Five Levels of Communication
Five Levels of communication: John Powell
(From : Why am I afraid to say who I am?)
Someone has aptly distinguished five levels of communication on which persons can relate to one another. Perhaps it will help our understanding of these levels to visualize a person locked inside of a prison. It is the human being, urged by an inner insistence to go out to others and yet afraid to do so.
Most of us make only a weak response to the invitation of encounter with others and our world because we feel uncomfortable exposing our nakedness as persons. Inside our prison we may be lonely and fragmented by an almost desperate need for connecting with people outside but we are afraid to take the risk since we can be rejected. Some of us are only willing to pretend this exodus out of ourselves while others somehow find the courage to go all the way out to freedom. There are various stages in between.
The fifth level represents the least willingness to communicate ourselves to others. The successive descending levels indicate greater and greater success in the adventure.
Level five: Cliché conversation.
This level represents the weakest response to the human dilemma and the lowest level of self-communication. On this level we talk in clichés such as … “How are you?….. How is your family?…. Where have you been” We say things like: “ I like your dress very much.” “ I hope we can get together again real soon.” “ It is good to see you.”
No one is expected to give details of one’s health problems when one is asked, “How do you do?” We say, “Just fine, thank you.”
This is the non-communication of the cocktail party, the club meeting… There is no sharing of persons at all. Everyone remains safely in the isolation of his pretense, sham, sophistication.
Level four: Reporting the facts about others.
On this fourth level we do not step very far outside the prison of our loneliness into real communication because we expose almost nothing of ourselves. We remain contented to tell
(From : Why am I afraid to say who I am?)
Someone has aptly distinguished five levels of communication on which persons can relate to one another. Perhaps it will help our understanding of these levels to visualize a person locked inside of a prison. It is the human being, urged by an inner insistence to go out to others and yet afraid to do so.
Most of us make only a weak response to the invitation of encounter with others and our world because we feel uncomfortable exposing our nakedness as persons. Inside our prison we may be lonely and fragmented by an almost desperate need for connecting with people outside but we are afraid to take the risk since we can be rejected. Some of us are only willing to pretend this exodus out of ourselves while others somehow find the courage to go all the way out to freedom. There are various stages in between.
The fifth level represents the least willingness to communicate ourselves to others. The successive descending levels indicate greater and greater success in the adventure.
Level five: Cliché conversation.
This level represents the weakest response to the human dilemma and the lowest level of self-communication. On this level we talk in clichés such as … “How are you?….. How is your family?…. Where have you been” We say things like: “ I like your dress very much.” “ I hope we can get together again real soon.” “ It is good to see you.”
No one is expected to give details of one’s health problems when one is asked, “How do you do?” We say, “Just fine, thank you.”
This is the non-communication of the cocktail party, the club meeting… There is no sharing of persons at all. Everyone remains safely in the isolation of his pretense, sham, sophistication.
Level four: Reporting the facts about others.
On this fourth level we do not step very far outside the prison of our loneliness into real communication because we expose almost nothing of ourselves. We remain contented to tell