Unhappiness guide. Paul Watzlawick´s book: the situation is hopeless, but not serious - the pursuit of unhappiness. Read it, teach your children. And note: all depends on context. Be unhappy or happy. Its your decision :-)

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Paul Watzlawick´s famous book: The Situation Is Hopeless but Not Serious - The Pursuit of Unhappiness

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way':
tragedy beats comedy.

Paul Watzlawick´s famous book:

The Situation Is Hopeless but Not Serious
The Pursuit of Unhappiness

---

Synopsis

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 .

---

This could be YOUR first book on constructivist
epistemology, definitely an introductive book
by Paul Watzlawick a leading theoretician in
Communication Theory and Radical Constructivism.

Watzlawick in
"The Situation Is Hopeless, but Not Serious"
gives you the best way to be

====> scientifically unhappy :-)

We read:

It's time to end the millennial fable
that happiness and serenity are
desirable goals of life.

Many examples are clearly ironic
and at the same time contain
a fund of truth.

The book is quite famous mainly for the hammer story:

A man wants to hang a painting.
He has the nail, but not the hammer.

Therefore it occurs to him to go over to
the neighbor and ask him to lend him
his hammer.

But at this point, doubt sets in.
What if he doesn't want to lend me the hammer?

Yesterday he barely spoke to me.

Maybe he was in a hurry.

Or, perhaps, he holds something against me.

But why?

I didn't do anything to him.
If he would ask me to lend him something,
I would, at once.

How can he refuse to lend me his hammer?
People like him make other people's life miserable.

Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer.

This is got to stop!

And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor's door,
rings, and before letting him say anything,
he screams:

"You can keep your hammer, you b......"

The second main Watzlawick's contribute
is on techniques that make it possible
to avoid solving problems.

Another good technique:
====> do be unhappy.

Definitly a quick read with a simple the key:

know how to be unhappy
to become instantly happy.

Learn more about this fantastic
scientist Paul Watzlawick
here on this lens :-)

Keyword:

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unhappiness

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----

Introduction to the book - part 1 

Every unhappy family is unhappy
in its own way':
tragedy beats comedy.

Paul Watzlawick´s famous book:

The Situation Is Hopeless but Not Serious
The Pursuit of Unhappiness

---

Synopsis

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"

---

This could be YOUR first book on
constructivist epistemology,
definitely an introductive book
by Paul Watzlawick a leading
theoretician in Communication Theory
and Radical Constructivism.

Watzlawick in
"The Situation Is Hopeless, but Not Serious"
gives you the best way to be

====> scientifically unhappy :-)

We read:

It's time to end the millennial
fable that happiness and serenity
are desirable goals of life.

Many examples are clearly ironic
and at the same time contain
a fund of truth.

The book is quite famous mainly
for the hammer story:

A man wants to hang a painting.
He has the nail, but not the hammer.

Therefore it occurs to him to go over to
the neighbor and ask him to lend him
his hammer.

But at this point, doubt sets in.

What if he doesn't want to lend me
the hammer?

Yesterday he barely spoke to me.

Maybe he was in a hurry.

Or, perhaps, he holds something
against me.

But why?

I didn't do anything to him.
If he would ask me to lend him something,
I would, at once.

How can he refuse to lend me his
hammer?

People like him make other
people's life miserable.

Worst, he thinks that I need him
because he has a hammer.

This is got to stop!

And suddenly the guy runs to the
neighbor's door, rings, and before
letting him say anything,
he screams:

"You can keep your hammer,
you b......"

The second main Watzlawick's
contribute is on techniques
that make it possible
to avoid solving problems.

Another good technique:

====> do be unhappy.

Definitly a quick read with a
simple the key:

know how to be unhappy
to become instantly happy.

---

The Situation Is Hopeless, but Not Serious:
The Pursuit of Unhappiness
by Paul Watzlawick

Note the subtitle of this book is
The Pursuit of Unhappiness.

Knowing thathappiness is something that happens
spontaneously, Watzlawick devotes this book
to a study of ways for folks to carefully
pursue unhappiness.

By cataloging the most popular ways
that folks make themselves unhappy and
giving intricate details on
how to do it, those folks
who recognize their own strategies for creating
unhappiness as they read this book, will be
unable to perform the tasks as well as before,
their careful processes for making themselves
unhappy will be broken!

When confronted with a desperate predicament,
the Northern German is said to take the attitude
that "the situation is serious, but not hopeless"

whereas the Southern German, confronting
the same predicament, would take the attitude that
"the situation is hopeless, but not serious".

With the southern attitude, Paul Watzlawick offers
a simple solution to seemingly impossible predicaments.

One predicament is choosing to operate on the
world the way one thinks it should be instead of
the way it is.

Watzlawick says of such a person, "As captain of his ship,
which the rats have already abandoned, he heroically
steers into the stormy night."

Of another favorite predicament, "Games with the Past",
Watzlawick details four variations for the reader to consider:

1) Glorification of the Past: Seeing one's youth as Paradise
Lost and "making it into an inexhaustible reservoir
of nostalgic misery."

2) Mrs. Lot: Looking back obsessively on the past
so as to avoid any possibility of discovering something
new in the present, in effect, turning oneself into stone.

3) The Fatal Glass of Beer: In this predicament,
the single act of sinning starts an irreversible decline
(like the young man drinking his first glass of beer in
W. C. Fields' movie, The Fatal Glass of Beer).

"Then I sinned, but now I am the victim of my own sin."

Watzlawick tells us in the voice of the hopelessly
lost sinner.

4) More of the Same: The story is of Nasruddin,
the Sufi joker sage, who was crawling around the
campfire in front of his desert tent when a friend
walked by. "What are you looking for?"

"My key" At this his friend got on his knees and
joined in the search, soon another friend came by
and there were three of them helping, then a fourth.

Soon, a fifth friend came by and asked,
"What are you looking for?"
"My key"
"Oh, where did you lose it?"
"In my tent."
"In your tent?
Then why are all of you looking for it out here?"

"Because the light is better here."

Sounds absurd, doesn't it? If you look in the wrong
place, you will never find what you're looking for, right?

Yes, but continuing the game of "more of the same",
is one of the most effective recipes for disaster
that has gradually evolved on our planet."

The only hope for the irrepressible "more of the same"
player is to follow these two directions explicitly:
[Liberally reworded from the author's text.]

1) You must keep doing what you're doing the same
way, since only one way of doing it is permitted,
and if the way you choose to do it is not working,
just apply yourself more forcefully.

2) Under no circumstances doubt the assumption
that there is only one way to do it; only your application
of that one way and its effectiveness may be
questioned and refined.

After these playful romps with the past, Watzlawick
examines other ingenious ways that people use
to make themselves unhappy.

As Margaret Mead pointed out, while an American
would pretend to have a headache to avoid an unpleasant
social engagement, a Russian would have
to have a headache.

The American suffers from a hurting conscience,
and the Russian from a hurting head.

For persons unfamiliar with the tools of the average paranoic,
Watzlawick, in The Story of the Hammer, gives details on
how to convert floaters into failing vision, tinnitus into
hearing loss, and one's friends into co-conspirators.

It only takes a little practice with the detailed exercises
to become proficient.

Given that all these simple tools may never allow one
to achieve the true unhappiness of Oedipus, Watzlawick
points out how the self-fulfilling prophecy, conscientiously
applied, can save the day.

He leads us to see Karl Popper's point that
"the very actions that Oedipus took in order to avoid
the horrifying predictions of the oracle led to the fatal
fulfillment of those predictions."

Need stronger ammunition?

Try mixing messages at the object and relationship level,
Watzlawick suggests. "Do you like the soup I made
especially for you?"

If it tastes bad and you say, "No" honestly, the relationship
will suffer. Some folks spend their entire lives nourishing
themselves on bad tasting soup rather than risk upsetting
the relationship by telling the truth.

The author finally unsheathes the most powerful weapon
of all in his armamentarium, the "Be Spontaneous" Paradox.

Its use is demonstrated below by two unhappiness experts:
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"If you really loved me, you'd say so
without my asking you."

Any request or command for a spontaneous act
will cause other persons to be unable to perform the act
spontaneously.

Whether it's to: "Go to sleep", "Show me you love me",
"Be happy", or even "Do a good job", the mere gracing
of their ears with the request will make it difficult or
impossible for them to perform as requested.

This is the reason why actors before a stage performance
are told to "Break a leg". Since breaking a leg can only happen
spontaneously, it will not happen on command,
and the actors are not stuck in the exquisite "Be Spontaneous"
paradox of being wished to "Perform well tonight".

Even the simple request by a photographer to "Smile"
will evoke a faked or posed smile in place of a genuine one.

True unhappiness enthusiasts are experts at the
"Be Spontaneous" paradox.

With so many effective ways to create unhappiness,
small wonder that one can continue along unhappy
for a lifetime, when merely stopping one's pursuit of
unhappiness would allow one to be happy in a moment.

"The situation is hopeless," Watzlawick ends his
small book saying,
"and the solution is hopelessly simple."

-----------------------

Introduction to the book - part 2 



Do you see the past through
a rosy filter that makes it seem
like Paradise Lost?

Are you convinced that traffic lights
always turn red for you?

Do you have to win
(so as not to lose)?

After extricating yourself from a
bad relationship,
do you find another partner
just like the previous one?

If so, congratulations!

You have the makings
of an

====> unhappiness expert.

With the techniques in this book,
you can raise
yourself to the genius level.

A word of warning, however.

Along the way you may begin
to ask yourself,

"How did I manage to turn myself
into my own worst enemy?"

Fortunately, this tongue-in-cheek
(but serious) volume takes a look
at that question too.

Calling upon metaphors, vignettes,
jokes, innuendos, and certain other
"right-hemishperic" language
games, Paul Watzlawick shows
how we can (and do)
make everyday life miserable.

Special attention is given to such
topics as

"Four Games with the Past,"
"Self-fulfilling Prophecies," and
"Why Would Anybody Love Me?"

Those who believe that the search
for happiness will eventually lead
to happiness will find much to ponder
in the section
"Beware of Arriving."

All readers will be both
amused and startled
to find themselves in these pages,
but there is a special delight and
enlightenment for therapists and counselors.

Although the author does not
officially admit it,
the book is one complex

===> "symptom prescription,"

a therapeutic double bind
as described and practiced
by him and his colleagues.

----

Paul Watzlawick was an associate
at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto,
and clinical professor in the department
of psychiatry and behavioral sciences,
Stanford University Medical Center.

----

1993 / paperback / ISBN
0-393-31021-3 / 5-1/2" x 8-1/4" /
128 pages / Psychology

---

How good are you at being unhappy?

Need a little help?

In his book
"The Situation Is Hopeless but Not Serious:
The Pursuit of Unhappiness",
psychologist Paul Watzlawick gives you
all the advice you need.

You can even use it to become happier,
if only by smiling at all the crazy little
ways humans have to keep misery alive.

Our world, drowning as it is in a tidal wave
of "how to" instructions for the attainment
of happiness, must no longer be deprived
of a lifesaver for those in the pursuit of
unhappiness.

No longer must the knowledge of
misery-producing mechanisms and
processes remain the jealously
guarded secret of psychiatry and
psychology.

The number of persons talented
enough to create their own hell
may seem relatively large.

But many more are in need of help
and encouragement.

These words can be found in the
introduction to a psychology
classic, The Situation Is Hopeless but Not
Serious: The Pursuit of
Unhappiness

by Austrian-born psychologist Paul Watzlawick
of the famous Mental Research Institute.

A notable influence on solution-focused
brief therapy, he probably also inspired
some of the humour and lightheartedness
that is so typical of the magicians of that type
of therapy.

This humour isn't just about being funny.

It goes deeper; it is the humour
of philosophers and of those who
have intimate knowledge of the
paradoxical and absurd side of the
human experience, and of how
healing it can be to meet adversity
not only with deep thought but
also with a loud guffaw of
laughter.

Canadian photographer Ulli Steltzer
who has spent some time with the Inuit,
told people that once she was out in the
great white nowhere
with some of her Inuit friends
when, just at the beginning of a blizzard,
their snowmobile broke down.

Her friends got off the snowmobile, surveyed the
damage, and realized they didn't have the
wherewithal to fix it.

In response, one of them got up,
spread his arms, and started to laugh like crazy.

"What are you doing," Ulli said, "we might
very well die out here, and you laugh?!"

And the response?

"When there's nothing left to do, all you can
do is laugh."

Paul Watzlawick strikes me as one
of those people who truly understand
(" grok", as Robert Heinlein says)
this deep, life-accepting humour.

It is in this frame of mind that
Watzlawick wrote this gentle
satire that attacks our many tendencies
to make our lives difficult.

From using the past as a source of
unhappiness (e.g. yearning for the good
old days and indulging in regret)
to avoiding reality checks and
romanticizing unachievably high goals,
this little book is an amusing and
intelligent smorgasbord of human frailties.

For those of us a little slow in savouring the
pleasures of unhappiness,
Watzlawick even has a number
of exercises, for example:

In your chair, close your eyes,
and take your attention to your
shoes.

It should not be long until you
notice how uncomfortable it is to
be wearing them.

Regardless of how well they seemed to fit
until now, you will now notice areas of
tightness and discomfort such as burning,
chafing, curled toes, heat and cold, etc.

Practice until the heretofore natural and
unself-conscious wearing of shoes
turns decidedly uncomfortable.

Go out and buy new shoes and realize that,
while they fit perfectly in the store,
within a short time, they produce
the same complaints.

Try it and see what fits better:
the shoe of unhappiness or
the shoe of happiness.

The irony and wit with which this
book (or rather the author through it)
presents some uncomfortable/hard-to-face
truths is fabulous!

It's tempting to give the author a wink
back after each chapter

--

Review

A therapist/sage's ironies re "the mechanisms
for the pursuit of unhappiness"
- situated somewhere between Dan Greenburg's
parodies (most recently, How to Avoid Love
and Marriage, p. 929) and
R.D. Laing's airy dialogues. The "true genius" of
negation, writes Watzlawick,
(How Real Is Real? etc.), rejects not only
what other people recommend,
but even what
"he himself considers the best decision."

Such persons find, in the past,
"more of the same"
(hence neurosis - and
lengthy psychoanalysis).

They not only create problems,
they avoid problems
"for the purpose of their perpetuation"
(pickpockets, exhaust fumes,
"incandescent fragments of
American or Soviet
space satellites").

They are prey to "self-fulfilling prophecies"
("others are whispering behind our backs")
- and expert at not arriving.

("Not even revenge is sweet.")

That brings us to "the baroque hell of human
relationships":
the communication on two levels
("Would you like to take me
to the airport this morning?");

the demand for spontaneous behavior
(parents' demand for a smiling countenance,
anyone's equation of sadness
with depression);

the "why would anybody love me?" syndrome;
the suspicion of one's own unselfish behavior.

In sum:
the zero-sum game.

"Why is it so difficult for us to realize
that life is a non-zero-sum game?

That we can both win so long as we are not
obsessed with the need to defeat the partner
so as not to be defeated by him?"

That we can "just as well construct our
own happiness" out of "such qualities as
fairness, tolerance, and trust."

The situational dynamics are often
as Watzlawick portrays them -
and no one would disparage "such qualities."

But without the humor that induces rueful
self-recognition, or the philosophical elegance
that commands respect, this is a heavy-handed,
satirical approach to a positive outlook.

The book illustrates how to satisfy yourself
by seeking unhappiness.
Quite clever, I think.

A VERY enjoyable read.

Paul Watzlawick, mostly famous for
his communication theories
(e.g. one cannot not communicate),
died at the 31st of March, 2007.

I enjoyed reading some of his books
(The Pursuit of Unhappiness is
highly recommended) as he had a
wonderful, humorous way of communicating
his thoughts.

Watzlawick is author of 18 books
(in 85 foreign language editions)
and more than 150 articles and book
chapters.

Books he has written or on which he has
collaborated include:

Invented Reality: How Do We Know
What We Believe We Know?
(Contributions to constructivism)

Pragmatics of Human Communication,

The Situation is Hopeless, but not
Serious,

Ultra-Solutions: How to Fail Most Successfully,

How Real is Real?

Change (with John Weakland and Richard Fisch)

The Language of Change

------------

A brief history of the solution-focused approach 1 

Watzlawick was a famous representative
of the so called solution-focused approach.

Therefore here you are.................

A brief history of the solution-focused approach

1. Precursors to the solution-focused approach

During the middle of the previous century, change was in the air. This was
also the case in the profession of psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists were
dissatisfied with traditional views on psychotherapy. Ever since it emerged
as a discipline, the dominant view had been that psychotherapy had to focus
on problems and problem causes (Walter & Peller, 2000). The therapist was
seen as the expert who would expose the nature and the causes of the problem
so that it could be solved. Causes were thought to be hidden away deep in
the psyche of the patient and were often related to unsolved problems in the
early childhood (Seligman, 1990). Furthermore, patients were generally
thought to unconsciously resist treatment. What patients directly told about
their problems and goals therefore, had to be taken with a pinch of salt.
The most useful information was thought to be information that trickled
through from the unconscious. To obtain that information, psychotherapists
used techniques like dream analysis and interpretation, hypnosis, drugs, and
different kinds of projective techniques.

Psychotherapy usually took a long time and did not tend to be very pragmatic
and goal oriented. A funny example illustrating this is a scene from the
movie Annie Hall by Woody Allen (O'Hanlon, 2000). Woody Allen plays the role
of the neurotic Alvey Singer who tells his girlfriend Annie he has been in
therapy for thirteen years. Yet it is clear he still has got many problems.
Annie asks surprised why there is little improvement after so much therapy.
Alvey responds that he intends to give it fifteen years, and if he has not
gotten any results by then, he's going to visit Lourdes.

Halfway through the previous century, several therapists were looking for
ways to make therapy briefer, more goal-oriented and more pragmatic. The
dominance of behaviorism played a critical role in this. Behaviorism had
dissociated itself from psycho-analysis and focused on intervening in
concrete observable behaviors. Albert Ellis is a well known therapist who
developed a more pragmatic form of therapy, rational emotive therapy (RET).
Within this form of therapy, problems were thought to be maintained by
irrational beliefs of the client. By identifying and then replacing these
irrational beliefs by more rational beliefs the problem could be solved. The
ideas on pragmatism that William James (1842-1910) had formulated before
were another source of influence to many people in that time. The
pragmatists suggested to shift the emphasis from trying to explain and
predict truth to identifying what works. James argued that people are
creators of reality. He once said: "Truth is what works." This way of
thinking certainly played a role in the work of another pioneering
therapist.

Milton Erickson

This pioneering therapist was Milton Erickson. He was an American
psychiatrist who had quite a few unorthodox ideas about therapy which he
used successfully. We no know that many of his ideas point forward to the
principles of the solution-focused approach. Erickson did not believe in
diagnostic labels and strongly believed in the power of people to solve
their own problems. He was convinced that therapy often did not need to take
long and believed that a small change by the client was often enough to set
a process of larger change in motion. Erickson also used paradoxical
techniques such as prescription of the symptoms. Characteristic of his
approach was that he used whatever was there in the context of the client.
Each seemingly coincidental feature or event in the life of the client could
turn out to be part of the solution. An illustration of this is the case of
the African violet lady (source: carol roach, M.Ed, B.A).

An old depressive lady lived alone in a big city. She had no family and
friends left and seldomly left her house. A concerned neighbor approached
Erickson who agreed to visit her. He saw the house was in total squalor and
asked to be shown around the house. While walking through the house, he did
not say a word. He did notice a dying African violet. At the end of the
tour, he said: "I can tell that you love flowers". The lady agreed. Erickson
suggested that she'd go out to buy African Violets and plant them in her
garden. He also suggested that she would send one of here African Violets
each time someone in her neighborhood died or was born without telling who
had sent it. The lady agreed and the news of this mysterious lady who sends
everyone her African violets spread quickly through out the city. When she
died, many years later, she had become well known in the area and hundred of
people came at her funeral. Newspapers mentioned 'The African Violet lady'
had died.

In a way that was typical for how Erickson viewed life, he once said the
fact that he had had polio at age 17 which totally paralyzed him had been an
important advantage to him. The reason the said this was that he was
convinced it had helped him to become very good at observing other people.
Instead of complaining about his situation, he accepted it and turned it
into an advantage. He is said to have conquered his paralysis later by
teaching himself step by step to move again. By the way, besides having been
paralyzed, Erickson is said to have had quite a few other limitations: he
was colorblind, dyslectic, tone deaf and arrhythmic (Cade, 2007).

Gregory Bateson is another influence on the solution-focused approach. He
was an English anthropologist who was married to the famous anthropologist
Margaret Mead and the son of the famous geneticist William Bateson. Bateson
thought and wrote about systems theory and cybernetics. One of his
influences on the development of the solution-focused approach was his view
that the social system in which people function is a great importance to the
development and solution of problems. But Bateson's greatest contribution to
solution-focused therapy may well be that he started The Bateson Project.
This was a communications research project in which researchers like John
Weakland, Jay Haley and William Fry observed and analyzed video tapes famous
therapists like Milton Erickson and Don Jackson. This project formed the
basis of the Mental Research Institute and has enabled the work of Erickson
to get a large audience and influence.

The Mental Research Institute

The Mental Research Institute has played an important role in the
development of the solution-focused approach. At the Mental Research
Institute in Palo Alto, California, which was founded in 1958 by Don
Jackson, researchers and therapists like Jay Haley, Paul Watzlawick, John
Weakland, Richard Fisch and Janet Beavin developed innovative approaches to
therapy. Within the MRI Fisch, Weakland and Watzlawick founded the Brief
Therapy Center in 1966 (Cade, 2007). The therapists within this center
developed a briefer, more goal-oriented and pragmatic approach to therapy.
They viewed the person who came for therapy not as a patient but rather as a
client, a customer even. They took what the client said very seriously which
meant that they focused on the problem that the client presented. Before
that time, it had always primarily been the therapist who determined what
the topic of the conversation was. Further, the MRI therapists believed it
was not necessary to talk extensively about the childhood of the client and
about any underlying problem causes. They believed that the reasons for the
current problems existed in the here-and-now and that solutions could be
found in the present, too. Their logic was: if the client has a problem now,
he or she must do something wrong now. He or she does must unintendedly do
something which maintains the problem. The goal of therapy became to find
out what the client did wrong and to convince him or her to stop doing this
and to replace it by some other, more effective, behavior.

------------------

A brief history of the solution-focused approach 2 

2. The birth of the solution-focused approach

Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer

In the Nineteen Sixties, Insoo Kim Berg was a young American therapist from
Asian origin. Like quite a few other therapists, she was dissatisfied with
the traditional way of doing therapy because she felt it did not work well.
Looking back on this period, in 2004, she said:
I realized: 'This doesn't work'. And that was quite something! Just must
know, I had a typical Asian girl background: very obedient. I was sent to
finishing high school in Korea, the type of school that teaches you to be a
good housewife. And my mother's main mission had been to have me married
into a nice family. It was quite a revolution that a girl like me could do
something like that...be disobedient about how to do therapy. I knew I had
to be disobedient quietly. I started reading a lot and I came across a text
by Jay Haley called 'The power tactics of Jesus Christ'. Can you imagine
that? This was a shock! I was shaken up. That was the beginning. That you
could look at things like that! Then, I read his book 'Uncommon Therapy'.
And in the early seventies I started to do things differently. And I really
read a lot. For instance a book by Paul Watzlawick of MRI, The Mental
Research Institute, in Palo Alto in California. Jay Haley, John Weakland and
Paul Watzlawick worked there (Visser, 2004).
Berg did not start working at the MRI but she did go out to study there.
John Weakland became a mentor to her. Incidentally, Weakland had a same kind
of mentorship with another therapist, Steve de Shazer, a creative person and
therapist. He had studied at the University of Wisconsin and had learned to
play the saxophone at a professional level. He admired the work of Erickson.
He was also an enthusiastic amateur cook. Around that time, De Shazer
experimented a lot with the so-called one-way screen, a mirror through which
a team of therapists could observe a therapy conversation without being seen
by the client and the therapist. The purpose of using the one-way screen was
to learn by observing conversations. At the end of the therapy session, the
therapist went behind the mirror for a few minutes to talk with the team.
The therapist would get feedback and tips from the team and would then go
back to the client to give his feedback and tips and close the conversation.

In 1977, after Weakland had introduced Berg and De Shazer to each other at a
MRI conference, they started working together. They spend lots of time
together behind the screen and eventually became a couple. Berg convinced de
Shazer to leave California and leave with her to Milwaukee. The two of them
and a few other therapists who were inspired by the MRI, like Jim Derks,
Marilyn LaCourt, Eve Lipchik, Don Norum and Elam Nunnally worked there in a
therapy practice called Family Service (Malinen, 2001). The majority of the
therapists working at that organization were traditionally oriented, though.
Berg remembered that she worked very hard and liked the challenge of
accepting difficult cases other therapists would rather not take (Visser,
2004). Berg and De Shazer and their colleagues introduced the one-way in
that organization to learn about effective therapy by closely observing what
worked, and to educate students. The students loved it but many of the
traditional therapists objected to it. They thought using the one-way screen
was unethical and put pressure on Berg and De Shazer to stop using it. At a
certain point, there the pressure between the two camps became so intense
that they and a few of their colleagues started their own practice.

The Brief Family Therapy Center

De Shazer and Berg started their practice in 1978 and called it the Brief
Family Therapy Center (BFTC). Original members of the BFTC team were Jim
Derks, Marvin Weiner, Elam Nunnally, Eve Lipchik, Alex Molnar and Marilyn
LaCourt. After that therapists like Wally Gingerich, Michele Weiner Davis,
John Walter, Kate Kowalski, Ron Kral, Gale Miller, Scott Miller and Larry
Hopwood joined (Cade, 2007). All these people have contributed in one way or
another to the development of the solution-focused approach. De Shazer and
Berg and their colleagues hardly had any money so they started off in their
own living room. Only later were they able to hire an office. Their mission
was to find out what worked in therapy.

They did not want to take a specific theory as a starting point. Instead
they wanted to build knowledge about what worked in therapy inductively.
They started of by identifying traditional elements of therapy and removing
one element at a time from sessions. Then they observed whether the client
outcome had been affected by the removal of this element. They discovered
that analyzing and diagnosing problems could be removed from the therapeutic
conversation without negative consequences for client outcomes. In addition
to the approach of systematically removing traditional element of therapy
they did several other things. One thing was that they were actively studied
therapeutic "accidents" or spontaneous events in therapeutic conversations.
When the therapist or the client did something that seemed to work, they
discussed that and they tried it again. While trying to figure out what
worked, they observed clients during actual conversations and videotaped
conversations. They looked for interventions that helped clients to
formulate more clearly what they wanted to achieve, that helped the client
to become more confident in their possibilities and that helped to identify
ideas for steps forward.

Each intervention that made clients become more aware of what they wanted to
achieve, more optimistic, hopeful, energetic and full of ideas, was written
down, discussed by the team and used more often. As the model developed, the
client's voice became a more and more important criterion. Each time a
client reported that some intervention had led to a positive change they
considered that intervention useful. They equated 'what worked' with what
the client found useful. In addition to this, they did occasional
quantitative studies to find out about the effectiveness of interventions
(Weiner-Davis, De Shazer & Gingerich, 1987), attempts to formalize the
approach into an expert system (the BRIEFER project, Gingerich & De Shazer,
1991) and several qualitative studies. They identified many interventions
that often worked well which helped them build a set of solution-focused
tools. But they also did another important discovery. They learned that what
worked well with one person did not necessarily with the next person. This
made them realize how important it was to pay close attention to how clients
responded to whatever happened during the conversation and to use this.
Between 1978 and 1985 the basis was created for what is now known as the
solution-focused approach.

--------------

A brief history of the solution-focused approach 3 



3. The solution-focused approach in writing

In those early years, the most prolific person and the writer within the
BFTC team was De Shazer. In 1982, he published his first book about the
solution-focused approach: Patterns of Brief Family Therapy: An Ecosystemic
Approach. At first, the therapy world did not receive De Shazer's ideas with
great enthusiasm. He had sent his article The Death of Resistance (De
Shazer, 1984) to a journal for the first time in 1979. It got rejected no
less than 17 times before it finally got published in 1984 (Malinen, 2001).
In the article, De Shazer claims that it is a bad idea to think the client
has resistance against treatment in therapy. According to him, what works
better is to view therapy as a process of co-operation between therapist and
client. He proposed that everything the client says or does can best be seen
as an attempt to help the therapy process move forward. When the client said
or did something the therapist did not understand right away, the therapist
should not confront the client. Instead, the therapist should assume that
the client had a good reason for saying or doing this. Approaching the
client very constructively helped to build a good co-operation very quickly.

An important next publication was the article Four useful interventions in
brief therapy, which he co-wrote with Alex Molnar (De Shazer and Molnar,
1984). In that article, one intervention they introduced was the First
Session Formula Task. This task, which the therapist asks at the end of the
first therapy session, goes like this:

Between now and next time we meet, I want you to observe, so that you can
tell me next time, what happens in your life, that you want to continue to
have happen".
The invention of this intervention, which was later sometimes called the
continuation question, formed an important step forward in the development
of the solution-focused approach because it changed the orientation of the
team drastically. Since that moment the members of the BFTC team started to
focus more and more consciously on what already went well. Elam Nunnally,
one of the original members, once told that the task was inspired by
interventions used in paradoxical therapies (Malinen, 2001) in which clients
were often discouraged to change anything.

As the title suggested, De Shazer and Molnar's article also contained three
other interventions. The second intervention mentioned in the article was:
Do something different. This task, which was inspired by the work of Gregory
Bateson (1979), was focused on replacing existing behavioral patterns with
new ones. By trying out new behaviors the client could encounter more
effective patterns of behavior which were solutions to his or her problems.
The third intervention mentioned in the article was what was later called
the overcoming-the-urge task:
"Pay attention to what you do when you overcome the temptation or urge to .
(perform the symptom or some behavior associated with the complaint)."
This intervention turned out to work very well in helping client to fall
back in old ineffective habits. Through this task, clients gradually became
aware that they sometimes managed to successfully resist their temptations
and how they did that. The task helped clients find ideas to overcome their
urges. The fourth intervention mentioned in the article was the stability as
change intervention. Whenever clients told that they were stuck in a
situation and did not manage to make progress, the therapist would respond
by explaining that remaining stable required many skills and that other
people would perhaps have fallen back instead of remaining stable.

In his second book, Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy, De Shazer began to
emphasize the importance of creating an expectation of change (De Shazer,
1985). He claimed that change was inevitable and he more and more began to
use interventions that were based on this assumption. By asking questions
that implied that change was certainly going to happen, the therapist
contributed to the client's trust that the change was actually going to
happen. An example of such a question is: "How will you know things will be
better?' This formulation implies that change is going to happen more than
this formulation: "How would you know things would be better?" The latter
formulation is more conditional, it leaves open whether the change is going
to happen or not. In Keys to Solution, De Shazer for the first time
explicitly claims that detailed information about the complaint is not
necessary for solving it (De Shazer, 1985). This book is also the first
publication in which he explicitly writes that past successes form a key to
solving problems (De Shazer, 1985).

In 1986, De Shazer described the later to be famous technique of the scaling
question, which the BFTC had been using for years, in the book chapter An
indirect approach to brief therapy (De Shazer & R. Kral, 1986). Scaling
questions belong to the most flexible, simple and popular techniques in the
solution-focused toolkit. With scaling questions the therapist asks the
client to imagine a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The 10 position on the scale
stands for the situation in which the problem has been solved and the
desired state has been accomplished. The 0 position stands for the situation
in which nothing has yet been achieved or in which the problem was at its
worst. The therapist asks where the client is now on that scale en how he or
she has managed to get from zero to their current position. When clients
begin to answer this, they usually begin to become more optimistic and
hopeful and they find some new ways to take further steps forward on the
scale. The therapist may also ask what the highest point on the scale has
been for the client and what was different then. The technique of scaling
questions emerged more or less by coincidence when a client, in a second
session, answered to a question by De Shazer about how things were: "I've
almost reached 10 already!" De Shazer and his colleagues began to play with
the use of scales and step by step the scaling question was developed
(Malinen, 2001, De Shazer, 1999)."

Around 1986 and 1987, new terms were added to the repertoire of the Brief
Family Therapy Center. For instance, the term solution-focused began to be
used more often and more prominently. Also from this period the What's
better question stems (De Shazer, 1986). This question is mainly asked at
the beginning of the second and later sessions with a client. The advantage
of this question is that the client can focus his or her attention fully on
what progress he or she has made and on what has worked. This usually has a
motivating effect, leads to more awareness of what works and to new ideas
for steps forward. In 1987, De Shazer mentioned the concept of exceptions
for the first time in an article (Molnar & De Shazer, 1987). This concept
refers to the fact that the intensity of problems always fluctuates. This
means that there are always times when the problem is less severe or even
absent for the client. These moments can be used to find keys to solve
problems. Clients were encouraged to identify and analyze exceptions and to
try to find out how they had managed to be less troubled at these moments.
Then, they were encouraged to repeat what had worked well in these
situations. Often, this helped in making exceptions occur more frequently
and last longer and the problem slowly seemed to move to the background.

-----------------

A brief history of the solution-focused approach 4 



Weiner-Davis, De Shazer and Gingerich carried out empirical research to find
out what worked well in therapy. One of the surprising things the discovered
is that the improvement of the situation of the client had often started
before the first conversation with the therapist had started. This appeared
to be the case in roughly two thirds of the cases. This phenomenon was
labeled Pre-session change (Weiner-Davis, De Shazer & Gingerich, 1987).
Clients had started themselves to make progress without the help of the
therapist. Ever since this is known solution-focused therapist use this fact
by asking questions like: 1) which changes have already occurred since the
moment you called me to make this appointment?, 2) Which things have helped
since you called me?, 3) Which steps forward have you taken since you called
me?, 4) What is better since you called me? By asking these questions, the
self-confidence of the client usually strengthens and solution-talk can
proceed quickly.

Probably the most well-known and popular intervention within the
solution-focused approach is the miracle question (De Shazer, 1988). Even
many people who have never heard of the solution-focused approach have heard
about the miracle question. Miller and Berg (1995) explain how the miracle
question emerged when a client said that her problem was so serious that it
would take a miracle to solve it. The therapist followed the clients'
suggestion and asked: "Well . suppose that would happen. what would be
different?" From later publications it becomes clear that that therapist was
Insoo Kim Berg (for example Norman, McKergow, & Clarke, 1996).

In his book Clues, Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy De Shazer wrote
about the prediction task (De Shazer, 1988). With this task the therapist
asks the client the following:
Each night, before going to bed, predict whether or not you will succeed in
............. (whatever it is the client wants to accomplish) the next day.
Prediction tasks are based on the idea that what you want to happen becomes
more probable once the process that leads to it is set in motion. De Shazer
had observed that simply predicting the desired change would increase the
chance of it happening, no matter whether the prediction would positive or
negative. In the same book, De Shazer described the difference between
visitors, complainers and customers. Visitors were clients who did not have
a clear idea about what they wanted from the therapy. This could be the case
for instance with involuntary clients. Complainers were clients who found it
useful to talk with the therapist but who complained a lot and behaved
helplessly. They usually did not see a clear relationship between their own
behavior and the problem, let alone the solution. Customers were clients who
found the conversation useful, were open to questions and suggestions by the
therapist and were prepared to do things to improve their situation.
Customers could be give a so-called behavioral task which could not be done
with complainers. They could only be given a so-called observations task
(like the suggestion to pay attention to what was going right in their
lives). A last well-known concept from the book Clues is reframing. With
reframing apparently negative behaviors are placed in to positive light by
focusing on the underlying good intentions and their possible usefulness in
certain circumstances.

Eve Lipchik has also written a some publications. At least two concepts she
described in these publications have become part of the arsenal of the
solution-focused professional: the coping question and listening with a
constructive ear (Lipchik, 1988). The coping question is the question: "How
do you manage to go on?" This question is very useful when the client
describes that his or her problems are severe, for instance when they say
they are at a zero on the scale. Listening with a constructive ear is
related to the Death of Resistance idea (De Shazer, 1984). When listening
with a constructive ear you approach what the other says appreciatively and
you notice good intentions and resources that would otherwise be harder to
notice.

In his book Putting difference to work (1991) De Shazer, among other things,
emphasized the development of well-formed goals. The idea it that specific
goals are usually the starting point of change.

In 1992, Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian presented an article in which
they assert that it is helpful for the therapy process when the therapist
assumes an attitude of not-knowing. This influential article elaborates the
idea that therapist can never fully understand the situation of the client
and never really know what is best for the client. These kinds of ideas have
been proposed by others earlier. Erickson and en Rossi (1979), for instance,
mentioned the concept of not-knowing and even before that Don Norum, in
1978, has written the article The Family has the Solution (Norum, 1978).
This article that is almost certain to have been influential to the
development of the solution-focused approach was only published in the year
2000 (Norum, 2000).

In the beginning of the Nineteen Nineties several other authors have
contributed to the development of the solution-focused approach. Two
examples are Cantwell en Holmes (1994) who introduced the concept leading
from one step behind and Berg (1994) who described the use of indirect
compliments.

De Shazer has made a formidable contribution to the solution-focused
approach with the many publications he has written. Beside this, all of the
members of BFTC as well as various 'outsiders' like Don Norum (2000), Bill O
'Hanlon, James Wilk (O'Hanlon & Wilk, 1987), Yvonne Dolan (1991), John
Walter en Jane Peller (1992) and Peter De Jong (De Jong & Berg, 2001) have
made important contributions. But especially the role of Berg appears to
have been so important that De Shazer remarked: "Well, everything that we do
over the years is trying to figure out how she and her clients did it. She
is the Master. I don't know what other word to use. She is the Master."
(Norman, McKergow, & Clarke, 1996). Berg seemed to view things a little
differently. She said the following about the co-operation between De Shazer
and herself: "Steve´s role was clearly to be very creative, innovative kind
of role, that´s his job, and I think my role was to somehow make that fit.to
make it a little easier to digest for the rest of the world." Insoo Kim Berg
about Steve de Shazer (Kiser, 1995)

Roughly after the year 2000, several individuals and groups from around the
World have started to apply the solution-focused techniques outside the
therapy context. In Belgium, Cauffman was one of them. In the U.K. Jackson
and McKergow (2002) worked hard to make the translation to the context of
organizations. Countries like Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany also
had such pioneers. In The Netherlands, Gwenda Schlundt Bodien and I have
attempted to make useful contributions (Visser, 2005).

The solution-focused approach is now being applied in therapy, in education,
and in organizations. The approach is not only used in one-on-one
conversations but also in teams and even organization-wide. Also, managers
are using solution-focused techniques more and more. Also, much research is
being done, both in the therapy (Gingerich & Eisengart, 2000) and in schools
(Franklin, Moore & Hopson, 2008) and even in a coaching (Visser & Butter,
2008) and the approach keeps on developing and renewing itself (see for
instance Young & Holdorf (2003).

In other words, the solution-focused approach is very much alive.

---------

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Understanding Gregory Bateson: Mind, Beauty, and the Sacred Earth (S U N Y Series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics)

by: Noel G. Charlton

Amazon Price: $19.75 (as of 11/08/2009) Buy Now

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

by: Gregory Bateson

Amazon Price: $14.96 (as of 11/08/2009) Buy Now

Gregory Bateson the Legacy of a Scientist

Gregory Bateson the Legacy of a Scientist

by: David Lipset

Amazon Price: (as of 11/08/2009) Buy Now

With a Daughter's Eye: Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, A

With a Daughter's Eye: Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, A

by: Mary C. Bateson

Amazon Price: $14.35 (as of 11/08/2009) Buy Now

Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Highland Bali: Fieldwork Photographs of Bayung Gede, 1936-1939

Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Highland Bali: Fieldwork Photographs of Bayung Gede, 1936-1939

by: Gerald Sullivan

Amazon Price: $59.00 (as of 11/08/2009) Buy Now

New Flickr Photos Watzlawick visited Heidelberg 

173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070401-A-0497K-001 by US Army Africa

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173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070401-A-0497K-008 by US Army Africa

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173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070331-A-0497K-010 by US Army Africa

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173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070331-A-0497K-016 by US Army Africa

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173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070331-A-0497K-003 by US Army Africa

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173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team - Southern European Task Force - Historical Image Archive - 070331-A-0497K-008 by US Army Africa

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Blog Posts from Google Paul Watzlawick radical constructivism 

constructivist epistemology (version 5)
paul watzlawick, who supervised in 1984 the publication of invented reality: how do we know what we believe we know? (contributions to constructivism). ernst von glasersfeld, who has promoted since the end of the 70s radical ...
hi, i am norbert sczepanski, cologne, germany, the owner of this ...
authors of the radical constructivism is ===> paul watzlawick. so here is your invitation to read some of his great + interesting books...... very amusing is this one: the situation is hopeless, but not serious (the pursuit of ...
introduction to radical constructivism i
munchhausen's pigtail or psychotherapy & reality, paul watzlawick. for those who prefer the internets, the best possible paper on the subject may be found at: riegler, a. (2001) towards a radical constructivist understanding of science. ...
obituary: paul watzlawick (*1921, villach - 2007, palo alto)
in palo alto, watzlawick and his colleagues (most notably gregory bateson) developed the double bind theory. other scientific contributions include works on radical constructivism and most importantly his theory on communication. ...
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Blog Posts from Google radical constructivism 

The Buck Stops Here: Education
These included the following six "theories" with very pretentious names: radical constructivism, information processing, cognitive connectivism, social constructivism, situated cognition and socioculturalism. I read these descriptions ...
Evolution & Ideology (What's Wrong with the World)
Between the radical constructivism and nominalism, and the implication that we can have no concept of the transcendent, I don't think there's much to recommend Darwinism from a conservative standpoint. And while the Left appears to be ...
Radical constructivism in mathematics education [electronic ...
Radical constructivism in mathematics education [electronic resource] ...: http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=4013540 #Math.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » We Are All Levi-Strauss Now
@Quiddity: While I agree that radical constructivism has become a trap for the left, I think an attitude of respect and openness towards non-western cultures, that is, the openness to the possibility of learning something from ...
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Blog Posts from Google Palo Alto 

Intimate and Domestic Violence Homicides in the News: Palo Alto ...
A medical examiner found that her hyoid bone had been crushed, a telltale sign of strangulation, said the affidavit from Palo Alto police Detective Aaron Sunseri. That indicates the 29-year-old was dead before the fire ripped through ...
Live From The Verizon Store In Palo Alto: The Droid Launch
Sixteen months ago we braved the early-morning lines for the launch of the iPhone 3G at an Apple Store in Palo Alto, CA, ...
Palo Alto Family YMCA Announces Registration Now Open For Winter ...
Sports News Release Wire - Palo Alto Family YMCA Announces Registration Now Open For Winter Basketball League.
California appeals court rejects arguments justifying racist ...
A California district court of appeal ruled that East Palo Alto could discipline a police officer for his racist remarks, rejecting the argument that an alleged ?culture of racism? in the department was sufficient to justify the ...
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Blog Posts from Google The Palo Alto Mental Research Institute (MRI)  

10.31心理讲坛公益沙龙专业版之焦点解决短程心理治疗_心理讲坛_新浪博客
?????????????????Palo Alto???MRI?Mental Research Institute???????????????????????Murray Bowen?Don Jackson???????????Milton Erickson?Jay Haley??????????????MRI?Milan ...
IncuBA-CMD: Noticias Editorial Teseo
Se entrenó en Psicoanálisis, Gestalt, teatro y dirección de Psicodrama y desarrolló su formación en terapia sistémica principalmente en el MRI (Mental Research Institute) de Palo Alto, California, instituto del cual actualmente es ...
Brain structures behind emotional balance in threatening ...
Research at LIFE - Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen - shows that vitamin C deficiency may impair the mental development of newborn babies. YouTube videos provide clues on players' brain injury .... at Palo Alto teen forum http://bit.ly/273Gyd; kevinboer Mental health experts offer suggestions at Palo Alto teen forum: Planned long before the death of another Gunn .. http://bit.ly/3C3FUk; ebaypro Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing by Mary C. Townsend ...
La galaxie des paradoxes » Articles » Gregory Bateson et l'École ...
Installé à Palo Alto près de San Francisco, il cristallise autour de lui l'avant-garde de la psychologie et de la psychiatrie américaines depuis 1959 (fondation du MRI, le Mental Research Institute) sous l'effet catalyseur de la célèbre ...
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Blog Posts from Google epistemology 

Resolving the Riddle: A Second Simple Note in Ontology ...
Resolving the Riddle: A Second Simple Note in Ontology & Epistemology (Or, There is No Necessary Theist vs Atheist Conflict). November 6, 2009 ? drsubrotoroy. From Facebook: A few days ago, I said: ?For myself, I have come to a belief ...
The epistemology of legal evidence « manwithoutqualities
Epistemology and the philosophy of law are both thriving, but it is unfortunate that there is so little interaction between the two. Few books on epistemology deal with legal evidence, and few books on the legal system's approach to ...
0.19: Questions about Colonialism and Anthropology: Epistemology ...
Like Jorgensen and Wolf, Lévi-Strauss finds the imprint of colonialism in anthropology's very epistemology: ?Its capacity to assess more objectively the facts pertaining to the human condition reflects, on the epistemological level, ...
Epistemology Introduction: Understanding Truth, Knowledge, Belief
Epistemology involves questions about the nature and definition of truth. Epistemology is the study of human knowledge - the grounds and conditions under which we can know anything. Knowledge, in turn, is normally defined in terms of ...
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Blog Posts from Google theory of cognition 

Individual Differences in Emotion Components and Dynamics: A ...
Published 08/24/2000. Human Performance provides the student and researcher with a comprehensive and accessible review of performance, in the real world and essential cognitive science theory. Four main section? ...
CrimProf Blog: Levinson on Social Cognition Theory and Racial Bias ...
The author presents two preliminary hypotheses that apply social cognition theory to the capital context. Death Penalty Priming Hypothesis posits that the supposedly race-neutral death qualification of jurors unintentionally and ...
Theory and Research in HCI: Hive Minded?
Pasquinelli, in her paper ?New Wave theories of Cognition? says that the concepts of Distributed Cognition are well-suited to the study of ?robotics, biology, infant psychology, even the neurosciences, as these disciplines must take ...
The probabilistic nature of preferential choice - PsycNET ...
An experimental test of several generalized utility theories. Journal of Risk & Uncertainty, 2, 61-104. Dieckmann, A., & Rieskamp, J. (2007). The influence of information redundancy on probabilistic inferences. Memory & Cognition, 35 ...
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Blog Posts from Google systemic thinking 

Healthcare@Intel · TED MED conclusion: Juxtaposition & Systemic ...
And some of the systemic thinking in this conference--from breakthrough ways to do diagnostics, grow organs, or personalize treatment to important reminders to drive behavior change, heal holistically, and look at the body and mind as ...
Is ROI Input, Process Or Output? - New Media, Social Media ...
So How Do You Measure ROI? If you understand systemic thinking you know that all results are produced by the quality of your input and related processes. For social media the input is reflected by your thinking.
Is ROI Input, Process Or Output? | The Relationship Economy......
If you understand systemic thinking you know that all results are produced by the quality of your input and related processes. For social media the input is reflected by your thinking. The process is distribution of communications. ...
All Things Workplace: Coach This: Systemic Thinking
Take a look at job descriptions and "help wanted" ads for managers. You'll see some form of "able to analyze____" in almost every one. Analysis is both important and useful. Here's the potential problem: a strong tendency to focus only.
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Blog Posts from Google Gregory Bateson 

Gregory Bateson : Santa Cruz 1974
jimhairphoto posted a photo: Gregory Bateson : Santa Cruz 1974. Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 ? 4 July 1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist.
The Tao of Strategy= David R. Cross, Ph.D.
Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 12(15?2) (Special Issue: Gregory Bateson: Essays for an Ecology of Ideas). John Boyd ("Maneuver Warfare") Wikipedia: John Boyd Website: Defense and the National Interest Hammond, GT (2001). ...
Gregory Bateson
what: Gregory Bateson and. his 1972 book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind in which he explored anthropology, cybernetics psychiatry, epistemology, biology, ecology, and philosophy of mind. I came across his work during my research and was ...
A Whitley Bay Thousand: 778 - Gregory Bateson and the Long ...
Gregory Bateson has been adopted by Neuro Linguistic Programmers as a key influence, because he tutored the co-founders of this controversial movement, but one can see from the content of his essays that his own interests extended far ...
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Blog Posts from Google Steps to an Ecology of Mind 

Philosophy bytes – Notes on a nodal framework.
(2000) 'steps to an ecology of mind' London: Chicago University Press. Castells , M (1996) 'The Rise of the Network Society' Oxford: Blackwell. Jones, S. (2000) 'Towards a physics of subjectivity' in Ascott (ed) 'art, technology and ...
Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Steps to an Ecology of Mind is posted online. It is available below, embedded within this?
Gregory Bateson
his 1972 book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind in which he explored anthropology, cybernetics psychiatry, epistemology, biology, ecology, and philosophy of mind. I came across his work during my research and was compelled by his work. ...
Steps To An Ecology Of Mind
Read news articles on coral bleaching, deforestation and wetland ecology. Read the full article.
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Blog Posts from Google The pursuit of unhappiness by Watzlawick 

Solution Focused Change Doing What Works: Paul Watzlawick
... but Not Serious (The Pursuit of Unhappiness) and Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues Jay Haley and John Weakland had a considerable ...
Change Management Blog: Obituary: Paul Watzlawick (*1921, Villach ...
... and nobody has written such compelling and at the same time entertaining books. I rarely deliver a training workshop without citing one or two of his anecdotes. My generation grew up with his book "In Pursuit of Unhappiness". ...
one cannot not communicate
the situation is hopeless, but not serious (the pursuit of unhappiness) is lighter reading than the other two, but a fine supplement. the language of change: elements of therapeutic communication is a more professionally oriented work, ...
rip paul watzlawick
en: paul watzlawick, mostly famous for his communication theories (eg one cannot not communicate), died at the 31st of march, 2007. i enjoyed reading some of his books (the pursuit of unhappiness is highly recommended) as he had a ...
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