Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
We claim the Wakefield Doctrine is a ‘perfect’ system for self-improvement and understanding the behavior of the people in our lives for 2 very simple reasons:
- the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated on the idea that we all live in one of three characteristic worldviews (aka personal realities)
- for something to have significance, it must exist within your worldview or it simply will not register
- (because of this) anything we say here, in this blog or from the perspective of the Wakefield Doctrine will simply be noise if the first two conditions do not apply.
There you go.
So rather than waste a lot of time trying to sell you on why you should believe any of this, which, if you don’t know by this point why it is (a waste of time) then just keep reading…a little more, thats it! …you are getting confused…disinterested…bored//////
OK we’ve gotten rid of the distractions. Lets give you something useful on this Monday morning.
Below is a Comment/Reply from yesterday’s Post. The Post itself is not critical to getting something from the exchange, being a clark is. The thing we say about the Wakefield Doctrine being a perfect system for helping us understand ourselves and the people in our lives? Totally serious about that. But, while my first instinct is to put the example (of the Comment) up here in your face, lets leave it down at the bottom of the Post. It’s kinda inflammatory, insightful, heart-felt and totally useful to anyone capable of understanding it. …and that’s precisely why it’s stuck down there at the bottom of the page.
There have been two ‘drives’ pushing me as I write these Posts over the last few years: a) the need to share the benefits of the Wakefield Doctrine with as many people as possible and 2) the fear that I lack the rhetorical skills necessary to present the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine effectively.
I have, of late, come around to a different view. Well, better make that one (of the two). I still want to have the Wakefield Doctrine become a household term, but will settle for total strangers being overheard in an airport terminal saying, ‘jeez what a roger‘ or ‘stop being such a clark, you don’t need to and you have the choice’
The second drive: to explain the Wakefield Doctrine in terms that, as Malcolm once said, ‘everyone can easily understand’. For the most part, I’ve written these Posts simply because it’s been fun. At other times (especially in the first couple of years) I’ve found trying to write Posts from the scottian perspective or the rogerian frame of reference. And while these efforts increased my own understanding of the Doctrine, there has been little change in the demographic of the readership. Eventually I gave up trying to: sell to the readers/convince people to come and read the Doctrine/pine for the ‘other two worldviews’ in my Reader Cross section.
Only when I stopped trying did I see the changes, the improvements. That and the good fortune to end up ‘in the same room’ with a number of very talented clarks… (and an exceptional roger) (and….and! a couple of scotts)
So how do we get away with saying this is a perfect system? Very simply. If the perspective that is being offered (insights, answers, suggestions for change) is something that you, the Reader, can identify with it…then it is valuable. If you can’t identify with what is being said, then it’s harmless information or, at worse, nonsense. You won’t be exposed to bad advice here at the Wakefield Doctrine simply because we are not requiring anyone to do as we say…. the Wakefield Doctrine is one (more) perspective on life. A very cool and amusing and scary-sometimes-in-it’s-accuracy-in-prediction, but still…just another of a thousand ways to look at the behavior of the people in our lives.
Seeing how the only people who have not already scrolled down to my little Comment reprint are the rogers who for god knows what reason are still hanging around, here it is:
Our friend Kristi wrote a Comment last night. She was referring to the Posts that were written for the TToT, which, if you are new here is a bloghop of no small distinction. To learn more and to read the Post that she is referencing (sort of ) follow this link or this link. I will reprint her Comment (and) my Reply here:
(Kristi) I know that you’re going to get this as a Clark but part of me is so itchy about TToT. I adore it love it adore it but also sometimes feel like a braggy asshole about what I’m thankful for like “YAY look at me!” Which (as you know) is always tempting but also SO FUCKING UNcomfortable at times. Like my post today? I didn’t like that person. And it was me. And I wonder should I change it or just be thankful for what I’m thankful for! UGH!!
(clark)…I know what you mean, (fortunately) there are some phrases that reference this state (unfortunately, as you might infer from the previous) this is a descriptive understanding, not an informative/explantive understanding.
one phrase I use (to describe what I think you are referring to) is that after I ‘exert myself among other people (non-clarks especially) ‘my head swells up and my face falls’… but there is something that happens, a kind of backlash that is either explicit, ‘hey, you’re getting pretty big for your britches, aren’t you?’ or more insidiously ‘mental nausea’ which is just feeling bad as an aftermath from going out of your comfort zone .
Frankly I’m not sure where I come down on what the hell this is coming from…it’s really unpleasant and lol all I want is time to pass…so it will fade away…nothing direct that implies I need to do something …just it needs to ‘be another time‘
that’s a clue, I think… one possibility is that it is simply our own (conscious or un-conscious/deliberate or non-deliberate) efforts to stay clarks… a way we have of keeping us in our place. It really sucks and is nearly the worst we, as clarks can feel… the worse is when we really, really get exuberant and then get a full ‘hey you know how you think you’re finally learning? how you’re pretty sure that you have overcome being such a creep? well, you haven’t…they’re laughing, just not when you’re around’
thats the worst. (but there is a tiny, fucked up, pretty damn clarklike bright side to this… we (clarks) all know what this is like…so, for me, the next time I find myself there… the voice that tells me why I deserve it won’t be so totally airtight-correct)… not much help…doesn’t get me out of that place…but it is a new thing and it changes what that experience is about.
So let us know what you think… no, this is the damn Doctrine! we already know what you think! why doncha go ahead and tell us what we think! make it interesting… lol
ya knw?
About clarkscottroger
Dammit Im just not that good at it that I can tell you what you think…as a matter of fact I tell all my clients to never assume that I know what they mean or are thinking … “treat me like a doorknob from the neck up…if you need me to turn a certain way you better be ready to twist me”… Turns out that if I test my own reality I probably CAN tell you what you think… I may be catching that funky predilection thing.
I read Kristi’s post last night and again if she were to test reality and ask herself if someone else wrote her post– eg you … would she think you were a braggy asshole for writing what she wrote? Correct answer: Of course not. Clarks man, we are so effing insecure! Sadly I was on my android and couldn’t comment last night but she wrote a great post!
Funny thing… when I first read Kristi’s Comment…my initial reaction was ‘man!…her too!’ that I knew how she felt goes without saying, …to use another more commonly used (and abused)… I could identify with her.
I trust that the irony is not lost when I talk about feeling the emotion of another. But I will say, a scott or a roger, would after reading this comment could be expected to ‘understand’ but I would say…their reaction being in her situation would not be any where near the same.
I am writing while in a seminar…so I will try to send this and follow up shortly
(I think I will take issue with the term, ‘insecure’… but since I’m paying for the class I should pay more attention. Like I’m going to have a probel with the test at the end of the class…yeah, right)
Feel free to take issue… no insult intended I’m sure you know…The term itself comes from my own emotional standing this past week or so…
NOW PAY ATTENTION! lol!
Lol
God bless technology…the lecturer is ‘still’ lecturing!
Not really taking issue with your use of the word insecure…wait a minute I am! damn!
(If the secure young lady at the lectern would turn it down a little, I would make an issue about Kristi and her response…that she did not falter in her assessment of the reception that her post would receive…rather we would say that she experienced the feelings (she describes) …as a whole… (meaning that it was what she came to know…not what she decided to believe)…in a sense …if anything about the Doctrine is true then everything is/can be true
I will come back after the break… and try to introduce the reverse of ‘the Doctrine is for you, not for them’…. very simply this: through my hearing and knowing of Kristi’s experience, more to the point, my identifying with her experience can result in a positive change in my experience when I encounter the situation myself…all this predicated on my ‘use’ ofmthis here Doctrine here
Christ its 8 o’clock and you’re not even at the break yet?
Skip
back at home… 3 hour lecture on the new Flood Insurance standards… fascinating.
…kinda lost the thread. but the thing that strikes me about Doctrines and clarks is that it (the Doctrine) does not change our worldview of Outsiders… but there is benefit (not a shocker) that comes from knowing that it is not us, it’s our worldview that can be held accountable.
I try to come back as often as possible to the very key concept, that, for the Doctrine to be useful, one needs to be willing to allow (for purposes of perspective) that clarks are not people who have for one reason or another decided to act this way or that anymore than a roger is the person who has an affinity for order and accountability (at a distance, to be sure, but accountability lol), rather these three ‘personality types’ are simply a label for a get of coping strategies that reflect the context that the person finds themselves in, at the start of their development. We say it more directly when we say, if I had been ‘dropped into’ the worldview of a roger when I was young, I would be tamping my pipe and reflecting on the difficulty finding a good Chambertin-Clos de Bèze at this time of year and asking you if I have told you how much my Readers admire me, recently. So human, different worldview…different coping strategies…a whole different personality type.
But Kristi with that insanely under-self-appreciated directness and courage offers us a view not into how she thinks she did with the Post she wrote, rather she shares the experience ( of most clarks) that when we begin to stray too far from the reservation, when we begin to forget our place (as Outsider) we are brought back to knowing that we are here and the world is out there and we would be wise to not believe in being like them.
I buy what youre saying completely…(here’s the BUT) …. I believe what you refer to here…
“…she shares the experience ( of most clarks) that when we begin to stray too far from the reservation, when we begin to forget our place (as Outsider) we are brought back to knowing that we are here and the world is out there and we would be wise to not believe in being like them.”
…is more of an emotional evolution… HOOPLA for Clarks evolving into those who can be secure in knowing they are wise not to be like the herd…however I think a good part of that comes from the initial insecurity of living as an outsider in earlier life…. (thus an evolutionary trait in some/ not all.)
oh poop…forgot another thing… my new roger is settling in to his new environment a bit too well… coveting my office…I loan my office out readily without reservation, but he made it very clear by saying ” I want that office… when are you leaving?” and has left telltale signs of his usage… I may have a rogerian twist and be a clark at heart… but never piss off my scott.
zoe
(please, please take this in the true spirit we intend…which may take a few paragraphs to justify but) wow! that’s great!! take notes! for god’s sake take notes. you are now in a situation(?) workplace milieu(?) whatever… that it totally where the Wakefield Doctrine will, at some point in time be in a position to help people deal with conflict in the workplace… I may need to do a Post on this very topic… I will… this Wednesday (have a bloghop up today).
In all seriousness, if there is a place for the utilization of the Doctrine for a practical benefit, it is in the workplace.
Now…for you to take notes… remember one predominant worldview (but) it is the secondary (and tertiary) aspects that allow us to go from the broad and general description of a personality type (a Cosmo magazine ‘what color is your spirit lover?’ chart) to a genuinely useful understanding of not only our first inclinations when confronted by another with goals and ambitions that are at odds with our own interests, but also an insight into how we respond when under duress (extreme and otherwise).
Will come back and offer the always fun, Doctrine predictions!
zoe
(cont’d)… in the interests of value-adding your experience to our Readers own workplace experiences: we have you down as predominant clark with a significant secondary rogerian and a tertiary scottian aspect.
zoe
I like the word ‘evolution’ in the context of (using) the Wakefield Doctrine to self-improve ourselves, as it does not have a connotation of flawed personality/coping skills ( hey, the dinosaurs were like way down on the evolutionary tree but they did pretty good for themselves) and does allow that the path to ‘improvement’ is to be found within the individual despite and/or no matter how far from ideal they might be functioning at any given time.
I suspect that my challenge in presenting the Doctrine as a tool for self-improvement lies in how well I can get people to understand the value of (using) the idea of personal reality. Fortunately, the primary ‘market’ for this thing of ours is clarks…and if anyone can deal with novel concepts it’s clarks. I’m making a lot of the necessity to ‘accept’ the reality of personal reality, not just because the Wakefield Doctrine is built on it, but because it offers a ‘work-around’ for clarks… we are trapped in our search for ‘the knowledge of being a real person’ in that if there is always another possibility, how can we ever know we have the right answer? (put another way, ‘clarks can believe in anything, but cannot believe in anything’). The insidiousness of the whole worldview conceptualization is that, if you accept the premise, you are stuck with the ‘permanence’ of the conditions.
…the thing is, we are forced to be clarks in order to succeed in adding to what we are, at the risk of no longer being clarks and therefore leaving the job unfinished.
Your first paragraph is really hitting home in that my practice ( you know Im a shrink right?) is based on no personality flaws or flawed coping mechanisms– just that those that may have worked at one time are often no longer effective when you come to my office. That being said they (these mechanisms of previous use) are now making you uncomfortable enough to require a change or as I see it a personal evolution. Off to my next appointment!
Hmm…that’s interesting. I actually haven’t looked at the Ttot as bragging per se, more like an extension of my own spiritual journey, actually. I use it as a tool to be “grateful” because I’ve heard that when you’re grateful for what you have, then comes the day when you have MORE to be thankful for. I want even more to be thankful for. :)
oh yeah….meant to add… that flood thing sounds riveting. ahem.
Read the post once. While tired. Scanned the comments. And yet…..I have to say….the fucking Doctrine! It has provided me with much insight into rogers. In a nutshell: they will always be the ones to say no. They will do nothing to disturb the boundaries, the lines that frame their world.
clarks need to take notice of this. The sooner the better. I leave it in your hands, Clark, to explain to new readership the why. Maybe you need to write the answer in the form of a post.