Paul Watzlawick | Stanford therapist, 85

Paul Watzlawick, 85, a Stanford family therapist and communications theorist who believed people create their own suffering by trying to fix their emotional problems, has died.

He died Saturday of cardiac arrest at his home in Palo Alto, Calif., according to colleagues.

Born in Austria, he gained fame for parting with Freudian psychoanalysis in favor of an approach to therapy that emphasized relationships over introspection. He trained at the C. G. Jung Institute in Switzerland and in 1960 joined the staff of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto.

As a scholar and a practicing therapist, Mr. Watzlawick wrote 22 books translated into 80 languages, for both academic and general audiences. Emotional health, he believed, hinged on abandoning the ego and achieving well-being through effective communication with others.

His research into the processes and principles of communication formed the foundation of the outward-looking therapeutic approach he developed with his Mental Research Institute colleagues, known as MRI Brief Therapy.

He became a licensed psychologist in 1969. He stopped seeing patients in 1998.

In 1967, he became a member of the clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University Medical Center and was clinical professor emeritus at the time of his death. - Associated Press