Chapter XIV: Section C: Forms of Expression, Thought, Interest

I. Forms of expression

(Includes all symbolizing forms: political editorials, novels, poems, paintings, cartoons, plastic media, plays, acting)

Most effective style
Analytical and dialectical
Persecutory (sarcastic, denunciatory)
Enthusiastic
Humorous
Commanding
Range of style wide or limited

II. Mode of thought

Quick or slow to suggest policies or tactics
Almost totally uninventive
Systematically collects data prior to judgment
Impressionistic improvisation
Welcomes suggestion and criticism before decision
Impatient of suggestion and criticism before decision
Anxious to justify decision to those about or to world
Indifferent about justifying decision
Stubbornly holds to decision
Oscillates in decision
Much influenced by facts and arguments (or little)
Much influenced by appeals to sentiments (or little)
Much influenced by personal inducements (or little)
Much influenced by coercion (or little) (note that influence may
be negative as to direction)
Genuine pursuit of general interest in exercise of discretion, or not
Elated by victory or depressed
Genuine or narrow in sharing credit
Deeply depressed by defeat or satisfied in defeat
Interested in programs and values
Interested in processes and methods
Long-run or short-run objectives
Aims at immediate or eventual political action
Presses through to a decision capable of being tested
Conclusions or decisions vague
Ideal of responsible personal participation
Consistency between opinion and practices
Self-consciousness of own techniques
Conforms or not to family pattern (exaggerated, adoption of
opposite, ...)

III. Political interest

Formulated early and persists through life
Formulated early, lies dormant, reawakened
Aroused early, disillusioned
Aroused late

By this time it is perhaps superfluous to comment that every fact is defined from the point of view of an observer, and that the problem is to specify as definitely as possible the angle of observation of the recorder. Trait lists are meaningless unless they can be filled in by a fact-collecting process which surveys the various situations with respect to which it is of possible relevance. It is very obvious to the psychopathologist that the man who is “aggressive” at work may be “timid” in sexuality. All too frequently personalities are supposed to be “aggressive” when a certain number of raters have agreed on it, without stopping to consider whether the raters have a chance to become acquainted with the behavior of the individual in many situations. The multiplication of ratings by persons who are in a poor position to judge the subject (even by “intimate” friends who do not, however, act as sexual partners) adds nothing but a spurious specificity to the data. The interviewer who listens to the intimate life of the individual through many weeks and months is in a very strategic position to become acquainted with details of individual reactions which even intimates have not seen. A “rating” must be taken with special reference to the history of the relations of the rater and the rated. It may be that we shall presently find that the ratings of analysts in dealing with certain types of people who can be easily identified do not substantially deviate from those of “intimates” or even rather casual acquaintances of certain kinds. Such knowledge will enable research to proceed with more certain pace toward the time when we shall know what to look for and how to elicit what we want with the maximum of economy. The specialist who interviews a man for an hour may be able, during the course of what appears to be an ordinary social relation, to find the tell-tale signs which detailed research has shown to be invariably, or almost invariably, connected with particular impulse systems and developmental histories. As Bjerre so well put it:

As soon as our intercourse with a certain person is no longer
governed by common interests, but by a desire to acquire a
knowledge of his inmost being, we immediately abandon the formal
content of his utterance and begin unconsciously to seek for
whatever indication of his inner life appears in his speech
independently of, or even in spite of, his conscious will.[76]

What is achieved is a correlation of the results of “casual” contact and “intensive” study, a correlation which is the common target of a converging attack upon the understanding of the human personality.

Some day we shall know how to validate the saying of the old physician which is on the title-page of this book: “From him who has eyes to see and ears to hear no mortal can hide his secret; he whose lips are silent chatters with his fingertips and betrays himself through all his pores.”