Personality Adjustment for Conversation
THE good conversationalist must develop an approach to conversation which involves a paradox. He wants to talk to please himself, and will talk for long only if he is enjoying himself, yet his whole approach must be that of trying to please others, not himself. Dryden the dramatist once said, "Who lives to please must please to live." Equally, the conversationalist must realize that anyone who loves to talk must talk to please others more than himself, or he won't be loved for his talking. A Saturday Evening Post verse, "The Terrible Talkers," by Phyllis McGinley (June 10, 1944) satirizes this urge everyone has to talk for his own relief. She says, "The back of my hand to So-and-So . . . Who will confide his troubles . . . When I'm longing to tell him mine."
