Dear Lily:

You are welcome and thank you for your kind words.

You wrote: “sometimes it is better to see things in black and white terms”-I want to give you an extreme example for a time when it is better to see things in black and white terms: you are alone on the street and a person is approaching you with a knife in his hand, pointing it at you. In this example, you better run, or if the person with the knife is too close, better you punch him hard in the nose and cause him that way to drop the knife, and then run!

In this example, it is not wise to just stand there while the man with the knife is getting closer and closer to you, and wonder about the complexity of the situation: what caused this man to get angry, maybe he is sad and lonely and needs my help, or wonder where did he get his knife, wondering if it is a good quality knife… no, no, no- this is not the time for complexity! It is time for simplicity, for black and white thinking: it sure looks like this man wants to stab me, better I run or fight!

Here is a different context of the situation: the man in my example gets arrested and sees a psychotherapist in jail. The man is unarmed, his hands are chained, there is a guard in the psychotherapist’s office, so the psychotherapist is safe. Now it is time for complexity: what caused the man to want to stab the woman on the street, what caused him to get angry, how can he be helped, etc.

If the man goes to a trial in a court of law, the prosecution and the defense may want to know where the man got his knife, what quality it is, etc.

Back to the woman on the street alone, with this man approaching her with a knife: her job is to escape injury and death, not to provide the man with psychotherapy or to prosecute or to defend him in a court of law.

anita