Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California. Early life and education Paul Watzlawick was born in Villach, Austria in 1921, the son of a bank director. After he graduated from high school in 1939, Watzlawick studied philosophy and philology at the Università Ca' Foscari Venice – even though the Faculty of Philosophy was not established before 1969 – and earned a PhD (doctor of philosophy degree) in 1949. He then studied at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich, where he received a degree in analytical psychology in 1954. In 1957 he continued his research career at the University of El Salvador. Career In 1960, Don. D. Jackson arranged for him to go to Palo Alto to do research at the Mental Research Institute (MRI). Starting in 1967 he taught psychiatry at Stanford University. At the Mental Research Institute Watzlawick followed in the footsteps of Gregory Bateson and the research team (Don D. Jackson, John Weakland, Jay Haley) responsible for introducing what became known as the "double bind" theory of schizophrenia. Double bind can be defined as a person trapped under mutually exclusive expectations. Watzlawick's 1967 work based on Bateson's thinking, Pragmatics of Human Communication (with Don Jackson and Janet Beavin), became a cornerstone work of communication theory. Other scientific contributions include works on radical constructivism and most importantly his theory on communication. He was active in the field of family therapy. Watzlawick was one of the three founding members of the Brief Therapy Center at MRI. In 1974, members of the Center published a major work on their brief approach, Change, Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch). He was licensed as a psychologist in California from 1969 until 1998, when he stopped seeing patients. Personal life Watzlawick was married (Vera) and had two stepdaughters (Yvonne and Joanne). A cardiac arrest at his home in Palo Alto caused his death at the age of 85. Work Interactional view Watzlawick did extensive research on how communication is