Two interpretive case studies are reported that investigate the intentionality of defensiveness versus open-mindedness in persons who hold flawed ideological beliefs. The 1st analyzes an academic authority's resistance to information that disconfirms a therapeutic intervention that he has been successfully promoting. His dissociation and narcissistic withdrawal contrasts with the 2nd case in which a neo-Nazi accepts shaming information about himself and his political ideology that leads him to forge a more integrated persona. The content and scenes of instruction in both cases are formally similar, but in the 2nd case there is an identification with the teacher and an interpersonal and philosophical vitality to their conversation that is credited as conducive to moral culpability, realism, and experiential enlightenment.