Comunicazione e relazioni umane: alcuni aspetti patologici

Domenico Sgobba

Domenico Sgobba

Keywords: General Semantics, Bateson, double bind, Mental Research Institute, pragmatic para-doxes

Abstract

This essay examines some philosophical schools and philosophers who have studied problems about our communications and our language. These researchers have underlined that wrong uses and unfounded ideas about our linguistic instruments can produce serious social and psychological problems and damage our human relations and our daily life.

The first philosophical school examined is General Semantics founded by Alfred Korzybski. The most important work of this thinker has a really expressive title: Science and Sanity and the subtitle is: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics. In this work the objective of Korzybski is the development of new linguistic habits that avoid the mistakes produced by Aristotelian logic and improve our social relations.

A different approach to the problems of communication and language is developed by Gregory Bateson, who utilizes a holistic point of view. In my essay, I expose some aspects of his studies and analyse especially his theory of double bind with its influences of our life.

Bateson’s studies have been developed by the scientists of Mental Research Institute at Palo Alto University, in California, especially by Paul Watzlawick. The last part of my essay is dedicated at these researches with a specific analysis about some pragmatic paradoxes, that can produce serious problems in our life and human relations. A short comparison about the different solutions suggested by different philosophical schools concludes the essay.

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