the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )

Hey there! Did Knackles¹ overlook you Saturday night?

But that’s not important now, what is important is that I think we have edged past the event horizon of the super-massive black holes of all Holidays. I am talking about Christmas, of course. Everyone understands that holidays are ‘ occasions meant to reinforce the social fabric’, serving to act as a binding force on the individual members of (a given) society. And since no holiday is without a cultural-historical reference point, it is very instructive to look at the basis of the holiday against the qualities of it’s ‘targeted demographic’.  In other words, “why do we use Pilgrims to attract the rogers” (Thanksgiving) or  “what the hell is it about babies and old men that will draw the clarks from their hiding places“? (New Years) and given that today is Christmas Day, ” a holiday in which the signifying character is a reclusive, over-weight, bearded man who spies on children, rewards behavior and insists on being permitted a degree of physical intimacy with total strangers that would have them doing ’30 to Life’ if they acted this way any other time of year… now which of the three personality types would respond to that? lol
(See how everything makes so much more sense when you use the viewpoint, the perspective made available by the Wakefield Doctrine?)

The question we ask is,  what does a particular holiday allow, condone, encourage in terms of individual behavior, targeted, as it is, towards one of the three personality types? As with much else we do with the Wakefield Doctrine, the goal is to observe behavior and (from our observations) infer what the person is experiencing. The holidays offer an opportunity to see the world as the other personality types do, in other words, by inference. We believe, here at the Doctrine, that behavior and personality is the result of responding to the world in a manner that is appropriate, given the nature of the world (being experienced). The trick being, of course, to keep in mind that the other person is, in all probability, experiencing a reality that is different from the one that you are experiencing. One of three characteristic realties, the world of a clark, the reality of a scott and the worldview of the roger…all three quite distinct but with enough in common that we can all identify with each to some extent.³ This concept is key because the Wakefield Doctrine focuses on the reality that a person is responding to rather than simply trying to create a list of traits and behaviors and other artifacts of the personality. When you understand the reality that a scott exists in, the behavior that you see exhibited (by a scott) makes sense, and as an added bonus you will be able to effectively predict the behavior of the scott.

For the newer Readers: the initial behavioral metaphor of the scottian personality type is that of predator. This means that your girlfriend or your husband or the woman who has worked the checkout lane next to you all these years? if they are a scott and you want to know what they will do next, simply think to yourself:  what would a wolf (or a lion or Wile E Coyote, for that matter)  do?
Really.
And the really messed up part (and the scary, inspired quality of the Wakefield Doctrine) is that their behavior will be less puzzling if you view it in that context. (the predator thing).  Granted there is much, much more to the Wakefield Doctrine in terms of  how we can apply it’s insights into human behavior, but bottom line?  scotts = predator,  rogers = herd animals  clarks = outsider, aka blue monkey²

So read through some of the Pages that are listed at the top of the landing page of the blog. You will find pages that give overviews of the three personality types and you will find pages that have photos of examples of the three personality types, real people (well, celebrities at any rate), and you will even find photos of the Wakefield Doctrine hat. Ask the right question and you too could be stylin in a Wakefield Doctrine hat (for your damn head).

1) you so need to read this short, short story by Curt Clark (Donald E Westlake), click here

2) there was a famous experiment in psychology or sock

3) do not forget that the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that while we all are predominately one of the three personality types, clarks or scotts or rogers, we never lose the potential of the other two. These are referred to as the secondary and tertiary aspects, an important concept, but for the more advanced students of the Doctrine.