A Good Conversation Relaxes the Mind and Opens the Heart
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Paula Marantz Cohen explores conversation as a vital human activity that bridges distances between people through improvisational exchange mixing opinions, feelings, facts, and ideas. Drawing on her family background and Freud’s talking cure, she argues that good conversation generates authentic connection, mutual insight, and joy while serving therapeutic and civilizing functions in society.
Cohen surveys historical perspectives from Cicero and Montaigne through 18th-century luminaries to 20th-century self-help literature, identifying key principles: conversation requires practice, welcomes difference as the Other, operates through transference-like affection, and never fully consummates but rather sustains relationships through continuous engagement. She advocates for conversation as an improvisational art that discovers new aspects of ourselves, ameliorates social division, and provides creative pleasure comparable to team sports—making it essential for individual wellbeing and collective harmony.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Therapeutic Power
Drawing on Freud’s talking cure, good conversation provides psychological benefits beyond therapy, offering pleasure while addressing anxiety through open engagement with others.
Transference and Affection
Authentic conversation generates deep affection resembling falling in love, creating bonds through engagement that sustains friendships rather than consummating them.
Embracing the Other
Good conversation requires welcoming difference and engaging with those from different backgrounds, positions, and experiences to fill the lack within ourselves.
Historical Significance
From Cicero to the American Revolution, conversation has served civilizing functions, with figures like Samuel Johnson using it to combat depression.
Improvisational Art
Conversation resembles team sports more than sculpture, requiring coordination with partners through unpredictable exchanges that discover new aspects of ourselves.
Forgetting Oneself
The ultimate secret to good conversation—self-forgetfulness in the flow of engagement—cannot be taught but emerges through practice and genuine connection.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Conversation as Essential Practice
The article’s central thesis establishes conversation as fundamental to human wellbeing and social cohesion, functioning simultaneously as psychological therapy, creative art, and civilizing force. Cohen argues that good conversation—characterized by improvisational exchange, openness to difference, and authentic engagement—bridges distances between people while generating joy, insight, and self-discovery. Unlike activities that reach definitive endpoints, conversation sustains relationships through perpetual incompleteness, making it uniquely suited to address contemporary social division and individual isolation.
Purpose
Advocating Conversational Revival
Cohen writes to persuade readers that cultivating conversational skills addresses critical personal and societal needs in an era of polarization and isolation. By combining personal memoir, psychological theory, historical survey, and philosophical reflection, she demonstrates conversation’s multifaceted value while providing practical wisdom for improvement. The essay serves as both celebration and instruction manual, arguing that reviving the art of conversation can ameliorate division, combat loneliness, and restore pleasure to human interaction.
Structure
Personal → Theoretical → Historical → Practical
The essay begins with intimate family origins establishing conversation’s emotional resonance, transitions to Freudian concepts of transference and desire providing theoretical framework, surveys historical perspectives from Cicero through Dale Carnegie demonstrating enduring significance, and concludes with practical wisdom about improvisation and self-forgetfulness. This progression from particular to universal, concrete to abstract, validates personal experience through scholarly authority while returning to actionable insights, creating a satisfying circle that mirrors conversation’s own open-ended yet complete-feeling nature.
Tone
Warm, Reflective & Enthusiastic
Cohen adopts an intimate, conversational tone that practices what it preaches, inviting readers into dialogue through personal anecdotes and direct address. The writing balances intellectual seriousness with accessibility, moving between memoir, literary analysis, and philosophical reflection without pedantry. Enthusiasm for the subject pervades the essay—evident in phrases like “how I loved” and exclamatory appreciation for historical figures—while maintaining scholarly credibility through extensive citations and careful argument, creating warmth that models the authentic engagement the essay advocates.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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In a noisy, energetic, and cheerfully rowdy manner; with exuberant enthusiasm and high spirits often involving loud or vigorous behavior.
“My parents were loud and opinionated people who interrupted and quarrelled boisterously with each other.”
Reserved or uncommunicative in speech; habitually silent or saying little; inclined to speak sparingly and avoid conversation.
“I realise that such an environment could give rise to taciturn children who seek quiet above all else.”
To repeat or reproduce in a condensed form; to summarize or go over the main points again; to repeat an evolutionary or developmental pattern.
“Since he believed that all love relationships recapitulate what occurs within one’s family of origin, he saw these patients’ infatuation as a repetition of earlier, intense feelings.”
With good judgment or wisdom; in a sensible and careful manner showing sound reasoning and discretion in decision-making or action.
“Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.”
A quality that evokes pity, sadness, or sympathy; the power of evoking tender or melancholy emotions through expression or situation.
“One feels the pathos of this statement, given that Montaigne lost his most cherished friend, Étienne de la Boétie, at an early age.”
A pleasantly sharp or stimulating quality; liveliness and interest that excites or provokes; engaging charm that adds zest or flavor.
“Conversation is both a function of and a metaphor for our life in the world, always seeking to fulfil a need that is never fulfilled but whose quest gives piquancy and satisfaction.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to Cohen, conversation reaches a definitive consummation point similar to how sexual relationships reach climax through the sex act.
2According to Milton Wright’s The Art of Conversation, what is the ultimate secret to good conversation?
3Which sentence best captures how conversation relates to the concept of the Other?
4Evaluate these statements about conversation’s role and characteristics:
Cohen traces her love of conversation to her family, where her mother’s storytelling and her father’s idea discussions created a stimulating environment.
The Literary Club in London was organized in 1764 partly to help Samuel Johnson combat depression through conversation.
Cohen argues that Freud’s talking cure is essentially identical to good conversation between friends.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What can be inferred about Cohen’s view on why conversation has diminished in contemporary society?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Cohen adapts Freud’s transference concept to explain the affection generated in good conversation. While Freud saw patients’ therapeutic infatuation as repeating family dynamics, Cohen identifies a ‘deep sense of affection’ as inherent to authentic conversation—a ‘welling up of positive feeling’ resembling falling in love that occurs when we genuinely engage with friends, strangers, or even whole classes of students. This transference-like connection sustains rather than ends relationships, making conversation fundamentally social and emotionally bonding.
Cohen distinguishes conversation’s improvisational nature from solitary creation. While writing and speechifying resemble sculpture—modeling something alone through words—conversation operates like team sports where ‘the game proceeds within certain parameters but is unpredictable and reliant on one’s ability to coordinate with another person.’ Words arrange infinitely but ‘wait on the response of a partner,’ requiring ‘extreme attentiveness’ and practice. Like sports, conversation skill develops through repeated performance with varied people, making it collaborative and responsive rather than independent.
Cohen cites Amar’s argument that ‘the American Revolution was successful in mobilising disparate people to its cause as a result of long and probing conversations among constituents across the colonies.’ Conversation created unity across geographic and social distances. Conversely, ‘The British were fated to lose the war… because George III refused to listen, let alone converse with his American subjects.’ This example demonstrates conversation’s civilizing power—how dialogue across difference enables collective action while its absence leads to rupture and failure.
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This article is rated Intermediate because while it engages with sophisticated concepts like Freudian psychology, transference, and historical analysis, Cohen’s warm, conversational style makes these ideas accessible. The essay blends personal memoir with intellectual history without requiring specialized knowledge. Vocabulary ranges from everyday language to academic terms, and the argument progresses logically through familiar experiences before introducing theoretical frameworks. The intimate tone and clear structure help readers follow complex ideas about conversation’s psychological and social functions without overwhelming difficulty.
Cohen argues that ‘Talk with others allows us to practise uncertainty and open-endedness in a safe environment.’ Conversation provides ‘exercise in extemporaneity and experiment’ while deconverting us ‘from rigid and established forms of belief.’ Because conversation is improvisational and relies on others’ unpredictable responses, it trains us to handle the unexpected without anxiety. Cohen concludes ‘There is no better antidote for certainty than ongoing conversation with a friend who disagrees,’ suggesting dialogue actively breaks down dogmatism and increases intellectual flexibility through regular practice.
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