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The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness | 
 enlarge | Author: P Watzlawick
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
Category: Book
List Price: £8.95
Buy New: £3.48
You Save: £5.47 (61%)
New (37) Used (15) from £2.24
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 160959
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 126
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0393310213
Dewey Decimal Number: 158.1
EAN: 9780393310214
ASIN: 0393310213
Publication Date: August 18, 1993
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New book. WE USE PRIORITY AIRMAIL ONLY for books from the USA. UK & European delivery is 7-10 days. Over 2,000,000 books sold to Amazon customers
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Brilliant April 12, 2008
eyeglass (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read through the whole of this book in one sitting! I have read as lot of self help books and books on CBT, REBT etc. but this book is a great leveller - bringing you down to earth. It shows exactly how we behave to make ourselves unhappy and as a side effect shows how we can make ourselves feel better. I was in a wonderful state of mind after reading it. It is like suddenly realising the sense of things rather than the mind wirling with all the theories from the self help books. Makes things much clearer.
Hopelessly Revealing... May 22, 2006
G. W. Evans (North Wales, UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Delicious! Wonderfully smile-inducing, playful and profound. This is Watzlawick at his best, utilising the MRI's whole gambit of tactics and ploys to induce an inverse state in the reader away from miserable thinking (darn it, and rightfully so!).
Watzlawick peppers his witty text with all manner of story and analogy that illuminates and delights. If you like this then also try his 'Ultra-solutions' (not quite as good but fine all the same) or his 'The Invented Reality' that has some very interesting ideas on self-fulfilling prophecy and also the sobering and scary essay (especially if your either a mental health professional or service user) 'On being sane in insane places'.
A most fulsome read that seriously hopelessy fails to not en-wisen and transfix!
Enjoy
KILL UNHAPPINESS WITH LAUGHTER AND SELF CRITICISM November 25, 2002
Luciano Lupini (Caracas Venezuela)
21 out of 24 found this review helpful
A wonderful, witty, exposà of our endeavors to live a more miserable life by Watzlawick, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University. The treatment of the subject will surely make you laugh at yourself and thus, perhaps, contribute to make you a better person.
W. deals with the fundamental, painful, necessity of the human being to be unhappy (in order to be quiet). And in fact, he contends that the best chapters of universal literature dwell with disaster, tragedy, guilt, madness, etc.
Dante's Inferno-W. writes- is very superior to his Paradise; same case as Milton's Paradise Lost compared with his Paradise Regained; Faust I's greatness is proportionally inverse to the tediousness of Faust II. So the author embarks hilariously in a methodic introduction to the best and more verifiable mechanisms to achieve unhappiness. Samples:
Always be truthful to yourself. A principle, from Polonius in Hamlet,of the outmost necessity for us ( its application is what gets the guy killed by Hamlet like a rat). So then, we must resist any temptation to yield to any other criteria or opinion, apart from ours. Never compromise or accept someone else's advice. The author then addresses the issue of the old saying: "time cures all wounds"..... According to W. four sound mechanisms exist if you want to avoid time's healing effects and transform the past into a present source of suffering. In the exaltation of the past we find those that only remember the good things about their youth and not the years of insecurity and anxiety. In so doing, they have a consistent reserve of sadness about their miserable present...... Also, this fidelity to the past, impairs our ability to enjoy the present and fully dedicate our efforts to the endeavors of the moment. Another mechanism is to consistently dwell with the guilt complex that past errors create, finding excuses or scapegoats (our parents, God, chromosomes, teachers etc.) while doing nothing to avoid committing the same mistakes again.
The author drives his point with practical examples. For instance the story of the hammer. A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn't want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. Or, perhaps, he holds something against me. But why? I didn't do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people's life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This is got to stop ! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor's door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: "You can keep your hammer, you b......"
Watzlawick not only discussess techniques to create false problems, but also the ones that make it actually possible to avoid solving problems and conver them into eternal torments. Here we get the example of the man that claps his hands every ten seconds. Asked why he does that, he answers: "to drive away the elephants..." -"But why, there are no elephants here"- The guy says: "Precisely".
This is a very funny book. It deals, with a fresh and delightful approach, with many of our karmas and mind bothering mosquitoes......
5 crowns? Frightening or brilliant? If I were sure..... March 5, 1999
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Attracted to Watzlawick's work after recommended to read "Change" I decided to try some more. Began to be perplexed, taking seriously the idea that it could be his aim to be unhappy. "We need unhappiness" he says early on. If I agree it is that we might know happiness, as knowing light because of darkness, etc. Later examples I begin to recognise and wonder. It is perfectly possible to become Relationship Destruction Experts and there may be some of it in all of us. The dark humour (I think) tells us that we can learn to destroy the happiness we could enjoy with others. We don't need to do that. Read it right through at one sitting, as I almost did. Then try reviewing it and see how you rate it. The whole reading changed my view of it as I went; the review made me realise that, and made my mind up. I am sure now. 5 crowns, not 3.
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