Watzlawick, Paul 1921-2007

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 25, 1921, in Villach, Austria; died of cardiac arrest, March 31, 2007, in Palo Alto, CA. Psychologist, educator, and author. Watzlawick was a pioneering family therapist who emphasized effective communications as more valuable to improved mental health than Freudian psychoanalysis. A graduate of the University of Venice, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1949, he studied psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute for Analytical Psychology in Zurich. He earned his diploma in 1954 and went into private practice. During the late-1950s, he taught at the University of El Salvador, and he was a researcher at Temple University in 1960. That year, he joined the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. He developed his MRI Brief Therapy approach, which emphasized communication as vital to improving mental well being. He then began teaching in 1967, when he joined the Stanford University faculty as a clinical instructor; he remained there until his retirement as clinical professor emeritus. Watzlawick was the author of over a dozen books; most are for professionals and some are in German, but he also wrote books for general readers that have a lightly humorous edge. Among these are The Situation Is Hopeless, but Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness (1983) and Ultra-Solutions; or, How to Fail Most Successfully (1988). Other works by Watzlawick include How Real Is Real? (1976) and Munchhausen's Pigtail; or, Psychotherapy and "Reality": Essays and Lectures (1990).

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PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2007, p. B8.