Pragmatics of human communication : a study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes
Paul Watzlawick (Author), Janet Beavin Bavelas (Author), Don D. Jackson (Author)
"Called 'one of the best books ever about human communication,' and a perennial bestseller, Pragmatics of Human Communication is now available for the first time in paperback. This book has formed the foundation of much contemporary research into interpersonal communication, in addition to laying the groundwork for context-based approaches to psychotherapy. Presenting a simple but radical idea--that problems in life often arise from issues of communication, rather than from deep psychological disorders--the authors make conceptual explorations concrete with case studies and well-known literary examples. Written with humor and for a variety of readers, this book identifies simple properties and axioms of human communication and demonstrates how all communications are actually a function of their contexts. Topics covered in this wide-ranging book include: the origins of communication; the idea that all behavior is communication; meta-communication; the properties of an open system; the family as a system of communication; the nature of paradox in psychotherapy; existentialism and human communication."-- Back cover
Print Book, English, 2014
First published as a Norton paperback 2011, reissued 2014 View all formats and editions
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2014
xiii, 284 pages ; 21 cm
9780393710595, 0393710599
881386568
Introduction
The frame of reference
Some tentative axioms of communication
Pathological communication
The organization of human interaction
A communicational approach to the play who's afraid of Virginia Woolf
Paradoxical communication
Paradox in psychotherapy
Epilogue existentialism and the theory of human communication : an outlook
References
Glossary
Author and subject index