Deliberate complication, the choice of a deliberately ornate language - or exaggeration, simplification, cutting off the excess, as a result of which the essence suffers? Psychotherapist Irina Mlodik discusses these two facets of presenting thoughts.
I love simplicity like no one else. Perhaps I’m not smart enough or I don’t really like the process of intense thinking.
In overly complicated things, I get lost, I begin to seem stupid to myself: I have to wander in the forest of words and concepts. Very quickly I lose my bearings, I can't see, I can't find the main idea, which seems to me to be a treasure carefully hidden by treacherous pirates. More often than not, I am not capable or simply do not want to complete this quest to find the essence. I do not like wading through the jungle of a language that is deliberately complicated, although I understand that any field of activity creates its own conceptual apparatus, uses its own terms, ingrained phrases and cliches.
Sometimes it seems that even the writer does not have a minimally clear picture. Then we, together with him, are forced to wander through the darkness of his confusion, to try to grasp the elusive essence of what he wanted to express. We wander, wander, at some point it seems that now it will become clear, but no - the key idea still dissolves in the next cascade of reflections and arguments. In this case, it is not at all humanistic for me to suggest that the author do this work himself, without inviting me to it. The feeling of such work is painful and joyless: to make an ornate path along someone's reasoning, and never find a treasure.
Other texts seem to be created in order to create the appearance of expertise and depth of thought. The explainable desire of other authors to appear smart does not evoke a response in me. For some, pseudoscientific speech creates the illusion of a stream of clever thoughts, but I don't like visibility, authenticity is more dear to me as it is. Once I had to translate the essence of my research into the language required and accepted in dissertations. It was quite painful. If you do the reverse work: translate a hundred of those pages from pseudoscientific to human - the essence will take only a few paragraphs and will be clear to everyone. I am sure that with a clear picture in my head, certain efforts and assumptions, even very difficult things can be expressed in simple words, without losing depth.
Lack of unnecessary information allows you to see the whole picture and determine the direction.
But I do not like intentional simplifications either, I am jarred by the phrases “be simple, there is nothing to bother”, “everything is simple, why fence a garden”, “be simple, and people will be drawn to you”. I wondered why I was so annoyed by the very simplicity, which, as the people say, is "worse than theft"? And why, in fact, is it worse theft? Theft is an attempt to take away something that belongs to us, a manipulation of our trust, a violation of our right to possess. Deliberate simplification is thus a bit like theft.
What is sneaking? I guess the scale and scope of any subjective phenomenon. Human subjectivity and psyche are ambiguous, contradictory and paradoxical. Attempts to simplify them deliberately reduce the volume to a plane, a straight line, or even a point: a simple conclusion, conclusion, decision, advice. This can be done only by cutting off the remaining parts that do not fit into the flat pin. Thus, for someone, the complexity of someone else's human experience, reflection, sensation is devalued, becomes invaluable.
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Who really needs to make it easier and when? The first thing that is immediately born in response to this question: children!
The child's psyche is not yet capable of perceiving ambiguity and volume. The child most often needs simple answers: "Is he good or bad?" An adult can already assume that it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally, the hero of a story or a film is at the same time confused, suffering, in a temporary crisis, acting in accordance with the movements of his soul or in accordance with difficult circumstances. But most often the child is not interested in knowing this, and it is unnecessary. Therefore, in fairy tales Baba Yaga or Kashchei look like unambiguously “bad” characters, Alyonushka and Ivanushka of different stripes - like “good” ones. It is easier for a child to split a complex phenomenon and place it in different people, including a "good" mom and a "bad" dad. And sometimes even one mother is perceived as different subjects: a kind mother and a witch mother.
So, children understand the language of simplification and at a certain stage of development they need it if we want the child to understand us.
Sometimes simplification is needed for certain tasks. For example, we know that the map is not equal to the territory. A map is a diagram, a flat, simplified view of the area that allows you to orient yourself. Lack of unnecessary information allows you to see the whole picture and determine the direction.
A diagnosis is also a kind of "map", a simplification that allows you to reduce everything that happens to a person to the name of a disease or syndrome for a specific purpose - the appointment of treatment.
Overly meticulous people who are incapable of simplification are often difficult to communicate with.
Even just naming is an oversimplification. When we say "chair", "spring", "pain", "love", we simplify, implying a certain object, feeling or phenomenon, our subjective idea of it. Simplification allows us to operate, contact, communicate. "It's spring on the street," "I love you," "we bought new chairs." If we have not simplified, then it is often difficult to understand us.
If in communication we describe each phenomenon and object for a long time, attaching a detailed description of the subjective idea of it, we will be considered boring. On the other hand, if we never even mean that "love" or "chair" means something different to everyone, we will deliberately simplify the situation by reducing everything to our projection. That is, he said “I love”, and we seemed to quickly understand what it was about, replacing his idea with our “I love”.
Therefore, it seems to me that it is often difficult to communicate with excessively meticulous (most often very intellectually developed) people who are not capable of simplification, it is impossible to quickly clarify something with them by cutting off unnecessary and unnecessary information at the moment. They are not always able to grasp the context, understand when to simplify, and when to accept ambiguity and volume. They can get bored with them, and not because they say nonsense, but because they cannot highlight the main thing based on the context.
And with those who have already grown up, matured, but are not able to see the phenomena in their complexity and contradictions, it can also be boring, because they quickly polarize any phenomenon, reducing it to "right" or "wrong", conventionally "good" or "Bad". They usually have quick and unambiguous answers, conclusions, solutions to everything. At the same time, it is precisely such hasty conclusions that they like to announce with surprising arrogance and pressure.
It is not at all trivial, in my opinion, the task is to choose how to use this ability of thinking in ordinary communication. When it is necessary to reduce to something simple, to model and schematize, and when - to imply and talk about the complexity, versatility and contradictions of the structure of the world. In this we will be helped by our ability to understand the external context, be aware of goals and objectives, switch from simple to complex and back.
Irina Mlodik, psychotherapist
