Pragmatics of Human Communication

The book Pragmatics of Human Communication, published in 1967, was a groundbreaking statement about the functions of interpersonal communication, particularly as it relates to behavioral and psychiatric problems. The two major contributions of the book were its presentation of axioms of human communication and elaboration of the double-bind hypothesis associated with family interaction and schizophrenia. Some of the axioms of communication were controversial and overstated but have enduring heuristic values to students and scholars of human communication. The double-bind hypothesis, although never substantiated, played an important role in the formation of the interpersonal paradigm in mental health.