Confrontation

For other uses, see Confrontation (disambiguation).
Illustration of a 17th century verbal confrontation between David Pieterszoon de Vries and Wouter van Twiller on the island of Manhattan. The two disagreed about the management of North American territories of the Netherlands.

Confrontation is an element of conflict wherein parties confront one another, directly engaging one another in the course of a dispute between them. A confrontation can be at any scale, between any number of people, between entire nations or cultures, or between living things other than humans. Metaphorically, a clash of forces of nature, or between one person and his own causes of internal turmoil, might be described as a confrontation.

It has been noted that the term confrontation has "a negative image, largely because people tend to confront others not about pleasant things but about painful, unpleasant things" and that it also "suffers from the stigma of being overly aggressive in both nature and intent".[1] An examination of a hypothetical confrontation is the basis of confrontation analysis (also known as dilemma analysis), an operational analysis technique used to structure, understand and think through multi-party interactions such as negotiations. It is the underpinning mathematical basis of drama theory.[2]

  1. ^ Russ Holloman, Making Marriage User Friendly: The Helping Solution (2012), p. 207.
  2. ^ P. Murray-Jones, L. Stubbs and N. Howard, 'Confrontation and Collaboration Analysis: Experimental and Mathematical Results', presented at the 8th International Command & Control Research and Technology Symposium, June, 2003.