Psychology | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [an Ian Devereaux Six]

July 20, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, ruled by a single… rule? To use the prompt word and keep it to six sentences in length.

To get you back into the story, here’s where we left off : Previously on…

(quick note: as we mentioned to Frank in our Reply to his Comment today: “…serial Sixes do offer the opportunity to learn/practice/develop what(ever) skills.” So, this week I kept tripping over a draft Six for the Ian Devereaux series. ikr? Why would we let it sit there, getting stale? That business of ‘staleness’ in fiction, i.e. a near-final draft, is interesting. Remind us to address it next week. You know the old saying, ‘Writing begets writing”.)

This week’s prompt word:

CONSOLE

“Now that I think of it, this is the first time you’ve had me at your house.”

Rising on an elbow, Leanne Thunberg’s head occluded the overly-bright face of the atomic clock on the 1960’s stereo console that stood, like a time-traveler in a lock-room mystery, against the opposite wall; it clearly offered information, but not a scintilla of advice.

“If it wasn’t half-past passion, I might be inclined to sit you down for a little adult / teenage-regressive chat about relationships,” settling back, her head making an eyelash-soft landing somewhere between my face and shoulder, my talent for inference hinted that she might be waiting for a response.

“Look, first let me say, you’re one of the most intelligent and educated women I know,” a tactile semaphore of the light stroke of an eyebrow on my upper-right pec suggested I qualify my assertion so I quickly added, “… the most intelligent and educated woman I’ve ever been naked with.”

Like five patriotic, but thoroughly-inept diplomats, the nails of her right hand stopped their downward slide and decided to take the shortcut to my attention, digging into unsuspecting external obliques; she regained the floor in our debate.

Despite the darkness of my bedroom, I could feel her gaze grasp the sides of my head and her smile direct resources of a less subtle nature to other parts of my body; as my old elementary ed. teacher said on the first day of class: “In the struggle between education and intelligence, if you bring a chair into the cage, you might as well bring a whip.”

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Rue DeNite Six]

July 19, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise. Rule by a limit on sentences to Six.

We rejoin Rue in the present as she and Rocco are finishing lunch.

This week’s prompt word:

CONSOLE

A salt-and-seaweed zephyr, pushed by the passive-aggressive wings of three sea gulls suicide-diving at a half-croissant tripped a memory, catapulting Rue’s mind into the past; fortunately she returned as quickly as she left, but not without evidence of a certain emotional whiplash.

Rue DeNite stared at her companion, searching for signs of assessment or, more concerning, re-assessment; resisting the urge to put her hand to her head, years of practice controlling what the world saw of her, she instead, with a shyness tinged in stale anger, offered a self-deprecating smile, “…a stage and all the…”

“…Men and women merely players,” Rocco completed the line from ‘As You Like It’ and, seeing a growing suspicion in his charge’s eyes, laughed ineffectually and hastily continued, “Sorry, let me redo that, in character: ‘Dey have they’re exits an’ entrences; An one guy will play a lotta parts’.

“I take it your real name isn’t Rocco,” Rue added, alert to any sign of gender-mandated console on what might easily be interpreted as her being at a loss; choosing to ignore a slight flush of self-consciousness, Rocco replied, “About as much as your’s is Rue.”

Glancing at her Longines La Grande Classique, “We’d better get back to the hotel, I believe our host Cyrus assumes he’ll be entertaining me tonight, keep your phone on vibrate, if you don’t mind.”

Pushing her chair back with her right knee, Rue extended her hand, “Kasia”; Rocco, bending at the waist in order to lift his own chair back silently, rose with her, took her hand, “Michael”.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘…between fiction and reality. Does it really matter where the line is drawn?’

July 19, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Hey! You’ve been good Readers. A ‘reward’ is surely in order. And what do Readers, (or audiences or (those) curious about a sequence), enjoy more than what used to be called trailers?

Trailers-with-backstories-and-the-opportunity-to-influence-the-ongoing-Narrative!

So here are the current Serial Sixes and some behind the scenes*.

Rue DeNite: originally from Martha’s Vineyard (we think); has a child but she taken away; is a dancer at the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge; the owner, Lou Ceasare, thinks highly enough of her to send her on a dangerous reconnaissance mission in Miami (FLA)
Ian Devereaux: he and Leanne are still an item; he and Diane are not, (through no fault of either), given their respective predominant worldviews; spending almost too-much time in his office (or at the Bottom of the Sea)
Six Sentence Café & Bistro: well, lets take a roll-call: the Proprietors, Tom, the Sophmore (kinda of a timetraveler), an excellent doggie, and a summer waning, which almost surely demands a barbecue

Alright, what does this have to do with the three little bears?**

*Waay big caveat here, yo. These serials are total SOP. That said, valid insight/suggestion as to characters are not ignored.

** flashback to college dorm days… you can only imagine… picture if you will an: 18 y.0. clark, scott and roger!

That picture of the three no-longer college-age progenitors at the top of the post? Erase the wrinkles, restore the hair, reduce the weight (somewhat) and cleanse their minds of the years of love-and-loss, hope-and-disappointment, dreams-and-dimming-energies. Friends who had sufficient complimentary foibles and faults to make each a better person, some in the immediate context and others in the far-distant future, when time and age distills each of the three closer and closer to their true spirits.

Clearly they haven’t aged a day.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, predicting human behavior, the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 18, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Here’s something a little* different.

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

March 22, 2018

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

Starting early, as I have my regular computer in the shop and typing is surprisingly difficult and typo-prone on a different key board.

This is, of course, the Six Sentence Story.

Our new host, Denise requests that all who would participate follow six very simple rules: write a story six (and only six) sentences in length.

We can do that, right?

Sure we can.

(Did someone say, ‘cyberpunk’? Sure… lets go for that genre this week)

The word?

Activate.

The hydraulic sneeze of a toilet somewhere on another floor brought a fragile consciousness, my bare legs moved slowly over the sheets, seeking the warmth of the old water-bed; I didn’t want to get up, preferring the, use-once-and-throw-away embrace of blankets that smelled of girl, passion and the hint of ether.

Favored by the well-heeled bio-enhancement tourist seeking basic creature comfort and post-op care, the hotel’s morning sounds triggered the memory-image of an attractive woman warning me that the anesthesia might mess with my memory.

“After a brief recuperation, you’ll be the proud owner of the latest in cerebral augmentation,” the surgeon’s real eye was beautiful, the scars on her other temple extended into her dark hair and were done in a deliberately elaborate pattern, like a 21st Maori with a medical degree and a scalpel. “It’ll override your HHS ID implant and read ‘100% country club genotype’, at any security checkpoint in the world,” she paused a second, “If you’re short the credits, I’m willing to take that multi-phasic corneal implant in your left eye as a partial trade; not that I care, but why the stealth, frankly this tech is over-the counter these days.”

“Well, doc, my grandfather was what they called, back in the 20th, a private eye and he was the best at what he did; nothing artificial in him other than society’s conditioning to consume and, maybe, the desire to impress any girl who gave him a second look; I’m just trying to uphold the family tradition. So what say you leave my cornea be, put the thing in my head, activate it and lemme go home; I got me some social network secrets to steal.”

Well, that was a fun Six. But, we have to admit to not having a clue as to how to draw, from the story, a lesson in the Wakefield Doctrine.

(yeah, right!)

So, you did know that, were you to have the opportunity/need/misfortune to apply the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine to (a) choice of medical professionals, we got ya covered?

Yes. Yes, we do.

…Hold on.

Writing a little late. Give us twenty-three minutes.

OK! We’re back!

We trust you all have an understanding ‘the Everything Rule’. (New Readers? Ask the Question in a Comment below)

As with any profession, avocation, hobby, belief system or philosophical predilection, the medical specialties can be viewed from the perspective of the Wakefield Doctrine. Specifically, which of the three should I look for in the choice of a ‘fill-in the blank’ doctor:

clarks (Outsider): pediatrician, psychologist
scotts (Predator): surgeon, psychiatrist (especially any who might ascribe to the gestalt school you know, Mr. Natural** himself, Fritz Perls)
rogers (Herd Members) oncologist, orthopedic surgeon

…oh, yeah, Advanced Readers? The above specialties? Lets go ahead and add:

clarklike physicians should have a significant secondary scottian aspect and a moderate rogerian tertiary
scottian surgeons: a strong secondary rogerian aspect and a near-same level clarklike tertiary
rogerian doctors: secondary clarklike and a weak scottian tertiary

There ya go!

*well, not that different. Still relies on a RePrint. But, let’s see if’n we can’t use the characters in the story to illustrate a point about everyone’s favorite personality theory. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

** way, way old cultural reference (ask, if you’re curious)

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, self-development, Six Sentence Story, the Wakefield Doctrine

RePrint Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

July 17, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Here ya go:

Wensdae -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘…of nonfictional fiction and learning from others’

July 26, 2017

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

Here at the Wakefield Doctrine we say the process of using the perspective (of the Doctrine) only begins when we accept ‘how we relate ourselves to the world around us’. (Without fail, an admonition is appended: ‘Be sure to notice the exact wording. We didn’t say, ‘… how we relate to the world around us’, we said, ‘… how we relate ourselves to the world around us.’ All the difference in the world.)

It’s an easy mistake to make. We’re all bombarded with advice on relating to situations, we’re asked if we can relate to this idea or that directive. Even (our) own best efforts to get along with the people in our world, the focus is entirely on the relationship, i.e. how we relate. The Wakefield Doctrine will, by necessity, nature and design, require those who would employ its principles to take themselves into account, (and thereby accounting for themselves) when assessing the relationship between themselves and the world (around them).

Kinda unavoidable, when you think about it. The Doctrine is about nothing if it’s not about the proposition that we all live and interact with the world and the people around us from within our own personal realities. The immediate benefit of this view is that it tends to eliminate the stress of cognitive dissonance that inevitably occurs when a person (in our world) acts in a manner inconsistent with what we believe is obviously true. We all have at least one friend, relative, or co-worker who we know to be mature, intelligent and good-natured people. Yet they exhibit, maintain and otherwise seem to find compatible one attitude/strongly-held belief/persistent-despite-overwhelming-evidence-to-the-contrary opinion. This is where the stress begins. ‘How,’ we ask ourselves (or anyone nearby), ‘can they believe that/maintain that position?’ It makes no sense. And yet there it is. Once we can bring ourselves to accept that, within this other person’s reality, the unreasonable is not as unreasonable, in fact, the unreasonable may make perfect sense, in their experience, we are able to stop twisting ourselves up trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. (Note to new Readers: temper this example. If you have a voice that is interrupting the sense of understanding that is growing within, that is only your ego, the part of your world that insists that there is only one world, one reality, or, at least, only one real reality. Read on and ask questions.)

Of course, the instant we concede the validity of this viewpoint, we’re forced to accept the (relative) truth about ourselves, the ‘ourselves’ in ‘how we relate ourselves to the world around us’. It is way hard, but totally worth the effort. To know the world can be a path to knowing ourselves, provided we have the stomach for it. We say that for the obvious (or not so obvious reason): if it is true, in our example above, that the personal characteristics of one’s reality allows a person to know, for a fact, a thing is correct despite the evidence to the contrary, what does that imply about our own world? (Yeah, I know! But this part is only as upside-down as you would let it be. Remember, there’s a part of all of us that will maintain, at all costs, that the world we know is the way it is, no matter what anyone else says.)

Good news! Even as you tackle the effort of a lifetime, the Wakefield Doctrine makes the better understanding the people in our lives, way fun. And, when it comes to actually self-improving ourselves? It’s as easy as circular dessert pastry! You have within, the capacity to experience the world from the perspective of all three personality types, which means the strengths of each are available to develop and express. très cool.

Speaking of cool, Friend of the Doctrine, Cynthia is on her own path to discover and self-develop herself, recently wrote of her adventures along the path,

“The comfort zone is an illusion, y’all. It’s the ego talking to keep us from reaching our full potential in the name of relative safety” (from ‘The Benefits of a Personal Retreat’ ) Get on over to Intuitive and Spiritual, tell her the Doctrine sent ya.

Don’t forget to get out your short pencil and scrap paper! Tomorrow is Thursday and that means one thing, Six Sentence Story! zoe (and her able assistant Joules) will have a prompt word and you are invited to find the best six sentences you can and put it in story form. It’s fun.

Very Good!

Your reward, (aka reinforcement), for reading this admittedly dry, (but informative), RePrint post is the music vid below. (Contrary to popular misconception, clarks are not inveterate passive-Aggressors! We just prefer the less-direct approach to dealing with people. ok, we abhor adversarial confrontations and, since, done correctly, the passive-aggressive approach does not paint an arrow on our poor-postured-backs, we can live with the risk of disapproval.

It’s not like we’re unaware of the cost of this particular interpersonal approach.

Thanks and a shout-out to Nick for doing his piece on Moby. Sure, we all recognized a clark as he spoke. But the ‘cost’ alluded to in the previous sentence? Go back to Nick’s Breaking Boundaries #12 and read all the Comments. (Hint for the rogers and scotts: ‘They were typing on the same page with, like eighty-nine photos, vid clips and content and, for the most part they were ‘pretty sure they knew this Moby-guy. And, in their opinion, he was pretty good at whatever he did.”)

Welll. Our Mr. Moby surely has burned his identity into the minds and lives of those Commentors. I would put an ‘lol’ here, but we want to let the clarks, (as opposed to the rogers and scotts with significant secondary clarklike aspects), take a moment. If determined enough, we (as Readers), can endure: ‘our heads swelling up and our faces falling’. In fact, we, in all good intent, encourage them to let that feeling establish itself. Sometimes we are better at being ourselfs than we realize.

That said, Mr. Moby has done quite well for himself. He has altered the world to a small but significant extent. We, as clarks, cannot (or, this being a platform for Outsiders), should not feel that the only way to change is to ‘learn’ to be as self-promoting’ as a roger or as ‘in-your-face-what’s-my-name’ as a scott. Our predominant worldview, with all it’s flaws and shortcomings, is as essential to the theoretical perfect combination as the other two.

Lets listen to a clark and a roger and then

…get out there in the world and do something.

(now we will include: lol)