Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Sorry for leaving an undeniably out of date Post up there, I mean, it frickin says ‘Saturday’ in the damn Title. So while I rack my damn brain for some fresh Content, here is a reprint Post, which is actually surprisingly germane to where my thinking is on the Doctrine. Don’t want to get into it too much but I will say this: a) the Wakefield Doctrine stands to become a very cool tool for self-development (for those so inclined) and 2) those rogers have been relaxing long enough in the wings…time to get this show on.
But for now, please enjoy:
Welcome*
…we know now ( if you read yesterday’s Post, you know now ) the relationship between rogers and scotts is a very… intimate pairing. While it is easy to mistake the roger’s as ‘victim’ to the scott’s predation, we know that this is totally not the case. ( New Readers! Go and listen to DownSpring Phyllis in Episode 13 of Video Friday), rather it is obvious that there is very much a symbiotic relationship binding1 your rogers and scotts. The Wakefield Doctrine is gender neutral, however it is often where gender is the central feature, that we can see the relationship between these two personality types in highest contrast. We all know a couple** where the guy is a roger and the girl is a scott. He is always pretty and she is always sexy. He is socially adept and she is socially aggressive. It is when these two are observed tant qu’ensemble, do we see the interplay of each personality type. With a roger/scott couple, it is the scott who is quick with the jokes about (the roger), ” oh yeah, you should have seen roger on our honeymoon! he was so nervous” (this kind of comment actually serves two purposes: a) make fun of the roger for the amusement of the surrounding group and b) (serve) as bait to entice any rogers listening to the story). The roger, in this situation, laughs comfortably and watches the reaction of the female members of their ‘audience’. Think: Bill and Hillary Clinton or (for you older Readers), Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton …hell, lets throw in Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston! In any event, you will find ‘this couple’ in most social gatherings where attendance of ‘couples’ is appropriate. It needs to be said that this type of relationship ( roger/scott) is by no means exclusive to ‘couples’ in the romantic sense; anywhere there are people interacting, you will find the dynamic described here. And, as Phyllis points out in her Video interview, the roger is not truly the passive partner. (From the rogerian perspective), the seemingly passive one is ‘leading from behind’ and reining in the scott, particularly in the public/social situations that we are using to illustrate the two personality types.
While the roger-scott relationship is relatively easy ( if not kind of…racy… dynamic… “ewww, I can’t believe she said that“…) to understand, what of the roger-clark relationship?
Before we continue with our discussion, a quick note! You know how we have been accused of… making up words, (neologisms, to get rogerian on it) for our own enjoyment? ( No? well we do! ) Real made up words, not rogerian expressions, anyway with Molly’s help we went and sent in a word to the Urban Dictionary just last evening. While not up to the sublime, subtly-nuanced standards found with most of the entries there, we are beginning to spread more and more into the ‘real world’. Thanks Molly!
The roger-clark relationship is much more stable, less wildly dynamic than is the roger-scott relationship. As the ‘active’ partner in a roger-scott relationship is usually the scott, the roger plays the more active role in the roger-clark couple. This is attributable more to the patience of the clark than (to) the aggressiveness of the roger. Lets just say that in the ‘natural’ relationship between rogers and clarks…
rogers are to clarks as:
- a diploma is to an education
- (the) record to the needle
- the ocean to the tide
- Thanksgiving is to Christmas
(As with yesterday’s Post, here is where we will relate an anecdote to serve as an illustration of some part of this Post. So I was talking to the Progenitor roger just the other day, the conversation was great fun, ranging an incredible variety of topics. This is as much evidence of the rogerian skill at story-telling, as it is proof of a clarks ability to adapt to nearly any situation. In any event, roger and I were talking and the topic came around to either: a)dinner, b)body weight or c) both a & b, at which point, roger made the statement, ” of course, you would be eating tuna casserole…” Now this statement should not mean anything to you (the Reader) however, what makes it so atypical of rogers is that at one time in the past (say …20 years ago) I was on a tuna casserole diet. Great meal, tuna…noodles…good hot or cold…perfect food! Being a clark, I could (and did) eat tuna casserole for every meal. The point of this story is that roger mentioned this…menu choice, as if it were (still) true. What is remarkable about the sentence that he made was not that it was no longer true, rather that he made the statement with such certainty and conviction that, for a second, I could almost smell tuna casserole. rogers do that, they maintain a (certain) worldview that they have decided is accurate, the passage of time (in this case, 20 years) has zero effect on how true the roger will hold their statement to be… This capability is at heart of the rogerian need to: preserve, to maintain tradition, to support their view of the world as lasting and consistent. This is perhaps the reason that rogers are such effective story-tellers…they maybe be relating a tale, one that they totally make up, but when they tell it, it is ‘true’. The listener feels this (rogerian) conviction that the story is true, it must be simply because (the roger) remembers it so…)
- musical technique is to creativity
- machine operator is to a Teacher
Well that wraps up Chapter II. Be sure to stay for the Video ( isn’t George just so….dreamy??! )
1) lol…ask a scott
* the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers
** we mean it about gender neutral…the term ‘couple’ is not limited to simple heterosexual pairs… can include any relationship, sexual and/or friendship-based
