This section of the book was written before the others. It was completed in 1951 for presentation at a communication conference at Norwestern University on the occasion of its centenary. The report was entitled «Communication: Its Disruption and Activation». Since then, it has been reprinted half a dozen times by various groups and in various journals, including the Harvard Business Review and Etc., the journal of the Society for General Semantics.
Although some of the illustrative material now seems somewhat outdated, I have included it because I feel its importance for the problem of group, national and international tensions. The proposals regarding Soviet-American tension seemed absolutely fantastic at the time. I think that now they would be accepted by many as quite sane.
It may seem strange that a person whose professional endeavors are in psychotherapy is interested in problems of communication. What do the provision of psychotherapeutic help to people with emotional disorders have in common with the main problem of this conference — barriers to communication? In fact, this relationship is very close. The general task of psychotherapy is to restore violations in communication. A person with emotional disorders, a «neurotic», experiences, firstly, difficulties from the fact that his internal communication is disturbed, and secondly, from the fact that as a result of this his communication with other people is disrupted. If this sounds a little strange, then let me put it another way. The components of the neurotic’s personality that are called «unconscious», or «repressed», or «rejected by consciousness», are blocked to such an extent that they cease to communicate with the conscious or controlling part of his personality. And while this lasts, there are disturbances in communication, from which he himself and his relationships with other people suffer. The goal of psychotherapy is to help the person, through a special relationship with the therapist, achieve good communication with himself. When this is achieved, he can communicate more freely and effectively with others. We can then say that psychotherapy is good communication, both intrapersonal and interpersonal. We can also reverse this statement and it will still be true. Good, free communication, intrapersonal or interpersonal, always has a psychotherapeutic effect.
Thus, my experience in counseling and psychotherapy for communication disorders has given rise to two ideas that I now want to share with you. I would like to identify what, in my opinion, is one of the main factors contributing to the blocking and difficulty of communication. Then I will talk about a method that, as our practice has shown, is very important for improving and facilitating communication.
I would like to define as a hypothesis for discussion that the main obstacle in interpersonal communication is our natural tendency to evaluate, judge, approve or disapprove when making a statement about another person or group of people. Let me illustrate my point with very simple examples. When you leave today’s session, you’re likely to hear statements like, «I didn’t like this person’s presentation.» And how will you respond to that? Almost inevitably, your response will either agree or disagree with the stated attitude. You either answer: “I didn’t like it either. I thought it was terrible,” or you might be tempted to say, “I think it was very good.” In other words, your initial reaction is to evaluate what has just been communicated to you, and from your point of view, depending on your own position.
Or let’s take another example. Suppose I say with feeling, «I think the Republicans are pursuing a policy that demonstrates a lot of common sense at this time.» What reaction to what you hear will arise in your mind? It is most likely that it will be of an appraisal nature. You’ll find yourself agreeing or disagreeing, or making judgments about me like, «He must be a conservative» or «He’s a great thinker.» Or take an example from the sphere of international relations. Russia sharply declares: «The treaty with Japan is a military conspiracy on the part of the United States.» We all say as one: «It’s a lie!»
The last example adds another element to my hypothesis. Although the urge to judge is almost always present in the exchange of remarks, it is greatly enhanced when feelings and emotions are deeply affected. Therefore, the stronger our feelings, the more likely it is that the element of reciprocity in communication will be absent. There will be two ideas, two feelings, two assessments that do not coincide with each other in the psychological space. I am sure you are familiar with this from your own experience. If you yourself, watching a heated discussion, are not emotionally affected by it, then often, when you leave, you think: “They actually talked about different things.” The way it is. Everyone made judgments and assessments based on their own position. There was nothing that could be called communication in the true sense. This tendency to respond to any emotionally significant statement, evaluating it from one’s own position, I repeat, is a major obstacle in interpersonal communication.
Is there a way to solve this problem and avoid this obstacle? I feel that we are successfully approaching this goal, and I would like to make it as simple as possible. There is no judgmental tendency, and true communication occurs when we listen with understanding. What does it mean? It means looking at the ideas and attitudes being expressed from the other person’s point of view, feeling what it means to him, taking his position on what he is talking about.
Such a concise explanation may seem too simple, but it is not. We have found that this approach is very promising in the field of psychotherapy. It is the most effective means known to us for changing the basic structure of an individual’s personality, for improving his relationships and communication with others. If I can listen to what he has to say to me, if I can take his view of it, if I can understand the personal meaning of what he said, if I can feel the emotional connotation of his words, then I release the potential forces that will lead to change it. If I can really understand how he hates his father, or hates the university, or hates the communists, if I can catch the shades of his fear of insanity, or the atomic bomb, or Russia — that will be the most effective help for him in overcoming this hatred and these fears and in establishing realistic and harmonious relationships with the very people and situations towards which he felt hatred and fear. Our research shows that empathic understanding—understanding with the person, not understanding with the person—is so effective that it can lead to significant personality changes. Some of you may think that you are good at listening to people, but you have not seen such results. Most likely, you did not listen in the way I described it. Fortunately, I can offer you a little laboratory experiment that can help you test the quality of your understanding. The next time you are arguing with your wife, friend, or small group of friends, stop the discussion for a moment and, for the sake of experiment, establish this rule: so precisely that the latter is satisfied with it.» You understand what that will mean. It simply means that before you can express your own point of view, you need to really take the position of your interlocutor — understand his thoughts and feelings so well that you can tell him their essence. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But if you try to do this, you will find that this is perhaps the most difficult task that you have ever tried to complete. However, as soon as you are able to comprehend the point of view of another person, your own statements will be radically revised. You will also see that the argument will become less emotional, the differences will smooth out, and those that remain will become more rational and mutually acceptable.
Can you imagine what this approach would mean if applied on a larger scale? What would happen to labor disputes between workers and management if they were conducted in such a way that the workers, even if they did not necessarily agree, could accurately state the management’s point of view so that it was accepted by them as correct, and the managers, not approving the position workers, could state the matter in such a way that the workers would recognize this presentation as correct? This would mean that real communication has been achieved, and one could really give a guarantee that some reasonable decision will be made.
In that case, if this approach is a direct path to good communication and good relationships, and I’m pretty sure you will agree if you try the experiment I mentioned, why isn’t it being adopted and used more widely? I will try to list the difficulties that hinder its use.
First, it requires courage, a quality that is not very widespread. I am very much indebted to Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, a semanticist, who remarked that in this kind of psychotherapy you take significant risks and that it takes courage. If you understand another person in this way, if you want to penetrate into his inner world and see life through his eyes, without trying to evaluate, you risk changing yourself. You look as if through his eyes and find that you are under his influence in terms of your relationships and your personality. The risk of change is one of the most daunting prospects most of us can face. If I penetrate as fully as I can into the inner world of a person suffering from neurasthenia or psychosis, then am I not in danger of getting lost in this world? Most of us are afraid to take that risk. And if we had a Russian communist or Senator Joseph McCarthy speaking here today,79 how many of us would dare to try to see the world through their eyes? The vast majority of us do not know how to listen; we would find ourselves forcing ourselves to evaluate because just listening is too dangerous. So, the first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it.
But there is also a second obstacle. It is when emotions are strongest that it is most difficult to take the position of another person or group. At the same time, it is precisely at this time that such an attitude towards another is most necessary if you want to communicate with him. In our psychotherapeutic practice, we do not consider this obstacle to be insurmountable. A third person who is able to step back from their own feelings and judgments can be of great help by listening with understanding to each individual or group and clarifying the opinions and attitudes of each side. We have found that this method is very effective in those small groups where there are antagonistic relationships and contradictions. When the disputants realize that they are being understood correctly, that someone sees the situation exactly as it appears to them, the statements become less categorical and less defensive, there is no need to constantly keep in mind: “I am one hundred percent right, and you are not one hundred percent wrong.» The influence of such an «understanding catalyst» in the group allows its members to come closer and closer to objective truth in their relationships. Thus, mutual communication begins, and the achievement of a certain agreement becomes much more likely. Therefore, we can argue that, although it is much more difficult to reach understanding with an opponent in the presence of strong emotions, our experience shows that in a small group setting, a neutral understanding leader or therapist acting as a “catalyst” can overcome this obstacle.
My last sentence, however, points to another obstacle to the application of the described approach. So far, all of our experience has been with people face to face in small groups—groups where tensions arise in industry, religion, racial issues, and psychotherapy groups where often tensions of feeling can be encountered. Our experience, supported by a small number of studies, is that in these small groups, listening to each other and empathy lead to better communication, greater acceptance of the partner and self, and more positive and productive relationships. There is a decrease in defensive reactions, exaggerated statements, evaluative and threatening behavior. But all these results were obtained in small groups. Is it possible to try to reach an understanding between larger groups that are geographically distant from each other? Or between small groups, but which speak face to face not on their own behalf, but as representatives of other people, such as, for example, UN delegates? To be honest, we don’t know the answers to these questions. I think this situation can be represented as follows. As social scientists, we have an experimental hypothetical solution to the problem of communication breakdown. But to confirm the validity of this hypothetical solution and apply it to the serious problems of communication between classes, groups and nations, additional funds, much more research and a high level of creative thinking would be required.
With the knowledge we currently have, we can foresee some steps that could be taken, even in large groups, to increase mutual listening and reduce the evaluation of others. Let’s let our imagination run wild for a moment and suppose that an international group with a psychotherapeutic bent addressed the leaders of the USSR with the words: “We want to achieve a true understanding of your views and, more importantly, an understanding of your feelings and attitudes towards the United States. We will state the essence of your views and attitudes until you agree that our description of the situation corresponds to your idea of it. Let us suppose that this group then proposes the same to the leaders of our own country. And if they then spread these two points of view very widely, describing the emotions accurately, but not offending each other, can you imagine what a strong effect it will be? Of course, one cannot be sure that the type of understanding that I spoke of will be achieved, but its achievement will be much more likely. We can understand the feelings of a person who hates us much easier when his attitude towards us is accurately described by a neutral third person, and not when he himself shakes his fists at us.
But even to describe this first step is to reveal another obstacle in using this approach to understanding. Our civilization still does not believe enough in the social sciences to put their discoveries into practice. This does not apply to the natural sciences. During the war, when a laboratory solution to the problem of artificial rubber was found, an entire army of talented scientists and millions of dollars were attracted to the practical use of this discovery. If artificial rubber could be obtained in milligrams, then it can and will be produced in thousands of tons. This is what happened. But if a way is found in the social sciences to improve communication and mutual understanding in small groups, there is no guarantee that this discovery will be used. It may take a generation or more before money and brains are directed to the development of this discovery.
In conclusion, I would like to summarize this small-scale solution to the problem of barriers to communication and dwell on some of its salient features.
I have already said that our research and current experience suggests that communication disorders, in particular the tendency to evaluate, this main barrier in communication, can be overcome. This is achieved by creating a situation in which each side comes to understand the position of the other side. In practice, this was achieved even in cases of strong emotional tension through a person who had a great desire to sympathetically understand the point of view of everyone and thereby acted as a «catalyst» accelerating further understanding.
This process has important features. One of the parties can act as an initiator without waiting for the other party to be ready. The initiative can even come from a neutral third party, provided that one of the parties agrees to at least minimal cooperation.
During this action, one can encounter insincerity, defensive reactions in the form of exaggeration, lies and «deceptive facades» — all this is characteristic of almost all cases of communication failure. Such protective barriers disappear remarkably quickly once people discover that their only intention is to understand, not judge them.
This approach quickly and confidently leads to the discovery of truth, to a realistic assessment of objective barriers to communication. If one side abandons the defensive position, it leads to the other side abandoning it, and thus the truth is comprehended.
This procedure gradually leads to mutual communication. Mutual communication is aimed at solving problems, and not against an individual or group. It leads to a situation where I see the problem as it appears to you and to me; and you see her as she appears to me and to you. Thus, a problem, once accurately and realistically defined, will almost certainly succumb to intellectual onslaught, and if it is somehow unsolvable, it will be quietly accepted as such.
All this appears before us as a solution to the problem of impaired communication in small groups obtained in an experimental test tube. Can we take this solution based on limited material and subject it to further study, refinement, development and application in tragic and often fatal cases of communication disorders that threaten the very existence of the modern world? It seems to me that such a possibility exists, and it challenges our intellectual powers.
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