Munchhausen's Pigtail, or Psychotherapy & "Reality" Essays and Lectures (English, German and German Edition) - Hardcover

Watzlawick, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393028259 ISBN 13: 9780393028256

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1990

Synopsis

Essays discuss the structure of human relationships, depression following stroke, hypnotherapy, schizophrenia, imaginary communication, self-reference, and ideological reality

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, German (translation)

From Publishers Weekly:

The quotation marks in the title matter; for systems therapist Watzlawick of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., reality is no absolute, but a construct, or "interpersonal convention," built of "first-order" facts and the "second-order" meaning ascribed to them. Thus, in his example, the first-order reality of a red traffic light is the combination of the color we call "red" and the thing we label "traffic light"; its meaning is "stop and wait." Quoting philosophers Wittgenstein and Epictetus, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, cybernetician Heinz von Foerster and hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, among others, Watzlawick ( The Invented Reality ) takes a hard line against "classic, linear-causal" psychiatry while presenting his case for a behaviorist approach to psychotherapy, in particular, systemic therapy with its focus on what is happening within a relationship rather than on why it is happening. Though Watzlawick's prose can be convoluted and vocabulary obtuse ("scientificity," "enantiodromy"), his controversial arguments, especially when illustrated by case studies, are provocative and frequently persuasive.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0393028259
• ISBN 13: 9780393028256
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286