Rationalist subtypes

heldenplatz

Aggressive Personality Type

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

  • Command. Aggressive individuals take charge. They are comfortable with power, authority, and responsibility.
  • Hierarchy. They operate best within a traditional power structure where everyone knows his or her place.
    • Tight grip. They are highly disciplined and impose rules of order that they expect others in their charge to follow.
    • Purposefulness. Aggressive personalities are highly goal-directed. They take a practical, pragmatic approach to accomplishing their tasks. They do what is necessary to get the job done.
    • Guts. They can function well and bravely in difficult and dangerous situations without being distracted by fear or horror.
    • Action. Aggressive people like action and adventure. They are physically assertive and often participate in or enjoy playing competitive sports.

    Top strong points of the type

    • Disposition to command, to dominate, to have strength, power, authoritativeness, responsibility.
    • Orderliness, conservatism.
    • Discipline, self-control, self-restraint, shrewdness, benevolence, protectiveness, generosity, liberality.
    • Purposefulness, goal-directedness, practicality, pragmatism, disposition to achieve and accomplish, productiveness.
    • Bravery, fearlessness, fortitude.
    • Energy, activeness, adventurousness, assertiveness, confidence, competitiveness.

    Negative terminal of the type: sadistic personality disorder

    The Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders of American Psychiatric Association, describe Sadistic Personality Disorder as a pervasive pattern of cruel and aggressive behavior as indicated by the repeated occurrence of at least four of the following:

  • has used physical cruelty or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship;
  • humiliates people in the presence of others;
  • has treated or disciplined someone under his control unusually hardly: a child, student, prisoner, or patient;
  • is amused by or takes pleasure in the psychological or physical suffering of others, including animals;
  • has lied for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others;
  • gets other people to do what he wants by frightening them;
  • restricts the autonomy of people with whom he or she has a close relationship: will not let spouse leave the house unaccompanied or permit teen-age daughter to attend social functions;
  • is fascinated by violence, weapons, martial arts, injury, or torture.
  • The behavior has not been directed toward only one person (e.g., spouse, one child) and has not been solely for the purpose of sexual arousal (as in Sexual Sadism).

    2.Idiosyncratic personality type

    Dr. John M. Oldham listed following six characteristic traits and behaviors oft he type in his The New Personality Self-Portrait.

    • Inner life. Idiosyncratic individuals are sustained by their own feelings and belief systems, whether or not others accept or understand their particular worldview.
    • Own world. They are self-directed and independent, requiring few close relationships.
    • Eccentricity. Oblivious to convention, Idiosyncratic individuals create interesting, unusual, often eccentric lifestyles.
    • Expanded reality. Open to anything, they are interested in the occult, the extrasensory, and the supernatural.
    • Metaphysics. They are drawn to abstract and speculative thinking.
    • Outward view. Though they are inner-directed and follow their own hearts and minds, Idiosyncratic persons are keen observers of others, particularly sensitive to how other people react to them.

    Character Strengths

    • Originality, integrity, bravery, confidence.
    • Independence, purposefulness.
    • Creativity, artistry.
    • Openness to experience, curiosity, spirituality.
    • Open-mindedness.
    • Alertness, sensitivity.

    Negative pole of the type: schizotypal personality disorder

    The Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders of American Psychiatric Association describes Schizotypal Personality Disorder as a pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

    • ideas of reference;
    • odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or “sixth sense”, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations);
    • unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions;
    • odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, metaphorical, overelaborate);
    • suspiciousness or paranoid ideation;
    • inappropriate or constricted affect;
    • behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar;
    • lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives;
    • excessive social anxiety that tends to be associated with paranoid fears.

    Main Features

    • High Neuroticism

    Chronic negative affects, including anxiety, fearfulness, tension, irritability, anger, hopelessness, guilt, shame; difficulty in inhibiting impulses: for example, to eat, drink, or spend money; irrational beliefs: for example, unrealistic expectations, perfectionistic demands on self, deep pessimism; unfounded somatic concerns; helplessness and dependence on others for emotional support and decision making.

    • Low Extraversion

    Social isolation, interpersonal detachment, and lack of supportive networks; flattened affect; lack of joy and zest for life; reluctance to assert self or assume leadership roles, even when qualified; social inhibition and shyness.

    • High Openness

    Preoccupation with fantasy and daydreaming; lack of practicality; eccentric thinking (belief in ghosts, reincarnation, UFOs), joining religious cult; susceptibility to nightmares and states of altered consciousness; social rebelliousness and nonconformity that can interfere with social advancement.

    • Low Agreeableness

    Cynicism and paranoid thinking; inability to trust even friends or family; quarrelsomeness; too ready to pick fights; exploitive and manipulative; lying; rude and inconsiderate manner alienates friends, limits social support; lack of respect for social conventions can lead to troubles with the law; inflated and grandiose sense of self; arrogance.

    • High Conscientiousness
    • Overachievement: workaholic absorption in job or cause to the exclusion of family, social, and personal interests; compulsiveness, including excessive cleanliness, tidiness, and attention to detail; rigid self-discipline and an inability to set tasks aside and relax; lack of spontaneity; overscrupulousness in moral behavior.