed to the unconscious, dark side of the soul
is, in clinical dialogue, habitually translated into the supposedly
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