I Just Want to Impress You with my Vast Arsenal of Yesterday's Knowledge.

This title just would have been too long.

INTELLECTUALIZATION - an ego defense mechanism used to distance one's self from an emotionally charged situation by focusing on facts and logic. It is also known as a "flight into reason".  The use of jargon is also common when one is intellectualizing a situation.

Example:   A person told they have cancer asks for details on the probability of survival and the success rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in, using 'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and 'terminal' instead of 'fatal'.

Other reasons people may take an emotionally charged event and take "flight into reason" is because they are extremely uncomfortable dealing with the emotions of others.  In the phrase "flight into reason", "flight" means to run away from as in the more common phrase of "fight or flight". Let's face it, when someone tells us horrible news about their lives it can leave us speechless and unsure of what to say.  We certainly don't want to say the wrong thing. 

Some people have a lot of difficulty relating to others, so in situations where "people skills" are required they cope in the only way they know how. Some people may revert to AVOIDANCE meaning they avoid people or social situations altogether. Others revert to "safer" objects like books or even animals. When the person reverts to books and academia in order to feel more comfortable dealing with people, they have about a fifty / fifty shot of succeeding. On the one hand, it always gives them something to talk about in a group setting, on the other hand they can come off like an ass if the situation calls for empathy.  For example:  A friend tells you that their parents are going through a divorce and you respond by quoting statistics that prove that it was bound to happen to some family sooner or later. As you can see this can be a poor way to relate to a person even if the statistics are rock solid.

The irony does not escape me that I am intellectualizing by writing this post. Somebody pissed me off big time today, so I had to step back and review the situation.  I had to rely on my own knowledge base to distance myself from that anger, otherwise this would have been an entirely different post, loaded with ranting and raving. I'll save that for another time.  (That was AVOIDANCE by the way! )