Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Good weekend. Got Chapter 4 of Blogdominion finished and published. Cynthia called in on Saturday Night. Wrote a TToT Post and washed the kitchen floor. Not bad as weekends go.
What might this have to do with the Wakefield Doctrine? To be more direct, ‘what does the above ‘list’ of weekend activities have to do with your reading, understanding, applying and enjoying the benefits of our little personality theory?’ Everything and nothing.
But, as Fritz Perls would tell us, lets start with a demand!*
…. ok! you’re back!
(running out of time!) so, the thing about not being cynical and such? …my reference to the poster that sold so many copies and the poster that would not sell that many copies, provides an illustration of what we mean by ‘personal reality,’ here at the Doctrine. We all, everyone of us, go through the day in a reality that is, to a certain degree, personal.
Example: you could have told the owner of the “…it’s beautiful” poster about the part of the quote that was left out, and it most likely would not have changed her feeling towards having the poster on her dorm room wall, (but doing so would, most likely, have changed your odds… unless you were a scott, in which case, if you were still there 2 minutes after your revelation (about the poster) your chances would, like, totally improved… but, if you were a scott, none of this would be going through your mind at the time, because…well, because you’re a scott and as the Wakefield Doctrine tells us, ‘scotts act‘ (and) ‘clarks think… rogers feel‘
Where the hell was I? personal reality! so these three worldviews that are at the center of the Wakefield Doctrine? personal realities, each and every one of them. and…real.
You want to know one of the cool differences between the Wakefield Doctrine and all those popular mainstream personality type systems? (yeah, besides the mountains of empirical data, documentation and clear writing style… thanks for reminding us, roger)… it’s this: imagine that you grew up in a world in which you were, somehow, an alien, an oddity…. they love you and care for you as part of the family, they even ignore the fact that you’re so different and pretend that you’re part of the family and not an Outsider. Well, you’re just learning to deal with the world (you’re 2 or 3 or 5 years old) and, no different from your brothers and sisters and classmates at the pre-early-child-daycare, you’re developing ways to get through your day, learning to deal with the world.
….you live in a world in which you’re the Outsider. Your strategies and style of interaction, i.e. your personality type is geared towards that kind of world, that reality.
You grow up to be a clark, (i.e. you mumble because you don’t want to be noticed, but you will not tolerate being ignored… you stay on the fringes of any group, but manage to be closest to whoever is the alpha, in case you need power… and you learn things, everything and anything, because you believe, (beyond doubt), that the reason the people in your life are accepting of each other is that they know something that you do not know)
…the same for the child finding herself in the world of Predator and Prey and the child who wakes up a Herd Member.
they’re all developing the perfectly appropriate social skills to get through life ‘in the world as they are experiencing it’ clark(Outsider), scott(Predator) and roger(Herd Member)
… that should get us started for the upcoming week!
*ha ha… old grad school joke. Well, not really a ‘grad school joke,’ as much as it’s a joke playing off a quote attributed to our favorite scottian pioneer in the field of modern psychology, Fritz Perls **
** Fritz is also responsible for one of the most enduringly hopeful sayings ever to grace a college coed’s dorm room wall… right next to the ‘hang in there, baby’ poster and just above the desk with the straw-wrapped bottles of rose (one with a candle stuck in the top, an offering to the god of sophomore romance) and one un-opened (in case the gods deign to answer aforementioned offering) and 2 macramé belts, which were the second things the current occupant purchased upon moving into college life as a Freshman…. anyway! the quote that was printed on the poster:
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
and you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful
the actual, complete, quote:
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
and you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
…and no! before you think it, I am not being curmudgeonly and cynical! (well, not too much), I use this ‘marketing-to-hopeful-kids correctness’ as an illustration of one of the really critical aspects of the Wakefield Doctrine. But, to hear the rest of my argument, lets go back to the beginning of today’s Post, ok?
….no, not here! here!
About clarkscottroger
You have no idea how tempted I was to write FRITZ, instead of FRIST… sigh….
lol
Clark as leader. This is a world I’m new to navigating in terms of managing a boatload of people. I once managed a marina with five teenage boys and managed customers – as the assistant manager. The REAL manager worked on all the boats.
Fast forward fourteen years (holy crap has it been that long?). I go from being a teacher and working a school’s website to…managing 34 people. Some are paid, most are volunteers. Then there’s dealing with parents. The students themselves. The school district.
What have I gotten myself into? Sure. I’m having fun. But…I have fun until, like today, had to put a roger in her place. She was liking the snarky comments a little too much.
That’s when this is hard. I’m fine but here’s the million dollar question: does the roger remember that moment forever like a clark does? Does having the “watch yourself” (but I said it in a nice way) speech with a roger warrant that they won’t try to “walk on you” again?
Eh…I called her out on it. I probably felt much worse than she did. Still. That part of being a leader is not my idea of a cup of chamomile. :P
Life. So. Interesting.
not the moment (which to a clark is the actual, factual, what was said, who did what, who said what)… the feeling. (clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel)
the really tricky part is to ‘translate’ from the rational to the emotional… (you know how scotts are? they thrive on, they live for attention… good attention is good, but bad/negative attention is not bad (especially if that’s all there is… we clarks recognize that scotts don’t feel bad about negative moments, at least after the interaction and the bodies have been picked up and all
…I am suspecting that with rogers it’s similar just in their context of emotion… what we might consider a bad thing (and therefore a bad feeling) a roger more than likely is less impressed by the specific context of the feeling. less attached to the event as we might call it.
lets try this approach: you’re a clark… you learn and think and know shit good, bad, indifferent (and yes, sometimes knowing things can be negative, ‘I didn’t want to know that about you…. ‘how can people do that to other people’ but overall do you hang on a given fact or bit of information? for the most part…no
and scotts live in a reality of action and attention, they do not overly fixate on the feelings accompanying the actions and
therefore rogers, in their reality of emotions (non-rationality) they will not hold on to the factual elements, but they will still ‘value the emotionalness.’ (I love those three way counter balancing symmetries)
plus and most important, you did your job as appropriate to the worldview you live in… and, it is your worldview that those 34 people are coming to and are valuing… you did exactly the right thing.
…that’ll be One Million Dollars… a personal check will be fine