negate
repair
eliminate separation or fracture, by integrating the fragments (back) into a whole
negative thinking > achieving negative goals > repair

Repair is often a conservative stratagem for change. Keep as much as possible, and get out the glue pot.

If the current state is one of fragmentation and separation, then repair may be a useful healing process. It overcomes the fragmentation, reduces or eliminates the separation, restores balance.
 
Holistic
architecture
The architect Christopher Alexander has argued for an approach to building based on healing and creating wholes. This can be applied to individual houses, or to town planning.
Integration According to Melanie Klein, one of the crucial learning experiences happens very young, when the baby realises that the "good mother/breast" and the "bad mother/breast" are one and the same, and moves from a "paranoid-schizoid" position to a "depressive" position. This is thought of as a process of repair. Furthermore, this early experience becomes a metaphor for much subsequent mental distress. During Kleinian psychotherapy, the emphasis is on identifying and repairing (reintegrating) fragmented concepts. These fragmentations are worked through (recollected) as if they were instances of the primary division between good mother and bad mother, on the grounds that this experience is where the individual learned how to divide in the first place. Therefore, it is argued, this is the psychological place where the individual needs to carry out all repair work.
Business
articulation
Overcoming fragmentation in business processes and organizations is an important theme of the component-based business.
One Nation One school of political conservatives describe themselves as "One Nation Tories". They have a fantasy of overcoming separations between regions and social classes by piecemeal action.
Overcoming
dualism
Many religious people separate Good and Evil, personifying them as God and Satan. To use Kleinian terminology, this can be characterized as a "paranoid-schizoid" cosmology. Religious authorities often argue against this form of dualism, and insist that everything comes from God. This insight, if we are to accept it, takes us to the "depressive" position that God is directly responsible for the evil in our lives, as well as the good.

This religious debate, of course, is rather older than the psychological one. The ancient Persians were divided between the monotheistic Zoroastrianism and the dualistic Manicheism. Various Christian heresies have explored the same ideas.

Perhaps the most striking religious expression of the integration of good and evil is in Hinduism, where the god Shiva clearly represents both creation and destruction.

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Page last updated on December 15th, 2000
Copyright © 2000, Richard Veryard