The Perfect Fit

Copyright © 2014 Sandra K. Woods, PhD.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2638-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2637-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904977

iUniverse rev. date: 5/8/2014

Contents

Preface

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

2: The Nuts and Bolts of Human Temperament

3: Four Basic Qualities Common to all Feeling

4: How Do the Things That We See and Hear and Touch and Smell Acquire Their Personal and Relative Meaning?

5: What is the Significance of Having a Feeling Brain that is More or Less Responsive Relative to Others?

6: Be-ing and Do-ing in Everyday Life

7: Meeting in the Inner World of Marriage

8: Closing Thoughts

Sources/Suggestions for Further Reading

Table 1: Prominent Tendencies of the Two Basic Temperaments

About the Author

About Willis H. Ploof, MD

To Be What We Are, And To Become What We Are Capable of Becoming, Is The Only End In Life.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Preface

This work represents a point of view endeavor related to human temperament and its pervasive influence on everyday life. Putting pen to paper to bring it to completion has been difficult, in part, due to the passing of my friend and colleague, Willis H. Ploof, MD. We had planned to write this together. Many of the ideas and concepts contained in this work represent his legacy to me. To this I have added my own thinking and perspective, making the final product a marriage of sorts. As such the reader will find the pronouns we and our used freely in the text, for his influence is pervasive throughout this work.

Dedication

In loving memory of Willis H. Ploof, MD

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for reading whole sections of the manuscript and for their many helpful comments and suggestions: Dr. William DiTullio, Clinical Psychologist, Private Practice, Bangor, Maine; Dr. Robert Hallock, Distinguished Professor, Physics Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; James M. Hurley and Janet Maratta.

Introduction

Almost as soon as we become aware of ourselves as separate beings, we begin to ask ourselves: Who am I? What is my place in life? Where do I fit? These are fundamental questions that each of us will struggle with at some point during our lifetime. A fortunate few will find out who they are early in life, but most will return to these questions again and again particularly during midlife when an increasing awareness of our own mortality results in a shift from a time-since-birth to a time-left-to-live perspective. Of all the natural forces that determine who and what we are, the contribution of temperament is perhaps the most profound for it is the web of meaning upon which we live our lives. In the following pages we will discover or should I say rediscover just how profound and pervasive that web is. Our journey will take us to familiar places of play and life, places that might seem strange at first, but upon seeing them again through the prism of temperament will seem, alas, like old haunts.

Being comfortable in our own skin isn’t easy. Like many other aspects of life, the grass is always greener…. Self-acceptance and appreciation are, for most of us, hard-won. On the one hand we take for granted what we have; on the other, we tend to overvalue those qualities that we don’t have that we see in others. And to complicate matters, the process is confounded by the necessity of learning our parental and cultural dos and don’ts, which begins in early childhood. During this cultural embryonic stage, certain behaviors are good, others are bad, and there is little room for discussion. These are important survival lessons, but they come with a price. Out of necessity, many aspects of our individuality and freedom of expression are suppressed during this period while we acquire the gender-specific hood of childhood and learn to internalize right from wrong. As adults, we will be able to rethink these early lessons of childhood and decide for ourselves. But as youngsters we simply don’t have enough experience nor are we in a position, developmentally, to use reason and logic to evaluate the fundamental goodness or badness of things. The brain structures, e.g., prefrontal cortex, underlying these skills are only beginning to mature.

If we were better than our siblings at internalizing parental dos and don’ts, we probably had an easier time of it. That is to say, we weren’t as likely to get yelled at as often or sent to our rooms as much or lose privileges as much as they were. We were the good, easy-to-manage, compliant child. On the other hand, we didn’t have as much fun as or get noticed as much as our nonconforming, always-pushing-the-envelope sibling. Life just didn’t seem fair. And we had a point, but from our nonconforming sibling’s perspective, life wasn’t all that fair either. All that negative attention left them feeling somehow inherently bad.

Truth is, young humans don’t have much control over whether they are difficult versus easy to manage. We are all predisposed by our genes to be more or less sensitive to the positive and negative feelings emanating from others. Other things being equal, the easier our brains are to stimulate in this regard, the easier it will be for us to tune into the subtle changes in tone of voice and facial expression that impart meaning to our actions. If all it takes is a mild glance of disapproval to inhibit the wrongful deed before it shows up in behavior, we can effectively avoid further discipline. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Each stage of development brings its own particular challenges with respect to selfhood. As previously stated, childhood is a period of self-subjugation and conformity to outside authority as represented by parents and other significant adults. And this is not necessarily bad. To survive and take our place in society, we have to know what the rules are. Gaining control over our impulses and drives is an integral part of the process.

The onset of puberty signals the beginning of the next stage which is or should be about individuation and increasing autonomy. All too often, however, it is about rebellion and the persistence of authoritative approaches that have outlived their usefulness. It’s easy to feel between a rock and a hard place during this time—neither child or adult—one foot in one world, one foot in the other. As adolescents we’re still expected to toe the line in terms of our parental dos and don’ts, but sexual awakening with its many internal and external changes is stimulating a recall to the inner self. More and more, we’re becoming aware of ourselves as separate beings. Among other changes, our hormones are urging us to do things that our parents might have told us were naughty. How can something that feels so good be so bad we wonder?

Increasingly, we find ourselves challenging the black and white notions of childhood, insisting on rational answers to why and who said so. Our capacity for independent thought is emerging and we want it to be recognized and accepted. We seek more freedom and privacy. No taxation without representation is our position. We rebel and our parents fight back, still wanting to protect us, still relating to us as children. Their authoritative approach is inappropriate at this stage in our development, but they, like us, are having difficulty making the transition. It’s a confusing time for all. Having failed to recognize and encourage our emerging capacity for independent thought, our parents have unintentionally alienated us.

We begin to look more to our peers for direction and approval. Their opinions and attitudes take precedence in shaping our behavior. We want to fit in, to belong. It’s important for our psychic and social survival. But to fit in, we have to express some behaviors and repress others. And if we arrive at this point with little or no sense of who we are as individuals, we run the risk of being unduly influenced by the expectations others have for us. It’s a delicate balancing act—being oneself within the context of the group. Where to turn for direction?

What we really needed, more than anything, at this stage is the benevolent ear of a mature adult—someone who could have appreciated our need to freely question any area of life, someone who could have guided us without preaching. He or she would have had to be good at the Socratic Method—stimulating our thinking with leading questions, making us use logic and fact to back up our opinions. If we could have found this at home, there would have been little need to rebel for we would have had what we needed—the freedom to think openly for ourselves—the freedom to explore what is right and wrong for us. If we had this at home, we were among the lucky few. Many adolescents have to look elsewhere for this needed kind of mentoring.

Before too long, it will be time for us to take our place among the adults of our culture. But will we be ready? We’ll have all the outward physical signs of adulthood but what about our inner development? What about our brain power? Will we possess the mature reasoning capacities of an adult mind or will we still think in the black-or-white terms of childhood? Will we finally be able to trust in our own feeling and thinking capacities, using them in concert to chart our own