Quotes by Paul Watzlawick

About Paul Watzlawick:

Paul Watzlawick was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communications theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa. And the most dange...

Paul Watzlawick

The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way t...

Paul Watzlawick

...The world's benefactor has no choice; he is the surgeon who wields the healing scalpel. He does not want the violence, but the reality (which he has invented) drives him to use violence, in a way, against his will. Throwing a bomb into a crowded d...

Paul Watzlawick

The belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.

Paul Watzlawick

In other words, what is supposedly found is an invention whose inventor is unaware of his act of invention, who considers it as something that exists independently of him; the invention then becomes the basis of his world view and actions.

Paul Watzlawick

A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own 'accuracy.'

Paul Watzlawick

This is the secret of propaganda: To totally saturate the person, whom the propaganda wants to lay hold of, with the ideas of the propaganda, without him even noticing that he is being saturated.

Paul Watzlawick

The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight.

Paul Watzlawick

The suicide arrives at the conclusion that what he is seeking does not exist; the seeker concludes that what he has not yet looked in the right place.

Paul Watzlawick

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.

Paul Watzlawick

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality.

Paul Watzlawick

Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.

Paul Watzlawick

Author Bio

  • NamePaul Watzlawick
  • DescriptionAustrian-American psychologist and philosopher
  • BornJuly 25, 1921
  • DiedMarch 31, 2007
  • CountryAustria; United States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Psychologist; Psychotherapist; Author
  • AwardsGold Decoration For Services To The City Of Vienna