Reframing reveals the positive facet latent in every negative trait

Evidence

Even behavior that seems problematic to us can have a good intention behind it, and every characteristic contains positive as well as negative facets. In systemic therapy, this approach is called “reframing.” We change the frame with which we look at a particular issue. This changes the meaning. The goal is to be able to look at a characteristic, a behavior from different perspectives and to perceive it in its diversity. Someone is fanatical? Then perhaps he is (at least in this area) also enthusiastic, passionate, consistent, persistent, tenacious, unbending, an idealist, true to his faith even against opposition. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 407

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the systemic-therapy term ‘reframing’ with a concrete fanaticism example.
• XREF: connects to: Totalizing analysis reveals progressive kernels inside ostensibly reactionary phenomena — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 223; What the mind repels is a positive force shaping its concepts — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 740