Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
I was taking out the garbage this morning, thinking about the Wakefield Doctrine. I was concerned that I’d be late getting the trash down the long driveway to the curb, because the recycling company had changed the pickup schedule and I was running about 15 minutes behind. As I took off the lid to the plastic garbage can and slid off the top of the recycling container (the first was a rounded-square shaped top and I simply popped it off the plastic ‘garbage can’, letting it fall to the ground; the second was a rectangular lid that I slid off, carefully so that it remained leaning on a slant against the end of the container), when, for no apparent reason I thought about:
- disappointment
- the Wakefield Doctrine
- manifesting1 in the three worldviews
- …if I hurried, I might get these thoughts to turn into a Post
Please allow me elaborate on each of the three bullet points, showing how each thought connected to the other and hopefully, the resultant Wakefield Doctrine insight becomes one that will prove useful to one of you today.
…disappointment: more akin to losing hope in goals, than it is feeling let down by others. This thought was represented (to me) as ‘the falling buttered toast’. Does it land butter side up? does it not… ( ‘…man it always lands butter side down’). For reason unclear, this lead me to think about Christine and zoe. One was posing a hypothetical question about adolescent boys and the other was reminding me that I needed to get more organized with the presentation of the…
…Wakefield Doctrine: Now, in this context, since my mind was already running down the path of buttered toast and how it represents the way a clark invest(s) (ourselfs) in goals, particularly the ‘public goals/amibtions/bids-for-inclusion-in-whatever-group-is-important-at-the-moment.2
What the Wakefield Doctrine would say about goals and disappointments was immediately modified by remembering Christine’s Comment, if there is a better form of presenting the Wakefield Doctrine, it must include specific examples of it’s principles being applied to everyday life situations. And so, I thought, how to understand why the child is seemingly more upset (or, perhaps, upset for a longer period of time than seems appropriate) at a disappointment, which lead to….
…manifesting in the three worldviews: the person3 is disappointed:
- clarks feel/experience disappointment as a judgement of insufficiency (it was not that they lost because they raced against faster runners, they lost because they were not good enough runners)
- scotts feel/experience disappointment as stimulation…. (the 12th girl of the night to tell him to go to hell could only mean two things: the next one was surely going to say yes or now he could enjoy a quiet evening with nothing more than a Coke, a bag of Oreos and a good book)
- rogers feel/experience disappointment as evidence that something is not right… their Opponent (who won this time) clearly trained better, had better equipment, knew the inside scoop on conditions at the track, the loss is actually an enhancement of the roger’s efforts…. the importance and value in training is made all the greater… there is no question about if they can win, it is simply what they must do in order to win.
1) ‘Manifesting’ is the term to indicate that the same experience for each of the three personality types is experienced differently.
2) you definitely get points if, on reading this, you found your eyebrow trying to crawl to the top of your forehead, (the better to try to signal the others in the room….. “hey!! guys!! did you just hear what he wrote?!! we got him now!”)
3) your 16-year-old boy coming home from the track meet; your 17 year old daughter coming into the house after cheer… from the track meet; your husband returning to his family from the staff meeting that was called to make a big announcement; your wife standing at the mailbox after opening the long anticipated envelope
About clarkscottroger
Here’s one from the real life of a roger with a strong secondary clark: She comes home with a report card in 8th grade, the first one to contain a “B”. In an effort to comfort her, her parents tell her that the important thing is that she has done her best. Instead of being comforted, she sees the report card as proof that if only she had worked harder/longer/better, she would have gotten the “A.” (In retrospect, my parents were right that my life was not ruined by a “B.” Though my adolescent self just knew I had messed up my chances of obtaining my goals, I still somehow managed to make it to college! ;-) )
Kristi
That’s a great example of the rogerian perspective. I think one of the things I was trying to convey, (about how ‘disappointment’ is manifested differently in the three worldviews) is that, for ‘each of us’ the things we do, the thing in our lives is different on a level that is often under-estimated. This gets back to the original application to Christine’s Comment question of last week…. (in part) ‘he makes the effort to break the habit, but is focused on only the short-term problems (presumably aspects of the ‘main bad habit’)… the Doctrine would have her see the situation (causing the habit to be created) as a clark would experience it. Otherwise she would not be seeing the ‘problem’ as it exists for the person that is being helped.
Your example clearly shows us that. For a roger, the important thing is ‘the Right/Proper Way’ to attain good grades, not getting A’s is a reflection of your practicing the ‘Right Way’, it is not a direct reflection on your value as a human being (and a roger)…. lol are we correct that the B was as much a stimulation of this drive to study as much as a degradation of the value (of this ‘Right Value’).
Absolutely. My priority was studying, yet I recognized on some level that I really needed to do more with my time than just study.
And in reverse a clark with an aggressive roger backing it up….when my grades weren’t an issue I knew it cuz I wasn’t good enough…..Thank god we going ow up
exactly! (thank you for reinforcing the understanding that a secondary aspect (in your case, the rogerian) modifies or shades a perception (how a thing manifests) it does not create a thing (nor determine how a thing might be manifest).
(was that Thank god we grow up?…. can change it, just not sure of what you intended to say (before the autocorrect decided for itself))
Yup…stupid auto correct!
Disappointment and sometimes the need to FEEL that I can get a new set of everyone, if necessary. That helps.
…and that (the ‘good’ feeling that another set of everyone is an option for us clarks) highlights how…. personal the experience of disappointment is for our people.
I think that this is one of the clearest definitions of Clarks, Scotts, and Rogers for newbies to the Doc ever. Also? It so made me feel like more of a Clark than ever. Because when I don’t win, it’s because I am not good enough and do not deserve to.
yeah… the best secret part of this is, when I see a comment like your’s (and the others)…. the effect (of not being good enough)….somehow gets a little less inevitable/irrefutable
thanks