Irrational Beliefs vs. Defense Mechanisms

The current predominant school of thought in psychotherapy is called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which replaced the previously dominant school of thought, psychoanalysis (PA). There are of course, other psychotherapy schools - over 200 of them as a matter of fact. Why? Well, as I described in a another post, because of three facts: 

1. The brain is so complicated. 
2. We can’t read minds. 
3. People lie not only to others but themselves. 

Psychology is still a very young science. 

It is in a phase of development that the scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn, in his classic book The Structure ofScientific Revolutions, called the “pre-paradigmatic stage.” This means that in young sciences in which not a lot is known, a lot of theories compete with one another for dominance until the evidence accumulates to the point in which one model starts to predominate. After a while, some problems with that model arise, which then leads to the development of new models. For instance, although Newtonian physics still works for large objects, it falls apart at the subatomic level, where it has been replaced with quantum physics.

Understanding that this is the way science works has not stopped a lot of psychologists and other therapists from loudly claiming that their model is the only correct one. The psychoanalysts used to do it. When anyone dared to question the theory, they were told they needed to get into psychoanalysis to find out why they were resistant to its ideas. Three logical fallacies in a single sentence! (For those readers interested in logic: ad hominem, non-sequitur, and begging the question. If you want more detail, e-mail me back channel).

Now the CBT people are playing this same “We are right and you are wrong; we are superior to everyone else” game. Historically, the game went down this way: Psychoanalysis attributed “neurotic” behavior (showing signs of mental disturbance but is not psychotic) to conflicts in individuals between their biological urges – their id – with their values that were internalized from their upbringing – the superego or conscience. CBT people said this was all a buncy of nonsense, and went on to cherry pick certain parts of PA theory that were obviously incorrect to throw hot water on all of the PA ideas – which is another one of the tricks that indicate “groupthink” is operating instead of “facts and logic.”

Which brings us to what is postulated to be the cause of neurotic behavior which cognitive therapists champion (behaviorism – rewards and punishments - seeming to have almost disappeared from the therapy arsenal of a lot of CBT therapists). Starting with Albert Ellis and latter with Aaron Beck, they attributed it to “irrational thoughts.” Someone thinking, for example, that they simply must be this or that, or torturing themselves by imagining unlikely worst-case scenario outcomes which would then prevent them from even trying something new that they might just excel at.

So who’s right? Well, both of them. But don’t tell that to any of them on either side. I once mentioned what I am about to say to Albert Ellis at a psychotherapy conference, and he practically laughed in my face in front of a whole audience. Anyway, the key is something that authors Jonathan Haidt and Gregg Henriques have discovered: Logic in human beings did not evolve to arrive at truths. It evolved to justify group norms. 

Groups have to stick together to survive; they can’t be constantly arguing about everyone’s individual ideas about what to do when they are, say, attacked by another tribe. So group cohesion has survival value – at least it used to. It still does to a significant extent, but with the advent of technology and other modern developments, not nearly as much as it once did.

Before I understood this, I was bothered by something I called the “problem of stupidity.” Why were people torturing themselves with these thoughts which are obviously and transparently stupid or illogical.  Even seemingly highly intelligent people do this all the time. Are we all really that dull-witted? I didn’t think so, so I asked myself why these people are seemingly acting as if they are that dumb.

See if you can spot the irrational idea in a recent letter (8/14/19) to advice columnist Dear Abby:

8/14/19. DEAR ABBY: I've been with my boyfriend, "Rocko," for two years, but in the late months of last year… He would disappear for days at a time, block my phone number and ignore me. I was sure he was seeing another woman or taking drugs because he is an ex-addict. Two months ago, he was arrested. I was right -- Rocko was on drugs and had been hanging out with another woman… I hate myself, and I can't stop wondering why I wasn't enough.

See it? Her boyfriend is an addict and a cheater, yet this woman wonders why SHE wasn’t enough for him! It wasn’t his glaring and obvious faults and limitations: his problems were all due to her and her being inadequate to meet all of his needs. How nice of her to blame his irresponsible behavior on herself rather than hold him accountable!

If we assume that she is not stupid enough to think this is a logical conclusion, then we have to ask ourselves why on earth she doesn’t just dump the S.O.B. and find someone who will treat her right. I answered this by looking at the end result – what I call the net effect  - of her continuing to think this way. It’s obvious. She ends up staying with a man who cheats and uses drugs. So this would have to be her intent.

(But why on earth should she want to do that? The answer to that question in my opinion lies in her playing some sort of dysfunctional role in her family of origin which requires her to do this in order to stabilize her unstable parents. Explaining that part is beyond the scope of this post, but various roles are discussed in detail in previous ones).

So the irrational belief generates anxiety which then prevents her from acting in her own best interests. This allows her to continue to sacrifice herself for her kin group – a process known in evolutionary biology as kin selection. Guess what? The defense mechanisms of PA accomplish the very same thing. Analysts think that defense mechanisms are meant to control anxiety, but as a fellow blogger known as The Last Psychiatrist once said, if that were true, they sure do a lousy job of doing that. No; in fact, they too are meant to either create anxiety or do other things which lead people to avoid doing something that might conflict with their role in their family.

If for example your role in your family is to be a scapegoat so that your frustrated father can blame you for all of his problems and not have to feel bad about himself, his behavior is bound to make you angry. Your anger makes it hard for you to maintain the scapegoat role. You may eat (or repress) a certain amount of it, but some of it must be discharged somehow. So you come home and kick the dog (the defense mechanism of displacement).

Defense mechanisms or irrational thoughts? You say tow-may-tow, and I say tow-mah-tow. They are the same damn thing!

Ve Have Vays of Making You Talk, Part VIII: Countering Logical Fallacies

In Part I of this post, I discussed why family members hate to discuss their chronic repetitive ongoing interpersonal difficulties with each other (metacommunication), and the problems that usually ensue whenever they try. 

I discussed the most common avoidance strategy - merely changing the subject (#1) - and suggested effective countermoves to keep a constructive conversation on track. In Part II, I discussed strategies #2 and #3, nitpicking and accusations of overgeneralizing respectively. In Part III, I discussed strategy #4, blame shifting. In Part IV, strategy #5, fatalism.

This post is the fourth in a series about strategy #6, the use of irrational arguments (previously: non sequiturs; post hoc reasoning; begging the question). Descriptions of this strategy have been subdivided into several posts because, in order to counter irrational arguments, one first has to recognize them.  Until this post, I have held off describing the basic strategy to counter irrational arguments until after I finished describing some of the most common types.  Today’s post will be the last concerning these irrational arguments, and will also describe the basic countermeasure.

Irrational arguments are used in metacommunication to throw other people. Listeners either become confused about, or unsure of the validity of, any point they are trying to make or question they are trying to ask.  Fallacious arguments are also frequently used to avoid divulging an individual's real motives for taking or having taken certain actions. 

Today’s post will describe arguing from worst case scenarios, and ad hominem or personal attacks.

An argument is often made that a particular course of action is ill-advised because of difficulties that might arise in a worst-case scenario. In other words, one asks the question, "If I did so and so, what would be the conse­quences if everything possible went wrong?"

Posing a worst-case scenario does not always mean that the poser is engaged in an illogical maneuver. Indeed, for certain questions, such as whether to build a nuclear reactor near an earthquake fault, looking at worst-case scenarios can be a matter of life and death. Residents of Fukushima, Japan, will know exactly what I am talking about.

The worst-case argument becomes logically suspect if it is being used as an excuse to avoid some action when either of two con­ditions is present. The first is when the worst case is so unlikely to occur as to be almost meaningless. The second is when the worst case is preventable.

The most common usage of the maneuver in psychother­apy cases occurs when patients attempt to suppress some ­aspect of themselves by frightening themselves with the thought of dreadful consequences should the characteristic of self ever be expressed. One of the most often seen examples of this involves the ques­tion of whether or not to express anger.  


I once was the therapist for a group where every single member was in complete agreement that anger should be kept to oneself. They all painted a most shocking picture of the dire results that might ensue if their anger were ever unleashed. The anger would be destructive to the nth degree.

Everyone present said they had so much anger inside that if some of it got out, a dam would burst and a flood of violent fury would come pouring out. They might murder all of their loved ones and bomb government buildings. They would all suddenly become completely crazed, and each might end up in a mental institution or worse. They might tear the objects of their rage limb from limb and end up on death row. 


If thoughts like that did not scare them into keeping their anger quiet, nothing would.

The worst-case scenario that was proposed by the group members is illogical for several reasons. First, it is based on the non sequitur "If I let out some of my anger, I'll let it all out." Forgetting for the moment the unlikelihood that the rage they fear is as extensive as they believe it to be, how did they come to the conclusion that they would have more difficulty restrain­ing themselves once some of the anger had emerged than before the process started? They were each masters at self-restraint.


While it is often true that people who have been stuffing their anger may suddenly explode when there is a "last straw," this usually occurs in the heat of the moment, not when one is planning how to bring up for discussion anger-provoking behavior.  For this reason, 

the situation is not really analogous to the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. One can always catch oneself. 


Indeed, the extra guilt these people probably would feel for having exhib­ited angry feelings might make it even easier for them to re­strain themselves in the future. This worst case, in which all of a limitless amount of anger would come out in a deluge is a highly unlikely worst case. Furthermore, this worse case is preventable.

Acting out the anger is hardly the only way to express it. One can talk to the anger-provoking person in a constructive attempt to get them to knock off the provocations. 


The use of terrifying imagery to scare oneself out of a course of action  is a very clear example of what I mean by mortification. In this case, an aspect of self, the emotion of anger, is suppressed by frightening oneself with worries about horrific conse­quences.

One last fallacy that I would like to briefly mention is ad hominem. This translates from the Latin as "to the man." This fallacy is based on the non sequitur "if a person is reprehensible in some respect, then everything that person has to say is incor­rect." This fallacy is frequently encountered outside the metacommunicative realm in the area of politics. 

Politicians can have repulsive views on certain issues or may be self-serving liars. Nonetheless, any single assertion that they make might still be true or correct. One cannot reason logically that because their views are unpopular or because they have lied in the past, then any current assertion they make is false. 


From the standpoint of in­ductive reasoning, one can be highly suspicious of their state­ments because of their past behavior and motivation, but in order to actually disprove their thesis, one needs corroborating evidence. Just because Castro is a Communist autocrat, for example, one could not con­clude that he is always lying whenever he made accusations against the United States government.

In metacommunication, family members will frequently discount an idea because of the alleged motivation of the person making it, without addressing the actual merits of the idea.  The metacommunicator might be accused of being insincere or having some sort of ulterior motive for making an observation while the target completely ignores the merits of the observation itself.  

Invalidation is a form of an ad hominem attack.  The person bringing up a past event is accused of distorting it, or even making it up.  This situation usually leads to a fight or flight response on the part of the metacommunicator, which stops the effort to solve interpersonal problems in its tracks.

And now at long last, what does the metacommunicator do when faced with a person who uses illogical arguments to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable interpersonal issue.

The basic response is what many therapists refer to as the Columbo style of response. Columbo was a TV detective played by the actor Peter Falk who often got suspects to incriminate themselves by, in a sense, playing stupid.  He would point out discrepancies in the suspect’s story and kind of scratch his head, acting if he were the one who was not bright enough to figure out the explanation. 

Peter Falk as Columbo

He would never act as if he believed that the suspect were purposely misleading him, although he obviously knew that was really the case.  The suspect would then try to “help out” the hapless cop by clarifying the apparent discrepancy, much to his own detriment.

In metacommunication, the object of this strategy is of course not to make the other person incriminate himself or herself, but to get past the block to appropriate, metacommunicative problem solving.

In response to a logical fallacy, the metacommunicator tactfully expresses confusion about what the target is saying, or points out seeming contradictions. This is done in an almost apologetic fashion.  Rather than accusing the other of purposely being misleading or confusing, metacommuncators try to indicate that they themselves are taking responsibility for any lack of interpersonal understanding.

In addition to decreasing the target’s need to become defensive, with this strategy the target often feels obliged to clear up the patients’ confusion.  In order to do so, he or she must drop the logical fallacy.  When this happens, it is important that the metacommunicator seem grateful for the new clarity, and not have a kind of “I told you you were irrational” attitude.

Now maintaining this bemused, self-effacing sort of style is often particularly difficult to do if there is an ad hominem component to the target’s irrational argument.  


In that case, as mentioned above, it is the metacommunicator who usually becomes defensive, and who derails the effort for problem solving.  In this case, learning and practicing many of the strategies described in my series of posts on how to disarm a patient with borderline personality disorder, such as giving the other person the benefit of the doubt and acknowledging one’s own contribution to the problematic past interactions, come in very handy.

Ve Have Vays of Making You Talk, Part VII: Begging the Question

In Part I of this post, I discussed why family members hate to discuss their chronic repetitive ongoing interpersonal difficulties with each other (metacommunication), and the problems that usually ensue whenever they try. 

I discussed the most common avoidance strategy - merely changing the subject (#1) - and suggested effective countermoves to keep a constructive conversation on track. In Part II, I discussed strategies #2 and #3, nitpicking and accusations of overgeneralizing respectively. In Part III, I discussed strategy #4, blame shifting. In Part IV, strategy #5, fatalism.

This post is the third in a series about strategy #6, the use of irrational arguments  (previously: non sequiturs; post hoc reasoning). Descriptions of this strategy have been subdivided into several posts because, in order to counter irrational arguments, one first has to recognize them.  I will hold off describing strategies to counter the irrational arguments until after I have finished describing some of the most common types.

Irrational arguments are used in metacommunication to throw other people. Listeners either become confused about, or unsure of the validity of, any point they are trying to make or question they are trying to ask.  Fallacious arguments are also frequently used to avoid divulging an individual's real motives for taking or having taken certain actions. 

The third major logical fallacy I will describe is begging the question. A person begging the question merely insists that an assertion is proved without offering any proof at all. If someone offers some evidence that the assertion is false, the beggar states that the evidence must be incorrect. After all, since the assertion is true, any evidence to the contrary must be faulty. 

It might seem that the absurdity of this kind of reasoning should be quite ob­vious when it occurs, but it can be quite subtle. Often an inter­vening argument for the questionable assertion is made by the beggar, which is then refuted by the disputer. The beggar then goes on to offer yet another argument, which in turn is refuted. This process continues until the beggar suddenly announces that he or she has won the case - by ignoring all of the previously refuted arguments and merely re-offering the initial unproved assertion.

I first truly understood this process one day in college when I caught myself doing it. I was engaged in a friendly argu­ment with a fellow student over the relative merits of the space program during the sixties. My friend took the position that going to the moon was a complete waste of money, because there were important human needs here on earth for which the money could be used. I was and am of the opinion that scien­tific knowledge is valuable for its own sake, but at the time I was unable to formulate a convincing argument for that posi­tion. Instead, I advanced the oft-used argument that the space program had yielded important scientific by-products, such as Teflon, that were quite useful here on earth.

He countered that Teflon could have been invented for far less money by doing research on nonstick surfaces instead of moon flights. I then countered with, "But this way, we also get to the moon!"

Another time when begging the question was used on me was when I was a trainee (resident) in psychiatry.  Back in the Stone Age when I trained, most of the faculty members were Freudian psychoanalysts.  When anyone dared question psychoanalytic dogma, they were told that they needed to get into therapy to find out why they were "resistant" to the ideas.  Of course, the concept of resistance is itself a psychoanalytic concept, so the statement was in fact begging the question of the validity of a psychoanalytic concept. 

Interestingly, the analysts' short sentence contained not one but three logical fallacies.  It was not only begging the question, but was also a non-sequitur (perhaps the person was questioning the dogma for some reason other than subconscious resistance), and a personal attack as well.  Personal attacks, or ad hominem arguments, are another fallacy I will discuss in a future post.

Begging the question is a maneuver that occurs most often when people are being questioned about their motivation but do not wish to reveal the true reasons for their behavior to others -  or perhaps even to themselves. They may assert that they behave in the way they do because that is how they truly wish to be­have or because they have no other options.

If listeners pre­sent evidence that the behavior seems to be something that is bringing them a great deal of grief or if they offer other options, beggars will then either just ignore what the other person has said, invalidate it by making a snide comment, engage in a game of "why-don't-you-yes-but," or begin the process of-making further refutable arguments and then returning to the initial assertion as if it had been justified.

A good example of begging the question occurred in the case of a poorly educated employee of a large manufacturing concern. Despite a horrendously abused childhood and a lack of formal schooling, he had managed to rise to a fairly responsible posi­tion with the firm. Then suddenly, through no fault of his own, the position was eliminated. Because of further bad luck com­plicated by his own aggravating behavior, he was gradually de­moted and shifted to a department that he despised, and continued to go downhill until he had become a glorified file clerk.

The more responsibilities were taken from him, the more upset he became. The more upset he became, the more poorly he per­formed in his job. The poorer the performance, the more re­sponsibility was taken from him, and so on. He felt that his supervisor wished to get rid of him because he was being paid far too much for his present position, but also believed that the supervisor was blocking his transfer to another department in which he might get a more responsible job.

I wondered why, if it were really true that he was unable to get out of the department and find a job with which he would be satisfied, he did not seek employment with a different firm. I conceded that such a move would be quite difficult considering his lack of education, but pointed out that he had not even at­tempted to look.

He replied that he did not wish to leave the firm. He stated that, in fact, he loved working for this company; it was just his department he despised. I pressed on. I pointed out that he had already told me that he could not get out of the department because of his mean supervisor. Why was it so important for him to stay with the same firm? He replied once again that he would not leave the firm because he loved working for it.  The conversation went something like this:

"The firm seems to be very important to you. What is it about working for the firm that you love so much?"

"They've been very good to me."

"Well, they certainly have been good to you - in the past. At the moment, however, you've told me that they are not being very good to you at all."

"That is the department that is being bad to me. I have no complaint with the firm."

"I know that, but you have told me that you are stuck with the department. Don't you think you might find a differ­ent firm that you would also like?"

"Yes, I might be able to do that."

"So why are you so intent on staying with your present firm?”

     

"I want to get in twenty-five years with the firm."

"What makes that important?"

"It is important to my self-esteem" [a possible non sequi­tur that I let go].

"So you'll consider leaving when you have been there twenty-five years?"

“No.”

"So there must be another reason why you feel you must stay with the firm."

"I don't want to give my supervisors the satisfaction of driving me out." [This is another assertion that does not make very much sense. Why should avoiding making them smug be worth daily torture at their hands? I avoided touching on this also].

"Do you really think they care all that much?"

"Probably not."

"So why stay?"

"I've told you. The firm is very important to me. I love working for the firm. Okay?"                                                                          

The last statement was, of course, merely a restatement of his initial position that did nothing whatever to shed light on why the firm was so important to him. This is exactly what is meant by begging the question.

Ve Have Vays of Making You Talk, Part VI: Post Hoc Reasoning

Reproduced from http://xkcd.com/552/

In Part I of this post, I discussed why family members hate to discuss their chronic repetitive ongoing interpersonal difficulties with each other (metacommunication), and the problems that usually ensue whenever they try. 

I discussed the most common avoidance strategy - merely changing the subject (#1) - and suggested effective countermoves to keep a constructive conversation on track. In Part II, I discussed strategies #2 and #3, nitpicking and accusations of overgeneralizing respectively. In Part III, I discussed strategy #4, blame shifting. In Part IV, strategy #5, fatalism.

This post is the second in a series about strategy #6, the use of irrational arguments.  Descriptions of this strategy have been subdivided into several posts because, in order to counter irrational arguments, one first has to recognize them.  I will hold off describing strategies to counter the irrational arguments until after I have describe some of the most common types.

Irrational arguments are used in metacommunication to throw other people. The other individuals either becomes confused about, or unsure of the validity of, any point they are trying to make or question they are trying to ask.  Fallacious arguments are also frequently used to avoid divulging an individual's real motives for taking or having taken certain actions. 

The fallacy I would like to discuss in this post is post hoc ergo propter hoc, which literally translated means "after this, therefore because of this." Under this fallacy, two events that occur in sequence are merely assumed to be causally related. That is, if event B follows event A, then an assumption is made that A caused B, even though many other environmental events were also going on during the time between A and B that could have caused B, either individually or in some combination.

This sort of fallacy can be funny when it is obvious but difficult to detect when subtle. No one would believe a doctor who claims that headaches are caused by a deficiency in the body of aspirin, but the debate rages on over whether the effects on assailants of por­nographic movies caused them to become rapists.

I frequently see this fallacy used in arguments made by the anti-psychiatry crowd.  If some psychiatric symptom developed by a patient occurred after he or she either started or discontinued a drug, they argue that it simply must have been caused by the medication.  Well, sometimes it is, but often it is not.  The further removed in time from when the medication was started or discontinued, the less likely it becomes that the drug had anything to do with the symptom. 

There are a very limited number of drug-induced symptoms that, once started, never go away, and those usually involve a situation in which a drug actually grossly damaged an organ.  Some dyes used in X-ray procedures, for example, may physically damage the kidneys. Tardive dyskinesia, a long-term neurological problem in the central nervous system caused by antipsychotic medication, is one obvious exception.

Withdrawal symptoms from addictive drugs almost always go away after a relatively short period of time.

With patients in psychotherapy, the post hoc fallacy is most frequently seen with during conjoint marital or family sessions. When spotted, such a fallacy may reveal the presence of a family myth.  A family myth is a false belief that assists family members in suppressing those thoughts, feelings, preferences, or behavior deemed to be unacceptable and in allowing one or more family members to continue playing a spe­cific role. The myth may be believed by an individual, a sub­system of the family, or the entire family.

Family myths may take the form of a causal explanation of a family member's be­havior that is not the true explanation. In order to be believ­able, the myth often makes use of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. In such a myth, the belief in a causal connection is based solely on a sequence of events that takes place in a certain period of of time. If the behavior to be explained begins after a certain event, the behavior is blamed on the event. As with other mechanisms used by people who are attempting to hide their true feelings and beliefs, the proposed cause often re­veals clues to the real cause, even though the proposed cause is meant to be a smokescreen.

One example occurred in a family being seen under duress from a probation officer. A young teenager was caught shoplifting. He lived with his father and his siblings. The mother ­had not only divorced the father but abandoned the family, entirely abdicating any family responsibility in order to pursue a career. The father could rarely spend time with the boy because the firm that he worked for was demanding more and more overtime. The father ­routinely worked fourteen-hour days; he expressed disappointment· that the boy could not take better care of himself without supervision.

The post hoc fallacy was expressed in the session following an incident in which the son picked a fight with another boy who was twice his size. The father theorized that the son had engaged in this rather dangerous activity because he had not had a good night's sleep the night before the inci­dent - and was therefore overly irritable.

This seemed to me a rather odd explanation. When provoked, overly irritable people will sometimes unthinkingly do or say things that they other­wise might keep to themselves, but they seldom go out looking for trouble.

The father appeared to be attempting to veer away from any explanation of the boy's odd behavior that might involve family dynamics, but he unwittingly revealed something about himself. It was he, the father, not the son, who was irritable from lack of sleep.

I later guessed that the boy's acting-out behavior was a feeble attempt to force the father, who was utterly ex­hausted from working so much, to work less. The probation officer had in fact required the father to be at home more in order to supervise the misbehav­ing youngster. The boy was also bidding for more attention, as many therapists would theorize, but I believed that he was genuinely concerned about his father’s mental health.

When I suggested to the father that the boy was, at great per­sonal sacrifice, attempting to indirectly demonstrate his concern by forcing the father to insist on more time off, the father never really bought it. However, soon Dad was spending more time home, and the patient stopped acting out. No causal connection between my intervention and the boy’s subsequent im­provement was ever established. 

Ve Have Vays of Making You Talk, Part V: Non Sequiturs

In Part I of this post, I discussed why family members hate to discuss their chronic repetitive ongoing interpersonal difficulties with each other (metacommunication), and the problems that usually ensue whenever they try.

I discussed the most common avoidance strategy - merely changing the subject (#1) - and suggested effective countermoves to keep a constructive conversation on track. In Part II, I discussed strategies #2 and #3, nitpicking and accusations of overgeneralizing respectively. In Part III, I discussed strategy #4, blame shifting. In Part IV, strategy #5, fatalism.

This post is the first in a series about strategy #6, the use of irrational arguments.  It will be subdivided into several posts because in order to counter irrational arguments, one first has to recognize them.  I will hold off describing strategies to counter irrational arguments until after I have describe some of the most common types.

To review once again, the goal of metacommunication is effective and empathic problem solving. In this post, I will discuss an avoidance strategy called fatalism, and describe appropriate counter-strategies to get past it.

As with all counter-strategies, maintaining empathy for the Other and persistence are key.

Irrational arguments are used in metacommunication to confuse other people so that they either become confused about, or unsure of the validity of, any point they are trying to make.  They are also frequently used to avoid divulging an individual's real motives for taking or haven taken certain actions. 

In my first book, A Family Systems Approach to Individual Psychotherapy, I attempted to educate therapists about how their patients will use irrational arguments to confuse them.  I referred to irrational arguments as mental gymnastics. They are particularly effective in emotionally-charged exchanges. 

One can learn to recognize irrational arguments meant to throw someone off the track by learning about the logical fallacies that are taught in debate clubs and philosophy classes.  Today's subject: the non sequitur.  This is a Latin phrase meaning "it does not follow."

A non sequitur occurs when a conclusion is drawn deduc­tively that does not follow logically from the preceding proposi­tions. Someone will take a fact or make a generalization or a categorization, assert than some other fact or generalization is an example of this, and then draw a conclusion.   This process is called deductive reasoning.  

Correct deductive reasoning can best be demonstrated using syllogisms. Let us look at perhaps the most famous of all syllogisms:

                        All men are mortal.

                        Socrates is a man.

                        Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The first thing one should understand, if one is to correctly evaluate deductive reasoning, is that this is a valid deduction whether or not the initial statements "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" are correct. A deduction - the last statement in the syllogism - can be judged to be valid if the structure of the syllogism is correct. This means that a conclusion can be com­pletely wrong but the deduction can still be valid logically if the conclusion follows correctly from the initial propositions.

The truth of a proposition, as opposed to its logical validity, de­pends upon the truth of the information from which the propo­sition is deduced. In a valid syllogism, if the first two statements are true, the conclusion must be true. The presence in the syllogism of the word all is extremely important. If some men are mor­tal and some are not, Socrates might fall outside the set of "things that are mortal," and the syllogism would become invalid. This is precisely why the equally famous fallacious syllogism

                        The Virgin Mary was a virgin.

                        My name is Mary.

                        Therefore, I am a virgin.

is invalid. The set of "people named Mary" falls both inside and outside of the set of "virgins." Therefore, Marys may or may not be virgins, and the conclusion is thus invalid. In this case it is not true that if the first two statements are true, the conclusion must be true, as would be the case with a valid syllogism.

A word here regarding inductive reasoning is in order. Inductive, as opposed to deductive, reasoning attempts to go in the reverse order. One attempts to make a generalization by examining several phenomena that seem to have something in common. One then makes the leap of faith that because all observed instances of the phenomena have this characteristic in common, therefore all instances of the phenomena, now or in the future, observed and not observed, share the characteristic.

For example, every ­time an object of whatever size or shape is dropped on earth, it falls down. The inductive conclusion is that the set of "things that fall down" entirely subsumes the set of "things that can he dropped" and that anything droppable will fall down if dropped.. One makes the prediction that any new object that can be dropped will head earthward if one picks it up and lets it go.

Now the deduction "since all observed instances of a cer­tain phenomenon behave a certain way or have certain things in common, therefore all future instances of the same phenomenon will continue to behave in the same way and have the same things in common" is in all instances a non sequitur. One might come upon an exception to the rule at any time. In other words, all inductive conclusions are invalid!

Nonetheless, induc­tive conclusions are not necessarily unreasonable and are fre­quently correct. I have in my hand a pencil, which I plan to hold up and then let go. Will it fall? I predict, on the basis of induc­tive reasoning, that it will. Let’s see. Well, I'll be. It did it again!

The reasonableness of an inductive conclusion is evalu­ated not by logic but by whether enough instances of the phe­nomenon have been observed to make a generalization possible and by whether there are any instances that contradict the gen­eralization. Deductive reasoning, or reasoning based on proof, would not be possible without inductive reasoning. It would be impossible to conclude that Socrates was mortal if one could not make the generalization "All men are mortal."

The deter­mination of how many instances are required to decide whether an inductive conclusion is reasonable is a very subjective matter, because no matter how many instances there are, the next one could always be the exception. For this reason, anyone look­ing for mental gymnastics when someone else makes an inductive conclusion best asks the questions: Are there significant excep­tions to the generalization that the first person is is making? If so, are they obvious, if only the person would look for them?

I will now describe a case in which a patient presented a therapist with a goodly number of non sequiturs. She was a single woman who came in complaining about being subjected to severely and significant repetitive sexual harassment by a co-worker.  The question the therapist posed was why she had made an appointment to see a psychiatrist in the first place, since she did not seem to have any evident psychiatric problem.  

As it later turned out, she did not really want to give the real answer because she was  protecting her mother, from both the judgment of the therapist and from her own rage.  So she gave spurious and very sublty non-rational reasons in order to throw the therapist off the track.

Her chief complaint was that she was upset - but only because someone was doing something to her about which almost anyone would be upset. People usually see a therapist because they believe there is something wrong with them or with their reactions to things.  That did not seem to be the case with this woman. Why wasn’t she talking to her boss or a lawyer, the therapist wondered?  Actually, she was in the process of doing both! 

The therapist could not seem to get a satisfying answer from her to the central question, and knew for certain that something else was going on with her when the non sequiturs began.

She first stated that she must have done something to make the co-worker behave in this extreme fashion, because people do not hate you unless you've done something bad to them. This was a non sequitur because she had no proof that her tormenter’s behavior was based on hatred of her, and even if it were, she was quite aware that the causes of hate in the world include a great many other things. Hate can be based on prejudice, jealousy, a chip on the shoulder, or any number of things other than what someone has done to the per­son who hates.

The next bit of curious logic occurred when the patient told the therapist that she just could not seem to make him understand that his gossip was disturbing her. How she could possibly have thought that he was not aware of that was simply beyond comprehension. The therapist told her he thought it kind of her to wish to give him the benefit of the doubt after all he had done to her, but it seemed that she had too much evidence to the contrary to support this thesis.

The first clue about the real reason she thought she needed a psychiatrist came when the patient is­sued yet another non sequitur. She began to get upset with herself for being disturbed by some of the slurs verbalized by her nemesis. She stated that he was just calling her names, after all. Why should just names bother her? Sticks and stones, and all that. She should be able to ignore it, like water off a duck's back. The therapist told her she would be quite an unusual person if she had not found the barrage of insults disturbing.

When faced with a recommendation that we explore why she was so upset that the whole situation bothered her, she balked. She said that if she were to get to the reasons be­hind this seemingly self-defeating behavior, she might find something terrible. Well, she might, but how terrible could it be? How did she know that she would not discover something wonderful? The odds were, of course, that she might find something uncomfortable, but as Albert Ellis (the founder of cognitive psychotherapy) says, feeling that one would not be able to tolerate the discomfort is irrational, espe­cially when the level of discomfort is already so high, and when bearing some additional discomfort could reduce it over the long run.

She correctly guessed that certain information she had re­lated to the therapist might incline him to think that her parents' divorce when she was a pre-teen had something to do with her current reactions. She then added a non sequitur that later turned out to be the essential clue to what was really going on. She said that she was puzzled by why everyone seemed to think that a parental divorce had so traumatized her and added that she had taken the divorce in stride. It was done, and there was no reason to get upset about it. The event just did not bother her.

When she made this statement, she was trying to take what may sound like a rational position. After all, the belief that one cannot stand an unpleasant occurrence makes one suffer more than necessary. The patient was saying more than this, however. She was saying that one should not be un­happy about a traumatic experience. No disappointment. No regret. No anything. Ellis states that regret and disappointment are emotional re­sponses that make sense. She was stating that she was unaffected entirely. Furthermore, the available evidence strongly suggested that she was more than just disappointed about what happened. She could hard­ly discuss the matter without breaking into tears.

Much later, the therapist discovered that what the non sequitur really alluded to was the patient's very rational concern about seeming to be bothered about anything. As it turned out, the patient's mother had been subjecting her for years to frequent guilt-ridden harangues about how bad the mother felt about the divorce. The mother would literally badger her with questions about whether she had been upset and traumatized by it. If the patient appeared distressed about anything, her mother would begin drinking herself into a stupor.

No wonder the patient tried to project an image of not being bothered by things! If she were to admit to being the least bit upset, the mother would feel even guiltier. The mother was already self-destruc­tive; perhaps she would become actively suicidal.

Now that seemed like a valid deduction.