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

In the manner of an idealized Summer School session, today we begin a series of Posts¹ that is intended to teach the theory and practice of the Wakefield Doctrine to those who, although already familiar with it’s underlying principles,  might benefit from a more casual approach to the subject.  As such, these Posts while appearing to be somewhat extemporaneous, are meant more as ‘talking points’ as opposed to a straight out lecture on the Doctrine. And, since we appear determined to try the ‘Summer School’ theme, at least one of our Posts will be (the mythical) class outdoors.²

Lets get started.

(oh! wait!  one more thing. this will be a two part Post. This is the morning section and there will be an afternoon session. So read, learn, consider and have your questions ready for the mid afternoon Q&A)

the Wakefield Doctrine is a personality theory with a difference. Sure, we have three personality types (hell, every personality theory has three personality types) and we also maintain there is a degree of ‘commonality’ among the three personality types. Still nothing radical. If you want to apply and use (to your benefit) one of the many popular personality-type systems, the first step is usually a questionnaire or a survey in which you are asked to describe yourself, your likes and dislikes, interests and phobias, hopes and dreams, ideals and goals.

We don’t.

We don’t need to ask you about what you know about yourself. We do need to know how you would describe the world around you. See, the Wakefield Doctrine is not about how you relate to the world. the Wakefield Doctrine is about ‘how you relate yourself to the world around you’.  If you find this Doctrine interesting and want to use it to better understand yourself and the people in  your life, your first task in not to ask everyone what they think about themselves! No. No it is not! The first thing to do is read about the Doctrine, then read about the three personality types: clarks, scotts and rogers.  You need to do this because the first step to using the Wakefield Doctrine to better understand yourself and the people in your life is to infer their worldview.  See, we don’t care about questionnaires and favorite likes and secret dislikes! We do care about whether they are relating themselves to the world around them as would (an) Outsider (clark) or a Predator (scott) or as would a Herd Member (roger). Correctly infer which of the three worldviews the person is experiencing and you are on your way to not only know why they do the things that they do, but how they are likely to react to a situation that has not even occurred.

Afternoon Session: Considerer  she say, ‘yeah, but do the three types have different sense of humor, or wot?”

************* Lunch Break is so Over!! Back to your seats!! *************

OK  everyone back to your desks… except our Mz. Considerer, you may make yourself comfortable anywhere, seeing how you appear to be walking around 6 inches off the ground! lol
Congratulations are in order for Ms. Rogers, she has seen her hard work and focused efforts become a reality with an Offer of Employment. We will ask her for the details, but for now a round of applause is in order.

Jak? we see you sitting back there… you had a question? more of a ‘concern’?  Certainly we would like you to share it with the class.

I think you are right about it being a great self-improvement tool. If the offer is open-ended (is that the term?) meaning available once I get a better grasp, I’d be interested. In the meantime, I feel like I would be prone to “mucking” things up.

I’ve been known to break the internet

Thank you for that…  I believe my response in my Reply was words to the effect:

I am also fond of saying to people learning about the Doctrine, ‘hey! look try it out.. you not only can’t break it, but you can’t get it wrong’ (you know that last is totally asterixeded lol)

The reason I say this and why I would encourage you to be comfortable with experimentation is twofold: a) no one is judging anyone’s rate of learning to use this thing, I can say that with assurance… and 2) we have a saying, ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is for you and not for them’

Lets put it this way:  try out the three worldviews,  see which one seems to to be the better fit, the most resonant with the world as you see it. . If you ‘make a mistake’ picking the wrong one as your predominant worldview… well, it won’t change what your worldview is, you’ll just notice that (the descriptions don’t feel right).  And you try and switch things around, eventually you will arrive at the correct worldview. The thing about this personality theory is that, provided you have an understanding of the basic principles, you will learn something useful about yourself everytime you try to use it. Even if you don’t do it right! you still will learn something. The reason is simple. The Wakefield Doctrine is not an Answer. The Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective.

(ok, for anyone sneaking into class without the prerequisites… yeah, clarks, we know you’re back there!  here’s the deal: we’re all born with the potential to experience the world as clarks, scotts and rogers. At a very early age we find one of the three is our predominant worldview…where we live. We never lose the capacity to see the world as do ‘the other two’. So if you feel you are a roger, but could swear you acted like a scott one time there, you’re a roger with a secondary scottian aspect. That’s all you get! You want to keep up, then you better hope that one of the DownSprings will let you cheat off their papers…yeah there will be a Test. You did get the Summer School metaphor we’re doing here, didn’t you?)

1) by series, we mean once, maybe twice a week you’ll see a Summer School… for extra help, ask one of the DownSprings: Denise, Cyndi, Considerer, Molly,  Steve or Jennifer

2) as in, ‘hey everyone, it’s such a beautiful day, lets go outside and have class outdoors!  This one class will be a Video conference call through google+ hangouts  check your syllabus for date and time.