relationships | the Wakefield Doctrine

RePrint Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

December 4, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

As to the thought, ‘What more is there to say about a theory of personality that has three types and is predicated on (one’s) relationship with the world around them?’

Not so much more information, as with better style. Rather than recitation of data, (an ongoing) demonstration of effects and consequences in the real world.

In other words, the actual topic of pretty much every Wakefield Doctrine post is on any given day, which at the moment would be Monday, we ask: how does this day of the week/that particular occupation/going to the gas station/trying to get ‘A’s in school or find love in a relationship, manifest in the reality of the Outsider (clarks), the world of the Predator (scotts) and the life of the Herd Member (rogers)?

This topic, i.e. reprint posts came up on the call-in show this weekend past. The Why and (the) is it an irredeemable fault or, at least, a less than.

Our position was, in the context of RePrint Monday, was that it was like a prompt, a warm-up, if you will. Not to give away too much insight into the early years, gots to save something for the next installment of our weekly series: ‘عمر خیّام Tuesdays’ * ¹ ‘Hey!!’ (Last week’s installment: Here)

Believe it or not, three hundred fity words in and we’s still gonna post a RePrint post.

Come back tomorrow! Subscribe or like or, better yet, tell someone you encounter in your day today to come here and read and such.

sun don’t shine, the gods look down in anger

December 3, 2009

(Well, oh kay… interesting note to start a Post on… but stranger things have happened in and about the Wakefield Doctrine)(…”this just in”…’clark…the seventies…were…thirty…plus…years ago’…stop…’please, stop’…)Hey Reader! Yeah you!
Do you believe that your (personal) history defines and (pre)determines your future or what? Is there such a thing as the momentum of habit. (The ‘momentum of habit’ is the notion that what we are is simply a more elaborate form of what we have always been.) (Cheery thought, no?)Well? Do you think it does? (Don’t you dare touch that “Back” button.)
(in a fairly creepy, sudden shift to a calm tone…)Do me a favor, (After all, you know something about us here at the Doctrine because of the information we are throwing out into the world by way of this blog.)……Look back on your life. Try and recollect the things you have done, the places you have lived, the people you have known, since as far back as you can.
Now, erase the names of the people, delete the addresses of the locations and take off the labels of the things you have done (job title, education, religious designations). You can still remember your life, can’t you?
Even with names and labels removed/deleted/eliminated, you know that you have been alive, with a life that is yours and yours alone. You know, even without the names, you lived in one place (or many different places), you knew some people (or a lot of people) and you spent your waking time doing this (or doing that).
Your ‘life story’ runs from the first (and often sketchy) times you remember as a child through and right up to now.Pretty goddamn ‘straight’ line isn’t it?
(Come on roger, stop protesting. You what I mean. You are capable of this.)
Look at your life in terms of how many different interests and activities and ways of investing your time is evidenced. How different was your life when you were 7 years old compared to when you were 17 years old?(…or 27 or 77…)
(Yeah, yeah scott, I get the, ‘I gots the girlfriends/boyfriends, thing’ Does not matter. Lose the names, and they (still) are people you shared yourself and your time with, no different than a best friend in second grade or a spouse in middle age or the person in the bed next to yours in the nursing home.)
What I am trying to get across here is that the important thing is not the names of the people, places and activities that comprise(s) your life.
Rather, I am asking you to consider the question, what did they (seem) to add to your life, why did you give them your time!?I want the Reader to consider their lives without the qualification/rationalization/justification that we all impose when we reflect on our lives.

… ‘he was a great friend, even though he was an asshole’… ‘I really liked spending time with her, but I had to because she was family’ … “of course we are happy together! We have beautiful children and a nice home’… ‘I know this is a boring job, but I will stick with it, because otherwise, what will I do?…’maybe I can still pray and maybe its not too late for me…”who will take care of me if I get sick?’…

(These little quotes barely hint at the myriad of ways that we employ to make the fact that what constitutes ‘our lives’, the essential nature and character, if you will, is the same today(as you read this blog) as it was on your very first day at school.)

So?
So what, what is wrong with that, at least I have a life that I can look at and say, ‘hey I’m not doing so bad’!

(You are correct, scott. roger you can come back in the room, we have stopped talking about life as if it were totally unpredictable and un-certain. We won’t talk about interchangeability any more.)

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? (Yes, I am seriously getting ready to close out this Post for today.) (No, I actually don’t have a more satisfying denouement for todays Post)

(writer leaves, house lights stay off…)

Alright, alright. Seeing that we have some new visitors (from Italy and Sweden and Ghana to name a few) and, of course, Sloveniaaa is in da house!! I will try to impart or at least ‘duct tape’ some kind of coherent point to this Post.

If pressed, I would have to say the point of this (Post) is that our essential natures, (clarks, scotts and rogers), will determine how our lives are experienced and will force a consistency throughout the years (of our lives).
Having said that, I will remind everyone that the Wakefield Doctrine is predicated (yeah! he said predicated, he must be back from wherever…) on the idea that we all have the full range of potential, we are all (potentially) clarks and scotts and rogers.
And, despite how this Post reads, we always have the potential to feel, act, or think in the manner of the other two personality types. In fact, that really is the purpose of the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers).

* ¹ ‘Hey!! lol we apologize to any New Reader who might be a roger with a secondary clarklike aspect on a razor’s balance between getting mad and clicking away or staying to see this if Doctrine thing might not be kinda fun. The clarklike autosome that contains the code for ‘ain’t no reference too obscure that it can’t be fun! should never, ever be underestimated as to the effect it exerts in the life of an Outsider. (The reference to Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī** will pay off in future Tuesday posts.)

** lighten up… like you didn’t see that coming? we’re just messin’ with any rogers in the Readerverse***

*** damn right we’re claiming that word! Unless someone (most likely another clark) has already coined the term.

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

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “a memoir is to history as a story is to reality”

November 28, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

We had a story in mind, towards the end of last week, that felt like a good one to re-tell as part of whatever this Tuesday thing is trying to become. Unfortunately it’s been lost in the clutter of the daily effort to a) stay on the Path with Heart* and 2) be on the alert for the best inciting incident to push this project along.

We left ourselfs last week with the definition of ‘the Everything Rule’. This is, of course, the…

damn! just went back and reviewed the previous post. We’re tempted to re-take a narrative path that was here, in this post, before I sicc’d the back-delete cursor on the words.

Here’s a question: does writing a memoir (or history or biography or simply a story of a tool for better understanding the world around us) necessarily require… Wait. Stop. We answered our own question.

But what does survive, this (most recent) attempt to sabotage our effort to write the definitive book on the Wakefield Doctrine, is the use of the term ‘manifest’ in the context of the three predominant worldviews.

As an adjunct (or extension or some cool term of rhetoric) to the Everything Rule is the recognition that how a thing manifests in the reality of the Outsider (clark) or the world of the Predator (scott) or the life of the Herd Member (roger) is directly affected by the character of the person’s relationship with the world.

Enough. Time has run out for this Tuesday.

That said, permit us to take refuge in what constitutes one of the most important gifts we’ve received over the years. Specific to this week’s Memoir post is the insight that it is easier to edit than it is to write (on a blank page)*.

Remind us to do two things in next Tuesday’s post: a) go into why the Wakefield Doctrine is of use to clarks, as opposed to scotts and rogers, and 2) tell the story of ‘The Spot that Moved’.

* interesting that I feel a push-back on this idea from both my scottian and my rogerian aspects. each for a different ‘reason’. But we are exploring the concept of how things manifest differently in each of the three. Won’t attempt to go too deeply, but a scott would favor the illusion of energy inherent in a ‘single take’ and a roger would sow doubt about anything that wasn’t already an effective narrative.

[in the interest of not being short-sighted in the case of maintaining this effort to chronicle the development of the Wakefield Doctrine, here, in reverse order, are previous installments:

last time
the time before that (the inaugural post)

* a cool phrase borrowed from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types, Understanding Human Behavior

Monday daymoN -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 20, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

RePrint Monday. Want to be sure to be obscure with our pick for a Monday RePrint, as we’re starting a week that is the occasion of the first of the ‘damn! no way we can do better than the first post! Let’s cut ‘n paste that bad boy and be done with it!’

That is correct, yo. Thanksgiving week. It’s the holiday that’s as on-book with the Doctrine as the Pesci/DeNiro Casino pen scene.

(New Readers: Here in Oceania, there is a holiday that we sometimes refer to as the Feast of Saint Roger. Always in November, all citizens are pretty much required to acknowledge, if not participate in it. And the liturgy of the day is celebration of everything rogerian. (Seriously! Tell us another day of the year that, as part of the holiday festivities, includes what can best be described as a lay collēcta invoked by a weekday morning weatherman!)

sorry, getting ahead of ourselfs.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, The morning of the Book of Wakefield (WIP) Then… Six Sentence Story day and then Thursday (‘Hallowed be thy college football game’)

But for today:

‘why is a raven like a writing desk’? (and) what is the Wakefield Doctrine’s take on those other personality theories?

September 27, 2011

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

A frequently asked question: ” What does the Wakefield Doctrine call this personality type? ( Always one of some other personality theory’s type), i.e. the Driver Type ( from the Merrill-Reid schema) or the ‘Type 2 ( of the 9 Enneagram Types ) or even the famous Axis 4 (from the rogerian geek school of personality typology). Sometimes answering this question is fun, other times it is frustrating but the outcome of this exchange is always less than is hoped for by the person posing the question.

Comparisons between mainstream personality types systems and the Wakefield Doctrine hardly ever yields an answer that is satisfactory to the interlocutor or the listener. While the underlying motivation for these questions is often well-meaning, the goal behind asking them is misguided. ( “well, don’t you see?  The Wakefield Doctrine and (  well-known personality theory) are both talking about the same thing, so the Doctrineis not so unusual or odd or weird! Maybe if you describe clarks and scotts and rogers using some of the same  language, you will attract more people to the blog!”
At this point the answer (from the Wakefield Doctrine is always the same: No.   (…for 2 reasons):

The Wakefield Doctrine is not scientifically based on empirical data nor does it rely on test subjects providing statistically significant and consistent reporting of identification with certain traits or behavior(s). The Wakefield Doctrine does not approach the ‘classification of personality’ on the basis of traits and quirks, phobias and foibles gathered from a test subject. ‘Personality Typing by Chart’,  in which check-marks are totalled/summed up and added up, with a score at the bottom of a column labeld: ‘Your Personality Type! A lot like a dinner party at a restaurant, the host glances down to the bottom of the bill that the Waiter has brought to the table. Scanning the menu items and tallying the cost, the guests will hear:    “OK! who had the FEAR OF HEIGHTS with the DISDAIN FOR AUTHORITY Combo?  no, scott!! I am sure you ordered the MECURIAL TEMPERMENT COMBINED WITH AN INGRAINED RESISTANCE TO LEARNING BY EXAMPLE! OK folks, the total  is: (2) Drivers with homophobic tendencies masked by an excessive interest in contact sports and (1) Passive-aggressive nurturing-type with un-resolved oedipal conflict compensated by a need to demonstrate language skills un-supported by actual ability! Alright everyone!! Ante up!”

the Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not for them!
For most of us, the attraction to ‘personality types’ and ‘personal profiles and assessment’ is founded in a genuine curiosity about ourselves and a sincere desire to help other people in our lives handle  their own problems and shortcomings better. Unfortunately, the focus all too often comes to rest on ‘the other person’.   We all know this person, a caring friend/relative/co-worker who goes to great lengths to find answers so that they can ‘help you’! With a magazine article in hand (or a book, or a CD or DVD) that promises to describe personality types and how to identify them…whats the second thing you/they do after learning these well-researched, empirically based systems of understand the human psyche? The second thing (and sometimes the first) is to say, “Hey! You know who is a real Driver personality? This personality system totally  got his/her number!! This is really helpful, I can’t wait to tell them how much I understand their personality!”
…this is where the Wakefield Doctrine and all the better researched, better marketed, widely-accepted personality theories part ways. No matter what you think you can do with the understanding that this Doctrine can help you get, it is for you, it is not for the other person.

Are we saying that the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers ) is neither scientifically valid nor an effective method for helping other people to solve their intractable mental and emotional problems?
Yes, yes we are saying that.

So why bother with this thing of ours? Well, for starters:

you will have an advantage over the people you meet in the course of your day today

the behavior of the people in your life will make more sense to you (because of your understanding of the Wakefield Doctrine)

you will be able to anticipate the actions and (re)actions of people to virtually any situation

you will see your own life, habits, behaviors in a different light

you will have fun with your friends spotting the clarks and the scotts and the rogers as you go about your day today

Sound like reason enough to figure out this blogsite?

I promised Molly, a short and concise definition of the Wakefield Doctrine:

…three personality types predicated on (three) characteristic ways to perceive the world at large. All people are born with the potential to see the world as any of the three (types) that we call: clarks, scotts and rogers. (Further) the Doctrine maintains that at an early age we become predominately one (of the three) but we never lose the capacity to experience the world as do the other two. The personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine are gender and culture neutral and is predicated that the personality type is derived from understanding the reality in which a person lives, not by trying to identify specific traits, interests, drives or ideation. The Wakefield Doctrine is a tool meant to aid a person who would try to see the world as the other person does.

Works pretty damn well, too!

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 14, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

Lets start with:
the Wakefield Doctrine is a perspective. As such, it requires a certain willingness to imagine that things are one way and not, necessarily, only one way. We are talking, of course, about our experience in and with, reality.

[In the early days of this blog we’d be more direct, saying that to ‘get’ the Doctrine a Reader needed to have a certain, ‘flexibility of intelligence’. In the Ephedrine, Ringling, Oscar Myers axes, this is the famous, lesser known: WTHN*. Without the presence of an innate desire to play with ideas, the Wakefield Doctrine is simply a scheme to divide life into three characteristic relationships.]

Hey, wait. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Fine. This post is intended to be, what the books on essay writing refer to as (the) introduction and thesis. Let’s agree here, at the beginning that, that….. ‘the purpose of this ~~paper~~ post is to present an overview of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, its practical uses and applications and, concurrently, noting (any) changes in the Doctrine itself. Well, to be a bit more accurate on this last, ‘changes in how we describe the Doctrine’.

…oh yeah! And! Maybe we need to jump into the Herd and offer advice and observation from our little personality theory/worldview. (Surely this is the most ambitious of goals. Hell, it’s not merely a goal, it would actually be a proof of concept, wouldn’t it?)

Far be it from us to stray far from the predominant worldview of your painfully-reliable Narrator, but …no! Wait. Will not indulge in the disclaimer that those of us of a certain predominant worldview would be trying to sneak in at this point. This highly visible point. (New Readers: not to worry. Secret Rule inherent here, in this effort: when you arrive at a certain point in your understanding and you are tempted to say, “I knew what they meant then!” We believe you.)

The Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them.

…to be cont’d

*WTHN Why The Hell Not

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine, Understanding Human Behavior

et tu chewsdae? -the Wakefield Doctrine-

November 7, 2023 By clarkscottroger

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

ok, we’re getting a bit behind, lets get to the mail room!

Sure, we all know that Tuesday is the most clarklike day of the week. But like everything else about our favorite personality theory, it’s the questions we ask that lead to enlightening insights not the lectures we listen to or the text we memorize.

Let us grab a post from the 2011-2013 era (‘the write ever day Period of the Wakefield Doctrine) that addresses this topic

Tuesday at the Wakefield Doctrine (“alright, move along folks nothing to see here…that’s right just move along”)

January 8, 2013

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks… lol, the undeniable reality of scotts and the annoying certainty of rogers)Anyone seen a box of words? I am pretty sure I had some put away, under the bed or in the back of the closet, just in case. What’s the deal with the writing style of clarks and the non-use of contractions? We certainly don’t think like that! See? I used ‘don’t’ (as opposed to do not!). Well, the fact remains, I am missing a bunch of words and I really could stand to find them right about now.

Long time Readers know what’s coming next. But… we will let the new Readers enjoy the w…t…..f??! moment that comes with each and every one of these special Posts. Today’s Post is the blog equivalent of what, in the world of jokes and comedy, is referred to as a ‘shaggy dog’ story.¹ An example of such a story is provided in the footnote area. Better go down there right now, if you do not find yourself laughing (at very least chuckling) then you will not be amused when you have dragged yourself to the end of this rambling morass of a Tuesday Post. Serially. Better go there…now!

Still with us? Fine. Actually, the process of finding the shaggy dog reference in wikipedia and jamming it into this Post has gone a long way to get me out of the ‘what the hell! there are no words left in my (fill in favorite body-part here). But since you are still reading, it is only fair to give you something to take away, as a reward for your:

loyalty: which is a clarklike trait. notice we did not say it was an admirable quality …we did not!

stubbornness: scotts are stubborn, not for any reason that would produce a benefit, in fact, they should not be thought of as being stubborn for any reason, they just are

close-minded: rogers are the example of how being close-minded can be thought of as a good thing!

Now, rather than do the obvious and leave the above characterizations hanging out there, (like those still photos of scenes from X-rated movies that are used to illustrate the evils of ‘pornography’ btw: the people who use those kinds of photos are either scotts or rogers. And the reason we know this, is that there is a secret pruriency in the use of these photos that is beyond the capability of a clark. Seriously. Someone is standing in front of ‘an audience’, holding forth on the evils of the people who make such obscene movies and to better make their point, they hold up censored photos. Of course, even though the black-bars cover the offending body parts, a normal human being must, in their minds, provide an image of what is missing…otherwise the photo is totally non-meaningfull! And where do theses (mental) images come from? Exactly!)

Loyalty: this is a personal quality very frequently found in clarks, (about which) most people will say, “hey! that’s a really admirable quality!” …except that if you listen very, very closely you might hear them think, “...yeah, what elseare they gonna do?” ( hold your Comments until the end, clarks!)

Stubborness: all of us fortunate enough to have dogs, have played the tug of war game. Yep! your mind is now providing you with the image we are going for: ‘human hand holding pull-toy in the air, doggie suspended from the lower end of said toy…tail wagging the entire time’ scotts!

Close-minded (ness): Quick!! what’s 2 + 2? Right! Hey! what is 2 +2?? Still right!!! the best thing about rogers is their constancy …the worst thing about (HEY! 2+2…what’s the answer?!?) is their consistency! It is often said in these pages, the reason we have civilization is rogers…. and the reason we had the (Spanish Inquistion, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the ban in the 1960s on girls wearing slacks in high school, the existance of Ann Landers, the Electoral College, Prohibtion, the War of the Roses and the discovery of radium)?… rogers!

Feel free to ask us Questions! Better yet, mark tomorrow Wednesday 4:00 blogtalkradio the Wakefield Doctrine 30 Minute Radio Hour!

1) In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline based on a play on words in cliché form. These stories are a special case of yarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns. Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience’s preconceptions of the art of joke telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner. A lengthy shaggy dog story derives its humour from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all, as the story ends with a meaningless anticlimax. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story )

What some sources choose to believe is the archetypical shaggy dog story:

“A boy owned a dog that was uncommonly shaggy. Many people remarked upon its considerable shagginess. When the boy learned that there are contests for shaggy dogs, he entered his dog. The dog won first prize for shagginess in both the local and the regional competitions. The boy entered the dog in ever-larger contests, until finally he entered it in the world championship for shaggy dogs. When the judges had inspected all of the competing dogs, they remarked about the boy’s dog: “He’s not that shaggy.”