Watzlawick, Paul (1921-2007)

Theoretician in Communication Theory and Radical Constructivism and has commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. He lived and worked in Palo Alto, California until his death at the age of 85. Life: After he graduated from high school in 1939 in his hometown of Villach, Austria, Watzlawick studied philosophy and philology at the Università Ca' Foscari Venice and earned a doctorate degree in 1949. He then studied at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich, where he received a degree in analytical psychotherapy in 1954. In 1957 he continued his researching career at the University of El Salvador. In 1960, Don. D. Jackson arranged for him to come to Palo Alto to do research at the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto. In 1967 and thereafter he taught psychiatry at Stanford University.