College essay: The Interactional View theory

The Interactional View

Of Paul Watzlawick  

Review

The Interactional view is based on systems theory and was developed by Paul Waltzawick. Waltzawick was a part of the Palo Alto group because he was one of twenty scholars and therapists who was inspired by, and worked with anthropologist Gregory Bateson. The Palo Alto group does not focus on why a person acts a certain way, instead the focus is on how that behavior affects everyone in the group (Griffin, 2012, p.182) they reject the idea that individual motives and personality traits determine the nature of communication within a family. “Family system is an autonomous, mutually dependent network of feedback loops guided by members’ rules; the behavior of each person affects and is affected by the behavior of another” (Griffin, 2012, p.182). The Interactional view theory postulates that relationships within a family system are interrelated. The theory infers that relationships do not come together or fall apart because of one individual. In essence, everyone needs to continue playing the role they are use to; if they do, then things will not change and everything will continue as is.

According to Watzlawick, in order for communication within a family to be effective, four axioms must be met: one cannot not communicate, the content and the relationship is more important than the way people communicate or even communication itself, the nature of a relationship depends on how both parties punctuate the communication sequence, and all communication is either symmetrical or complementary. According to this theory Relationship messages are always the most important element in any communication, but when a family is in trouble, metacommunication dominates, metacommunication should be reserved for explicit communication about the process of communicating, not all communication about a relationship, and Punctuation becomes a problem when each person sees himself or herself as only reacting to, rather than provoking, a cyclical conflict. Watzlawick believes that not all nonverbal behavior is communication. In the absence of a sender-receiver relationship and the intentional use of a shared code, nonverbal behavior is informative rather than communicative.

The paradox of the double bind is that the high-status party in a complementary relationship insists that the low-status person act as if the relationship were symmetrical. Despite these problems, the interactional view has had a terrific impact on the field of interpersonal communication.