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Janet Beavin, Don Jackson and Watzlawick presents key axioms describing "the tentative calculus of human communication".

  • The axioms comprise the rules of the game.

  • Games are sequences of behavior governed by rules.

  • Each family plays a one-of-a-kind game with homemade rules and creates its own reality.

The Palo Auto Group

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3. The nature of a relationship depends on how both parties punctuate the communication sequence.

  • Rejected the idea that individual motives and personality traits determine the nature of communication within a family.

  • Less concerned about why a person acts in a certain way than how that behavior affects the group.
  • Punctuate is an ongoing sequence of events by labeling one event as the cause and the following event as the response.

4. All Communication Is Either Symmetrical or Complementary

2. Communication

= Content + Relationship

  • The interactional view focuses more on questions of control, status, and power.

  • Symmetrical interchange is based on equal power, whereas complementary communication is based on differences of power.

  • Healthy relationships include both kinds of communication.

  • To judge an interaction of symmetrical or complmentary will require an exchange of at least two messages.
  • Every communication has a content and relationship aspect such that the latter classifies the former.

  • Metacommunication = Communication about Communication.

  • Relationship messages are always the most important element in communication.

  • Metacommunication dominates the discussion when a family is in trouble.

  • Sick family relationships only get better when there is metacommunication.

Content : WHAT is said

Relationship : How it is said

Edna Rogers and Richard Farace came up with a coding scheme categorizing control in ongoing marital interaction

  • One-up communication seeks to control the exchange.
  • One-down communication yields control.
  • One-across communication neutralizes control.
  • Bids for dominance do not necessarily result in control of the interaction.

1. One Cannot Not Communicate

Symptom Strategy

  • Attributing our silence to something beyond our control such as being tired or feeling sick.
  • Communication is inevitable
  • Corollary: one cannot not influence

Family Homeostasis

Tacit collusion of family members to maintain the status quo.

To recognize this destructive resistance to change is to understand the axioms.

Class Activity

Guess the communication ?

The family as a system

Axioms of Interpersonal Communications

He believed that in order to understand the movement of any single figure in the family system, one has to examine the communication patterns among all its members.

The Interactional View

Reframing: changing the game by changing the rules.

Critique: adjustments needed within the system.

  • The sudden "aha" of looking at things in a new light

  • Accepting a new frame means rejecting the old one

  • Outside help is required before adapting to a new frame

Axiom 1 : One cannot not communicate

Janet Beavin Bavelas recommended modifying some axioms of the theory.

  • She concedes that not all nonverbal behavior is communication

  • She also suggested a “whole message model” which treats verbal and nonverbal communication as completely integrated and often interchangeable

  • She believes that the content of communication is always embedded in the relationship environment

  • The term metacommunication should be reserved for explicit communication about the process of communicating

Axiom 2 : Communication = Content + Relationship

By Dianne Tan 50025713

Shalyn Sim 50028546

System Theories involving people are difficult to evaluate because of their equifinality (a given behavioral outcome could be caused by other factors that are interconnected)

Thank You !

Originator and Purpose of theory

Trapped in a system with no place to go.

Hi, My name is

Paul Watzlawick, born in Villach, Austria in 1921. I was a member of the Palo Alto Group.

  • Family systems are highly resistant to change.

  • Double bind is when a person trapped under mutually exclusive expectations.

  • The paradox of the double bind is that powerful party in a complementary relationship insists that the low power party act if it were symmetrical.

Purpose: To look at dysfunctional patterns within families in order to gain insight into healthy communication.

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