On "The Effort To Drive The Other Person Crazy"
In an article of 1959, 'The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy', Searles examined six modes of interpersonal communication, arguing that “each of these techniques tends to undermine the other person's confidence in his own emotional reactions and his own perception of reality”. Among these techniques were switching emotional wavelengths while discussing the same topic; and dealing with different topics (life and death/trivial) while remaining on the same wavelength.
Such attempts at crazy-making were often applied by patients to therapists, who had the task of enduring them without retaliation. Searles added moreover that it was important for the therapist to survive their own wish to kill the patient.
Read more about this topic: Harold Searles
Famous quotes containing the words effort, drive, person and/or crazy:
“When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)
“It’s this crazy weather we’ve been having:
Falling forward one minute, lying down the next
Among the loose grasses and soft, white, nameless flowers.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)