THE FUTURE IS RUSHING UPON US

We're in for a wild ride. Exponentially accelerating technological, cultural, and socioeconomic evolution means that every year will see more developments than the previous one. More change will happen between now and 2050 than during all of humanity's past. Let's explore the 21st century and ride this historic wave of planetary transition with a confident open mind.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

"Psychological Disorders": Just Maladaptive Qualities of Intense Myers Brigg Personality Types? Part 1

Intro to discussing similarities between widely known psych "disorders" and their descriptive counterparts in the "weaknesses" of Myers Briggs personality types. "Disorders" make as much sense as a poodle being found inadequate by standards of a bulldog



Before we begin, lets do an exaggerated analogy to our world. In a warrior society, a kind person who is a Buddhist (with good serotonin/dopamine production in his brain) would be diagnosed by warrior psychologists to suffer from "cowardice syndrome" and perhaps treated with liquor. Similarly in a kindly harmonious Buddhist society, an aggressive warrior would be diagnosed as having some sort of anti-social disorder and treated with whatever the monk psychiatrists deem proper.

In Myers Briggs personality typology descriptions, one can filter the most adaptive and maladaptive characteristics of each type. Assuming the type we're looking at is an acute one (say an ESTP with each letter being 60 or above), the so called "positives" and "negatives" can be extracted quickly. It then becomes very intuitively logical to think that some MBTI types are more likely to have some psychological "disorders" than others based on their default modes of being. All one has to do is match the descriptions of psych disorders with descriptions of MBTI types when they are not at their best and can't deal (say a stressed out low income and low education INFP in a country where ESTJs dominate culturally and expect everybody to be like them).

The reason why I put psych "disorders" into quote marks is that as hinted above, these maladaptive "conditions" appear to be (for the most part) physiological traits of different breeds of homo sapien when they are driven to the neurotic breaking point by social conditions. Negative psychology still dominates and only classifies conditions when they become the most apparent and severe. Usually that involves a certain breed of human being on a lower end of the socioeconomic scale who is compelled to seek help to continue functioning. Here is an in depth article dealing with the historically severe counterproductive nature of negative psychology versus the emerging field of positive psychology.

In other words,

1) The dominant culture/socioeconomic system of a country is often closely correlated to a few dominant Myers Briggs types (extroverted Ts usually)
2) Breeds that physiologically differ from the herd's ruling breeds are compelled to participate in a socioeconomic system (run by the rulers) that is incompatible with them
3) If people who are incompatible with their system are wealthy and connected, they have more coping mechanisms to deal with stressors and avoid/lessen activation of their MBTI type's "negative" neurotic qualities
4) Those breeds likely to seek help (and have their condition classified and codified as science) have had the positive qualities of their MBTI type suppressed and negative ones exaggerated by the neurosis causing social stressors. They are likely to be from the poorer less educated end of the proletariat class and thus have more on their plates daily while not being able to verbalize whats ailing them as well. Even if they are from the arrogant proletariat faction that fancies itself as "middle class", they are still likely to be misinformed about the fundamental structural nature of their neurosis and defer to the so called experts within the corporation dominated field of negative psychology.
5) All of this is exacerbated when the economic pie is shrinking instead of expanding (this means a reversal of industrialization rather than constant material renewal of an industrialized country)

To be continued...


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