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Dr. Gloria Galanes tells us how "[d]ialectical theory describes all human relationships as grounded in contradictions" (Galanes, 2009, p. 409), because have opposing drives and want to satisfy both at once. She points to simultaneous desires for autonomy and connectedness; stability and adaptation; task-oriented vs. socio-emotional orientation; and a list of examples which you could probably add to yourselves. These drives create ambiguous demands between individuals in probably every conceivable relationship, many of which have been studied explicitly. Dialectical theory is particularly useful for explaining small group relationships, which become "inherently paradoxical" because "members encounter a variety of feelings and actions they experience as contradictory but that exist simultaneously within the group (Smith & Berg, 1987b, qtd. In Galanes 2009).

I see some of you nodding: I expected that, because all individuals (to our knowledge so far) share these conflicting desires in many ways to different degrees. How can this play out in the bank? Time passes faster when there are more customers at the till but some of them are grouchy so you both want and don't it to get busy at the same time. You are a social person but sometimes others become more personal or intimate too quickly so you remain aloof, which they take as something completely different. The result is lonely people who both do and don't want someone to talk to. I know these things happen because they happen to all of us, including me.

What happens next is that we internalize these dialectical ambiguities and their tensions into 'self-talk.' It is apparently very rare to find people who don't constantly have a conversation with themselves -- not out loud, although we find those too! [laughing; 'there's one in every crowd' etc.] Most people discuss the world they observe with themselves in an ongoing conversation that is never verbalized, which Dr. Patrick Jenner argues convincingly is how we explain the reality we find outside ourselves, to ourselves (2009, 37). What happens as we encounter change in the world around us is we continually renegotiate the definitions underlying our prior assessment of relationships, individuals, situations and objects to cope with new information. When this