We take the good with the bad

Recently this blog has been discussing the self. Elements of the self include things like identity, temperament, personality, etc. One thing to know is that personalities can be healthy or toxic, what scientists would call adaptive or maladaptive.

Psychodynamic psychology is the modern psychology stemming from the lineage of Sigmund Freud. And as the reader likely knows, some of the language of Freud remains commonplace to this day. For example, two personalities types people have heard of are narcissistic and obsessive, and in common language most people understand those two things to be negative. But in the world psychodynamic psychology, both narcissistic personalities and obsessive personalities can be either healthy or unhealthy. Yes you read that right, there literally is a thing called healthy narcissism. Believe it or not.

One thing that has changed is the words Freud used to describe the organization of personality. In Freud's time personality had three possible arrangements: neurotic, borderline and psychotic. Here there are two things to note. First, today being neurotic is considered a negative thing. But in Freud's time, neurotic was as healthy as a personality could hope to be. And second, in Freud's time borderline literally meant the space between neuroses and psychoses, between reality and delusion. So, any personality type could present with a borderline organization.

Largely because Freudian-like psychoanalysis is a long-term form of treatment, not many people do it. So, not many people are familiar with what Freud actually meant with his teachings. Enter into this void a new and common diagnosis called "borderline personality disorder," or BPD for short (admittedly the confusion is unfortunate).

Though I am taking small liberties here, let me give a brief summary of the likely origins of BPD. I will begin with the words of a fairly well-known man named Gabor Maté. According to Dr. Maté, all human souls require at least two things: authenticity and attachment. Though he doesn't include the human need for competence, what Maté is saying is in direct alignment with Self-Determination Theory. If you would like more information on Self-Determination Theory, please review this blog's recent posts. What Maté calls attachment the Self-Determination folks would call relatedness.

Being centrally important, it is not surprising to know much work has been done on human attachment. Starting in 1969, famed British psychoanalyst John Bowlby began laying out his attachment theory. And today, it seems clear most people are probably living with some level of "attachment injury," a psychological wound (aka trauma) resulting from a deficiency of attachment. And when that attachment injury is debilitating enough, we begin to speak of BPD.

The core symptom of BPD is a destructively strong fear of abandonment. And if you know anybody with BPD, you may know how profound and pervasive the suffering can be. Though there exists more than one way to treat BPD, today we will discuss a woman named Marsha Linehan.

Born on May 5, 1943 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Professor Linehan is becoming more and more well-known due to her development of a branch of psychology called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT for short. And, the evidence is mounting that DBT is an effective method for helping heal BPD.

Side note: I apologize for the use of multiple acronyms, but DBT is how most people refer to Linehan's method and BPD is generally how people refer to borderline personality disorder.

To the extent people utilize the DBT modality, most do it as a client/patient in counseling, coaching or therapy. That said, in 2020 Professor Linehan wrote a lovely and helpful autobiography titled Building a Life Worth Living. Regardless of whether or not you have BPD, the four core skills of DBT can be very helpful. They are: distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. One thing I love about DBT is, Linehan directly and explicitly acknowledges her main objective is teaching people the skills of effective living.

Why I am telling you all this? Well, it does seem to be the case that all human souls fundamentally require authenticity and attachment. As such, it also seems clear that a deficiency in either authenticity or attachment can lead to profound mental health challenges. And, the skills of effective living do seem to be a prerequisite for sustainably successful entrepreneurship and leadership.

This blog has recently spent time talking about identity and personality, and hopefully you can imagine their connection to authenticity. I have also begun introducing you to the work of Professor Liah Greenfeld, who has shown rather conclusively how deficiencies in identity formation can lead to things like schizophrenia, bipolarism and depression. And, as mentioned, it further seems clear that a deficiency in human attachment can lead to challenges like BPD.

So, am I saying any personality can be either healthy or unhealthy? And being one element of personality, am I saying an underdeveloped identity can cause mental illness? And, am I also saying insufficient human attachment can cause mental illness? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. As I think we all know, life is complex. But, I don't believe that means it needs to be complicated.

We all need authenticity and attachment, and I think we know how to create both.

Who Even Are You? Part Three

Personality. What is it? Is it static or fluid? The answer is yes, personality is static or fluid. LOL! I think personality is static for people with a fixed mindset and fluid for those with a growth mindset.

But regardless of whether your personality is static or fluid, identifying your type is a useful part of getting to know yourself. Fortunately, today you can take a free online test and it will help you identify your personality type. The free test is available at 16personalities.com.

That personality model has been traditionally referred to as Myers Briggs, and it builds off of the psychology of Carl Jung. To the extent we understand our personality and those of the people we care about, our relationships will likely run most smoothly.

A while back, the late psychology professor David Keirsey wrote two books explaining the Myers Briggs system, and I highly recommend them. They are titled "Please Understand Me" and "Please Understand Me II."

For today, I will simply explain a brief overview of Keirsey's four temperaments, in no particular order. As a side note, each of the four temperaments manifest themselves in four ways, which is how they end up with sixteen possible personalities.

I will start with SJ. SJs are highly committed to maintaining tradition and social order. They are big on obedience and believe rules are made to be followed. In Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper, they are the ant. Busy busy busy. Work work work. They are big on duty and obligation, and believe that work must come before play. They detest freeloaders, believing all people must earn their keep. Ironically, SJs often marry SPs.

In Aesop's fable SPs are the grasshopper, and they are essentially the opposite of the SJ. SPs spend their days leisurely swinging on a blade of grass, singing their song and not taking things too seriously. SPs are centrally concerned with having fun, and they revile in their freedom from constraint. So, you won't get very far trying to order around an SP. SPs tend to think life come down to luck, so it doesn't make sense to try very hard, and they like to have fun warning SJs about how they are going to develop an ulcer with all the worrying. SPs would rather eat, drink and be merry!

Combined, SJs and SPs make up the majority of the population. One key thing to know about the "S's" is they think in concrete terms, meaning Who What When and Where. They want "Just the facts, Jack." This is important to know because the other two temperaments are the "N's," and the Ns think in abstract concepts. By the way, these temperaments aren't mutually exclusive. We are all combinations.

NTs are pretty much always thinking in mental models. The reader doesn't have to follow me for long to realize I am mostly an NT. Scientific theories are mental models, and whether it is the theory of Peter Drucker, Liah Greenfeld, Edward Deci, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, David Keirsey or whomever, I am always thinking in mental models. NTs are centrally concerned with truth and knowledge, effectiveness and efficiency. That said, I can also be an NF.

NFs are occupied with the search for self, uniqueness, authenticity, meaning and intimacy. Hello?! This is literally my third post in a row with the title "Who Even Are You?" LOL! Keirsey writes "The NF's truest self is the self in search or itself, or in other words, his purpose in life is to have a purpose in life." If you think that logic sounds circular, you would be correct. And because it is the most complicated temperament, it is usually best to speak of NFs last.

You see, the "N" stands for intuitive because "I" was already taken by introversion. So just as the Ss think and speak in concrete terms, the Ns use their intuition to think and speak in abstract concepts. Hopefully you can already spot a pattern. Knowing the difference in personalities, and knowing that I am an intuitive, when I communicate I consciously reminder myself to always include concrete examples for the S temperaments.

I hope this helps.

Again, please take the free test at 16personalities.com.

You see next time 😊

Who Even Are You? Part Two

According to Liah Greenfeld identity is the core structure of the human mind, and I think she is correct. Professor Greenfeld defines identity with four simple words, saying it is "The relationally constituted self." To put a little more meat on the bones of that definition, Otto Kernberg says "We call the combination of an integrated sense of self and an integrated sense of significant others identity."

Being so centrally important, it is great news that we are able to consciously develop our identities. An obvious first question would be; How?

Habit number two of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is "Begin with the end in mind." And if you have read the book, you know Covey gives us an exercise to perform (though I doubt many people actually do it). The exercise is to write your eulogy. Obviously, writing your own eulogy is a way of beginning with the end in mind.

Unrelated to the work of Covey, while speaking with Professor Greenfeld she told me she assigns the same exercise to her university students, because she has found it to be a useful way to cultivate your identity.

Peter Drucker has a similar but different exercise, which requires a less explicit contemplation of your own mortality. Drucker explains that his exercise goes back to at least Saint Augustine, but reveals he first learned of the exercise from economist Joseph Schumpeter. According to Drucker, Schumpeter and Augustine, everybody must answer the question "What do I want to be remembered for?"

To state the exercise in more humorous, and potentially more triggering terms, the French absurdist philosopher Albert Camus advocated contemplating the question "Why shouldn't I kill myself?" In other words, what do we have to live for?

Drucker said if we don't do this exercise we will waste our lives, and Greenfeld has shown how a malformed identity can lead to profound mental illness. So whichever way you look at it, the stakes are high and you should probably do the exercise!

Who Even Are You?

For as long as I can remember I have been interested in core knowledge and first principles. We have all heard it said that each person is as unique as a snowflake, and to a degree it is true. That said, if you keep drilling down you will eventually discover we are all the same.

Like the old cliché says, we all bleed red. Another example was given in the last post, which was about something called Self-Determination Theory. It seems pretty clear that all people need competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Recently, I gave an overview of the French word anomie. For our purposes here, a workable synonym for anomie is confusion. Modern society is very confusing and, in moments of vulnerable honesty, most people will admit they don't really know who they are. Who you are is a key part of your autonomy.

I also mentioned Liah Greenfeld, and I want to give you her deceptively simple hypothesis about the human mind. Stated in two identical ways, Professor Greenfeld says the human mind is "culture in the brain" or "individualized culture." To me, it often makes sense to compound the phrases and say the human mind is individualized culture in the brain.

At the risk of getting nerdy, let us touch briefly on a word which has become very popular. That word in meme. As usually happens, now that the word meme is used widely it is also widely misunderstood. Here is where I will get slightly nerdy. A nerdy definition of meme is "An artifact of consciousness." In simpler language, a meme is an idea.

Images with captions are common memes online, and they certainly are memes, but they are only one type of meme. Memes can also be more general (things like is transportation, weaponry, or even television) and it can be said that memes are fundamentally what separate humans from all other life forms.

We have all heard of DNA. A simple explanation of the purpose of DNA is to function as biological instructions on how to live. Suckling is an instinct DNA has put into mammals for survival. If the newborn doesn't suckle, it doesn't survive. All mammals possess DNA and it functions as the biological analog of memes. 

As already mentioned, the memes most people are familiar with are online memes, and they are usually humorous or thought provoking. But in the totality, memes function similar to DNA in that they constitute psychological instructions on how to live. Are you with me? Combined, memes create something we call culture. And again, yes, the funny online memes are one form of meme.

In western civilization one of our key jobs as humans is to give birth to ourselves. Psychological birth, which is painful and scary. And because it is painful and scary, most people simply default to doing what other people are doing. One of life's great ironies is, when people are free to do whatever they want they usually imitate each other. Short term this is a less risky strategy. But long term, it can be catastrophic because you may wake up one day and wonder "Who the hell am I?!"

It is not the intention of this blog to provide psychotherapy, but one thing we all have in common is we are trying to understand this big complex thing called life. Please stay with me.

Being a Model Citizen

A couple weeks ago we began our discussion of the word anomie. As a reminder, an acceptable synonym for anomie is confusion. So, what are we to do? The answer is we follow models, and there exists two main types of models; behavioral and mental.

As sad as it was, the year 2021 was a year where the world lost a number of psychology GOATs. As previously mentioned, we lost Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in October 2021. In July 2021 we lost Albert Bandura at the ripe old age of 95, and that November we lost Aaron Beck who made it all the way to 100.

During his career, Albert Bandura created Social Learning Theory and it explains behavioral models. To simplify, and to use a phrase everybody is familiar with, it is monkey see monkey do. Imitating the behavior of others is the easier way to learn, and thus it is the way most people learn. But, it isn't the only way. So, let us talk about mental models and a man named Anders Ericsson.

It can be said Anders Ericsson was a man before his time, and it can be argued he died before his time in June 2020. You may not know the name Anders Ericsson, but it is likely you know of his work. He was the world's leading expert on expertise. It was Ericsson's research that Malcolm Gladwell used, in his book Outliers, to create the so-called 10,000 Hour Rule.

A quick aside for anybody who insists the 10,000 Hour Rule isn't a rule. Fine. Let's not quibble over the small things. It may not be a rule but we can at least call it an average. Sometimes reaching expert performance takes more than 10,000 hours and sometimes it takes less.

Fortunately, in 2016 Professor Ericsson laid out his theory in an elegant book titled Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. As a general rule I prefer to stay descriptive rather than prescriptive, but please allow me to get prescriptive for a moment. I believe everybody should read Peak, or at least chapters three and eight.

Chapter three is titled "Mental Representations," and Ericsson says they are the key to understanding his theory. As an unfortunate reality of life, sometimes psychologists use words and phrases in ways the majority of people don't. Such is the case with the phrase "mental representations." As a replacement, I find it easier to think of "mental models."

In chapter eight, Ericsson writes "Abilities are created with the help of detailed mental [models]." The quintessential example is the game of chess. All chess "grandmasters" possess a highly detailed mental model of how the game works. The average person understands the way the pieces are allowed to move. Rooks can only move linearly, Bishops can only move diagonally and Queens can do both. But the better a person becomes at the game, the more they are able to string together the moves and see patterns in their mind's eye. Which is essentially the definition of a mental model or mental representation.

Let me give you another example. Last week we talked about one particular mental model called Self-Determination Theory. Do you remember the SDT CAR? It stands for Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness, and it can provide us with a mental model of human psychology. For literally anything I do, I make sure it includes competence, autonomy and relatedness.

As we conclude for the day, please allow me to be prescriptive again. I believe all adults should read Edward Deci's book on his Self-Determination Theory. It is called Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. See ya next time!

What Do People Really Need?

Last week we discussed that most important of French words, anomie. An acceptable synonym for anomie is confusion, and the reality is life in the western world is very confusing.

A core cause of anomie is freedom and a proximal cause is bullshit. In the western world, in the world of freedom, most people are full of shit most of the time.

So, what are we to do? Probably a good starting point is to ask the question, what do people actually need? Fortunately that question has been the subject of research for a very long time, and researchers have made strong headway.

I, for one, am firmly in alignment with the school of Self-Determination Theory, or SDT for short. SDT is the brain child of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan at the University of Rochester in New York.

You can think of it this way. We know life has biological necessities, but does it have psychological necessities? Most people know the biological necessities of life, they are: air, water, and food. But, very few people know life's psychological necessities. Deci and Ryan to the rescue.

According to SDT there are three irreducible, human psychological needs and they happen to form the acronym CAR. Let us consider them in reverse order.

R stands for Relatedness and as a place holder you can think of the word Relationship. More accurately, relatedness is the desire to love and be loved, to care and be cared for.

A stands for Autonomy and as a place holder you can think of the word Freedom. More accurately, autonomy means the desire to be the captain of your own ship.

Let us pause for a second to scream Uh-Oh! Because, if you are paying attention, you can already see a paradox. Remember from last week what a paradox is? A simple definition of paradox is "a true contradiction."

Follow me here. One psychological need is relationship which creates constraints, and another is freedom which removes constraints. So, am I telling you we simultaneously wish to be free and constrained? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. As Stephen Covey would say, it isn't logical it is psychological.

Paradox is something I will return to often because, try as we may, there is simply no way for humans to truly avoid paradox. So, what are we to do? Well, fortunately, I haven't told you the third psychological necessity.

C stands for competence and it doesn't require much explanation. Competence is a belief and a feeling that we are effective in the world. To be candid, I hadn't learn about SDT when I titled this blog "On Effectiveness and Entrepreneurship." I simply listen to the yearnings of my soul, and I have long recognized a deep desire to be effective aka competent.

As mentioned, one of the things we need to become competent in is resolving paradoxes. Notice how I didn't say we need to be experts. I am not suggesting we become philosophy professors who aim to master paradox. Mastery isn't required. Good old competence will do.

We also yearn to be competent at our jobs, and our hobbies and anything else we do. So, while relatedness and autonomy will always be something of a balancing act, there is zero evidence of an upper limit to competence. In other words, the more the merrier.

I hope you choose to stay with me.

😃

Ann-Ah-Mee

Ann-Ah-Mee. That is how you pronounce the French word anomie.

Anomie is a condition which plagues any and all societies built upon the idea of self-determination. And yes, plagues is the right word. Stated differently, anomie is a condition common to western civilization, which is to say any nation built upon the core values of freedom and equality, with the quintessential example being the United States.

For our purposes, an acceptable definition of anomie is "A social condition defined by a breakdown of standards or guidance for individuals to follow." Think about it. It used to be people simply did what their parents did.

From time immemorial, as a general rule, women were homemaker and men worked in the same field as their fathers. And field is the right word because, as we know, a large percent of the population used to be farmers. Alternatively, if your father was a blacksmith you would be a blacksmith. If your father was a shoemaker you were a shoemaker. Furthermore, in the past people generally ascribed to the same moral foundation/religion as their parents. But, today everything has changed.

As we know, today's society is defined by near total mobility. You can live wherever you want, do whatever you want, marry whoever you want, worship whatever you want, etc. We live in a state of near total freedom which, at first glance, sounds pretty great. But, have you ever considered the reality that blessings and curses are often the exact same thing? Total freedom sounds liberating, and, to an extent, it is. However, it shouldn't take too much reflection to realize total freedom is an enormous responsibility.

The reason total freedom is an enormous responsibility is because it leads to something called the paradox of choice. If you aren't familiar with the word paradox, it simply means a true contradiction. Examples would be: never say never, the only constant is change, we fail our way to success, etc. Those statements are contradictions and yet they are true.

At first glance, most of us would say the more choice we have the better. But it simply isn't true. Too much choice overwhelms us and causes harm in the form of confusion and doubt. That is the paradox of choice. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. Obviously it is a contradiction to say that good things can be bad things, but it is also true. It is a paradox. Stated differently, it is easy to say "moderation in all things" but is much more difficult to do. Since I am a dyed in the wool food addict, let me give you two examples using food. 

In 2006, Michael Pollan wrote a fun little book called The Omnivore's Dilemma. If you haven't read the book, let me give you the spoiler. Very simply, the omnivore's dilemma is when you can eat anything what to eat become an increasingly difficult decision. It is pretty well established that humans are omnivores, so we can eat almost anything. Thus, what to eat can be a hard question to answer. Have you ever found yourself tired of having to decide what is for dinner? That is because the doubt and confusion which accompanies the paradox of choice can become exhausting. The phrase most people these days are familiar with is "decision fatigue," and it is a very real thing.

More specifically, let me give you an example using the fruit spread most people call jam or jelly. Researchers arranged to handout samples of jelly at a grocery store and they setup two research conditions. For one period of time they offered twenty-four varieties of jelly, and for an equal but different period of time they offered six varieties of jelly. The question for you is, which do you think led to the sale of more jelly? In fact, when only six options were available 30% of people bought a jar versus only 3% of those exposed to twenty-four options. Six options is more manageable which led to many more people making the decision to buy. Twenty-four options is more overwhelming and led people to shelve the decision.

Freedom of choice is a great thing but it often leads to anomie, confusion and suffering. As I end for today, I will address an obvious question. Am I advocating for an artificial restriction on our freedom of choice? The answer, of course, is yes and no. LOL! Stick around and I will explain!