During the past two decades the network of communication researchers known informally as the “Palo Alto Group” has published several hundred articles and more than 20 books on what has been variously termed the “New Communication” and the “Interactional View.” The work of this group, however, has been largely neglected in human communication research. The objectives of this essay are: (1) to summarize the theoretical and epistemological bases of the Interactional View, noting the pragmatic instances for which this framework is invoked as explanation and justification; (2) to introduce some of the conceptual and methodological difficulties which need be addressed in formulating appropriate research; and (3) to suggest several general and specific directions for research in human communication.
Psychiatry, 1 came across the work of the Bateson group. I was particularly impressed by their work on communication in schizophrenia, the double-bind theory, and other topics that, at the time, were really quite revolutionary. People at Temple were impressed by this work too, so I decided to meet Dr. Don Jackson-then a consultant to the Bateson group-when he visited Philadelphia in October 1960. As it turned out, Dr. Jackson was in the habit of picking up stray dogs, and he said "All right, come out to Palo Alto and let's see what we can do."Jackson had founded MRI about a year and a half before that, so that what is loosely called the "Palo Alto Group" was really two groups. The Bateson group, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Menlo Park, was studying schizophrenic communication at that time, but had also done work with dogs for the blind, studied animal play at the San Francisco Zoo, and had done a number of other very interesting studies with ventriloquists and with hypnotists and so on. They were investigating communication on a very wide range, but always on the principle that communication has a pragmatic, behavioral effect. After Jackson founded his group at MRI in late '58, the two groups coexisted very closely in terms of joint staff meetings, joint case discussions, and so on. I joined Jackson's group at MRI, which at the time was part of the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation. There was never any formal synthesis of the two groups. They were just two independent groups with Gregory Bateson as the great theoretical mentor and Jackson as the great clinician. Wilder: You have argued that the approach of the Palo Alto Group-the tnteractional view" or the "new communication," as it's been variously called-is epistemologically discontinuous from the Freudian intrapsychic psychoanalytic paradigm. How is this so?Watzlawick: You see, what I think was so absolutely new in Bateson's approach to psychiatric problems was due to the fact that he is, among other things, an anthropologist. He therefore approached the phenomena of so-called psychopathological behavior in the way an anthropologist would look at the functioning of a strange culture. When he goes out in the field to look at a culture that is not his own, he does so with a minimum of preconceived notions.He tries to see what they are doing and not have prior ideas about why they are doing what they're doing.This differs from the orthodox psychiatric approach where there is a theoretical model of the human mind, and one looks at disturbed behavior and tries to understand it in terms of this more or less preconceived idea of what goes on inside a person's mind. In that sense, the two views are totally discontinuous because the orthodox view takes the mind as the ultimate unit of study, while the approach that Bateson pioneered takes into account what goes on between people, and how that influences behavior. And, further, how the behavior of one ''.
Political documentaries Hearts and Minds and Fahrenheit 9/11 were made three decades apart and stand as cultural markers of their times. The films share remarkable similarities and equally important differences. Hearts and Minds and Fahrenheit 9/11 include many similar iconic images of antiwar rhetoric, including grieving parents, profiteering businessmen, dissembling politicians, and wounded warriors. They have similar distribution histories. Conceptually, both films construct cinematic argument through an intricate succession of incongruous, contradictory, and ultimately ironic words and images. This article explores argument by irony as exemplified by Hearts and Minds and Fahrenheit 9/11, and discusses their dissimilarities as manifestations of the radically differentiated media environments of their times."Throughout the war in Vietnam, the United States has exercised a degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war." -Richard Nixon in Hearts and Minds (1974) "The care that goes into targeting [in Iraq] is impressive as anyone can see. The care that goes into it-the humanity that goes into it." -Donald Rumsfeld in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) It is a riveting political documentary that won raves at the Cannes Film Festival, was dropped by its original distributor, met with passionately opposing reviews, and was a leading contender for an Academy Award. Is it Michael Moore's 2004 Fahr-
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