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Aptitude has crazy aggressive REMOVE policy

Each time I want to upgrade a couple of packages to a later version, say, from the 'stable' distribution to 'testing', Aptitude looks for packages which don't have any dependencies and removes them. The tentative result of this
on my system would be very bad. To install the testing version of bittorrent-gui, gdm and gnome-session would be removed:

Code:

The following packages will be REMOVED:

  abiword-common abiword-gnome bluefish bug-buddy capplets dia-gnome eog

  epiphany-browser evolution file-roller firestarter foomatic-gui gcalctool

  gconf-editor gdm gedit gnome gnome-about gnome-applets

  gnome-control-center gnome-core gnome-cups-manager

  gnome-desktop-environment gnome-games gnome-gv gnome-media gnome-nettool

  gnome-office gnome-panel gnome-session gnome-system-monitor

  gnome-system-tools gnome-terminal gnome-utils gnome-volume-manager

  gnomemeeting gnumeric gpdf gtkhtml3.2 hal-device-manager inkscape

  libapache2-mod-python libbonoboui2-0 libeel2-2 libgail-common libgail17

  libgal2.2-1 libgal2.2-common libglibmm-2.4-1 libgnome-desktop-2

  libgnomecanvas2-0 libgnomecupsui1.0-1 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeui-0

  libgtk2.0-dev libgtkhtml2-0 libgtkhtml3.2-11 libgtkmm-2.4-1

  libnautilus2-2 libpanel-applet2-0 libpango1.0-dev libsigc++-2.0-0 libvte4

  libxft-dev libxrender-dev nautilus nautilus-cd-burner nautilus-media

  planner python-gnome2 python-newt python2.3-gnome2 rhythmbox synaptic

  totem totem-xine vino yelp zenity

I think this behavior is caused because at some point I had to free up space and was sick of the crazy aptitude decisions so I removed the 'automatic' flag from almost every package and manually purged a bunch of the packages.
Now the question is how to add the needed flag(s) back to the essential packages so aptitude doesn't try to remove them during every install. Thanks in advance.

OK, I tried setting the hold and keep flags as a test. 'aptitude hold gnome-core' did set the hold flag, but any package install from the testing distribution still wants to remove gnome-core and gdm, and abiword and other packages I use that definitely do not want removed; but hundreds of other crap I NEVER use because I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY DO are scheduled to be 'automatically installed'.

Many things aregravely wrong with this version of aptitude. Unfortuanately I can't upgrade to the testing version which includes a fixed 'resolver' to handle the dependency cluster**** because eseential things will be removed.

It looks like a dit-upgrade to testing might be the best (if not only) solution to this tangled mess...

Possible solution #2

OK, the following might achieve my objective with about half the download time and subsequent disk space that would be required with a dist-upgrade:

Code:

aptitude -t testing install xbase-clients xlogmaster gdm gnome gnome-core librsvg2-2 nautilus gnome-desktop-environment aptitude ntp