This had an influence on the study of psychosomatic illness and stress, emphasizing the role of patients' inability to adapt to environmental situations, rather than focusing on internal psychic conflict, as had been the approach of Franz Alexander.
The early volume Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (1951, with Gregory Bateson) situates his work alongside and in some senses intertwined with his coauthor, a well known anthropologist who also focused upon systems and adaptation.
Ruesch was also aware that the broader social milieu was composed of a great number of sub-systems to which one must adapt including (1) the schoolhouse (2) the sports field (3) the dating scene (4) the romantic relationship, (5) the employment site, (6) the Church, to name a few.
For Ruesch this idea of word-set utterances (digital message) being interpreted alongside performance features (analogic content) such as location, equipment, and gestures was critical to the understanding of the event.
For example, the digital content of the word set "I don't want to love without you" varies in its meaning, depending on whether the speaker says it on one knee holding an engagement ring and roses or whether he shouts it from the ledge of a 20-story window.
It appears that Sebeok had been given discretion with respect to the series and that he was interested in the monumental publications of Ruesch (who purportedly coined the expression 'nonverbal communication') starting 20 years earlier in journals.