Confusion is our most important product: Deconstructing “stuckness”
The first time I met Paul Watzlawick was in rather unusual circumstances in 1985. I was a young social worker on a child protection team in rural Ontario, Canada. This was a time when family therapy was flourishing. Our child protection team was studying family therapy books together and attempting to apply the knowledge and skills to our work with families living in low income rural areas. We had all just finished reading Pragmatics of human communication: A study of interactional patterns, pathologies and paradoxes, by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas and Don D. Jackson and were very excited about the ideas in the book. However, we were continuously getting “stuck” when we tried to apply the ideas to our work in child protection. Then one time, as we were having a team discussion about how to move past this sense of “stuckness” one of the team members said, “I’ve got a crazy idea! Since Paul Watzlawick was lead author on the book, maybe he would help us understand it better. Why don’t we call him and ask for a consultation? It’s a long shot, but what have we got to loose?”
Long story short, I was elected to make the initial call to Paul Watzlawick. Five child protection workers huddled in behind me in my tiny office cubicle as I sat at my desk to make the call. My little cubicle was crackling with excitement. I dialed the phone to call the Mental Research Institute and then almost fell out of my chair when they actually answered, “Mental Research Institute”. Suddenly, it felt very surreal. They may have well answered “The Vatican”. I said in a shacky voice, “can I speak to Paul Watzlawick please?” Suddenly, the next voice said, “Watzlawick here”. We all looked at each other in shock and disbelief! Could it be this easy? I explained to him that we were a group of child protection social workers in rural Ontario, Canada working with children and families. I said “we’re getting a bit stuck trying to apply the ideas from the book and we could use your help. We would really like some consultation but, we don’t have any money to pay for it”. He replied, “hmmm”, followed by a long gap of silence on the phone. We thought he probably wished he hadn’t answered the phone. Finally, he said, “I’ll give you three phone consultations and that’s it”. We were struck with his patience and generosity. We were also glad that he didn’t just hang up the phone.
His consultations were invaluable and respectful of our efforts in working with families who were entangled in the child protection system. He started by deconstructing “stuckness” and teaching us a skill that continues to serve me today. He quoted a sign that apparently used to hang upside down over a one-way mirror at MRI which said, “CONFUSION IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT”. He said that ‘confusion or ‘stuckness’, is a necessary part of the experience on the way to more useful understandings and often means you are ‘on track’. He encouraged us to see the stuckness as a signal to step back and take note of our work with the families. What were the family member’s style of communicating with each other? He also encouraged us to notice our emerging style of communicating with the family. Are we becoming too engrossed in trying to solve the problem with them? Are we paying too much attention to content and not enough attention to relational patterns? He challenged us to change our thinking from pathologizing the individual to focusing on the interpersonal communication and the relevant social context.
That was my first introduction to the idea that meaning [reality] is subjectively created and generated between people. That understanding remains in our current work today as an ability to constantly reflect on our work within a pluralistic view of possible multiple realities. This major shift in paradigms, moved from internal and intrapsychic understandings, to interpersonal and relational understandings. Paul Watzlawick’ s message about the role of confusion has also remained with me to this day. In an effort to avoid false certainties, the role of ambiguity is privileged as an inherent part of the journey toward what is possible to know and do. Ambiguity, mystery and tentativeness invite curiosity, creativity and choice. I still visualize the sign hanging upside down in the observation room at MRI.
Two years later I contacted Paul Watzlawick again when I had started operating a year-long family therapy training program and was producing workshops and international conferences. We invited Dr. Watzlawick to teach one day in the year-long program as a visiting faculty. He provided a stunning presentation of his current work and conducted a moving interview with a family. I still have the VHS video recording of the session. He then taught a two-day workshop during that same visit. In 2000 we invited him again to present at the Millennium: Family therapy: Honoring the past, Embracing the future conference in Toronto. He presented with other faculty such as Dick Fisch, Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg, Salvador Minuchin and many others.
My experiences with Paul Watzlawick were certainly high points in my professional career. I will always be indebted to him for his responsiveness, generosity and respect in our initial contact with him as young child protection social workers. I still treasure my signed copies of Pragmatics and his edited book, The invented Reality: How do we know what we believe we know?
The Author: Jim Duvall M.Ed. is Co-Director of JST Institute and Editor of Journal of Systemic Therapies. He has over four decades of experience as a therapist, educator, consultant, speaker, editor and author. He was the Director of Training and Education at the Hincks-Dellcrest Institute and Director of Brief Therapy Training Centres – International in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In addition to numerous articles, book chapters and books, Jim co-authored a policy paper for the Ontario Government; Duvall, J., Young, K., Kays-Burden, A., (2012) No more, no less: Brief mental health services for children and youth.