The Language of Change Elements of Therapeutic Communication

by Watzlawick, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780393310207
• ISBN10: 0393310205
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-07-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Overview	3	(10)
Our Two Languages	13	(6)
Our Two Brains	19	(9)
Experimental Evidence	28	(12)
World Images or Reality-Constructions	40	(8)
Right-Hemispheric Language Patterns	48	(43)
Condensations	49	(7)
Figurative Language	56	(13)
Pars pro toto	69	(4)
Aphorisms	73	(5)
Ambiguities, Puns, Allusions	78	(13)
Blocking the Left Hemisphere	91	(36)
Il est interdit d'interdire	99	(2)
Symptom Prescriptions	101	(5)
Symptom Displacements	106	(2)
The Illusion of Alternatives	108	(10)
Reframing	118	(9)
Injunctive Language---Behavior Prescriptions	127	(11)
Anything, Except THAT	138	(16)
Speaking the Patient's ``Language''	139	(5)
Utilizing the Patient's Resistance	144	(6)
Preempting	150	(4)
Therapeutic Rituals	154	(4)
Conclusion	158	(3)
Works Cited	161	(6)
Index	167