Pragmatics of Human Communication Quotes

“The loss or the absence of meaning in life is perhaps the most common denominator of all forms of emotional distress; it is especially the much-commented-on "modern" illness.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“Disagreement about how to punctuate the sequence of events is at the root of countless relationship struggles.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“One cannot not communicate.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Menschliche Kommunikation. Formen, Störungen, Paradoxien

“In psychotherapeutic work with intelligent schizophrenics on again and again is tempted to conclude that they would be much better off, much more "normal", if they could only somehow blunt the acuity of their thinking and thus alleviate the paralyzing effect it has on their actions.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“In human relations, all prediction is connected in one way or another with the phenomenon of trust.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“It is not the issue here wether punctuation of communicational sequence is, in general, good or bad, as it should be immediately obvious that punctuation organizes behavioral events and is therefore vital to ongoing interactions.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“It is in the nature of paradox that "equations" based on it do not work out. Where paradox contaminates human relations, disease appears.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“To avoid a frequent misunderstanding, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that symmetry and complementarity in communication are not ins and by themselves "good" or "bad", "normal" or "abnormal", etc. The two concepts simply refer tp two basic categories into which all communicational interchanges can be divided.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“In fact, it seems that the more spontaneous and "healthy" a relationship, the more the relationship aspect of communication recedes into the background.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes

“We are spun into communication; even our self-consciousness hangs… of communication…. and[we] are – or for that very reason – almost incapable of communicating through communication.” — Paul Watzlawick, Menschliche Kommunikation. S. 42 f.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Menschliche Kommunikation. Formen, Störungen, Paradoxien

“It seems to us that in its most basic definition, existential despair is the painful discrepancy between what is and what should be, between one's perceptions ans one's third-order premises.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes