A couple of years ago I wrote a post about Paul Watzlawick et al's Change and the idea of first and second order change. The idea has kept on being useful since I remembered it, so recently I got my hands on a copy of the book to read it again. Along with it I also bought a book by Watzlawick called Ultra-Solutions: How to fail most successfully. This little booklet is an exploration of the kind of solution which "not only does away with the problem, but also with just about everything else, somewhat in the vein of the old medical joke - operation successful, patient dead...". It is a light-hearted romp through the pitfalls of rigid or inadequate thinking, using as its framework the witches and their mistress Hecate who tempted Macbeth, and who continue to tempt us in our day to adopt strategies just as seductive and self-defeating as that followed by Shakespeare's tragic hero. In each short chapter he deals with a mental pitfall. The search for security and
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson