relationships | the Wakefield Doctrine

Wednesday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘Lady Godiva, her scottian husband and….a clark’

January 21, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

Seeing how, of late, we’ve been all studious and learning the use of the Wakefield Doctrine to self-improve our own selfs, lets kick back and have a mid-week break! You all deserve it*.

Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband’s oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word and, after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in one of the most famous instances of voyeurism. In the story, Tom bores a hole in his shutters so that he might see Godiva pass, and is struck blind. In the end, Godiva’s husband keeps his word and abolishes the onerous taxes.

Most of you will not need me to tell you whats going on with this most…. civic of fairy tales (cautionary tale?… fable? morality play?… whatever). I will, however, address the New Reader.

New Reader? The fun (and real value) to be found in the Wakefield Doctrine lies not in being able to immediately identify Lady Godvia as a roger, her, kind-of-a-jerk, husband as a scott and …and poor Tom as a clark. It does not. The real fun (and value to ourselves, as people trying to better understand the people in our lives), lies in accepting that we have the qualities of all three of the characters in this story. ( One would represent our predominant worldview, and ‘the other two’ as our secondary and tertiary aspects, which, of course, our potential to be better (or worse) people.)

(While the more experienced Readers giggle in the back of the class and compose their smart-assed, but nevertheless perceptive interpretations of this Tale, lets review the three personality types of the Wakefield Doctrine):

clarks are the ‘personality type’ that results from growing up as ‘the Outsider’. Through no fault of their own (though, they will go through life suspecting that there was something that was their fault…but that’s a whole ‘nother Post), clarks seek to learn how to live the best life possible, they place their stock in understanding the world, and believe that what they think is missing (in their lives) is knowable and rational. They are very creative, funny and (they) see the rules of social order as just another interesting thing about all the real people around them
scotts are identified by the coping strategies that have allowed wolves, lions, dogs and other predators to thrive through history. scotts are impulsive and decisive, mercurial and sentimental, for them the world is very simple: wake up… eat, protect the pack, be alert to threats and opportunity in the day, reproduce (of course! metaphorically as well as literal! knucklehead!) and sleep. scotts are the first pick for captain …of the other team (lol…. no, think about it a little….) (if you’re reading this you were in the other team… not the first team) they are great best friends and scary adversaries
rogers are the people who grow up and develop their coping skills knowing that they are ‘a part of’, they belong. rogers live (and thrive) in a world that is quantifiable, understandable, predictable ( in an unpredictable way) and above all has Rules…. rogers live searching for the Right Way (to do things) and will go all out to help others engaged in this task… the Yearbook Committee? pretty much all rogers (with one clark or so to do the stupid work)

ok.

You now know what is necessary in order to understand why we are identifying our three main characters as we are….lets open the Post for Comments.

(New Readers? the real fun lies in what is really required to successfully identify another’s worldview, i.e. you need to see the world as the other person is experiencing it. So…. Lady Godiva’s husband? so he says, ‘sure, I’ll lower taxes if you ride naked through the streets of town’…. bet that guy had a supply of banana peels, seltzer bottles and whoopee cushions around the palace and, that naked part? And Godiva? issue a proclamation (aka a Law)… that she would ride naked (implying that she would be exposed to all) but then say…. ‘you can’t look’ god! how many times in high school did we have to deal with that kind of behavior! … Tom? clark…clark…clark oh man, dude! you don’t have to make things so difficult for yourself… she doesn’t care!)

* did we mention how the Doctrine is predicated on reality being personal? that last sentence is the perfect example of what we mean by personal reality.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, self-development, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

fff -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘here’s an Answer! …is this really an answer, or another trick to teach the Doctrine?’

January 16, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

“Outsider. This could be my motto for life. I’m surrounded by rogers and um…ya know…have figured out that the office environment…well…let’s just hope the rogers don’t gang up on me and kick my ass.”

Thanks go out to our friend, Cynthia, for the ‘Friday Post Prompt’ (Friday Post Prompt motto: ‘thank god!! a coherent thought to base a Post on!!!”)

Is there any, more common reason, (for a clark) to like the Wakefield Doctrine, than it being a resource in figuring out how to deal with the rogers in their lives? No. Well, maybe. No, yeah, but that business about how we can rest our brain even for a minute…. that qualifies, right? (I remember being in a conversation one evening with a group of people. We were having a good time with the Great Questions of Life. There came a moment when the question of ‘communication between people’ rose to topic-level and, when there was one of those pauses in the give-and-take, (when the rogers are preparing their rebuttals and the scotts are calculating their chances of getting lucky after the intellectual activities ceased), I made the following statement: “I’ve always wondered what it is that real people do, with all that time in-between sentences.” Had there been a person to throw a handle full of pins, everyone would have come up with the same number, …someone whispered, very loudly, ‘oh man!! what is it with this guy!!’ His tone was not negative, it definitely had a certain quality of ‘wonderment’… this was followed by good-natured laughter.

I identify with Cynthia. We are fortunate to have rogers who are of such a mind as to be willing and able to share with us their perspective, (thinking of Kristi and Michelle and Phyllis and even, accidentally Sarah), however, the solution to ‘Cynthia’s Problem’ is not in learning what the rogers want. The solution to the problem is for Cynthia to know what she wants. You know how we have this saying for the New Readers, ‘the Wakefield Doctrine is for you, not them‘? There is an extensionary thought* to be derived from this, ‘It’s about us, not them.’
A clark lives in a reality where things should make sense, that there should be an understandable reason for everything. Where we clarks often get into trouble is when we project this (quality of understandable-ness) and believe that the ‘correct answer’ will be possible only with the participation of the real people in our world. (Now, stay with me….)

We don’t believe us.

(That’s not fair. I should say: as clarks we don’t believe that what we understand is sufficient, unless it’s supported, corroborated, validated, confirmed and otherwise approved of, by the people around us. You Advanced Readers are now looking around and waving your hands. “I know!!! I know”…. lets let the New Readers have a moment to figure out what is it about clarks that cause them to get trapped , despite the clear fact that they are thinking everything through in an organized and rational manner.)

I’ll be back a little later in the day.**

* an attempt at a rogerian expression¹

** yeah, right

1) not to be confused with a person’s ‘rogerian expression‘

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: clarkscottroger, Personal, personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

www -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘of scotts and clarks and the the fear of discovery’

January 14, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

Fun Post today. Will try to keep it simple, while, (for) one half (of the themes) that’s pretty likely, the second half… no way. Unless… To my constant, yet grateful chagrin, I find myself underestimating my Readers.

Following are two short clips from TV shows. One stars a clark and the other a scott. (Sometimes New Readers say, ‘but clark, they’re playing a character, why would you think that you’re seeing their personality type?’ to which I respond, the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that what you might observe of an actor or actress, politician or clergy, teacher or self-help guru in any context will be an accurate reflection of their personality type because, one of the few tasks that the Doctrine charges us with is, to ‘observe the other person and infer how they are relating themselves to the world around them‘*.

So watch our two ‘reality’ TV show stars. (and… yes, I will make a predict the reaction of some of our readers, but I’ll put it down at the bottom of the Post^**, so as not to spoil the fun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH86JtRbiDU

damn! I need to limit my word count for mid-week Posts, we’re at 507 words, and I really don’t think I can properly address the second half of the today’s Post theme. Hey, what the hell! it’s Wednesday and, rumour has it, the average Reader understands the Wakefield Doctrine way better than I appreciate so lets try this:

clarks, are Outsiders…we all know that. But what we might not appreciate is that (most) clarks don’t realize that everyone around them know that they’re Outsiders. The biggest problem with clarks begins with the notion that we have to keep people from ‘knowing too much about us’. As a result, many clarks will spend way too, too much time, ‘trying to pass’ …as a real person. And the reason underlying that… that’s the core issue. Most clarks, on one level or another, suspect that we are Outsiders because there is something bad/wrong/off/not-acceptable-to-real-people about us. And the real, this-time-I-mean-it-real problem underlying that is that we leave it …un-determined. Maybe we are ‘wrong’, not qualified as people to be included in the pack or in the Herd… but we’d rather keep hiding, (in very plain sight), rather than deal with this core issue. Unfortunately or not, for many of us clarks, the decision is made (way, way early in the game) that it’s better to not know for certain, because, for a clark, un-certainty allows for possibility. Certainty locks the door.

That’s all the time we have today!

* we have fun with words and language around here, but this phrase is one of the few examples of where the exact wording is essential to what we are trying to convey. We are not saying ‘…how a person is relating to the world around’… that has an entirely different connotation. The ‘extra’ word ‘themselves’ ‘how they relate themselves‘ tells us that, if we are open-minded and imaginative, we can ‘see’ the context from which the behavior is springing… i.e. the person’s worldview

** scotts, like Christine and Dyanne will laugh, look around (either literally or figuratively) try to find someone to punch on the shoulder while saying, “am not!”… and yet, if we were an invisible 3rd party watching this reaction interaction, we would be paying very close attention to the eyes of the scott… they would reflect a very close paying of attention… the better to see if the other person is taking the fun in the right way…. ya know? clarks, on the other hand, (people like Lizzi or Cynthia, Denise or zoe,) their first response will be to smile…. and immediately pay even more attention to the person in the vid… ‘holding their breath’ until they assure themselves that the character is aware of the possible reactions of the viewers and does not care (about the reaction), in other words…’are people in ‘the audience’ laughing with her or at her rogers… not so sure about how they might respond…. Kristi? Michelle? any help?

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: personality types, psychology of personality, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

mmm Day -the Wakefield Doctrine- “of hand puppet friends*, embracing the now and letting go”

January 12, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

This Wakefield Doctrine is not just a fun thing to do while you are: at work/and are supposed to be working, at school/and really should be paying attention, waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store/ and really need to be thinking how to better provide for the family, making love/and how can you possibly be thinking about that problem at work, apologizing to your boss/when you know that were it not your family you would be telling him to stick the job in an inappropriate spot, sitting in traffic/and unable to let go of the past… nope! absolutely not the only thing that our little personality theory is good for!

The Wakefield Doctrine is a very useful tool to aid in that increasingly difficult and frustrating task of ‘being a better you’. Sure, you have a great track record working on the obvious things, the ‘lose that Holiday weight’, the ‘get into better physical shape’, getting better grades, earning more money by working overtime, etc…etc and etracetra. But, what about the things in your head, in your heart… you know the kinds of thing (about yourself) that you barely speak of to anyone else (and if and when you do, it always comes with a laugh line). What about those?

The Wakefield Doctrine is very useful with these …issues. Starting with the fact that ….issues (like these) are shared by others, even when, by all appearances, they. (these other people who you know… your friend, your spouse, that woman who seems to have it so together, what with 5 kids and a job, your relative… even your kids and spouse!) What the Wakefield Doctrine offers us is this:

we all start life with the potential to experience it in one of three ways: as an Outsider (clarks), as a Predator (scotts) and as a Herd Member (rogers)
that at a rather early point in our lives, we settle into one (of these three) and it becomes our reality (personal reality, nevertheless real…reality)
our ‘personality type’ is simply a reflection of the coping strategy that is best suited to the reality that we are experiencing as we grow up
…we never lose the capacity to experience the world of ‘the other two worldviews’

…so when you look around and wonder how on earth does that other person act like they don’t have a care in the world, cheerful and enthusiastic each day, …despite their dead-end job, or that women with the sick parent and the ill children, looking peaceful as she waits patiently in line or that young man who sits 3 cubicles away quietly working, always with a kind thought…when he thinks no one is looking. They are all experiencing life in one of three personal realities… as clarks or scotts or rogers and you have that same capacity.

….coolest thing about the Wakefield Doctrine as an aid to self improvement and ‘jeez! I got to stop doing this to myself!’ ? You don’t have to learn anything new. All you need do is ‘see the world as the other person is experiencing it‘. Know that what they seem to find simple, is also available to you.

* (this was what started me thinking, yesterday, that I totally could write a Post a day ahead… I was wrong! lol however, I still like the sound of the subtitle with this expression in it, so in keeping with the Truth in Blogging Law, here is a (preliminary definition of the term): handpuppet friend, (n) you’ve been friends for as long as you can remember, but increasingly over recent years, it takes you to ‘make the call’, (once the conversation starts, it’s just as it’s always been…like no time has passed.) You wonder if it’s worth the effort, sometimes you berate yourself for continuing the charade, but there was so much history and still, even when you know that it’s only because you insist on holding onto the past, you enjoy the interaction…. letting go is an option, not a requirement.)

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

F. -the Wakefield Doctrine- (yeah, it’s a re-print but…but! it’s from, like 3 years ago! my how things have changed/not-changed)

January 9, 2015 By clarkscottroger

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

I really wanted to participate in the Finish the Sentence Friday that our friend Kristi ( motto: ‘no, I’m the clarklike one!’) who is one of the co-hostinae at that bloghop. FtSF is the first bloghop I participated in and remains to this day, the second best bloghop in the whole damn ‘sphere! Unfortunately, I could not come up with a decent post and, even though I might otherwise write something about the Doctrine, not having participated, (in FtSF), for a while, I wasn’t comfortable writing my normal…. ‘yeah, but it does relate to the Wakefield Doctrine because….’ Post.

So, since I’m obviously up for a Post, following is a reprint Post from way the hell back in 2011.

Hey! Cyndito!! Remember last Saturday, we were talking about rogers having a writing style that makes them identifiable on the basis of a writing sample? Well, this reprint has 2 block quote sections, one is written by a roger (in fact, the progenitor roger) and the other by me. Can you see the stylistic differences?? rogers do that ‘well-rounded words’ thing so well.

************************************************************************************************

‘Bill before Congress to Mandate Liposuction for Over-weight Teens’

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

Sunday.
Day of Rest.
Quick and Easy Post.

To keep all our little reddit friends from getting too disappointed that this Post is not as outrageous as the title might imply, and thereby running the risk of having a bunch of rogers wearing the finest clothes from the Virgin-Geek Fashion Line ( from the renowned House of Atari Couturiers). Hey, this is not a true story! This is a ‘made-up’ story. As in not true. Does anyone out there read complete stories anymore?

But lets have a quick Wakefield DoctrineLesson of the Day: Today’s Post was submitted to one of those referrer sites (rhymes with ‘geddit’) today. Got lots of hits and actually got Comments…angry and shocked Comments from Readers who felt hurt and injured by the attack on over-weight people. Of the three which is/are most likely to be offended:

clark: nah, not paying enough attention, unless the clark in question has decided that the problem is mean people who need to be taught to be nice, then perhaps (the clark) might formulate a plan of action…nah…never get out of the formulating stage;
scott: nah, too short an attention and the inability to focus on abstract concept of people submitting opinions via email on a thought expressed on a blog Post about personality theory…unless they was naked pitchas;
roger: bingo!! we have ourselves a Winner, the most likely to be offended by…by…well, truth be told by nearly everything is the rogerian Reader of tabloid blog Post titles.

Well, that certainly was informative and might throw them off our trail, if the Niceness Police show up, tell ’em to go to Mel’s house.

(I know, lets do a ‘re-print’ from within this here Doctrine blog here).

Once upon a time, in a land not very far from Clark’s house… there were three atypical college friends who engaged in many of the atypical activities of their day. They went to school; they played guitars at ear-splitting volumes in dorm rooms, and sneered derisively at those who objected; one drank too, too much; one not at all, but subsisted on Oreos and Coke. One became a Baptist with a capital ” B”. They played in rock bands, worked all sorts of jobs, one got married way too soon. They all wrestled with the Issues Of Their Day, with varying degrees of resolve and/or success. And in spite of all the atypical ups and downs, they managed to form a very unique bond. And , to their surprise, the bond has lasted much longer than any one of them might have thought. Longer than some marriages, jobs, bands, or Baptist dogma. And after many hours of conversation about just about everything turned into years and decades of same, there came to be what was, and is now, referred to as … the Wakefield Doctrine.

Psychology and psychiatry texts make constant reference to type A/B/C personalities and their interactions. We are somewhat along those same lines. For us, those references have evolved into our Wakefield Doctrine, which we have found to be much more palatable. To err may be human, but to create a categorization system that explains all of human behavior in a somewhat cryptic nutshell is absolutely divine. And, we have noticed along the way, a heck of a lot of fun. In an “improvisational academia” sort of way, we gleefully invent terms as we go along to describe conditions and situations that may not have existed previously. And yet, our system also works perfectly well when taken perfectly and totally seriously.

The basic premise is that there are three fundamental personality types; and much can be known and discovered about oneself ( and any other aspect of life ) by learning to identify your own basic type; how to identify the types of others; and then consider all the ramifications of the interactions. In short…this explains everything, but only from a point of view that holds human dynamics as the prime component.

The Wakefield Doctrine is predicated upon the idea that everyone experiences the world/reality differently, from one of three overlapping but distinctive perspectives. It also proposes that our personalities are but a result of our perception, of our habitual responses to the world. The Wakefield Doctrine maintains that this characteristic perception of reality can be grouped into three distinct types, called for reasons stated elsewhere, clarks, scotts and rogers.

Born with the potential to view the world in one of these three ways, all people possess the characteristics of all (three) but soon (by age 7 or so) ‘become one of the three. Put another way: we also possess the potential to see the world as aclark or a scott or a roger. It is only the predominance of qualities from one (over the other two) that makes us what we are. No one is only clarklike or scottian or rogerian.

The value of the Wakefield Doctrine is that once you can see the world ‘through the eyes’ of another, behavior becomes understandable. If a scott sees the world as a predator (would) then all action is predicated on interacting with the world as a predator. This is distinctly different from a roger, who seeing the world as a social being, predicates action and reaction on the basis of a world in which the intereactions of the herd is the dominant theme.

The above notwithstanding, following is the ‘eureka moment’ for the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers (the Wakefield Doctrine):

At one time in the past, Scott (the progenitor scott) worked at a music store doing, among other things, repair on equipment. Visiting him one day I witnessed an interaction with a customer that was to be my eureka moment.

A customer came into the store and presented to Scott a ‘double cassette recorder’ This machine had dual volume tone controls (for each cassette) and it had one master volume control. The customer said to Scott, “this thing is brand new, it worked for a couple of days, then it stopped working entirely, I can’t figure out what is wrong”.

Scott looked at the recorder briefly, took some electrical tape from under the counter, carefully put the tape over the master control volume (which he turned back up), slid the recorder over the counter and said to the customer, “there its all right now”.

The customer tried the recorder, ran it through it’s paces, saw that it worked like new and walked out of the store without another word; totally satisfied that his cassette recorded had been fixed.

From this point to the present day, I have been watching the behavior of others with the thought in mind, “What kind of world does that person live in?”