Telepathy and Distant Personality Diagnosis

[Stevie Argyl]

Check your first reply to my post, It was all about your observation of me and nothing about you.

I'm afraid you lost me there.

This is telepathy/ crystal ball gazing and well you know it Smiley

Not even close. Stevie, just because you do not understand how something works does not mean that it does not work.

So far out of the first 2 replies to my post No one who answered the first time actually admitted to ever estimating themselves.

Had I thought that you were sincerely asking that question and not posting in order to accuse because what was mentioned to you made you uncomfortable, I might have answered the question. It's just such an elementary question, that I don't see much point in it, however. Of course, everyone on the planet overestimates themselves. We are human, it's part of what we do. If we didn't, we'd likely never have gotten out of bed on the first day of kindergarten. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with the observation of you that prompted this thread and your responses in this thread.

An observation, no attempt at diagnosis is made so I ask for information from those who replied.

Did you think I was offended or outraged and thats why I posted?
Was it important to 'fix me' rather than examine 'you'

You're a little hard to follow in the above as well - but I'll try to answer. No one - to my understanding - is trying to 'fix' you. That's never the point. Your turning the attention onto others is a rather classic maneuver to avoid the subject, however. Stevie, it's really not that threatening a concept that you might - just might - at times - over intellectualize, and intellectualize your emotional processes. Why does that idea threaten you so?

The question was sincere and I hoped that it would be useful and perhaps prompt discussion of whether we can or cannot diagnose personality remotely, but no one seems to doubts their ability. So the post has prompted discussion, Just not the one I expected. I would have thought the other discussion might have been a more useful exchange, but it has not happened.
I have nver met you Anart, I like the cut of your internet jib, but have no idea what you are like away from the computer, whether you yell at your kids if you have them or whther you are short tempered , even tempered, lovely nature :)

Do you get where I am coming from?
I dont really know any one on the forum after 4 months. I know how people 'seem' I do not know how the 'are'.
Is this my lack of perceptive ability or is it my recognition that I aint seeing the whole package in a forum post?

 

[Stevie Argyl]

[quote author=Stevie]
Was it important to 'fix me' rather than examine 'you'

We are not fixing you, we are observing, are you observing yourself too?

Yes ! work is work on oneself after all.

I am also observing everyone's tendency to focus on me.

And I continue to observe that no one is paying attention to the real question of over estimation of abilities.

That's likely because that was never the real question.

Sincerely ask yourself this: If I hadn't mentioned that you appear to intellectualize your emotional processes, would you have written this thread?

Was this thread not a reaction to my observation?

Was this thread not phrased in such a way to be able to suggest that I, for no reason at all, use a crystal ball, as you put it, to make observations about people that are inappropriate?

It would have been more sincere of you to post in the original thread something like, "anart, I think you have no right to say such a thing about me because you don't know me and you don't know what you're talking about". That would have been sincere. Instead you start a thread that vaguely masks your irritation and offense at having something pointed out to you, and then progress to insist it was done so just to ask a hypothetical question that is so obvious it needs no asking.


[/quote]

You aren't getting it Anart

You seem to think this was all prompted by you?

This is exactly the point of the post, you seem to have come to a conclusion and do not for a minute doubt it. No question of Infallibility.

Ask yourself this question, is there a o.oooo1% chance that you are wrong in your conclusion?

BTW you are persistent , oops, rather you seem to be persistant :) , I like that :)

 

[anart]

The question was sincere and I hoped that it would be useful and perhaps prompt discussion of whether we can or cannot diagnose personality remotely, but no one seems to doubts their ability. So the post has prompted discussion, Just not the one I expected. I would have thought the other discussion might have been a more useful exchange, but it has not happened.
I have nver met you Anart, I like the cut of your internet jib, but have no idea what you are like away from the computer, whether you yell at your kids if you have them or whther you are short tempered , even tempered, lovely nature :)

Do you get where I am coming from?
I dont really know any one on the forum after 4 months. I know how people 'seem' I do not know how the 'are'.
Is this my lack of perceptive ability or is it my recognition that I aint seeing the whole package in a forum post?

Stevie, let me clarify one thing and I'll let this go, since you seem truly uninterested in considering that observations are always worthwhile, especially when they prompt such a reaction.

I don't know what kind of clothes you wear every day or if you drink coffee. That does not mean that your personality traits do not come through strong and clear via what you write here. They do. Do all of them come through strong and clear? Nope. But - some do and for you to discount that means that you are unaware of how much each of us reveals by the words we choose to use, the way we choose to use them, the sentence structure and, most especially, the emotion or lack there of revealed in the verbiage. As I stated earlier, just because you don't know how it works does not mean it does not work.

Now, if you are interested in working on yourself in the context of this forum, then that would be great. If not, that's fine too - it's your life and your adventure. Just please try to consider the idea that you might not have the 'whole banana' on this one and that there might, indeed, be things you could learn from others here who can see aspects of you that you might not so clearly see yourself. fwiw.

 

[anart]

You aren't getting it Anart

You seem to think this was all prompted by you?

I am saying this was all prompted by your reaction to my statement in the other thread. Do you really not think that is the case?

This is exactly the point of the post, you seem to have come to a conclusion and do not for a minute doubt it. No question of Infallibility.

Ask yourself this question, is there a o.oooo1% chance that you are wrong in your conclusion?

There is always a chance I am wrong at all times. However, there is also reality and your posts and the fact that you are truly uninterested in examining yourself and your own motivations and reactions. Enough of my time and energy has gone into this. As I said in my previous post - if you are interested in working on yourself in the context of this forum, then, great. If not, that's fine too, it's your life, but please do this forum the courtesy of considering that you might not actually understand everything and that you might actually be able to learn a thing or two if you open your mind a bit.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Stevie, I just re-read your whole original post and it is really manipulative. Like anart said, you phrase it as a question about which you just happen to be a little curious. Then as you elaborate your questions, what you think are the answers are embedded in your question.

For example: you ask, "Is it useful to diagnose on internet where there is no way of verifying your conclusions by meeting the diagnosee and getting to know them and updating your model?"

No one is "diagnosing." The forum does have to maintain a healthy environment, though, so posts and exchanges need to be monitored. Not only that, but most participants want some kind of feedback to help facilitate growth.

Then you ask if this long-distance diagnosis (which isn't what is happening) is "overestimation." That's kind of beside the point in lots of ways, but let's address it. Again, you phrase it in a general, supposedly open way, without being honest enough to ask this specifically about anart. The purpose of a network is to compensate for any individual mis-estimations, identifications, etc. But we have to contribute as individuals, risking being off-base, so that the network can have as many perspectives as possible. We all individually overestimate our abilities often, but the question if someone has scratched us is not "is that person who offended my self-importance overestimating their abilities" which would just be a pure deflection so we don't have to consider the truth of what they said.

A "diagnosis" only needs to be made in a clinical setting. And what you seem to be talking about is diagnosing people but what the forum tries to do is evaluate (not diagnose) statements. For example, I think you made a manipulative statement. That doesn't mean I think you are a manipulative person. Or that you are any more manipulative than most any of us are because of how we had to go about surviving in a pathological world.

In any case, don't you think there is more opportunity for growth in examining your own feelings about this whole thing than there is in intellectualizing it and deflecting it back on other people?

"Be careful of the printed matter: you may not read it as it is written down.” FM Alexander

I have been a member of the forum for four months now and I find this place interesting , informative and the people friendly , genuine and sincere in their desire to help others. And I thank everyone and I genuinely mean everyone who has taken the time to exchange with me and who have allowed me to stick my tuppence worth towards their posts.

One thing puzzles me though and it surprises me and continues to surprise me and that is what I can summarise as a tendency towards personality profiling by the written word, by reading posters posts. It surprises me primarily because many of those whom I have read doing the diagnosis thing are obviously well read and I would have expect a certain caution on concluding on a profile , expecially a profile based on a few posts on a forum.
As a therapist of 16 yrs who has daily contact with people I find the most damaging thing I can do for MYSELF and for My CLIENT is to box them in a profile. 'Here's your label ,sorted, thats me sussed you now, now I can stop thinking'. It is something I tried and wanted to be able to do in my first year or two until I realised not only the trap that was being set for both of us but also the arrogance , the over estimation of my abiliy implicit in the assumption that I could understand someone in 2 or 3 sessions, over even worse, the first session.

So, as I say, I have noticed new posters being boxed and 'tasted' and 'smelled' within three or four posts and would raise some questions which might be useful for self examination, I am applying this post to myself also.

Gurdjieff said that the work was the study of lying. I should have this tatooed in the inside of my eyes so that it is continually in front of me.

From Mme De Salzmann:
Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you believe yourself to be, that you overestimate yourself, in fact that you lie to yourself. That you always lie to yourself every moment, all day, all your life. That this lying rules you to such an extent that you cannot control it any more. You are the prey of lying. You lie, everywhere. Your relations with others—lies. The upbringing you give, the conventions—lies. Your teaching—lies. Your theories, your art—lies. Your social life, your family life—lies. And what you think of yourself—lies also.

So, I continually overestimate myself, I have fight my tendency to lying in the form of over estimating abilities, my lying in terms of wanting to appear smart, of when I read an internet diagnosis I have to fight not to form my own diagnosis of the person doing the diagnosis. Does it ever end?

There you have it, Is it useful to diagnose on internet where there is no way of verifying your conclusions by meeting the diagnosee and getting to know them and updating your model?
Is doing so an over estimation?

I apologise in advance if anyone feels offended by this, I have been considering posting this for sometime , weeks actually, but continually put it off. but in the spirit of the work uncomfortable questions sometimes produce the most worthwhile material post examination.

So where does our need to box, to diagnose, to come from? False personality? Arrogance? humility? Essence? Genuine Being Knowledge? From our need for safety and comfort in 'knowing'?
Where does our confidence in our ability come from? How do we verify this ability without face to face contact, without sensing each others qualities and emanations first hand?

In the spirit of the work
Stevie

 

[Stevie Argyl]

Why are people jumping on the bandwagon that this specifically aimed at Anart?

Affiliations? Suspicions?

What about suspending conclusions.

Why the need for instant judgement, for setting down conclusions.?

are people uncomfortable with an open ended enquiry?

 

[Stevie Argyl]

Mr Premise

Stevie, I just re-read your whole original post and it is really manipulative. Like anart said, you phrase it as a question about which you just happen to be a little curious. Then as you elaborate your questions, what you think are the answers are embedded in your question.

I disagree that I phrase this like something I am a 'little curious' about I am a lot curious hence the use of the words Suprised.

So now I am manipulative ?
when my intention was to post something to post on self examination.

I read your post and I am thinking - knows Anart , friends with Anart, or maybe Mr Premise mind reads / crystal ball gazes - and you know what - I dont kow that any of that is true and I havn;t decided any of it is true. Thats an example of what I am trying to point out.

We are quick to conclude on others and slow to doubt our own ability - and in a medium like the internet there is little chance of verification.

I could have posted this in response to Anart in Oxjali's thread If I had wanted to make a point to Anart.
I thought it would be more usefull for everyone if instead I put a post in the work section and give a topic for some self searching - 'how much can I rely on peoples posting styles'?

I dont know Greek posting style, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, pehrhaps these people have all different temperaments and I am not familiar with them.

I went to Rome, I initially thought Romans were rude, they aren't ,they just don't relate to strangers the same way that English people do. I could have concluded they were rude as they relate different.
Question, question , question. What am I concluding? Is it valid? How can I test?

 

[go2]

Anart

I feel my emotions, you can't intellectualise emotions without supression or abstracting, whats the point in that, thats been the point I have been continually trying to make.

When people feel bad they look for a way out by supressing / fantasising, justifiying, the only thing that can keep the feeling on track is the head continually leading the horse back out of the dream out of the escape and back into feeling.

Hi Stevie, I know very little and I could be wrong. I reference the bold in your quote as a possible source of confusion. The head cannot lead the horse out of its dream. They speak a different language. The head cannot tell the horse how or when to be a horse. You are intellectualizing your emotions. I know the story of the carriage where the master tells the driver the aim and the driver directs the horse. I have wondered if this allegory is incorrect. One must separate the functions, making twos so that we can make one.

 

[Stevie Argyl]

Anart

I feel my emotions, you can't intellectualise emotions without supression or abstracting, whats the point in that, thats been the point I have been continually trying to make.

When people feel bad they look for a way out by supressing / fantasising, justifiying, the only thing that can keep the feeling on track is the head continually leading the horse back out of the dream out of the escape and back into feeling.

Hi Stevie, I know very little and I could be wrong. I reference the bold in your quote as a possible source of confusion. The head cannot lead the horse out of its dream. They speak a different language. The head cannot tell the horse how or when to be a horse. You are intellectualizing your emotions. I know the story of the carriage where the master tells the driver the aim and the driver directs the horse. I have wondered if this allegory is incorrect. One must separate the functions, making twos so that we can make one.

Hi go2
Why no capital G?. :)

The head speaks to the horse by pictures - its in Nicol psychological commentary - can't remember which book. I but thats another topic Go2 :)

I wasn't talking about that kind of communicatiing.

Say just now, I am sitting here and say I take this personally, the accusation that I had of posting a manipulative post. If I got upset and feeling arose and the blood pumped I could rush straight into posting insults , accusations etc - That is an attempt at 'self calming' I would post and post to discharge the emotional energy that my system couldnt handle. Or I could go and play my guitar ,, or I could try to go to sleep. These are all escape routes. If I recognise that they are escape routes I can say NO to them - Its my head that see's that they are escape routes and it's with my head I say no. I then come back to my sense of upsetness and stay with it rather than trying to run away from it.
Does that make sense?

Thanks for you input .

 

[wattsup]

On this matter, I for one have some sort of "fear" in posting due to the fact that my toughs may not reflect what I'm expressing by a post. It is somewhat difficult for certain person, me, to post due to the fact that distortion appends a lot when posting.

Let's say you don't have the face value in front of you to see the reaction of the person you are dealing with. So you cannot see certain emphasis of certain words thus, error in judgment may intervene. This perception would allow added errors to the judgment, no?

Human basically categorize by good, bad, hot cold so, it is in our nature that we categorize people. I wonder if seer's can detect those kind of things on a person as to know if the person is good or bad.

Wattsup

 

[Stevie Argyl]

ok, got something useful here and this may have lead to some confusions.

I used the word Diagnosis. Mr Premise says 'No one is diagnosing here'. So I have used a medical/therapuetic term which was sloppy.

So I restate that observations are sometimes posted in a definitive manner.
In the form of 'You do / you are / you think' rather than 'You seem to do , it looks like you are , do you think?'

To me there is a big difference , between a definitive statement and a statement of possibility.

Again it might be regional, linguistic , cultural difference and perhaps when people are offering their observations they are doing so giving suggestions and not definitive 'this is how X is' and I have been remiss not to check this.

I just found an over estimation of my ability to grok a posters pure intention by discounting linguistic difference.
Thanks

 

[go2]

Say just now, I am sitting here and say I take this personally, the accusation that I had of posting a manipulative post. If I got upset and feeling arose and the blood pumped I could rush straight into posting insults , accusations etc - That is an attempt at 'self calming' I would post and post to discharge the emotional energy that my system couldnt handle. Or I could go and play my guitar ,, or I could try to go to sleep. These are all escape routes. If I recognise that they are escape routes I can say NO to them - Its my head that see's that they are escape routes and it's with my head I say no. I then come back to my sense of upsetness and stay with it rather than trying to run away from it.
Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense. It makes feelings. It makes thoughts...... All these images coalesce in the brain. This is my question. Have you ever let your horses out of barn to run, to snort, and to kick up their heels? That is feeling. That is emotion. The horses must learn their lessons of life, but they cannot function to their potential if your head keeps them locked in the barn. I think Anart sees more because she feels your words in addition to imaging the abstractions of your words. Does that make sense?

 

[Niall]

Say just now, I am sitting here and say I take this personally, the accusation that I had of posting a manipulative post. If I got upset and feeling arose and the blood pumped I could rush straight into posting insults , accusations etc - That is an attempt at 'self calming' I would post and post to discharge the emotional energy that my system couldnt handle.

Why the conditional tense? This is exactly what happened!

I can say NO to them - Its my head that see's that they are escape routes and it's with my head I say no. I then come back to my sense of upsetness and stay with it rather than trying to run away from it.

But you couldn't say no to them; the horses bolted before you could calm down long enough to think about anything.

You've got the theory down pat, but when presented with a real life opportunity to self-observe in the heat of the moment, out the window it all went!

And that's perfectly normal; programs begin playing before we even register that they're playing!

 

[John G]

But you couldn't say no to them; the horses bolted before you could calm down long enough to think about anything.

You've got the theory down pat, but when presented with a real life opportunity to self-observe in the heat of the moment, out the window it all went!

And that's perfectly normal; programs begin playing before we even register that they're playing!

That actually happens to me a lot, I run around the house "dancing" as my family calls it and then I go type something. My program really does have legs so it's hard to miss it!

There's plenty of OSITs and FWIWs here, I don't think there's a problem with too much certainty here. There can be tough questions here which makes sense; the main purpose of this forum isn't fun and games.

 

[RyanX]

Ryan

You have missed the jist of my post. I have not felt insulted, humiliated or anything of the like.

the jist is this

Are we overestimating our abilities?

Steve, I understood your post, but I was reading the language behind it instead of just taking your words at face value. My observation was that your post had nothing to do with asking a sincere question. If you wanted to ask a sincere question, you would not have phrased in a disclaimer about others possibly being offended. It appeared that there was something lurking beneath the surface of your words from the way you wrote your post.

This isn't any sort of telepathy on my part, just an observation based on my own personal experience. There have been times when I've thought in the same manner that you've written here. My only advise would be to take some time to relax and think about everything people have said here and try to consider all the observations people have made. There might be some worthwhile lesson hidden in all of this. I may be off, but this is just what I'm seeing, FWIW.