Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes

In this study of pragmatic (behavioral) effects of human communication, disturbed behavior is seen as a communicative reaction to a particular situation rather than evidence of the disease of an individual mind.

Communication is a relationship that is qualitatively different from the "properties" of the individuals involved.

After defining certain general concepts, the authors present basic characteristics of human communication and illustrate their manifestations and potential pathologies. Then the systemic aspects of human interactions that arise from the patterning of specific characteristics of communication are exemplified by the analysis of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

They then extend it to psychotherapeutic double binds and the technique of "prescribing the symptom." In conclusion, they postulate about man's communication with reality in the existential sense.

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. An internationally known psychologist, Watzlawick died in 2007.

Janet Beavin Bavelas is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Victoria.

The late Don D. Jackson was a founder and director of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, and associate professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was coauthor, with Paul Wazlawick and Janet Beavin Bavelas, of Pragmatics of Human Communication.