Sir, – Reading Charles Lysaght's dissection of the decades-long dispute over the naming of the State, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry ("Higgins controversy a reminder of ambiguity in naming of State",Opinion & Analysis, October 18th).
Whether boiled eggs should be broken at the big end or the little end led to “a most obstinate war for six and thirty moons past”, as Jonathan Swift wrote in Gulliver’s Travels.
Sigmund Freud diagnosed such antagonism as “the narcissism of minor differences” and showed that the smaller the real differences between two peoples, the larger it looms in their imagination. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
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Gaoth Dobhair,
Co Dhún na nGall.