Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Ar G(L)UE ments!

Something that my sibling read out to me from one of his text books: (this is not a verbatim reproduction)

Different people handle/react to arguments in different ways. The immature way of handling arguments includes repression (deal with it in a cruel manner), psychotic denial, distortion (misrepresent facts), projection (exaggerate), conversion (change things to support the ‘winner’ of the argument), undoing, disassociation, and rationalization. (I should say that I am surprised about the last one making it to this list! I’d have thought it is perfectly mature to rationalize. Maybe rationalize in this context actually means ‘to defend’. Any thoughts?).


While, the mature way of handling arguments is to anticipate it, indulge in humour, and through sublimation (making it a non-issue), and suppression (“ya! ok! I understand” types…). In my perception, some of these approaches, frankly, seem to have a very thin line of difference. I think humour would definitely win hands down if it boils down to choosing the single-most effective approach among these…though it would be mandatory to address the issue at the heart of the matter after the initial ‘face-off’.

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