Author: Ron Johnson

Temperament III: Analysts

Ron Johnson Uncategorized

This is the third in a series about “temperament” after Temperament I where we discussed the idea of temperament in general and Temperament II where we introduced the temperament of “player.” In short review, and acknowledging that there are many shades of personality assessment, we propose that there are four primary temperaments that give us a general orientation to the world, e.g.:

  • Players: seek experience, often excitement, adventure, and tend to take a rather physical engagement to the world
  • Analysts: whom we will discuss herein
  • Lovers: seek human connections
  • Caretakers: take care of things, both property and people

We admit to the obvious, that no one falls completely into one of these categories and that many people have perhaps two dominant temperaments, although our experience is that such is rare. More often, people have found ways of accommodating to the world that is outside of their basic life orientation and temperament. E.g., players perhaps have the most difficult time adjusting to life in America because this country tends to be caretaking first based on production, business, and the Protestant work ethic. So players often find ways of skirting these things and fail in life, or give into a caretaking way of life and end up unhappy. In Temperament II we discussed our daughter, Krissie, who operates primarily as a caretaker because of her profession at an insurance company and as a mother of two young children. She has accommodated to these seeming necessities of life. We also mentioned Kevin who was actually the stimulus for our understanding of the player personality 40 years ago. While distinctly a player, his profession is actuarial science. Now how does that sound as a fit for a player? Not particularly good. So he has also accommodated.

Accommodation is good but better is adaptation, which is primarily a Jungian word for a more positive and self-enhancing way of adjustment. The difference here is that accommodation tends to be a kind of giving in to something that is not particularly good for someone, while adaptation is a means of adjusting to the environment while not losing one’s life orientation. Adaptation also helps a person mature beyond his or her temperament while not losing the foundation what is one’s personality structure. True maturing is remaining foundational in one’s nature, which is one’s perspective of life, and then adding profitable means of operating out of one’s foundation. Jung referred to this kind of adjustment as adaptation, which we might also call developing one’s shadow, or one’s secondary nature. It is also important to mature beyond one’s foundation because it is impossible to be successful, happy, and productive in life without such maturing. If one does not mature beyond one’s foundation, one will tend to find an accommodation that is not valuable, which could be some kind of addiction, or more commonly doing something to a fault. As a caretaker myself (Ron), I spent many years working, fixing, and other doings to a fault. It is yet hard for me to just “hang out,” or dolce far niente as the Italians say, which is quite easy for my other daughter. So as we continue to study the four temperaments as an important way we have come to understand and value people, know that no one is any one thing, and that is important to “know thyself first” and then mature beyond ones’s basic foundation. Now, let’s look at the analyst temperament.

Characteristics of analysts

The primary element of such people is, as the name suggests, analysis. What is analysis? Analysis is taking apart or even breaking up something for the purposes of understanding, for the purpose of identifying the elements in something and ultimately to make things work more effectively. Synthesis is quite the opposite, namely the bringing together of things for the increased value of how things can work together more effectively. You can see how both analysis and synthesis ultimately have the goal of making things work more effectively. People with an analyst temperament love to break things up and see how they work, or perhaps not don’t work, to make things work better.

The second element that analysts have is problem-solving. They love to see problems in the sense that they are intrigued as to why something doesn’t work because it stimulates their interest in making them work. The “things,” by the way, could also be people, namely working to have people live more efficiently or effectively. They not only like to solve problems, they also like to prevent problems, namely for the same reason, to make things (or people) perform better. Analysts are fascinated by problems because they want to make the world a better place. They think, “What better thing to do for the world than to solve and prevent problems?”

There are several other characteristics that evolve out of these two basic elements of analysis and problem-solving, one of which is predicting the future. Because analysts look intently at how things work, or don’t work, they like to suggest how the future might work out with things. They might suggest, for instance, how a sports team might win or lose as they progress in a game, or they might see how a political candidate might succeed or fail after having examined the candidate and the voting populace.

It might seem quite antithetical to our discussion of analysts to suggest another characteristic, which is uncertainty. Analysts know a lot, usually much more than the rest of us, but they also know that they don’t know everything, so they fully understand the uncertainty principle that is quite basic to physics. You will rarely hear an analyst suggest some future event without a qualifier like, “it is not entirely clear to me.” So, they hedge their bets, knowing that they might wrong or inadequate in their analyses.

The value that analysts bring the world

Much. The obvious value that analysts bring us is their seeking to understand how things (again, also people) work and how they don’t work. So, their primary contribution to the world is to solve problems and prevent problems. We just spent three hours with our IT guy who helped us analyze some problems we were having with our emails, contacts, and other Internet challenges. Although Chris is not primarily an analyst by temperament (he is a “lover,” our discussion in Temperament IV), he was able to solve a myriad of problems that resulted from a breach in our email account.

Chris helped us solve our IT problems, but he also helped us prevent future problems. He gave us some ideas of how we could better utilize our computers, social media, and general maintenance of all the IT that is so central to doing business.

While analysts are primarily interested in preventing and solving problems, some analysts are truly investigative; they think about what could happen, what could be invented, and what could be discovered. Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the like were most certainly analysts at heart as they discovered various elements of the universe. We are indebted to such people who are scientists at heart, but we are also indebted to people like Martin Luther King of the world who have seen possibilities like, “white children and black children on the mountaintop.” Might it be profitable for all for nations to have analyst leaders who were able to foresee potential problems and current problems with an eye for making the world a better place?

I will close this third edition of Temperament by noting two things. The first is this: analysts are my favorite people, and that would include my wife, consummate analyst that she is. Secondly, as with players and people of all stripes and colors, have challenges, which we will discuss later in this series.

Further Reading

Bates, J.E. and Wachs, T.D. (1994). Temperament: individual differences at the interface of biology and behavior. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2019). Watch your temperament. Prepublication manuscript available in our office.

Jung, C.J. (1971). Psychological types. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Press.

Keirsey, D. and Bates, M. (1978). Please understand me: character and temperament types. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.

Temperament II: Players

Ron Johnson Personality, Personality, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

This is the second installment regarding “temperament.” Temperament is a way I have come to see and understand people. It is not the only way and it may not be the best way, but it has been helpful for my understanding people for many years. Beginning with the Greek philosopher Galen two millennia ago there have been people who have used temperament as a valuable way of understanding people. Understanding people by their temperaments is part of what I have called a “friendly diagnosis.” In other words, instead of diagnosing people with some kind of disorder, like depression, anxiety, or personality disorder, making a friendly diagnosis is finding ways of understanding the basic natures that people have. Other positive ways of understanding people include personality type (originating with Carl Jung), multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner), the Enneagram, personal development (many authors), and cultural elements of personality and behavior.

In this and forthcoming blogs I will discuss each of four temperaments: player, analyst, lover, and caretaker. People tend to fall primarily into one of these temperaments, and sometimes two, but everyone has characteristics of all four temperaments to some degree. Let’s start by examining what I call the player temperament.

Background

My introduction into psychological testing was exclusively directed at what was psychologically wrong with people, called psychopathology. The tests I was introduced to in graduate school in in 1969 were primarily the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Profile (MMPI) and the Rorschach Ink Blot test, although since that time many more problem-based tests have been developed. These tests provide categories like depression, anxiety, personality disorder, or schizophrenia. The MMPI, the Rorschach, and other tests of psychopathology gave me a way of understanding people, but primarily what was wrong with people. Next I learned about tests that identified personality “traits” that weren’t necessarily about psychological problems, like the Edwards Personal Preference Scale (EPPS), the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), and the Adjective Check List (ACL), all of which provided about 20 personality characteristics or traits. These tests of personality were more valuable in understanding the differences among people, but with 20 or 30 different terms, like “sucorance” and “achievement,” they were cumbersome in offering me a way to help understand how they saw the world and how they engaged the world.

My understanding and use of psychological testing was dramatically affected by three events: (1) Both the problem-based tests like the MMPI, and the personality trait-based tests like the EPPS didn’t really help people understand themselves and profit from that understanding. (2) Master therapist, Dick Olney, had “reframed” a very valuable way of understanding people developed by Alexander Lowen. Lowen identified people by “body type” and “diagnosed” them in the categories of schizoid, oral, masochistic, psychopathic, and rigid. Olney reframed these categories into words that were more positive, namely creative, loving, containing, challenging, and achieving. (3) By far the most dramatic development in my understanding of personality came when I was introduced to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) developed by Elizabeth Briggs-Myers and her daughter, a test based on Carl Jung’s psychological types. An adjunct to the MBTI was a system of “temperament” developed by David Keirsey. After some years using the MBTI and Keirsey’s understanding of temperament, I began to see patterns of personality and behavior that led me to develop my own temperament analysis using a test that I called the Johnson Temperament Indicator (JTI).

My understanding of temperament, while not unlike Keirsey’s and others who had preceded me did not develop all at once. The JTI and my analysis of temperament developed first by my understanding how two important people in my life operated: my daughter, Krissie, and my friend, Kevin. Kevin and Krissie seemed to share a certain similarity in the way they saw the world and engaged the world. They seemed to play all the time. I wrote a monologue on what I came to call “the player personality” originating in my observations of Kevin and Krissie but also on many people that came to my office. Since I had started my practice as a child psychologist, I continued to see a lot of children, many of which were struggling mightily in school and home for some reason. Often these children had been given diagnoses and medications to treat ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, or conduct disorder. But the parents who brought these kids to me weren’t satisfied with these diagnoses and medications and asked if I could help them deal with their children who seemed unruly and unpredictable. I found it valuable to “diagnose” some of these children as “players” and treat them accordingly. From this initial “friendly diagnosis” of the player personality, I began to see people with other temperaments, those that we will study in forthcoming blogs. But what could I say about the psychological makeup of players that distinguished them from people of other temperaments? This has been a work in progress and remains so.

Characteristics of players

Movement.

One of the dominant features of players is physical movement. I saw this movement in Krissie and Kevin albeit in different ways, and I saw movement in all the player patients I saw in my office and friends in my social life. I recall a moment when I saw Krissie skipping between one room and another, skipping, not running, and certainly not walking. I saw Kevin nearly always moving his hands in ways that could have been American Sign Language except for the fact that it was unique to Kevin. I saw Kevin and Krissie always fiddling with something. Krissie would pick things up, explore them, and then perhaps drop them, often nowhere form where she found them. When she was two, she loved to pull tissues out of the tissue box, much to the distress of my wife. I suggested that she just be allowed to pull the tissues out and see where it went. I don’t recall what actually happened, but it is likely that the living room looked like a tornado hit it. I watched Kevin do similar movements, often with his hands and fingers, but most distinctively he would chew on something, often a piece of paper with a kind of vigor that suggested he was somehow connected to this inanimate piece of paper.

My observation of people I came to call players was not limited to my daughter and my friend Kevin. I saw other people, both children and adults, engaging the world in a physical way. I saw people on the dance floor who seemed to have natural physical movement, albeit rarely in any kind of formal dance pattern. I saw kids playing various sports, but the player kids weren’t necessarily playing by the rules; they were just playing. I saw movement in Sam, whose mother said that she “just couldn’t keep up with him” and in Jamie whose father was beside himself in trying to manage her movement in the house that seemed excessive to him. But movement was not the only thing players did. In fact, I came to understand the “excessive” movement that I saw in players as a way they wanted to engage life: they wanted to experience the world, not just observe it.

Experiencing:

At first I thought that players “played all the time.” While that is true is some ways, I came to see that players more accurately want to experience life, not watch it. Their way of learning is to live life by experiencing it in any way possible. This experiencing usually involves some kind of physical engagement, but it can also be the experience of connection to another person, group, or event. This experiencing life, whether personal or impersonal seems to be a way of making life real. Making physical property real means engaging things: picking them up, dropping them, throwing them, or just fondling them. Making people real means the same thing: picking them up, perhaps dropping them, yes, maybe fondling them. Engaging machines most certainly means to see what these machines can do, perhaps by turning the machine on full blast, which could be the radio or the crosscut saw. Things and people are real when they are engaged physically. Players don’t just watch; they have to be involved.

I had to learn early with daughter Krissie that she engaged all property as if all things were toys. This could be the tissue box or the mashed potatoes when she was young, and my charm bracelet (yes I have one) when she was a teenager. I still don’t know where some of the charms ever ended up, and she certainly doesn’t know. I recall Kevin being one who would often literally “be in your face,” often with a grimace as if he were seeing into your soul. A player child I once saw in my office jumped into my lap as soon as he came into my office, somewhat to the chagrin of his mother. I’m quite sure the actor Robin Williams was a player having him engage anything or anyone in his environment as a way of experiencing people and things, always with a vigor of curiosity. Williams’ form of experiencing blended with entertaining.

Entertaining:

I think that all players like to entertain, but I think I originally conflated the player nature of extraversion, which only some players have. Players’ entertaining nature takes many forms. Entertaining people is a way players experience the world, engage to the world, and serve the world. Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage.” Players take this to heart.

My wife who certainly has a player nature (while primarily “analyst”, the next temperament that we shall study) finds a stage wherever she happens to be, preferably alone in her greenhouse with her precious flowers or in canyons with her precious rocks. It seems that God is in all rocks, flowers, and more for Deb. I am never quite sure if God, the rocks, the flowers, or the canyons are part of the audience or returning the favor of entertaining her. Other players are like Jack, an 8-year old player kid I saw many years ago. When he was in my office, he spied my guitar in the corner and told me he could play it. I was surprised to learn this about Jack because his mother had said that he never stuck with anything longer than 30 seconds. I invited him to pick up the guitar and play something. He did so without hesitation and began strumming the guitar, seemingly randomly, and singing equally randomly without meter, rhyme, or cord. He was entertaining me. Then he asked me if I could perhaps advertise my clientele for a performance he could do for people. I declined his request to his great disappointment. Jack, an extraverted player, just wanted to engage people by entertaining them. A more introverted young man and I talked about the magical wardrobe portrayed in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. When we walked around my office building one afternoon (as a part of “therapy”), he spied what he thought was a wardrobe and asked if he could get in it. I agreed, and he entered this old closet, sat on the floor and closed the door. He was there silently for ten minutes or more, and might have been there longer had I not opened the door. He was disappointed that the back of the “wardrobe” hadn’t opened up to Narnia.  By the way, Jack had been brought to me by his father who was convinced that he was ADD because he couldn’t sit still. I’m convinced that he could have sat in the wardrobe still for hours waiting for Narnia to expose itself. He was ready to entertain all Narnians. When he was in the wardrobe, he was in the moment, and that was all that mattered.

In the moment:

One of the characteristics of personality type (which we might study at a later time) is what I call a “low boundary” orientation, something the Jung/Briggs people call “P people.” Low boundary people challenge boundaries because they know that all boundaries are human-made, and hence artificial in a sense. While most players certainly have this low boundary orientation, it seems that they live in the moment like there is no tomorrow. They know that the moment is all that we have so they want to fill that minute with 60 seconds worth of experience as Kipling once said. Players just don’t want to waste time; they want to use time. For players, especially young players, the moment is all that exists. They’re right.

I think my granddaughter, Alexis, has a good deal of this “in the moment” that players have. Given the opportunity, she will simply run, jump, and otherwise engage whatever part of the world she finds herself in. She seems most content to run around our lake cabin, sometimes disappearing into the woods, sometimes into the water, something that gives her mother (player daughter Krissie, by the way) great alarm. I think she is just seeing what is out there in the world and what is in there inside of herself. Some players find success in certain professional avenues, like improvisational work because they are so naturally good at entertaining by seeing what or who is in the moment. Whether experiencing, entertaining, or in the moment, all players are playing.

Playing

Players play. In fact, not only is all the world a stage, and every minute should be filled with experience, all things are playthings. That certainly means all property. It often means all money. And it means all people. They think that all things are toys, all money is play money, all people are playmates, and the world is a playground. But what is play? Play is activity that engages body, mind, soul, and preferably other people in activity that has no ultimate meaning but just meaning in the moment. Players want to enjoy property, places, and people not unlike the first rule of the Westminster Confession written some 400 years ago: “the chief end of humankind is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

We will be looking at the Opportunities and Challenges that players have in the world. You might have already considered that players might have both. We dill defer this discussion, however, until a bit later because we want to tell you about the other temperaments. Next up: analysts.

Further Reading

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). Watch your temperament. Prepublication manuscript available at our office.

Bruner, J., Jolly, A., and Sylva, K. (1976). Play: its role in development and evolution. New York: Brunner.

Dabbs, J.M. (2000). Heroes, rogues, and lovers: testosterone and behavior. New York: McGraw Hill.

Seeing Unicorns

Ron Johnson appreciation, Discovery, Feelings, mindfulness, Spiritual

There was once a small village in a mountainous region of the world. There lived in this village a wise man. He had seemingly always been both old and wise as no one could remember him being anything else. The people in village went about their normal responsibilities taking care of their property, persons, and purposes in life without complaint. It was quite idyllic and the village was not easily located although it had an interesting reputation in various parts of the region and in the world. There were stories of people who tried to find the village without success, often coming back from arduous journeys without ever finding the village, while occasionally a simple wanderer seemed to find this village without difficulty. There didn’t seem to be a logical reason why some very experienced adventurous people could not find the village while others less sophisticated in the business of exploration seemed to happen upon the village.

One such wanderer came upon the village one late night and found the village residents warmly welcome him. They quickly found him a warm place to stay and a nutritious meal before he retired for the night. The wanderer was a relatively young man who had been wandering for some time and had had both warm receptions and hostile ones. He couldn’t seem to understand why he sometimes found some people so accepting and others so rejecting, but it had been on his mind for a long time. His night in the village passed without incident.

Our wandering young man rose the next morning to discover that his hosts had prepared a sumptuous and nutritious morning meal for him. There was simple chatter at the breakfast table among the host family and other guests with young and old seemingly quite interested in one another. The young man found it interesting that all in the family respected one another despite differences in age, gender, or station in life. It didn’t seem appropriate for him to ask about the demeanor of the family and the guests. He was quite taken, however, with the respect and demeanor that this group of people seemed to have for one another. There was discussion of philosophical and spiritual matters as well as matters of care of property and people. There was even debate and discussion without an argumentative spirit. There was expression of emotions, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, but never expression of anger or fear.

About the time that our young man was about to leave this gracious host family the wise old man of the village happened to walk into the house. The old man walked in with a staff that he placed by the entry door, leaning it almost as if it belonged there. He was greeted warmly by all in attendance and was offered what appeared to be his standard choice in hot tea. He sat at table with the others and listened intently to all who spoke, only rarely speaking his thoughts and feelings. Then, to the surprise of the young man the older man asked him if he knew why he had come to the village. This question bemused the wandering young man because it hadn’t seemed to him that he had come to the village purposefully. It had seemed to him that he had quite accidentally stumbled across the village on his wanderings. The old man saw the young man’s uncertain countenance and suggested that they take a walk together. It seemed the right thing to do for the young man but he continued to wonder about this whole scene: the pleasantness of the village, the graciousness of the people, and now the mysterious nature of the old man. Yet, he felt both privileged and compelled to accept what appeared to be yet another act of graciousness that seemed to be the nature of the whole village.

The old man took the young man on a walk that fairly quickly became a bit of a brisk hike, quickly out of town and then up the closest mountain to the village. The trek up the mountain was, for reasons unknown to the young man, long but not arduous. He felt compelled to trail the old man who clearly knew the route up this mountain demonstrated by his taking carefully orchestrated steps as if he had taken this exact route many times before. When the two men reached the summit of the mountain, the young man admired the view. He could see the village quite a bit below as well as a vista of other mountains in the distance. There seemed to be so much to see that he was taken aback by the whole scene. He expected that the two men would soon descent to the village shortly, but was surprised by a question the old man asked him. It was a simple question but at the same time it was the most invigorating question he had ever heard.

The old man asked him, “What do you see on that farthest mountain?” The young man looked at that far mountain expecting simply to see a mountainscape, but then felt a strange feeling come over him, so much so that he was quite unsure as to how to respond to the question put before him. He answered the old man’s question with hesitation and with some concern because of what he thought he saw but dared to answer, “I think I see a unicorn.” The young man felt a bit awkward by saying what he had said so he quickly added, “…but know that unicorns don’t really exist, so I must be mistaken.” The young man felt a mixture of feelings at that point including a kind of exhilaration at seeming to see something so wonderful. He had learned in his personal study that unicorns are symbolic of purity. But in addition to the exhilaration he felt some embarrassment, or was it shame that he felt? He waited for the old man’s further comment. He didn’t wait long.

The old man quietly and carefully said this: “There are three things about seeing a unicorn. First, not many people ever see unicorns because it is very hard to see a unicorn. Secondly, it is very hard to believe that they are seeing a unicorn. But the hardest thing of all is to remember that you believed that you saw a unicorn. Having said that, the old man quietly and simply took a step on the path leading to the village. The young man followed equally silently. Having returned to the village, he gathered his simple pack and left. Though he never saw the village or the old man again, he remembered.

 Comment

I heard this story from the person who has been my most important therapist, Dick Olney, perhaps 40 years ago. I have no idea where he heard it or if he actually created it. I have found myself compelled to tell this story to a very few people whom I deemed ready to hear the story. One of these men having spent an intensive week of therapy with me wrote to me when he returned to the UK: “there have been several sightings of unicorns here in England.” I was glad to hear of such a thing because not many people see a unicorn because they are hard to see, it is hard to believe that you are seeing a unicorn, and it is really hard to remember that you believed that you saw a unicorn. I remain grateful that I have helped a few people see the unicorns in their lives, believe it, and remember it.  I’m certainly old, but not always wise, but occasionally I help people see unicorns. What a wonderful moment it is