Exactly what provokes denial remains a mystery.
Stories by American journalists about Marcos's grotesque corruption provoked angry denials from the regime, which the Philippine media then reported because they came from official spokesmen.
Shimon Peres, a former assistant to Ben-Gurion, had always regarded the job as his rightful inheritance and the denial provoked an intense 20-year rivalry.
That sense of a society in denial has provoked Mr. Uys's latest spat with Mr. Mbeki, an exchange that in some ways seems far more freighted with bitterness and recrimination than Mr. Uys's former altercations with the apartheid regime.
"It will come soon and then we can bring cars, large imports and fresh food for our menu," he explains with a conviction that provokes a certain anguished denial.
History and civilization were his passion and what he loved to write about -- but provoking people with the denial of God paid the bills, he told me, and allowed him to write the more important stuff.
But taxpayers sometimes do just that, provoked by "fear, paralysis, and denial — how could this be?" as Mr. Donnelly put it.
Such issues provoke non-cooperation, a form of denial.
Suggestions that patients may at times be kept in the HC rather than referred out of fear of losing face provoked reactions ranging from bewilderment to violent denial: referring was a technical matter and prestige had nothing to do with it.
Another important element may have been the deliberate policy of fear arousal in order to combat denial, dramatize that AIDS is real and provoke Ugandans to feel at personal risk of HIV infection, unless they were willing to change behavior.
