This classic book, available in paperback for the very first time, explores why some people can successfully change their lives and others cannot. Here famed psychologist Paul Watzlawick presents what is still often perceived as a radical idea: that the solutions to our problems are inherently embedded in the problems themselves. Tackling the age-old questions surrounding persistence and change, the book asks why problems arise and are perpetuated in some instances but easily resolved in others. Incorporating ideas about human communication, marital and family therapy, the therapeutic effects of paradoxes and of action-oriented techniques of problem resolution, Change draws much from the field of psychotherapy.
The concept of intersubjectivity, explicit or implicit, has emerged as a common denominator in approaches to interpersonal engagements in early infancy and children's understanding of others' thought and emotion. This 1999 book brings together the most senior international figures in psychology, psychopathology, sociology and primatology to address the key question of the role of intersubjectivity in early ontogeny. Together, they offer an interesting perspective on child development, learning and communication and highlight important comparisons with processes in autistic development and in infant ape development. The book is divided into four parts, focusing on intersubjective attunement in human infancy; companionship and emotional responsiveness in early childhood; imitation, emotion and understanding in primate communication; and intersubjective attunement and emotion in language learning and language use. It is an invaluable resource for researchers in emotion and communication across the social and behavioural sciences.
In this groundbreaking book, a world authority on human communication and communication therapy points out a basic contradiction in the way therapists use language. Although communications emerging in therapy are ascribed to the mind's unconscious, dark side, they are habitually translated in clinical dialogue into the supposedly therapeutic language of reason and consciousness. But, Dr. Watzlawick argues, it is precisely this bizarre language of the unconscious which holds the key to those realms where alone therapeutic change can take place.
The fundamental concern of psychotherapy is change. While practitioners are constantly greeted with new strategies, techniques, programs, and interventions, this book argues that the full benefits of the therapeutic process cannot be realized without fundamental revision of the concept of change itself. Applying cybernetic thought to family therapy, Bradford P. Keeney demonstrates that conventional epistemology, in which cause and effect have a linear relationship, does not sufficiently accommodate the reciprocal nature of causation in experience. Written in an unconventional style that includes stories, case examples, and imagined dialogues between an epistemologist and a skeptical therapist, the volume presents a philosophically grounded, ecological framework for contemporary clinical practice.
This is a tongue-in-cheek look at the ways in which we turn ourselves into our own worst enemies. Using metaphors, vignettes, jokes, innuendoes and other "right-hemispheric" language games, Dr. Watzlawick shows how we can make everyday life miserable and inflate trivialities beyond recognition. Those who believe that the search for happiness eventually leads to happiness should consult the chapter "Beware of Arriving."--Publisher description.
Disciplinary knowledge is under threat in the modern world. Claims abound that we are entering a landscape in which the division of disciplines is obsolete, implying a commitment to outdated values in scholarship. Notions of 'discipline' are critiqued as reflecting social power and representing the worldview of dominant social groups. By addressing and challenging such claims, this edited collection argues that proclamations of the death of disciplines have been greatly overstated. Not only are the notions of disciplinarity still important for understanding how we come to know the world, but this volume demonstrates how significant disciplinarity is to understanding different forms of knowledge if we wish to improve the building of knowledge and educational practice. Using analytical tools from systemic functional linguistics theory and social realist sociology, this volume illustrates how different disciplines can collaborate and cross-fertilize successfully, without losing their distinctive insights and disciplinary integrity. The subsequent theory developed will thereby extend both linguistic and sociological approaches to the topic and make a major contribution to educational theory.