Beyond Fear

While the majority of his fellow psychiatrists in the USA saw depression as a purely physical disease, Aaron Beck became aware in the 1960s that his depressed patients had a particular way of thinking, or what he called ‘a depressive cognitive style’. He developed a way of investigating this style, and out of this initial work has come a vast body of theory, research and practice called Cognitive Therapy.

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A depressive cognitive style was made up of ‘schemas’ or structures which were stable and enduring and developed from early life experience.

(#litres_trial_promo) By 1983 Beck and his colleagues had discovered that each depressed person’s schemas had one of two distinctive superordinate schemas. They named these superordinate schemas sociotropy and autonomy. The person who used a sociotropy schema placed high value on a positive interchange with other people and was extremely concerned with being accepted, being intimate and being supported and guided by others. The person who used the autonomy schema placed high value on and was extremely concerned with achieving their goals, maintaining their high standards, being independent and maintaining what has been called ‘the integrity of one’s domain’.

(#litres_trial_promo) A later statistical study using factor analysis found further evidence for the existence of these two distinctive cognitive styles.

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Some years ago, when I was running a seminar for an international group of managers, the Japanese managers in the group told me that in Japan there was a series of popular psychology books which divided people into two groups in the same way as I had described dividing people into extraverts and introverts. They could not supply me with an English translation of these books but they were totally unsurprised by what I had said.

No matter how diverse the theories and the jargon these different psychologists used, it does seem that they were all commenting on an enduring feature of all human beings - namely that, individual though our interpretations of events might be, they all seem to fall into one of two groups, one where the person is turned outward to external reality, and one where the person is turned inward to internal reality.

Over the years that I have been writing about extraverts and introverts, quite a number of people have told me that, though they have read my books or listened to me lecture, they cannot work out whether they are an introvert or an extravert, or they insist to me that ‘I’m a bit of both’. I have found that such people are invariably extraverts. Introverts find what I have to say mildly interesting, but I am not telling them anything they have not always known about themselves. One of my introvert friends told me that in his teens and twenties he had wanted to think of himself as an extravert and had tried to act as such, but somehow he never got the knack of it. He resigned himself to recognizing himself as an introvert who enjoys good company. Some extraverts admire what they see as the superior qualities of an introvert, and either persuade themselves that they are an introvert or that they feel inferior to introverts. Neither attitude is wise because there is nothing to choose between being one or the other. Extraverts and introverts both enjoy certain advantages and labour under certain disadvantages.

It is not surprising that introverts usually know that they are introverts. Introverts introspect. They know that they need a peaceful environment, that chaos upsets them, and that every day they have to feel that they have achieved something, however small. Knowing that they have tidied a kitchen cupboard will allow them to feel that the day has not been wasted. They work out theories about anything that attracts their interest. (This is not to say that all such theories are clever. Some are stupid, some bizarre.) Just working out a theory about why something is so can seem to them an achievement which gives them satisfaction. Extraverts are more interested in doing than in working out why. Their thoughts are not so much concerned with theories as with fantasies that involve much activity. Extraverts can be keen and observant critics of what goes on around them, but they are not impelled to work out in any detail why such things happen.

Some extraverts, busy focusing on what they do, find the question of why they do what they do impossible to answer. A friend of mine, a delightful extravert and the author of a number of highly successful romantic novels, asked my advice about a story she was developing. When I asked her why her heroine wanted to pursue a certain investigation my question completely flummoxed her. She knew that her heroine wanted to obtain certain information but she did not know why having this information was important to her. She knew what her heroine would do but she did not know why. Yet if we do not know why we do what we do, how can we ever understand ourselves?

Of course, we all want to achieve and to have good relationships, and when our lives go well we can usually fulfil both aims, but in the final analysis we are either an extravert or an introvert, and when, our backs are to the wall, in the extremes of danger, there is only one construction of our existence and potential annihilation that we know. In ordinary life we have to make conscious attempts to learn the skills in which we are naturally deficient, and if we are wise we do this. Many introverts learn to be highly skilled in social interactions; many extraverts learn to be highly skilled in experiencing, labelling and understanding their internal reality.

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Unless we come across a psychologist who is keen on laddering, we rarely make conscious and explicit how we experience our existence and our potential annihilation. We simply use our experience of our existence and potential annihilation as the basis of everything we do. Sometimes it is hidden. Sometimes it comes out clearly in what we say about ourselves.

Linda Evans, who was once a very famous television star, revealed herself as an extravert when she said:

My main purpose as a child, and as a young adult, was to be loved. I was passive and submissive at any cost. The idea of rejection was frightening to me. I’ve broken out of that mould by now; but I still have this feeling for anyone who is warm.

There’s an old Chinese saying, which I apply in my everyday life, that ‘everyone you meet is your mirror’.

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In contrast, the writer Edna O’Brien, when interviewed by Miriam Gross, revealed herself as an introvert. Miriam Gross asked to what extent she felt that writing was a way of explaining oneself, of making up for the failure to communicate fully in ordinary life.

It’s a stab at it. I think it was Beckett who said - I’m paraphrasing - that you write in order to say the things you can’t say. It’s a cry, or a scream, or a song. Whatever form it takes, it is definitely an attempt to explain things and put them right.

Did she feel that if women had more confidence and a more active role in the affairs of the world, they would invest less energy in their emotional life?

I do. But, ironically, I think that much as our longings might hurt us, they also enrich us. Because finally, when the curtain is down, I mean, when one is dying, what really matters is what took place inside, in one’s own head, one’s own psyche. And people who acknowledge the relative failure or paucity in areas of their lives - either in love or in work - are in a way more blessed than the others who pretend or who put on masks. Though you suffer by not being confident and you suffer by not being befriended or loved as you might like to be, you are the sum of all that need and at least you’re alive, you are not a robot and you are not a liar.

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These are two successful people, successful not only in terms of fame and wealth but in developing a way of life which allows them to be themselves, to live within and to extend that which gives them their sense of existence. Linda Evans was eminently lovable, on screen and off, as they say. Edna O’Brien used everything that came to her, whether it caused her pain or not, to develop her own clarity and understanding in ways which meet with enormous public approval. However, when we do not develop a way of life which allows us to be ourselves, when we cannot live within and extend that which gives us our sense of existence, we suffer great fear.

Ken had come to be cured. As soon as he sat down he announced, ‘I have a good, secure job. I’ve got my own house and no money worries. I’m forty-two and I’m in good health. There is no logical reason why I should be anxious.’

He had been off work for six months. He was so overwhelmed by anxiety that he could not attempt the simplest task. He spent most of his time going over in his mind technical work he had done in past years in the homes of neighbours and friends, trying to convince himself that he had not made any mistakes and that the people living there were not in danger.

He was an engineer, a practical problem-solver. ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘When there’s a problem, they come to me to solve it.’ He liked people looking to him to solve their problems. I asked him why. He said, ‘It gives me satisfaction.’

At that time the UK was in the midst of a huge strike by coal miners, and this had created a series of problems at his place of work. As he would solve one, another would be created. There was no way all these problems could be solved simultaneously. He felt that he could not afford to let his staff and his superiors see that there were practical problems which he could not solve because that, he feared, would diminish him in their eyes.

A friend, ‘the most logical and competent chap I know’, had committed suicide. Ken had found him. ‘It didn’t upset me particularly,’ he said. But, in fact, inside he was greatly upset.

In later discussions Ken told me how his mother, a very strong-willed woman, had insisted that he achieve and that he help people. He had to accept what she said because she had ways of enforcing her orders. He told me how one day, when she discovered that he had lost his best sweater on his way home from school, she had come to the cinema where he was happily watching a film and, in front of all those people, had hauled him home to look for his sweater. The shame he felt then was the shame he feared if, through his own carelessness, he caused the people he had tried to help any suffering.

He had come on his own. I asked after his wife.

‘She says I’m getting her down.’ No, they didn’t discuss things much.

At that first meeting it was not until he was near to leaving that he said, ‘My sons have their own friends now. They don’t need me any more.’

Ken was unable to say, ‘I feel that I am alone, abandoned and rejected. I fear I shall disappear.’ In contrast, Ella was able to describe her fear.

Ella nearly died in a road accident. Four years later she was still weak and shaky and prone to tears. She had not returned to work, and she found driving a car a frightening experience.

‘I just want to hide myself away,’ she said. ‘I don’t want people to see me like this. I used to be so confident and in control.’

She had always had to be competent, but only in the feminine skills of housekeeping. ‘My mother thought that a girl didn’t need an education. A woman’s fulfilment was to be a wife and mother. I won a scholarship to grammar school but she wouldn’t let me take it up. I got married and had a family, but I’ve always done something more. I’ve always worked. But now, I’m back to where I started. I’ve achieved nothing. I’m weak and frightened, and I’m just what my mother wanted, a wife and mother and nothing else. No personal achievement. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?’

Ella’s statement that life is about personal achievement is just what an introvert would say, though introverts cover a wide range of activities in what they call personal achievement. Extraverts say that life is about other people, though they cover a wide range of possible relationships with other people. Both extraverts and introverts need to achieve and they both need other people, but for extraverts achievement is to strengthen their relationships with other people while for introverts achievement is what life is about. Introverts need other people to stop them disappearing into their own internal reality and losing touch with the world around them, while extraverts need other people to provide an essential part of their sense of existence.

When we are small children we are aware that we have certain talents and powers. We may not be able to put a name to them, but we know that whenever we use them we feel an enormous joy. The passionate pleasure of acting creatively and successfully in and upon the world has always given puny human beings the will and power to go on striving in a vast and dangerous universe. As children, if we are lucky, our talents and powers are approved of and encouraged by the adults around us. If so, we can then use our talents and powers to develop and make ourselves safe. If we are extraverts we use our talents and powers to gather people around us and keep them there, and to fill the empty space within us. If we are introverts we develop our talents and powers to gain clarity and personal achievement and to relate our internal reality to the external world.

However, if as children the adults around us do not recognize or approve of our talents and powers, we are forced to neglect and to deny them and to learn skills which we know are not in us. This leaves us with a sense of feeling ‘not right’, in some way always an impostor. We are left with a sense of longing. We may not be able to put a name to the object of the longing, or we may know the name but be too ashamed to admit it. How could this delicate wife and mother admit that all she ever wanted was to sail her own boat round the world? How could this rugby-playing company director admit that all he ever wanted was to be principal dancer in a ballet? How their families would laugh if they said these things! Perhaps they dare not even admit these longings to themselves. Then all they become aware of are certain passionate dislikes. She ‘cannot stand’ Clare Francis, who was such a brilliant sailor, while he refuses to accompany his wife to the ballet, saying that he has better things to do than watch ‘those poofs’. The prevalence of envy in our society shows just how many children have been prevented from developing their talents and powers and being themselves.

Both extraverts and introverts need other people. Extraverts need other people to establish and maintain their existence. Introverts need other people to help them gain clarity by setting standards and giving approval. When I was discussing this with Mick McHale, I asked him which for him was the more real, his internal or external reality - what went on inside him or what went on outside him?

He said, ‘Internal reality is far more real. I tend to believe that far more than my external reality.’ He went on to say that while he wanted approval, when he did actually gain it it no longer meant anything to him. ‘I think the difference is, if I’ve got things sorted out and I know I’ve done a good job, I can reward myself, but if it’s on the periphery of that, if I’m not sure whether I’ve done a good job or taken the right direction, then it’s very important and I really appreciate it.’

‘So getting approval makes things more clear for you.’

‘Yes.’

If extraverts are left in isolation they are in danger of being overwhelmed by the emptiness within them. Under stress they continue to perceive their external reality as ordinary, but it becomes dangerous. If introverts are left in isolation they are in danger of retreating into their internal reality and losing the ability to distinguish internal from external reality. Under stress they find that external reality becomes increasingly strange.

We need other people to help us structure ourselves and our world, but it is other people who threaten the structures we create. When they disappoint, leave, reject or betray us they show us that we were wrong in our expectations. When they criticize and correct us they show us that our meaning structure may not be an accurate picture of what is going on. When they press their ideas upon us or try to force us to be what they want us to be they threaten us with annihilation. We have to learn ways to defend ourselves.

A Choice of Defences (#ulink_e3267a37-8f30-5634-a774-11ed3f661a60)

As our meaning structure establishes itself it builds defences so as to hold itself together. We create ways of conforming to society’s demands while at the same time resisting such demands. If your parents sent to you to a school where each child had to wear an identical uniform you conformed but you defended yourself by wearing your skirt a fraction shorter than regulation, or you battered your hat and wore it at a rakish tilt. If you were expected to sit quietly through long, boring church services you defended yourself by escaping into fantasy or developing private games. When people criticized you you developed a nonchalant air, or a sudden and complete deafness, or a quick wit which stung your critics and amused onlookers. As an introvert you developed methods of organization and control which, when practised, gave you a sense of achievement. As an extravert you developed your charm and gathered around you a host of friends and acquaintances.

However, defences such as these require considerable self-confidence to create and use. The less self-confidence we have the more vulnerable we are to the encroachments other people make on us. The more vulnerable we are the more desperate are the defences we need. If we lose all self-confidence and we come to feel that we are irredeemably bad and utterly valueless, we have to resort to the most desperate of defences, those behaviours which psychiatrists call the mental illnesses.