Basic Axioms of communication by Paul Watzlawick

Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 - March 31, 2007) was an Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he has commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California, until his death at the age of 85. Watzlawick defines five basic axioms in his theory on communication that are necessary to have a functioning communication between two individuals. If one of these axioms is somehow disturbed, communication might fail.

1. One Cannot Not Communicate (Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren): Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate. 2. Every communication has a content and relationship aspect such that the latter classifies the former and is therefore a metacommunication: This means that all communication includes, apart from the plain meaning of words, more information - information on how the talker wants to be understood and how he himself sees his relation to the receiver of information. 3. The nature of a relationship is dependent on the punctuation of the partners communication procedures: Both the talker and the receiver of information structure the communication flow differently and therefore interpret their own behaviour during communicating as merely a reaction on the other's behaviour (i.e. every partner thinks the other one is the cause of a specific behaviour). Human communication cannot be desolved into plain causation and reaction strings, communication rather appears to be cyclic. 4. Human communication involves both digital and analog modalities: Communication does not involve the merely spoken words (digital communication), but non-verbal and analog-verbal communication as well. 5. Inter-human communication procedures are either symmetric or complementary, depending on whether the relationship of the partners is based on differences or pari

Watzlawick, Paul: Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of International Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. W. W. Norton & Company (1967)