Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.

Paul Watzlawick (July 25 1921 – March 31 2007) was an Austrian-American family therapist psychologist communications theorist and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism he has commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto California until a cardiac arrest at his home in Palo Alto caused his death at the age of 85.