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.

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 os one complex "symptom prescription," a therapeutic double bind as described and practiced by him and his colleagues.

Called one of the best books ever about human communication, and a perennial bestseller, Pragmatics of Human Communication has formed the foundation of much contemporary research into interpersonal communication, in addition to laying the groundwork for context-based approaches to psychotherapy. The authors present the simple but radical idea that problems in life often arise from issues of communication, rather than from deep psychological disorders, reinforcing their conceptual explorations 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."

The book is divided into six sections: Theory (includes articles on the study of the family and human communication); Research (reports of research projects); Training (use of videotape, training of nonprofessionals); Normality, Neurosis, and Psychosis; Change (the therapeutic process); and Family Medicine (the impact of somatic illness on family interaction). Over the years MRI has viewed family therapy not as a new, additional treatment method, but, first, as a new way of conceptualizing human problems, and, secondly, as a different therapeutic approach based on this conceptualization. This form of therapy does not consider why something happens (what in an individual's past causes and emotional problem), but what is happening (what is going on right now between individuals; is there a pattern of interaction and what are the attempted solutions). This, then, is the common denominator of the papers brought together in this volume, since it is this perspective and resulting procedure that constitutes the basis of most of the work performed at MRI. Paul Watzlawick is research associate at MRI and clinical associate professor, department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, at Stanford University Medical Center. John H. Weakland is research associate and associate director of the Brief Therapy Center at MRI.

As he begins this book, the author muses about the fate of Macbeth at the hands of the three witches. Their strategies led to his downfall, and--though much refined due to modern technology--are in force today. The urge for ultra-solutions has been with us since unrecorded time, and the witches are always there to offer sinister encouragement. Sure-fire candidates for ultra-solutions emerge in such chapters as "Twice as Much Is Not Necessarily Twice as Good," "Good Can Be Bad," "Nonzero-Sum Games," "Brave Digitalized World," and "I Know Exactly What You're Thinking." Other chapters point out the dangers of security and the nature of order/disorder. Fortunately, all can defend themselves against Hecate and her companions. While Dr. Watzlawick appears to be outlining all the ways we can "snatch failure from the jaws of success," he is, paradoxically, making us aware of the absurdity of our behavior.

This book examines how individual, social, scientific, and ideological "realities" are constructed, after which we naively assume they are the "real" realities. Contributors include Ernst von Glaserfeld (known for his cognitive studies with chimpanzees); cybeneticist Heinz von Foerster; David L. Rosenhan (author of On Being Sane in Insane Places); microbiologist Francisco J. Varela; and Gabriel Stolzenberg, professor of mathematics at Northeastern University. Paul Watzlawick has contributed commentary, an introduction and an epilogue, and two of the ten essays. For educated readers, this is the first multidisciplinary presentation of a subject of vital importance to the way we think and live.

This book puts forward a complete picture of Brief Strategic Therapy while defining the theoretical and practical features that distinguish this method from other psychotherapies. The authors present a comprehensive explanation of non-ordinary Mathematical Logic, which underlies brief strategic therapy techniques, to reveal how apparently simple techniques come to solve complex, seemly untreatable problems. This book provides the reader with a detailed description of the techniques applied throughout the treatment, and also explains the strategies, tactics, and techniques employed in reframing people's perceptions, behavior and opinions. This rigorous work is one of Nardone's most important and creative contributions to the evolution of Brief Therapy. It presents the advanced techniques set up for specific pathologies through long-term experimental-empirical research carried out at the Centro di Terapia Strategica of Arezzo, Italy. Case studies are introduced for a better understanding of this approach, followed by a thorough evaluation of the results obtained through on-going experimental-empirical research.

"Lucid, responsible, and tremendously enriching." —Neil Postman

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.

Dr. Watzlawick suggests that rather than following the usual procedure of interpreting the patient's communications and thereby translating them into the language of a given psychotherapeutic theory, the therapist must learn the patient's language and make his or her interventions in terms that are congenial to the patient's manner of conceptualizing reality. Only in that way, he shows, can the therapist effectively bring about genuine changes and problem resolutions. Drawing on the work of Milton H. Erickson, he supports his findings with many (and often amusing) examples.

This book, then, is a virtual introductory course to the grammar and language of the unconscious.