paradox

n.

1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking.
2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects: "The silence of midnight, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, rung in my ears" (Mary Shelley).
3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
4. A statement contrary to received opinion.

[Latin paradoxum, from Greek paradoxon, from neuter sing. of paradoxos, conflicting with expectation : para-, beyond; see para-¹ + doxa, opinion (from dokein, to think).]

paradoxical par'a·dox'i·cal adj.
paradoxically par'a·dox'i·cal·ly adv.
paradoxicalness par'a·dox'i·cal·ness n.

(PAR-uh-doks)
noun

1. A statement that appears contradictory or absurd yet in fact may be true.

2. A self-contradictory statement that appears true or is derived from true statements.

3. A statement that contradicts commonly accepted opinion.

[From Latin paradoxum, from Greek paradoxon, from paradoxos (contrary to opinion), from para- (beyond) + doxa (opinion), from dokein (to think).]

Usage:

"Assuming that the engineering problems could be overcome, the production of a time machine could open up a Pandora's box of causal paradoxes. Consider, for example, the time traveler who visits the past and murders his mother when she was a young girl. How do we make sense of this? If the girl dies, she cannot become the time traveler's mother. But if the time traveler was never born, he could not go back and murder his mother." — Paul Davies, How to Build a Time Machine, Scientific American (New York), Sep 1, 2002.

"Latest figures from the Property Council highlight the paradox faced by commercial property investors, with most sectors offering good returns while suffering declining capital values." — Greg Ninness, Property Investors' Paradox, Sunday Star Times (New Zealand), Jul 28, 2002. Ruth: "A most ingenious paradox! We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox! A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox!" — Frederic (who was born on Feb 29): "How quaint the ways of Paradox! At common sense she gaily mocks! Though counting in the usual way, Years twenty-one I've been alive, Yet, reck'ning by my natal day, Yet, reck'ning by my natal day, I am a little boy of five!" — Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance, 1880.

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paradox, a statement or expression so surprisingly self‐contradictory as to provoke us into seeking another sense or context in which it would be true (although some paradoxes cannot be resolved into truths, remaining flatly self‐contradictory, e.g. Everything I say is a lie). Wordsworth's line ‘The Child is father of the Man’ and Shakespeare's ‘the truest poetry is the most feigning’ are notable literary examples. Ancient theorists of rhetoric described paradox as a figure of speech, but 20th‐century critics have given it a higher importance as a mode of understanding by which poetry challenges our habits of thought. Paradox was cultivated especially by poets of the 17th century, often in the verbally compressed form of oxymoron. It is also found in the prose epigram; and is pervasive in the literature of Christianity, a notoriously paradoxical religion. In a wider sense, the term may also be applied to a person or situation characterized by striking contradictions. A person who utters paradoxes is a paradoxer.

For more information on paradox, visit Britannica.com.

A paradox arises when a set of apparently incontrovertible premises gives unacceptable or contradictory conclusions. To solve a paradox will involve either showing that there is a hidden flaw in the premises, or that the reasoning is erroneous, or that the apparently unacceptable conclusion can, in fact, be tolerated. Paradoxes are therefore important in philosophy, for until one is solved it shows that there is something about our reasonings and our concepts that we do not understand. Famous families of paradoxes include the semantic paradoxes and Zeno's paradoxes. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russell's paradox and other set-theoretic paradoxes led to the complete overhaul of the foundations of set theory, whilst the Sorites paradox has led to the investigation of the semantics of vagueness, and fuzzy logics. Paradoxes are indexed under their other titles: See analysis, paradox of; lottery paradox; Moore's paradox; omnipotence, paradox of; prediction paradox; St Petersburg paradox, two-envelope paradox.

A person or thing exhibiting apparently contradictory features, as in Lombard's paradox; or a phenomenon, such as a medical symptom, in conflict with what is expected.

A paradox is defined, according to Paul-Claude Racamier, as a "mental formation that indissolubly binds two propositions or directives that are irreconcilable and yet not contradictory."

This character of non-contradiction is essential. According to transactionalists, it is associated with the fact that irreconcilable prohibitions are not part of the same logical class, or, more simply, are not part of the same class (gesture and verb or affect and speech, for example). However, these irreconcilable directives can sometimes belong to the same class. In all cases the paradox results in infinite oscillations between two utterances of opposite meaning that are not contradictory but antagonistic—which is what accounts for its remarkable indeterminacy. The implicit conclusion of a paradox is that A = not-A. In 1952 Gregory Bateson and his colleagues began investigating the paradoxes of communication in men and animals.

We distinguish two kinds of paradox: logical paradox and pragmatic paradox. The most famous example of logical paradox, first formulated in antiquity by the Greek sophists, is attributed to Epimenides: "Epimenides the Cretan claims that all Cretans are liars. But Epimenides is a Cretan. Therefore he is lying when he says that Cretans are liars. But if Cretans are not liars, Epimenides is telling the truth." Pragmatic paradoxes are practical paradoxes. We distinguish paradoxical forecasts from paradoxical prohibitions. The "double bind" is a sophisticated version of the paradoxical prohibition.

The introduction of the concept of paradox into psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice occurred during the 1970s, from several different sources simultaneously. In France it is largely the result of Didier Anzieu's article "Transfert paradoxal" (Paradoxical transference; 1975) and Paul-Claude Racamier's "Humour et la folie" (Humor and insanity; 1973) and "Paradoxes des schizophrènes" (Paradoxes of schizophrenics); 1976, 1978, 1980). Anzieu insisted on the fact that paradoxical transference assumes, in individual or group psychotherapy, two forms: the paradoxical prohibition and disqualification, both of which are uttered by an individual or group in order to force psychoanalysts to contradict themselves and prevent the work of psychoanalysis from being accomplished. Paradoxical transference is thus one of the manifestations of the work of the negative. Paradoxical transference is accompanied by paradoxical resistance and paradoxical counter-transference.

Racamier extended the class of paradox to a type of mental and rational defensive organization—"paradoxicality"—which is found in schizophrenics, in whom it is both generalized and eroticized in particular ways. René Rousillon has investigated the formal nature of the paradox while contrasting it with the transitional class. Jean-Pierre Caillot used the concept of paradoxicality, applying it to interactive behavior and the psychoanalytic treatment of families engaged in psychotic transactions (1982). He described the paradoxical narcissistic position, where defense, through the oscillation of narcissistic and anti-narcissistic cathexes (Francis Pasche), against catastrophic, claustrophobic, and agoraphobic sensations or anxieties, characterizes the paradoxical narcissistic object relation. This position is comprised by the paranoid-schizoid position elaborated by Melanie Klein, where defense entails splitting and idealization. Caillot has defined paradoxical transference, whether individual, group, or familial, as a transference act or fantasy that indissolubly binds, self-referentially, two aspects of transference with opposite meanings, irreconcilable and yet non-contradictory. For example, Didier Anzieu has described the transference dream of a patient, in which he is simultaneously forced to remain at home and enjoined not to do so. This patient cannot remain in the analyst's office, nor can he leave it. Caillot and Gérard Decherf (1982) have described a paradoxical family transference where "living together kills and living apart is fatal."

According to Racamier, paradoxical behavior is obviously part of the general possibilities of the ego and the avatars of human relations. But its prevalence as a clinically close-knit system is associated with an overwhelming defensive organization designed to fend off intrapsychic and group conflict, the risks of individuation and separation, the internal or collective movements of fantasies of desire and death, as well as dream images and feelings of mourning or disillusionment. It is used to foster feelings of omnipotence and is active in the denial of desire, of mourning, and of the difference between the sexes and generations.

Bibliography

Anzieu, Didier. (1975). Le transfert paradoxal. Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, 12, 49-72.

Caillot, Jean-Pierre, and Decherf, Gérard. (1982). Paradoxalité et thérapie familiale psychanalytique. Paris: Clancier-Guénaud.

Racamier, Paul-Claude. (1980). Les schizophrènes. Paris: Payot.

——. (1998). Paradoxalité et ambiguïté. In S. Decobert, J.-P. Caillot, C. Pigott (Eds.), Vocabulaire de psychanalyse groupale et familiale, v. 1. Paris:Éditions du Collège de Psychanalyse Groupale et Familiale.

Watzlawick, Paul; Beavin, Janet Helmick; and Jackson, Don D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication. New York: W.W. Norton.

Further Reading

Pizer, Stuart A. (1992). The negotiation of paradox in the analytic process. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2, 215-240.

—JEAN-PIERRE CAILLOT

A statement that seems contradictory or absurd but is actually valid or true. According to one proverbial paradox, we must sometimes be cruel in order to be kind. Another form of paradox is a statement that truly is contradictory and yet follows logically from other statements that do not seem open to objection. If someone says, “I am lying,” for example, and we assume that his statement is true, it must be false. The paradox is that the statement “I am lying” is false if it is true.

Different from what is expected; at variance with the established laws.

• p. motion — see paradoxical respiration (below).
• p. respiration — a type of breathing in which all or part of a lung inflates during inspiration and balloons out during expiration; the opposite of normal chest motion. Called also paradoxical motion. The condition seriously inhibits the movement of gases during respiration and can produce severe and even fatal cardiovascular disturbances and respiratory insufficiency if not quickly relieved by emergency treatment.
— Paradoxical respiration or paradoxical motion of the lung usually results from traumatic injury to the thorax (flail chest) in which several ribs are fractured in two or more places and are no longer attached by bony cartilage to the rest of the rib cage. The condition can also be seen following surgical removal of several ribs and in paralysis of the diaphragm.
• p. septal motion — in echocardiography, the interventricular septum moves away from the left ventricular free wall during systole. Normally, it would move towards the wall. It is seen in right ventricular hypertrophy.

A statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to common sense, yet can be seen as perhaps, or indeed, true when viewed from another angle.

IN BRIEF: A statement or doctrine seemingly in contradiction to the received belief. Also: A statement that seems to contradict itself or seems false, but that may be true in fact.

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. — Hugo LaFayette Black (18741-1971), U.S. Lawyer, senator, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Quotes:

"Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things." - George Eliot

"The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo." - Soren Kierkegaard

"The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace." - Marcel Proust

"The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them." - Oscar Wilde

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - paradoks

Nederlands (Dutch)
paradox

Français (French)
n. - paradoxe

Deutsch (German)
n. - Paradox

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - παράδοξο, παραδοξολογία

Italiano (Italian)
paradosso

Português (Portuguese)
n. - paradoxo (m)

Русский (Russian)
парадокс

Español (Spanish)
n. - paradoja

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - paradox

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
似非而是的论点, 自相矛盾的话, 逆说, 悖论

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 似非而是的論點, 自相矛盾的話, 逆說, 悖論

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 역설, 자기 모순된 말, 앞뒤가 맞지 않는 일

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 逆説, パラドックス, 矛盾したこと

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) العبارة الموهمه للتناقض, العبارة الموهمه للصحه, تناقض, مغالطه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮היגד הנראה מופרך או סותר את עצמו, אפילו כאשר יש לו בסיס הגיוני, אדם או דבר המתנגשים עם מושג קודם על מה שהוא הגיוני או אפשרי, תמיהה, חידה, תפריך, פרדוקס‬

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