Re: crazy people/

Bob Green (bgreen@dyson.brisnet.org.au)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:03:31 +1000


Gary,

Regarding your post,

>With all due respect, I believe we have gotten off on a tangent.
>Looking back, I find that:
>
>On 27 Mar, Gary Blanchard wrote,
>
>>However, it does not follow that because we are free to construe, we can
>>just construe any old way we want. Crazy people do that; that's why we
>>call them 'crazy.' Effectively communicating (i.e., coordinating) people
>>always seek to match their interpretation/construal of a matter up with
>>the interpretion/construal of their partner(s)-- hence the oft-repeated
>>question/comment: 'know what I mean?'
>
>What do you think? Where should we go from here?

>>Effectively communicating (i.e., coordinating) people
>>always seek to match their interpretation/construal of a matter up with
>>the interpretion/construal of their partner(s)-- hence the oft-repeated
>>question/comment: 'know what I mean?'

My response to "always" is somewhat similar to my response of the word
"never". Anyway, a person spoke to me the other day, a person many would
construe as paranoid. After every sentence he said, "know what I mean".
Rather than an exercise in matching, I interpreted his comment as his
seeking validation of his views. I didn't experience this as very effective
communication.

To go back to your original comments cited above, effective communication is
important, however, I don't see not matching interpretations/construals or
idiosyncratic construal as "craziness". We probably can't go much further
on this one without discussing specifics.

Regards,

Bob Green

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