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The subtitle of this volume reads: The Clinical Assessment of Normal and Pathological Communicative Behavior. The author, by borrowing from the disciplines related to psychiatry, and including cybernetics, presents 'a theory of human communication founded upon modern principles of scientific philosophy'. He holds that 'traditional
psychopathological formulations … have neither explained the origin of mental disease nor contributed toward the development of effective treatment methods' and believes the time has come to try a new approach. He thinks that since communication 'seems to be basic to all forms of human relations … the formulation of human problems in terms of communication [will enable] the scientist to carry out the assessment of human communication along a continuum which ranges from normal to abnormal'. The presentation is 'problem-oriented rather than patient-oriented' and 'reflects the fact that in the process of communication at any one instant an individual deals not with the total personality of the other person but with certain salient features' of himself and the other person. It is the author's hope that specification of processes of communication, both normal and disturbed, 'will provide the clinician with a workable scheme which will prove useful in action as well as in retrospective reporting'.
Part One: The Nature of Communication Pathology, after a review of earlier related scientific contributions, takes up the nature of successful and disturbed communication, essentially in terms of the resulting gratification or frustration. The Genesis of Disturbed Communication considers the influence of such factors as 'overload', 'underload', 'incorrect timing', 'inappropriate statements', 'devious acknowledgment' and 'threatening content'. In discussing the genetic role of feedback, which 'is also responsible for the continuation of faulty perception and action', the author offers as an example (p. 68) a hand-washing compulsion. It is dis