What Are Some Examples of Dialectical Thinking?

Some examples of dialectical thinking include thinking of passivity and aggression, considering impulsivity and withdrawal, looking at love and hate as well as reviewing different answers to morality questions. Dialectical thinking is when a person examines or holds two polar opposite thoughts.

Dialectical thinking is used in every discipline, and it is a common method that the human brain uses to understand concepts of all kinds. By examining the opposite of something, the human brain can understand the world and the people in it. In fact, dialectical thinking is an important part of developing empathy because the person using dialectical thinking must consider each extreme opposite. They must continually look at the two extremes for each issue.

Using dialectical thinking often leads to paradoxical statements that can be a bit confusing. For example, people who believe that they should always fight against the people in their life who are trying to control them, such as their parents or their partner, will have to consider that they are actually allowing their loved ones to control them if it affects them that much.

Freud also was aware of the way that dialectical thinking works, though it is unclear that he used the term “dialectical” or “dialectics.” However, he did look at the dialectics between the ego, the superego and the id in his psychological work.