CONTENT: Texts

The content of the dialogues - 3 of 5

These registers of language are in fact taught and practised, but in non threatening and light-hearted role plays. Expressions of anger and frustration can be simulated in little sketches. For example, an irate customer in a book shop may be complaining bitterly because the book salesman is unwilling to sell him a pair of shoes.

What teachers refer to as "learning blocks", and what students experience as a vapid, empty numbness that overtakes them, are in fact defence mechanisms. These mechanisms are usually imperceptible, and aim at preserving the student's mental balance and ability to function, by insulating her/him against input that is disturbing.

Disturbing input, when it meets with resistance, generally does so because it has awakened, and run headlong into, one of the following three barriers:

(a) THE CRITICAL-LOGICAL BARRIER, which can reject the illogical and the disorganised;

(b) THE INTUITIVE-AFFECTIVE BARRIER, which can reject the dangerous and the painful;

(c) THE ETHICAL BARRIER, which can reject the immoral and unprincipled.