Basic concepts of communicational elements are explained: culturally institutionalized or individually internalized conscious or unconscious, intentional and unintentional encoding and decoding systems of verbal and nonverbal behavior, metacommunicational cues, various modes of communication (factual, insinuative, deceptive, etc.), the rôle of situational context and of background information.Examples of complex misunderstandings in interpersonal interactions are given and analysed. This analytical method has been useful in psychiatry as well as in daily life situations