Appendix A
Vignettes Of Persons Who Were Assessed In Our Studies
Mrs. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. C
Mrs. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. C participated in the Family Socialization Project at the University of California Berkeley — a longitudinal study of a nonclinical population. These interviews are of the mothers, when their children were adolescents. Mrs. A is an Intuitive. Mrs. B is an Operational. Mrs. C is a Symbolic.
Mrs. A is a charming, sophisticated, stylish, and successful saleswoman. In an interview she is quick and direct in stating her opinions. She says that she understands why her fellow salesperson exaggerated his success when he was talking to her. He was trying to put her down to make himself feel good. In that way he could bolster his self esteem before he approached the next customer. She says that she would not allow what he said to affect her, that she is a strong person, and that she just pays attention to her own next customer. She believes that you can achieve almost anything if you work hard.
Mrs. A was reared in a very religious home. She is still religious, but she does not feel that it is necessary to go to church all the time. It is important to her not to hurt someone’s feelings. She would avoid being frank if someone was likely to be hurt by what she might say. She regards a sin of omission as a nonentity — that is, it does not exist. She thinks stealing and lying are bad, but that either may be excused depending on the circumstances. She says, "We all lie a little."
She credits her volatility to her being of Latin descent. She says she never sets goals, just takes things as they come. She believes in the sanctity of life and of the family. She caters to her husband, is an excellent cook, and is concerned about her children’s education and their appearance. Her children do many of the household chores. She has discovered that if she is made happy, it is good for the whole family. She feels that she has a good life and a happy home.
Mrs. B is an intelligent woman with a good sense of humor. She is critical of the interview questions used in the study, saying that they pose false dichotomies. She then addresses the questions conscientiously and has no problem with any hypotheses that are raised by the questions. Her responses tend to be qualified. She says, "Sometimes yes and sometimes no." She thinks that confidentiality of personal communications should not be breached; then after a pause she says that she can think of exceptions and recounts these.
She is hardworking and competent. She enjoys her work as an administrative assistant. She regards herself as driven and somewhat compulsive. She believes that she has become less so, and is better at letting less important issues drop. But she still expects herself and others to perform. She thinks that you can do pretty well in life, if you work hard and if your goals are not too unreasonable. But, she recognizes that some people have very difficult circumstances to overcome.
Unlike Mrs. A, Mrs. B is not religious. But like Mrs. A, Mrs. B does not believe in volunteering the truth, if it will hurt someone’s feelings. Her values center on human and animal welfare. After having given a principled answer to how she would respond to a moral dilemma, she wonders if she would have the nerve to act on her principles if the potential price for doing so was high.
She gives a clear and detailed picture of her children. She is inclined to compare their behavior with her own behavior when she was a teenager. She uses the comparison to understand and to be more tolerant of teenagers’ attitudes and behavior, saying that she won no prizes as a teenager herself. She would like her son to be focused on a vocational pursuit, regardless of what it was. However, she would be distressed if a child of hers chose a vocation that was "not genuine" — one that basically took advantage of others. She thinks that parents are the predominant influence on children when they are young, and that peers are the predominant influence during adolescence. She is inclined to be permissive with her children, but she recently resisted her teenager’s attempt to abandon a pursuit that she thought was not in the teenager’s best interest to abandon. She is pleased to offer luxuries to her children. She resents the fact that her parents did not provide her with any luxuries.
She allocates household chores to all family members, based on who is available and on who is likely to do a good job. She sees to it that her house is thoroughly cleaned once a week, and will do it herself if she is available. She wishes that she were more physically affectionate, but has come to accept that she isn’t. She is reasonably satisfied with her family and her life. In the future she might like to travel.
Mrs. C is a talkative, expansive, friendly, demonstrative artist and part-time art teacher who has had significant success as a painter. She is interested in and pleased with her work. Her responses to questions are not guarded. She speaks freely about intimate details of her life — details that one might not expect someone to reveal even to a close friend or to a psychotherapist, unless the person had been in therapy for months or possibly years. Her responses are lengthy and not always relevant, but eventually she returns to the point. She describes things in hyperbolic terms, especially her children’s good qualities. All of her children appear to be successful and caring persons. She describes what appears to be a very close relationship with two of her children, one of whom is remarkable in automatically sensing her mother’s needs and in meeting them.
Mrs. C has great respect for individual differences. She is not religious. But she has a philosophy, which has a religious quality. She believes that everyone comes into the world with an endowment, which should then be cultivated. Coming into the world with an endowment is how she explains the behavior of her unassuming, hardworking, compassionate teenager, a girl, who, unlike her mother, is measured in her responses. This teenager senses when anyone needs something. and then unself-consciously moves to meet those needs. She is also particularly competent and is highly regarded by her teachers. Mrs. C is able to sense what that child is feeling and may comfort her by lying down beside her, much as she did with her other children; hugging and kissing each other, mother and child expressing their warmth and understanding. From the examples Mrs. C gives, it sounds as if her understanding is usually accurate. She says that she is in love with that child. It sounds as if she has good reason to be in love with her. Everyone else is in love with her as well.
Mrs. A and Mrs. B both have doubts about how they reared their children. Mrs. C says that she has no such doubts. She says that she had the best of intentions. She adored her children and enjoyed their growing up tremendously. She characterizes her experience of mothering by her own mother as "dreadful."
Mrs. C is enthusiastic about her life and her children. She is certain of her marriage, in spite of any arguments that she and her husband might have.
Categorizing Mrs. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. C
As I mentioned, Intuitives are near the inverse of Operationals. Consider several of the differences between Mrs. A — an Intuitive — and Mrs. B — an Operational. Mrs. A says she never sets goals. She focuses on the moment. Mrs. B assigns household chores based on who is likely to do a good job. She focuses on function. Mrs. A says you can achieve almost anything if you work hard. Mrs. B says that you can do pretty well in life, if you work hard and your goals are not too unreasonable. She also recognizes that some people have to overcome difficult circumstances were they to succeed. Mrs. A is global in her belief about how people succeed. All you have to do is work hard. Mrs. B is measured. You can’t succeed at everything. You must have realistic goals. Some people have major disadvantages that interfere with their success. If all we knew about Mrs. A and Mrs. B were these few facts, we would be reasonably certain that Mrs. A was not an Operational, and that Mrs. B was not an Intuitive. But we could not be certain that neither Mrs. A nor Mrs. B was a Symbolic. If we found no clear indications in the rest of the interview that they were Symbolic, we would conclude that Mrs. A had an Intuitive CMS and that Mrs. B had an Operational CMS.
Mrs. C’s flamboyant style of communication — its globality — does not ordinarily fit into the Operational CMS. We would tend to think that her CMS could be either Intuitive or Symbolic. But when we hear of her intense closeness with her children, we are reasonably certain that she is a Symbolic.
At this point we can add details as to why we thought Mrs. A is an Intuitive, Mrs. B is an Operational, and Mrs. C is a Symbolic.
Mrs. A says that if she is made to feel good, it is good for the family. That is probably true. But it is also a diffusion of valuation between self and outside. Along with her charming manner and her stylish appearance, it also suggests that she focuses on external supplies to feel good about herself. Her not setting goals and responding to the moment suggests that she learned not to trust the future. She had better take while the getting is good. Also, her defenses are narcissistic ones. She uses denial. She says that the salesman’s remarks do not disturb her; that she is "strong." She externalizes and rationalizes her volatility and her lying. That is, she attributes her volatility to her being a Latin. She attributes to others — externalizes — what she does when she says, "We all lie a little." She rationalizes that what is good for her is good for the family. These statements are evidence of a heteronomous superego. Her statements that a sin of omission does not exist and that lying and stealing are bad, but may be excused depending on the circumstances, suggest that she could readily rationalize irresponsible behavior.
Mrs. B is an Operational with obsessive features (she ruminates and is scrupulous). She is concerned about function at work and at home. Household assignments are based on who does the best job. Although she disapproves of the interview questions, she proceeds to address them conscientiously. She keeps her obligations. She is also concerned about social codes. She would like her son to choose an occupation, but she would be dismayed if any of her children chose a job whose purpose was to take advantage of others. She wonders about herself — would she do the honorable thing if there were significant risk attached? She qualifies almost every statement she makes — using undoing, not denial, externalization, or rationalization as defenses. Her resentment toward her family centers on their not having provided her with luxuries. I assume that they provided necessities — that they saw to her long-term interests.
Her focus is on function; social values are important to her and are graded — that is, qualified — and she probably experienced the kind of caregiving that fosters development of an Operational.
Mrs. C is a Symbolic. Mrs. C’s extreme qualities are obvious. Not every Symbolic manifests extreme qualities, but if someone does, the odds are that that person has a Symbolic CMS. Mrs. C is unguarded in her revelations, open in both content and manner of expression. She does little qualifying, little defending. She is enthusiastic. Her children are "adorable." The caregiving during her childhood was "dreadful." She has "no doubts" about how she reared her children. Gradations in attributes are eliminated as she paints with a broad brush. She abides by an all-encompassing philosophy. She is nearly merged in her attachment to two of her children.
I should mention that we may interpret the same words differently based on our overall picture of the person. When Mrs. A said that she would not tell the truth if it would hurt someone’s feelings, we think, based on what we know about Mrs. A, that she was describing a general mode of social interaction. Mrs. B also would not speak out if it would hurt someone’s feelings. But from what we know about Mrs. B, we think that not telling the truth would be a modification of her codes, an exception. We make this distinction between Mrs. A and B based on how the same kind of behavior fits our overall assessment of each. The distinction involves clinical judgment. Although it is certainly subject to error, clinical judgment — goodness of fit into a picture of the person — is an important part of our syndrome approach to categorization. Luria (1966, p. 75) defined syndrome as "externally heterogeneous but, in fact, internally connected symptoms." Just taking a statement or an answer to a question at face value, without subjecting it to any judgment as to what the person means, may be misleading.
For example, Mr. Q. asserted that, whatever the situation, he always asked himself, "Am I improving myself?" One might think he was asking himself, "Am I more honorable person if I do such and such?" One must know Mr. Q fairly well to realize that what he meant by this question was "Am I getting a better deal than the one I have?" By this, Mr. Q sometimes meant, "Will I have more money than I do now?" Sometimes he meant, "Should I agree now to go out this evening with the friend I am with, if it is possible that I will get a better offer a little later in the afternoon?" When Mr. Q said that a person was smart, he meant shrewd. One must know Mr. Q to know what his statements mean. In an interview, one hopes to have a large enough sample of data that one can see how a statement fits into a coherent understanding of the person.
< Chapter 11 | Contents | Appendix B >
Do you have a comment or would like to open a discussion? The author would be pleased to hear from you. Contact AJ Malerstein here.
