Paul Watzlawick- The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious- The Pursuit of Unhappiness

By now I heard it so often that to pursue happiness is a sure and trusted way to become unhappy. So, the question poppped into my mind and the minds of the tens of clients seeking help in dealing with their persistent issues: what shall we do instead?

Being on the look for solutions to this cul-de-sac I stumbled upon this book, who’s declared purpose is, in the very words of the author: ”What this book wants to offer, […], is a methodic, basic introduction- drawn from decades of clinical experience- into the most useful and reliable mechanisms for the pursuit of unhappiness.” (Paul Watzlawick- The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious- The Pursuit of Unhappiness)

Hmmm... I said to myself while ordering it immediately from Book Depository (my favorite book store online). Could this be something?

I’ll let you decide, but will give you a teaser sample:

„Of all the knots, tangles, and other booby traps in the arsenal of an experienced relationship demolition expert (RDE), the ~Be spontaneous!~ paradox is by far the most universally utilized. And a real kosher paradox it is satisfying even the most stringent requirements of formal logic. In the pristine halls of logical Olympus, coercion and spontaneity  (i.e. that which proceeds from within without constraint and external force) are incompatible. To do spontaneously what one has been commanded to do is just as impossible as to forget by an act of conscious decision or to deliberately sleep more deeply. Either we act spontaneously, that is, at our own discretion, or we comply with a command and therefore do not act spontaneously. From a purely logical point of view we cannot do both at the same time.

But so what? What do we care about logic?

[...]

It does not seem to make much difference whether we prescribe the ~Be happy!~paradox to ourselves or whether it is imposed on us by some outside authority. Furthermore, ~Be happy!~is only one of the many variations on one basic theme of ~Be spontaneous!~. Virtually any spontaneous behavior lends itself to the construction of inescapable traps: the demand for spontaneous remembering or forgetting; the wish for a particular gift and the disappointment when one receives it „only” because one stated that wish; the attempt to will an erection or an orgasm, which makes impossible precisely that which it was supposed to achieve; the resolve to fall asleep because one wants to sleep; or the demand for love as a moral obligation that leads to the impossibility of loving.”