Winner Work on Avoiding Psychological Denial

Winner Work on Avoiding Psychological Denial

Mr. Brown: “You know, dear Charlie, people are very different. You know it very well indeed; you have been very engaged with psychology for a long time. There is a big difference between patience and stubbornness. Patience is the willingness to wait a long time while remaining open to changing your mind when the facts change. Stubbornness is the willingness to wait a long time while ignoring and dismissing evidence that you are wrong. Just some people, they are your guests. I remember the tendency from your work on the Psychology of Human Misjudgment about pain-avoiding psychology denial. Could you be so kind to tell us more about it? Our young friend may be in need of some practical stories.” Mr. Brown was smiling at Peter.

Charlie: “This phenomenon first hit me hard in World War II when the superathlete, superstudent son of a family friend flew off over the Atlantic Ocean and never came back. His mother, who was a very sane woman, then refused to believe he was dead. That’s simple, pain-avoiding psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so one distorts the facts till they become bearable. We all do that to some extent, often causing terrible problems. The most extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.

“Where denial is used to make dying easier, the conduct meets almost no criticism. Who would begrudge a fellow man such help at such a time? But some people hope to love life holding to the iron prescription ‘It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.’ And there is something admirable in anyone able to do this. In chemical dependency, wherein morals usually break down horribly, addicted persons tend to believe that they remain in respectable condition, with respectable prospects. They then display an unrealistic denial of reality as they go deeper into deterioration. In my youth, Freudian remedies failed utterly in reversing chemical dependency, but nowadays Alcoholics Anonymous routinely achieves a 50 percent cure rate by causing several psychological tendencies to work together to counter addiction. However, the cure process is typically difficult and draining, and a 50 percent success rate implies a 50 percent fail rate. One should stay far away from any conduct at all likely to drift into chemical dependency. Even a small chance of suffering so great a damage should be avoided lxxxiii.”

Peter: “Yes, but I mean…how shall I put it? Berkshire Hathaway, and I am sure you as well, made a lot mistakes. Do you want to tell me that you acknowledge all of them together?! I heard Warren Buffett has said that the investment Berkshire made in an airline was a good example of what not to do. What chain of thinking led to that wrong conclusion?”