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

The phrase, ‘necessarily imprecise‘ popped into my mind, as I began to nod-off during a commercial in the middle of ‘the Family Guy’.

I’ve learned, over the relatively short time writing the Wakefield Doctrine blog, that sometimes a cryptic phrase is all you get. The demand for new content in the world of blog writing is insatiable. Where an idea for a Post comes from,  why one thought may take hold in your imagination doesn’t really matter as long as the result of the effort is ‘new content’.  There are two category of blogs, at least there are to a certain class of writer and these are personal blogs and niche blogs ( thanks to Julie DeNeen¹ for such an economical and concise classification of the literary zoo that is the blogosphere. The personal blogs are those written about an individual’s observations of everyday life, often the focus is on family life, but can be about having and/or finding a job, or may be a look at everyday life. Humor and insight are the hallmarks of this type of writing. The other category is what (Julie) refers to as the niche blog. These are topic specific and have subject that remains the center of the writer’s attention as long as the blog is being written. The advantage to writing a personal blog is that there is no limit to ideas, the challenge is to find something different to say about (a subject) that is familiar to every Reader. The opposite is true of the niche blogs. The advantage is that the idea, the subject of the blog is clearly defined, the challenge lies in finding ways to, once the explanation is presented, to keep the Reader engaged.
And so our Post today.

The Wakefield Doctrine is a personality theory having, at it’s core, three personality types: clark, scotts and rogers. These types represent the three worldviews that describe how a person relates themselves to the world around them. The difference between the worldview of the Outsider (clark), the Predator (scott) and the Herd Member (roger) is often referred to as ‘how one type will manifest their actions (or) re-actions to the events of life.
There is a saying at the Doctrine: ‘everyone does everything at one time or another, it’s just a question of how that act manifests in the worldview of the individual’.
In the simplest of terms this view can be expressed as:

• clarks think,
• scotts act and
• rogers feel.

Put another way, we would say to you that: clarks live in the reality of the rational/intellectual, a scott’s world is comprised of acts and action and rogers experience the world as emotion. These descriptions are, in the purest sense of the word a shorthand, a way of pointing the attention when we consider the experience(s) of the three personality types.  Now we all know that,  rogers don’t walk around all day crying (at least not all the time), and scotts do not run and shout (at things) and hug and hit (people), ( it just seems that way) and clarks they really don’t think all the time (well… alright, they kinda do).
The point of having this shorthand is to serve as a ‘marker’, a reminder that the person is seeing the world in a way that is different from the way that we might be experiencing it. And the reason we need a ‘marker’ is that the core premise of the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that the three personality types are, in fact, experiencing a (different but ‘knowable’) reality. You know that of the Outsider, the Predator and Herd Member. Well the thing of it is, due to the nature of their respective worldviews, each of the three types express, or as we say, ‘manifest’ themselves in distinctly different ways.

And that is what the phrase in the Title ( necessarily imprecise’) means, that when I interact with a roger and they seem to be upset about something (or happy about something or snidely critical about something) that does not necessarily mean that is how they feel about whatever it is we are discussing! No, it simply means that because I am a clark, and therefore a person who manifests reality in rational/intellectual terms, that is how I interpret what their experience is. And, in the case of a scott, who when asked about how their day at work went, suddenly gets animated and makes a joke that does not seem to relate to anything and then gets overly affectionate. Laughing is the best that a roger can do, given the gap between how a roger experiences the world and how the world is manifested to a scott.

Clear?  Do not worry. As the subtitle implies, this topic is advanced Doctrine and in no way is necessary to enjoy the insights and understanding that is yours when you understand the basic theory of clarks, scotts and rogers. That we all have the capability to experience the world as any of the three types and by doing so we will know more about the other person than they know about themselves!

Here at the Doctrine we like give shoutouts on Fridays. So among the excellent writers of personal blogs go read:  Janine, Melanie, Stacy, Amy, Emily, Julie, Richard Rumple, Michelle, Cari, Kate and Terrye   and in them horrifyingly difficult-to-write niche blogs you gots to go read  Cyndi, Steve, Ronin