Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

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. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

The papers and lectures collected here were published over a span of 15 years. Watzlawick intends to convey the development of thought at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, where anthropologist G. Bateson, psychiatrist D. Jackson, hypnotherapist M. Erikson, and cybernetician H. von Foerster have been inspirational. The main title refers to Count Munchhausen's story of having hoisted himself and his mount out of a bog by grasping his own pigtail; new possibilities become available when, through action, we break through old notions of reality. The book is not so much about psychotherapy as about going beyond monadic, positivist criteria for reality to interactional, relational, systemic, cybernetic, constructionist perspectives. These are increasingly influential perspectives that should be represented in library holdings. However, Watzlawick's earlier books might be preferable to this volume, whose contents are highly repetitive, were originally addressed to the concerns of German-speaking audiences, and are written with pervasive use of gender-biased language. Upper-class and graduate students nevertheless could make use of the volume. -C. T. Fischer, Duquesne University