[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #52 Embrace the Fluidity of Personality

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 "Neurons" Meta Reflections - #52

November 7, 2016

 

 

EMBRACE THE FLUIDITY OF "PERSONALITY"

 

 

If the question came up once, it came up several times, at NSTT this year
(Neuro-Semantic Trainers' Training).  The question?  Something about
"personality."  "Is that the way some people just are?"  "What about people
who are X?"  Sometimes the questions were about the meta-programs that a
person favors, sometimes about a favorite representation system, sometimes
about what to do with people who "are" X or Y? 

 

Once, in answer to some of the questions, I commented, "Just forget
'personality.'  It doesn't exist, it is a construct that has been overly
used, it is just not a useful way to think about things."  When some asked
that I later explain that, I commented on the book, The Structure of NLP:
Ordering and Disordering Personality with NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2000,
Crown House Publications).  I wrote that book to address the "personality
disorders" in the DSM IV along with three co-authors.  My intention was to
show that the NLP and Neuro-Semantic models can and do adequately address
personality disorders.

 

The comment I always make with regard to personality is this- 

Personality is what we do, not what we are.  You and I do personality- it is
how we think, emote, speak (language), act, and relate.  As we do these
things-we establish in our minds and the minds of others what we call as our
"personality."  It's how people know us, recognize us, and think about us.

 

As a person, how do you function?   How do you know yourself?  How do others
know you?  Is it not in how you think and the way you think?  Is it not in
how you emotion, the particular emotions that you regularly access as you
move through life?  Is it not in the way you use language, the way you
speak, the words you use?  Is it not in your actions and how you relate to
people?  Well, yes, of course.  You learn to be and express the person you
are in these ways.  And as you do, you are doing your "personality."

 

Where did you learn to think, feel, speak, act, and relate that way?  From
your early home life, from your culture, your religion, your school, your
friends, your books, your movies, etc.   You learned to do your personality
from all of these influences. And often, you learned to do what you needed
to do in those contexts in order to survive, to get along, to deal with the
factors that you had to deal with.  Obviously, the more dysfunctional your
early home environment as well as the "world" that you grew up in, the more
you would have adjusted your person (personality) and that may result in
developing personality disorders.

 

Abraham Maslow spoke to this in Toward a Psychology of Being (1968).  Maslow
was answering the question about "personality problems."  What do you say
when someone tells you that he or she has "a personality problem?"  Do you
say "I'm sorry!" or do you say, "Good!"  He noted that it all depends upon
the context in which the person has been surviving.  He asked about the
"personality" of someone trying to survive Hitler's Nazi environment.  If
someone adjusted oneself to that, would he have a healthy and normal
personality, or would there be some severe maladjustments?  If well adjusted
to a context of hate, prejudice, racism, etc., would we say "good?"  Or
would we say, "Sorry to hear that?"  And would the so-called "personality
disorder" in that situation not be a good thing?

 

Personality is context relative.  You do your personality in some context in
order to adjust or not to adjust and a healthy, strong, and vigorous sense
of self can be deemed good in one context and a disorder in another.  So
Maslow asked, "Who is doing the calling, the labeling?"  He recommended that
we ask about the context, the criteria of the evaluation, the identity and
motivation of the person doing the labeling if we want to fully understand
what's being discussed.

"The essential characteristic of holistic analysis of the personality in
actual practice is that there be a preliminary study or understanding of the
total organism, and that we then proceed to study the role that our part of
the whole plays in the organization and dynamics of the total organism. ...
The personality is not separate from its expressions, effects, or the
stimuli impinging upon it (causes) and so at lest for psychological data it
must be replaced by another conception." (1968, p. 297)

 

His "Self-actualizing People: a Study of Psychological Health" appeared in
Personality Symposia: Symposium #1 on Values in 1950.  There Maslow
challenged the fundamental premise of modern psychology, namely that we can
devise accurate theories about human nature by studying the mentally ill or
the statistically average.

 

If we learn to do personality, and if personality arises in specific
contexts and is relative to those contexts-this implies several really
important things.




.              It important to create healthy contexts.  Parents take note.
School administrates take note, also leaders and managers, etc.  The context
that you create for people to live and operate within will inevitably have
tremendous effects on the personalities that are developed in those
contexts.  Is it a healthy self-actualizing context?  Is it an unhealthy
context for human beings?  Is it loving, joyful, learning, contributing,
etc.?

 

.              Personality can be positively changed for the better.
Personality is an ongoing process and so by improving one's thinking,
emoting, speaking, acting, and relating-one's personality is improved,
enhanced, and enriched.  People are not stuck or victims of fate.

 

.              How you know and expressed yourself is under your control- if
you so choose.  "Personality" is not a mysterious force that is imposed upon
you.  You may be tendencies and you may be wired for certain talents, but
you are not fated to "be" a certain way.  You can choose what to think and
value and believe.

 

To your highest and best personality!

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


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