PTypes Personality Types

Adventurous Personality Type

The interests of the Adventurous Personality Type include (Oldham, pg. 227):

throwing caution to the wind
venturing where most fear to tread
not being bound by the same terrors and worries that limit others
living on the edge
challenging boundaries and restrictions
pitting yourself against your own mortality

Main Interests of the Adventurous Personality Type

not being influenced by other people or by the norms of society
enjoying the thrill of risk; enjoying high-risk activities
not worrying about others; expecting each human being to be responsible for themselves
being gifted in the art of winning friends and influencing people
keeping on the move; exploring, then, moving on; not worrying about finding work; living by your talents, skills, ingenuity, and wits
being high-spirited and making mischief
being courageous, physically bold, and tough; standing up to anyone who dares to take advantage of you
living in the present; not feeling guilty about the past or anxious about the future; experiencing life now

Characteristic Traits and Behaviors

Dr. John M. Oldham has defined the Adventurous personality style. The following eight characteristic traits and behaviors are listed in his The New Personality Self-Portrait.

Nonconformity. Men and women who have the Adventurous personality style live by their own internal code of values. They are not strongly influenced by other people or by the norms of society.
Challenge. To live is to dare. Adventurers love the thrill of risk and routinely engage in high-risk activities.
Mutual independence. They do not worry too much about others, for they expect each human being to be responsible for him- or herself.
Persuasiveness. They are silver-tongued, gifted in the gentle art of winning friends and influencing people.
Wanderlust. They love to keep moving. They settle down only to have the urge to pick up and go, explore, move out, move on. They do not worry about finding work, and live well by their talents, skills, ingenuity, and wits.
Wild oats. In their childhood and adolescence, people with the Adventurous personality style were usually high-spirited hell-raisers and mischief makers.
True grit. They are courageous, physically bold, and tough. They will stand up to anyone who dares to take advantage of them.
No regrets. Adventurers live in the present. They do not feel guilty about the past or anxious about the future. Life is meant to be experienced now.

Source: Oldham, John M., and Lois B. Morris. The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love, and Act the Way You Do. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 1995.

Idealized Image

I did conceive of "character strengths and virtues" in a positive way as Martin Seligman does in his Positive Psychology, but now see them as images of perfection that inflate the idealized self theorized by Karen Horney.

Character Strengths and Virtues (what the Antisocial type is proud of)

The "Character Strengths and Virtues" are attributes of the idealized self, or ego ideal. As "conditions of worth" they are idols.

Non-conformity, internal code of values.
Courage, boldness, challenge-seeking, loving thrill of risk, engaging in high-risk activities.
Independence, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, responsibility for self.
Persuasiveness, winning, influential.
Spontaneity, wanderlust, exploration, discovery, talent, skill, ingenuity, wits.
High-spiritedness.
Aggressiveness, toughness, standing-up to exploitation.
Emotional stability, without regrets, without anxiety about the future, living in the now.

Belief in themselves, definite inner sense of what's right or wrong for them, living in the here and now, wits, ingenuity, physical prowess, sheer guts (Oldham, 229); living for the present, not worrying about going under, easiness with money, appreciation of possibilities in any moment, eternal optimism (230); spontaneity, fun-loving (231); living in the now, reacting immediately to impulse, enjoying an unrestrained, non-conformist existence, taking numerous risks (232); not hiding feelings, emotional honesty, cheerfulness, eagerness to enjoy life, optimism, resilience (233); strong appreciation of challenge (234); players, can work well with discipline, concentration, responsibility, good talkers, instinct and ingenuity rather than intellect, easily bored (235); innovativeness, resourcefulness, outwit conventional obligations, create their own opportunities, inner sense of right and wrong (236); charisma (237); non-monogamous (238); wanderlust (240); exciting, interesting, non-critical, energy, curiosity, good spirit, romantic swashbuckling, freedom-loving (242); spontaneity, ability to act, strength, fearlessness, ability to experience pleasure, tendency to live life to the fullest (243); free of anxiety (244).

Selected from a list of "Key Character Traits" at career-in-your-suitcase.com:

able, active, adaptable, adroit, adventurous, aggressive, assertive, avid, cheerful, dexterous, direct, dominant, dynamic, eager, effective, eloquent, energetic, enterprising, enthusiastic, generous, gregarious, imaginative, independent, inspiring, inventive, keen, outgoing, perceptive, personable, persuasive, poised, popular, practical, progressive, quick-thinking, realistic, social, spontaneous, stimulating, talented, undaunted, versatile, vigorous.

Selected from Cawley's Virtue Clusters:

Magnanimity, naturalness.
Confidence, self-esteem, hope, cheerfulness, joyfulness, sociability.
Straightforwardness, fairness.
Tolerance, liberalism, open-mindedness.
Generosity, liberality, courtesy, equability, friendliness, fraternity.
Refinement, magnificence.
Energy, attentiveness, enthusiasm, alertness, rationality, resourcefulness, sagacity, independence.
Artistry, inquisitiveness, boldness, courage, spontaneity, humor, wittiness.

Michael J. Cawley III, James E. Martin, John A. Johnson (1999). A Virtues Approach to Personality.

Top Strengths*

"Bravery [valor]: Not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it"

"Vitality [zest, enthusiasm, vigor, energy]: Approaching life with excitement and energy; Not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated"

"Curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]: Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering

"Social intelligence [emotional intelligence, personal intelligence]: being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick"

"Leadership: Encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same [time maintain] good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen"

"Appreciation of beauty and excellence [awe, wonder, elevation]: Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience"

"Hope [optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation]: Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about" (Peterson & Seligman, 29, 30).

* Selected from Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Adventurousness

Adventurous: "1. Inclined to undertake new and daring enterprises. 2. Hazardous; risky." (AHD)

Synonyms: "venturesome, daring, daredevil, rash, reckless, foolhardy"

"adventurous, venturesome, daring, daredevil, rash, reckless, foolhardy denote in common courting danger or exposing oneself to danger in a greater degree than is required for courage. One who is adventurous is inclined to adventure; the word may or may not imply indiscretion or imprudence in incurring risk or hazard ... Venturesome frequently implies an excessive tendency to take chances ... Daring heightens the implication or fearlessness ... Daredevil implies ostentation in daring and is often specifically applied to stunts performed for hire as a public spectacle or to their performers ... Rash implies imprudent hastiness or boldness in word or action; reckless, utter heedlessness or carelessness of consequences ... Foolhardy implies a foolish daring or recklessness and may be used of persons or of their acts ... "

Analogous: "audacious, bold, intrepid, doughty ... : aspiring, panting ... : ambitious, emulous"

Antonyms: "unadventurous, cautious" (MW, 24-25)

Contrasted:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1981, c.1969). William Morris, Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Merriam-Webster (1984). Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Careers and Jobs for Adventurous type

Google Answers: selecting the right career for me

This list represents careers and jobs people of the Adventurous type tend to enjoy doing.

surveyor
fire fighter
private investigator
pilot
police officer
purchasing agent
chiropractor
medical technician
securities analyst
computer repair person
race car driver
computer programmer
electrical engineer
legal secretary
coach/trainer
commercial artist
carpenter
paralegal
dental assistant
radiological technician
marine biologist
software developer

Source: U.S. Department of Interior, Career Manager - ISTP.

Noteworthy examples of the Adventurous personality type

Many people (and not just those of the Adventurous personality type) have adventurous traits or behave in an adventurous manner. But the traits and behaviors of the Adventurous personality type are not so inflexible and maladaptive or the cause of such significant subjective distress or functional impairment as to constitute

Antisocial personality disorder. The noteworthy examples of the Adventurous personality type are examples of a *type*, not of a disorder. It is my opinion that the ideal type which is described above is best is characterized as adventurous, and that the Adventurous personality type represents the pervasive and enduring pattern of the personalities of the people listed below better than any other type.

Famous persons on this list may serve as ego ideals, idealized images, and idols for individuals of the Adventurous type.

Noteworthy examples of the Adventurous personality type are: Index of noteworthy examples

A prince ought to know how to resemble a beast as well as a man, upon occasion: and this is obscurely hinted to us by ancient writers who relate that Achilles and several other princes in former times were sent to be educated by Chiron the Centaur; that as their preceptor was half-man and half-beast, they might be taught to imitate both natures since one cannot long support itself without the other. Now, because it is so necessary for a prince to learn how to act the part of a beast sometimes, he should make the lion and the fox his patterns: for the lion has not cunning enough of himself to keep out of snares and toils; nor the fox sufficient strength to cope with a wolf: so that he must be a fox to enable him to find out the snares, and a lion in order to terrify the wolves.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. 18.

Cassirer, Ernst. "Implications of the New Theory of the State." The Prince: a new translation, backgrounds, interpretations. Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1977. 166-180.

"Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

I hypothesize that the personality theories of personality theorists best describe themselves and those of their own type.

Carl Jung

In a letter to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung declared: "Religion can only be replaced by religion."

I imagine a far finer and more comprehensive task for [psychoanalysis] than alliance with an ethical fraternity. I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were--a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. That was the beauty and purpose of classical religion. (Noll, 1997, pg. 65)

Books - 02.19.1998 [Book review of Richard Noll's The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung]
It's inevitable that, in these pre-millennial, superficially nihilistic times, previously unassailable 20th-century giants such as Freud (whose seduction theory has been called into question) and Heidegger (who failed to distance himself sufficiently from the Nazis after resigning from the National Socialist party) are being pounded, especially as posthumous documentation reveals a more detailed picture of their lives. In Jung's case, Noll doesn't trash the man entirely, but portrays him as less the saintly figure who cut a multidisciplinary swath across 20th-century thought, and more a candidate for the title Most Honorable Cult Leader Ever (OK, except Jesus).
Critical Notice by Anthony Stevens - a review of Richard Noll's books, Jung Cult and Aryan Christ, published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology.
Another decisive factor which Noll detects in the development of Jung's secret life was his relationship with Otto Gross, 'one of the most dangerous men of his generation ... a Nietzschean physician, a Freudian psychoanalyst, an anarchist, the high priest of sexual liberation, a master of orgies, the enemy of patriarchy, and a dissolute cocaine and morphine addict ... a strawberry-blonde Dionysus' (pp. 70-1). Gross became Jung's patient and they had marathon analytic sessions, each lasting many hours, in which Gross frequently assumed the role of analyst himself. Whether Gross benefited from this experience is doubtful, but Jung, according to Noll, was transformed by it. It enabled him to overthrow his bourgeois inhibitions and become a polygamist.
Jung Love by Jeffrey Satinover - First Things.
The real problem is not the Jungian guild, it is Jungian spirituality, and this touches on Noll's assessment that Jung was not really a "proto- Nazi." That may be true, but occult ideas provided the soil in which Nazi-like phenomena flourished, and one may argue that not only can they thus flourish, but that given the sufficient tilling of that particular soil they almost certainly will.
St. Catherine Review: The Jung Cult
Jung's drive to formulate a "better" religion, was the result of his trying to justify his own sins. What Jung was increasingly concerned with was justifying sexual libertinism, and his efforts extended not merely to reviving the lost gods of paganism, but in transforming Christ and Christianity to serve his own purposes.
Carl Jung - Dr. C. George Boeree.
...Carl Jung, was to make the exploration of this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially knowledgeable in the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If anyone could make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in symbolic form, it would be Carl Jung.
For A Change -- Carl Jung and Laurens Van Der Post
The Jungian scholar may be impatient with a book in which van der Post, himself a dreamer, philosopher and adventurer, regurgitates his understanding of the thought and experience of Jung, the 'father of modern psychology'. But for me it was a heady mix.
....

From the start it was a meeting of dreamers and explorers. As a reader, like a fly on the wall, I eavesdropped on a relationship between two large souls of my time, and found myself becoming more whole because of it.
from Man and His Symbols
Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and has populated it with monstrous machines. The latter are so indubitably useful that we cannot see even the possibility of getting rid of them or our subservience to them. Man is bound to follow the adventurous promptings of his scientific and inventive mind and to admire himself for his splendid achievements. . . [although] they represent better and better means of wholesale suicide.
The Enigmatic Origins of the Jung Cult
The following is a talk presented to the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in April 1999. It is primarily based on Richard Noll's two important historical studies of Carl Jung and the origins of the Jungian movement...
Apostle of Perversion, by William Norman Grigg - Studies in Reformed Theology.

Joseph Conrad

Colleen Burke - Joseph Conrad?s Heart of Darkness - A Metaphor of Jungian Psychology

Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis - Wikipedia
Shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in 1947, Ellis began a personal analysis and program of supervision with Richard Hulbeck (whose own analyst had been Hermann Rorschach, a leading training analyst at the Karen Horney Institute.) Karen Horney would be the single greatest influence in Ellis's thinking, although the writings of Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan also played a role in shaping his psychological models. Ellis credits Alfred Korzybski and his book, Science and Sanity, for starting him on the philosophical path for founding rational-emotive therapy.
A Sketch of Albert Ellis - The Albert Ellis Institute
"There is virtually nothing in which I delight more," says Albert Ellis, "than throwing myself into a good and difficult problem." Rational emotive behavior therapy is a direct and efficient problem-solving method, well suited to Ellis' personality. His self-assurance -- some would even say arrogance -- enables him to confront his clients about their beliefs and tell them what is rational and what isn't.
APA Convention2000 - Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis - photo: August, 2000.
Albert Ellis - Dr. C. George Boeree.
Brief Introduction to REBT [Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy] By Wayne Froggatt.
In summary, people view themselves and the world around them at three levels: (1) inferences, (2) evaluations, and (3) underlying rules/core beliefs. The therapist's main objective is to deal with the underlying, semi-permanent, general 'rules' that are the continuing cause of the client's unwanted reactions.
REBT places greater emphasis on dealing with evaluative-type thinking than do other cognitive-behavioural approaches, which focus rather more on inferential thinking. REBT especially underscores the centrality of demandingness over other types of thinking.
Rational-emotive therapy (RET) is a comprehensive system of personality change that includes a large variety of cognitive, emotive, and behavior therapy methods. It is not merely an eclectically or pragmatically oriented form of psychological treatment but is based on a clearcut theory of emotional health and disturbance: The many techniques it employs are used in the light of that theory. Its major hypotheses also relate to childrearing, education, social and political affairs, and for the extension of people's intellectual-emotional frontiers and the abetting of their unique potential for growth. Rational-emotive psychology is hardheaded, empirically oriented, rational, and nonmagical. It fosters the use of reason, science, and technology in the straightforward interest of man and woman. It is humanistic, existentialist, and hedonistic; it makes growth and happiness the relevant core of a person's intrapersonal and interpersonal life. - Albert Ellis

Ellis, Albert (1973, 1979). "Rational-Emotive Therapy." Current Psychotherapies. Raymond J. Corsini and Contributors. 2nd ed. Itasca IL: F. E. Peacock.
REBT, Philosophy and Philosophical Counselling
BookReview of Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation By Richard Sorabji.
[M]uch more could be said about Stoicism's connection with modern cognitive therapy. Sorabji has a few pages on this (pp. 153-4), rightly pointing out that cognitive therapy differs from Stoicism in that it focuses mainly on factual rather than evaluative errors (p154). But it would have been interesting for him to have said something about REBT, a form of cognitive therapy which, like Stoicism, focuses more on evaluative mistakes, only with a hedonistic rather than a virtue-based value system.
Albert Ellis has stated a number of times in his published works that REBT is based on the moral philosophy of hedonism. This is what he says in Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (pp. 292-93):
It is sometimes alleged that REBT is too crassly hedonistic and that it teaches people to enjoy themselves at the expense of their deeper or more rewarding commitments. This is a false charge, since one of the main tenets of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is the Stoic principle of long-range rather than short-range hedonism.
Just about all existing schools of psychotherapy are, at bottom hedonistic, in that they hold that pleasure and freedom from pain are good and preferably should be the aims of thought and action . This is probably inevitable, because people who do not believe in a hedonistic view would continue to suffer intense anxiety and discomfort and would not come for therapy. And therapists who did not try in some manner to alleviate the discomfort of those who did come for help would hardly remain in business very long. Rational Emotive Behavior therapists, therefore, are far from unique when they accept some kind of a hedonistic world view and try to help clients work for a hedonistic way of life.
It has been found through the ages that the short-range hedonistic philosophy of "Drink, eat, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die," is unrealistic: because most of the time you don't die tomorrow, but are much more likely to live and rue the consequences of too much drinking, eating, and merrymaking today. Consequently (as Freud, for one, kept stressing) the reality principle of putting off present pleasures for future gains is often a much saner course to follow than the pleasure principle of striving mainly for present gains. This reality principle, or the philosophy of long-range hedonism, is consistently stressed in REBT.
Instead of being encouraged to do things the "easy way," clients are encouraged to do them the more rewarding way—which, in the short run, is often more difficult. REBT, while embracing neither the extreme views of the Epicureans nor those of the Stoics, strives for a more moderate synthesis of both these ways of life. In the course of the therapy process itself, a fundamental principle of REBT is that clients had preferably better work, work, work at changing their own self-defeating [293] assumptions, feelings, and actions if they are to overcome their emotional disturbances.

Ellis, Albert (1994). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy, revised and updated. New York: Carol Publishing Group.

More Adventurous personality type

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