Friday, March 21, 2014

Differentiation

Differentiation is a Jungian term for valuating a phenomenon in separate parts rather than as a simple whole. Rather than saying, "My mother is a complete evil witch", you differentiate between her motherly parts and her witcherly parts. It's a task we need to perform in order to move beyond the infantile into the adult world of ambiguity. Theory basis courtesy of Melanie Klein.

A comment from January 2014 that I missed, exemplifies differentiation. He, I imagine him as a he, reponded to my brilliant sidebar essay on Liberalism as follows:

For a blog with a tacky layout, this may be the wisest thing I've ever read.

My response is also, well, differentiated.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So differentiation is the ability to see that people are never simply black or white? I know that there are parts of my family that cause me distress, but I can't hate them because I see the good parts of them far more often.

Liberals seem to have a dearth of differentiation. Are people naturally attracted to liberalism because its fantastical and childish naiveté appeals to their infantile worldview and moralism? It would certainly explain why they lash out so violently when somebody resists them: the only accurate description for these outbursts is "temper tantrums."

-Sean

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