https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=G1JWRFIzppA
So Roger suggested this technique, so I said I would get to the technique he said The next time you find yourself embroiled in an argument with someone that’s contentious and uncomfortable say institute the following rule You don’t get to respond to the person’s claims until they’ve exhausted that particular claim And this does presume to some degree that you’re dealing with a good-faith actor even if they feel differently than you do You don’t get to respond until you have recapitulated their viewpoint and summarized it in a manner they find acceptable that’s so Treacherously sneaky that rule because what it means is you have to demonstrate that you attended to what they say Closely enough and carefully enough to first of all act out Validation of the idea that they have an opinion worth attending to that’s a big deal People really like being paid attention to there is nothing people like more than that Unless they have something to hide and even then there’s a part of them that would rather have that paid attention to than fail to pass What would you say to go unnoticed every cynic is entirely? disappointed when his or her cynicism goes Unchallenged because there’s a part of them like a little unwarped part of their soul that’s still alive thinking Oh my god I hope someone calls me on all my foolishness and cynicism because if they don’t that means that it’s valid and Generally applicable and and I’m in hell and what good is that and so and I really mean that I really mean that and so So you’re called upon to first of all summarize what they said which is not an easy thing right because it means you have to Sometimes it’s somewhat incoherent and emotion laden especially if it’s in the course of an argument So you have to sort of strike right to the quick it sounds to me Like this is the point you were making and then you lay out the point and then you see they have to be happy With your summary they have to be pleased with it Which means that you’re doing exactly the opposite of straw manning the argument quite the contrary and you’re doing them a favor in some sense By reducing it to the gist because that’s actually an incredibly complex cognitive operation I had one client Who was extraordinarily seriously affected and in the final analysis? I don’t know if I was of any help to her because the the pit of family pathology She was in sconstant was so deep that no matter how far we dug there was already always a number a new layer of lies Underneath the lies we had already worked months to uncover. It was just awful like homicidal level awful literally terrible But she told me she went on a tangent that lasted for four consecutive day clinical sessions like they weren’t the whole day, but they were 50 minutes on four consecutive days. I had no idea where she was going She was wandering all over in this Freudian Associational manner and she came to the point at the end of it. It was unbelievable. She tied together this she was very intelligent woman She tied together this tremendously long Incoherent ramble into a little bow right at the end like the punchline of a remarkable joke and so and she had extracted in some sense the gist of what she was saying as a consequence of the circumambulation the wandering through all this territory and when you listen to someone very very carefully and Especially if they express themselves for a while and you say to them well It sounds to me like this is what you’re saying what you’re doing is taking a tremendous amount of emotionally laden material a lot of it Unnecessary in the final analysis because of the ensuing synthesis and offering them a synthesis, which is a great thing to do Especially if they’re happy to accept it because that also means that you did listen to them So you signified that they were worth attending to and then you listen to them enough to actually Understand what they were saying to try to understand it and then you did understand it and then they’re way happier with you Even if you’re arguing with them because at least now they know they can rely on you to be a reliable listener and that you’re Not trying to you know how it is when you’re arguing with someone. There’s a part of you that really wants to win It’s like I’m right You’re stupid and wrong and so the best way for me to Demonstrate that is to warp and bend your argument in some make it trivial in some way It isn’t especially if it’s directed to some degree like elucidating my character flaws and and to minimize you in doing so And if you do that, of course Well, that’s not a great road to peace unless you’re willing to bring a big club to the argument and and many people are and instead of Listening and trying to make peace and sort things out They’ll use all sorts of subtle forms of suppression in their ensuing dialogue just to keep everything You know under the rug or in the closet I wouldn’t recommend that as a medium to long-term strategy, especially if you’re trying to bring peace to a household you have to go through this horribly painful process of listening to the people around you tell you what they think of their lives and if you do that then well, maybe you can all come to a place that is Characterized by something approximating genuine peace and I would say that even Psychophysiologically, you know, I mean when there’s tension in a household in multiple What would you say systems of value operating simultaneously? There’s a tremendous confusion about what should reign supreme, right and you think well nothing has to reign supreme We can all have our diverse opinions It’s no you can’t not if you’re going to live together in harmony There has to be some overarching structure that unites you if there I mean what what else is a family if it’s not an overarching Structure that unites you now within that there can be tolerance and even appreciation for necessary individual differences And obviously there should be but that doesn’t mean there’s a not a higher unity that the entire Organization, let’s say is striving for in some manner and not only striving for but pining for or even dying for And I don’t use those words lightly like the absence of that Incorporating higher structures is a felt sense of catastrophe on the part of the members of the family They’re always at each other’s throats. They’re interfering with each other’s goals. They can’t listen They’re in a chronic state of hyper arousal because they don’t know what to do ever They’re hopeless because no goals have been clearly defined and we experience almost all our hope in Relationship to define goals. This isn’t some what would you say humanities? Myth or some some reality that isn’t as concrete as everything that you see before you it’s quite the contrary and As far as Rogers was concerned Well you had to let people talk To find out what they thought So they could find out what they thought so they could move towards something so they could move away from hell Because that’s certainly what you see in clinical practice I mean people are suffering in ways you can hardly well you can probably imagine because no doubt many of you Have either been there or seen people who were there lived with them, you know to move away from that is That’s more real than anything else if pain is more real than anything else What’s even more real than pain is whatever we have to fight off the pain and that’s free speech It’s identical with freedom of thought It’s associated with this capacity and necessity to listen deeply There are flip sides of the same coin to use a terrible cliche and all the clinical data We have including the more stringently research research oriented Clinical inquiry indicates quite clearly that the the exchange of information like that the generation of Semantic and emotional information in a state of relative freedom the revelation of those thoughts and then the discursive Analysis of those thoughts say and then the implementation into action and the testing of them That is the pathway to health in so far as that can be attained by say psychological or spiritual means And so that’s why free speech is not just another Freedom or right among many it’s certainly not viewpoint diversity or anything like that It’s the it’s the mechanism by which we generate the conceptions that allow us to organize our experience in the world It’s that mechanism and more than that. It’s the mechanism that allows us to Reformulate and criticize those conceptions when they become outdated and sterile To dissolve them into a chaos that we have to contend with while it’s occurring and then to Reanimate them in a new form so that we can move into the future And so if you’re concerned with the oppressed, let’s say why in the world would you oppose free speech? It’s the only thing the oppressed have and If you don’t understand that I would say well, that’s either an ignorance That’s either an ignorance that’s so deep that you should remediate it as rapidly as possible or a malevolence That’s so appalling that you should face it even though you’ll face it at your peril And so you can’t come to a university like this That’s been a bastion of free speech in a country that’s been a bastion of free speech and a light unto the world in that regard for a Thousand years and all due credit to all of you for that It’s like don’t forget this This is the fundamental thing Say the entire Judeo-christian enterprise To this date has been an attempt in some sense to elevate to the highest place the notion of the divine redemptive word And there’s no truth that’s deeper than that and that’s that so Thank you very much You