Conscientious personality type (continued)

Type A personality

• Who Is That Guy - A Poor Man's Emergency Preparedness Guide

  By nature, I have a near-obsessive/compulsive type-A personality, and find myself antsy if I can't simultaniously utilize the three computers under my control at work.

• Friedman, Meyer. Type A behavior and your heart. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1974.

  Sophocles in his play Electra had Orestes remark that "the end excuses any evil," and the early Jesuits insisted that their ends justified their means. Many people tend to rationalize the wretchedness of the means they use to reach their own ends.

  Now, the ordinary Type A person is no more evil than anyone else, but he is extremely apt to excuse many of his daily errors in living by pointing to his hoped for end. The real tragedy, of course, is that the Type A person's fundamental immaturity never allows him to discern two basic truths, the first one being that the end of man is always the same, whether he has been a galley slave or a Moorish prince; and the second, that life is not a particular cluster of days that made up his childhood or that will envelop him in his senescence. Rather, life is a series of single days. Certain days, of course, become more important than others. But the Type A man, not realizing the real composition of his life as a whole, allows thousands of days to pass by unnoticed, and even worse, not enjoyed, always believing that there will be some sort of "end" that will finally explain and justify his time on earth.

  If he manages to escape a heart attack or cancer and reaches sixty-five years of age, he may begin to wonder where this marvelous "end" is and when it will begin to cast its golden glow upon his waning years. Then the soul-crushing truth falls upon him. There is to be no great "end" but only a slow petering out, a period during which he must watch his mental and physical prowess fade gradually away. He learns that disease and disappointment are no longer his distant relatives; they become his regular house guests. Only now, so very late, does he realize that his real life had been composed of days that had already passed away long ago (229-30).

Workaholism

• Schroeder, Gerald. The science of God : the convergence of scientific and biblical wisdom. New York: Free Press, 1997.

  The concept of tendency is what biblical morality is all about. Wherever there exists a natural human propensity to an act that is counterproductive either to the individual or the society, there is a biblical command regulating that aspect of life. People have the inclination to cheat in business. Cheating comes in many forms. The Bible forbids them all, describing cheating as an abomination (Deut. 25:13-16). A person may smile at being a workaholic, but the Bible says that one day in seven the drive to transform the material world must be put on hold, and in its place we are to confront the act of simply being, focusing on self and family. If these traits were biologically determined and not alterable, there would be no biblical injunctions to regulate them (158).

Control freaks

"Usually the phrase 'control freak' conjures up the image of a man, partly because a man's style tends to be more direct," says psychiatrist John M. Oldham, co-author of "The New Personality Self-Portrait" and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "But I do think that is changing. As many women assume leadership positions in the business world, we see controlling behaviors crossing gender lines," he says.

...

A combination of factors causes controlling behavior, Oldham says. "It's the result of temperament and the influence of life events that shape character. Some people are temperamentally more prone to be this way. Others may have been shaped that way, often with examples set by family members, parent figures and adult authority roles."

He identifies controlling aspects in four of the personality styles he studies, plus tips for coping:

Conscientious style. "The conscientious style shows a heightened level of worry and concern. There is only one correct way to do it, and he happens to know what it is."These folks can be difficult managers. "They need to triple-check and micromanage."

To live with one: Be humorously tolerant. Don't expect him or her to change. Avoid arguments and power struggles; the conscientious must win.

Self-confident style. "There is an assumed self-importance rather than worry over a correct way to do things. The world revolves around this personality style."

To live with one: Pay him a lot of attention. Make your needs known. Don't tie your self-esteem to his understanding you.

Vigilant style. "A high level of suspicion and distrust here. He is going to get screwed unless he looks out."

To live with one: This person needs your respect; show it. Avoid power struggles. Expect defensiveness. Take the lead socially.

Aggressive style. "Control in the most exploitive way. The aggressive personality style uses people. He tends to be in charge in a dominating way."

To live with one: be strong; maintain your self-esteem. Work toward compromises that let him remain top dog.

 

from "Control freaks: they can be either gender." By Karen S. Peterson/USA Today.

Popular "Type A Personality" pages

Type A Personality Test
A free on-line scored Type A Personality Test
http://www.queendom.com/typea.html

How to Tell Who Has a Type A Personality
A simple how to on identifying a person with a Type A personality, from your About.com guide.
http://psychology.about.com/library/howto/httypea.htm

Transforming Type A Personality
Does anyone really need to hear again about the dangers of living a Type A lifestyle? About the medical and relationship problems that are by now all too well known? No way. Everyone has been told quite thoroughly that they should eliminate this disposition if they recognize themselves in its symptom lineup. But why? And replace it with what? Becoming one with laid back, new age, relaxed zombie, couch potato behavior?
http://goinside.com/98/11/typea1.html

glover.htm
Little research has been conducted on the relative incidence of Type A personality in African-Americans and whites; however, Spafka et al [1990] found a significantly lower incidence of Type A personality among African-American men than white men, but did not detect any ethnic differences in personality type between African American and white women.
http://nt2.ec.man.ac.uk/cpa96/papers.htm/glover.htm

Characteristics of "Type A" Personality
There are two cardinal features of type A that we must remember, namely, "time urgency or time- impatience" and "free-floating (all pervasive and ever-present) hostility.
http://www.mindpub.com/art207.htm

The Connection Between "Type A" Personality and Your Heart
Look at the psychological characteristics of type A behavior:  impatience; intolerance for errors; hostility; covert insecurity and inadequate self-esteem; pressure to make haste; participation in too many events and activities;  excessive acquisition of things; frequent failures in delegation to peers and subordinates; frequent loss of temper while driving; suspicious of others' motives and disbelief of altruism.
http://www.mindpub.com/art208.htm

Surviving the Type A Personality
The Millennium Group: "We offer the very finest in leadership and management training seminars.."
This entertaining but serious workshop examines the destructive behaviors of the Type A Personality. Participants learn by "poking fun" at some of the little, but consequential, behavior they exhibit. Self-examination of behaviors is assisted through use of an instrument which provides immediate, non-threatening feedback and analysis. A thorough discussion of the payoffs of Type A Behavior Patterns leads to conclusions of what blocks effective results in both personal and professional lives.
http://www.millennium-group.com/catalog/page47.html

The Impact of Ethnicity, Gender, Occupational Setting and Level of Decision
The overall finding that a Type A personality did not correlate with either job satisfaction or turnover intentions is counter intuitive given the results of previous studies, but a further examination of the data may provide an explanation.
http://panopticon.csustan.edu/cpa99/html/schroeder.html

Characteristics of a Type A Personality
Gregory K. Stephens, Ph.D. Texas Christian University, Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Management: Mediator, Group Process Facilitator
http://voltaire.is.tcu.edu/~stephens/teaching/mana4233/stress/tsld014.htm

LOL Stress and the Type A Personality
Specific types of personalities seem to be more susceptible to the effects of stress than others. In 1959, two cardiologists, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, summarized decades of research to come up with the much publicized Type A personality.
http://www.awc.cc.az.us/psy/dgershaw/lol/Stress1.htm

Type A-B
A personality dimension which is presumed to be related to stress is called Type A - Type B personality. Read the text for a description of each personality type. Take the following test, and then sumit the results to me (use the online reporting feature) regarding your impressions of what the test suggests about your personality type.
http://onlinelearning.tc.cc.va.us/psy/201/77a/f1998/unit2/work2.htm

Eliminating Type A Behavior
If you recognize type A behaviors in yourself, especially the general attitude of hostility and the harrying sense of time urgency or time pressure, there are some specific things you can do to get rid of the type A personality.
http://www.trueyou.com/Beststeps.cfm/582

Are you a type "A" or "B"
Type "A" personality have been shown to be associated with increase in stress. Such individuals harbor an excessive amount of competitiveness, aggressiveness, and are under a sense of time urgency. A free floating anxiety is accompanied by a latent hostility.
http://www.green-river.com/assign28.htm

Specialized Nutrition for Type A Hearts
If you find yourself angry or upset on a regular basis, or can't function without your schedule and "to do" list, read on. Given the potential increased risk, consider some specialized nutrition advice to protect your heart.
http://www.heartinfo.org/nutrition/typeA110599.htm

index
Type A behavior includes such personality characteristics as:
- hyperaggresiveness leading to competitiveness
- insecurity leading to achievement striving
- time urgency
- the incessant struggle against time
- and hostility leading to impatience with others (Friedman and Ulmer).
http://www.clemson.edu/~bburley

Jonathan Swift

• Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels - Home Page [via dmoz]

  Norman O. Brown, Life against death. Vintage Books, 1959.

  The psychoanalytical experts concur with the critics that Swift was mad and that his works should be read only as documents in a case history. Not just the fourth part of Gulliver and the "noxious compositions" but all of Swift. In all honesty we must hand the case over to the psychoanalysts. But after psychoanalytical scrutiny, there is nothing left of Swift that is not objectionable. We must not underestimate the ability of psychoanalysis to uncover the real meaning of symbols. For example, a psychoanalytical comment on Gulliver as a little man in a little boat on the island of Brobdingnag says that "the common symbolism of the man in the boat as the clitoris suggests the identification with the female phallus thought to be characteristic of the male transvestite." Similarly, psychoanalysis leaves the Dean's character without a shred of integrity. "Swift showed marked anal characteristics (his extreme personal immaculateness, secretiveness, intense ambition, pleasure in less obvious dirt [sc. satire], stubborn vengefulness in righteous causes) which indicate clearly that early control of the excretory function was achieved under great stress and perhaps too early."

  At this point common humanity revolts. If personal immaculateness, ambition, and the championship of righteous causes are neurotic traits, who shall 'scape whipping? And certainly no genius will escape if this kind of psychoanalysis is turned loose on literary texts (183-184).

  
  
  
• Swift's Gulliver's Travels

  A second reaction is to equate Swift with Gulliver--to claim, as with the first reaction, that Swift intends us to take Gulliver's transformation seriously. Swift, however, is mad, mentally unbalanced, notoriously neurotic, and therefore we do not need to attend seriously to the ending of the book, unless we happen to be interested in clinical manifestations in literature of various mental aberrations.

  Enter, from stage left, the psychoanalytic view of Swift, which quite neutralizes the satire by an appeal to various disorders. Here's a sample:

  Ferenczi (1926): "From the psychoanalytic standpoint one would describe [Swift's] neurotic behaviour as an inhibition of normal potency, with a lack of courage in relation to women of good character and perhaps with a lasting aggressive tendency towards women of a lower type. This insight into Swift's life surely justifies us who come after him in treating the phantasies in Gulliver's Travels exactly as we do the free associations of neurotic patients in analysis, especially when interpreting their dreams."

  Karpman (1942): "It is submitted on the basis of such a study of Gulliver's Travels that Swift was a neurotic who exhibited psychosexual infantilism, with a particular showing of coprophilia, associated with misogeny, misanthropy, mysophilia, and mysophobia."

  Greenacre (1955): "One gets the impression that the anal fixation was intense and binding, and the genital demands so impaired or limited at best that there was total retreat from genital sexuality in his early adult life, probably beginning with the unhappy relationship with Jane Waring, the first of the goddesses. . . . The common symbolism of the man in the boat as the clitoris suggests the identification with the female phallus though to be characteristic of the male transvestite. . . Swift showed marked anal characteristics [his extreme immaculateness, secretiveness, intense ambition, pleasure in less obvious dirt (e.g., satire), stubborn vengefulness in righteous causes] which indicate clearly that early control of the excretory function was achieved under great stress and perhaps too early."

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