PERSONALITY PROFILES AND REACTION RANGES

by PAUL HENRICKSON, Ph.D. ©1970, 2006

The exploratory studies referred to here suggest quite clearly that lying is
negatively related to verbal and graphic fluency measures as well as being
significantly more characteristic of the less-creative than it is of the more
creative persons.*

There is some indication that lying is unrelated or even negatively related

to measures of dogmatism.* These exploratory studies also indicate that
those who are identified as being either graphically creative or verbally
original are less dogmatic than those who are less creative or less original.

It was indicated that measures of lying and dogmatism were negatively

correlated. This suggests, as well, that dogmatically expressed beliefs
subvert duplicitousness. It is not a lie if one believes it. Does this, in turn
suggest that being “willing” is more effective than conventional belief, that
faith over comes fact, spirit more potent than materiality? Does this, in
turn , suggest that the priest, hypnotist, shaman or psychologists’ most
ideal role is to guide in the transmission of awareness from the state of
apperception to perception, imaginary to the real, the barely aware to the
aware?

These relationships have allowed the tentative suggestion that in matters

of self-expression the sample with which we have been working suggest
three relatively distinct styles. These may be seen as (1) the style
dominated by an habitual pattern of responding to consensually originating
aesthetic material; (2) the style dominated by a selective awareness of the
general consensus regarding aesthetic values, rejects aspects of the
organization but does not propose possible patterns of reorganization; (3)
the style which is again selectively aware of aesthetic values peculiar to
the population but experiencing a lack of satisfaction with them
reorganizes the components to reflect a higher level of awareness. These
might be known as groups as “the normal liars”, the dogmatic, non-
integrative personality type, and the creative integrative personality type.
Some may see in this a similarity to McKinnon’s “Normal adjusted, the
neurotic conflicted and the creative, or to Laing’s, normal, schizoid and pre
and post schizoid states, and Ranks “Truth and Reality”, the acquiescent
who is superficially integrative, who hides fantasies from others and feels
guilty towards others; the rebellious, non integrative person who lacks the
will to fight who hides fantasies from himself and feels neurotically guilty
towards the self, and the creative personality which maintains his fantasies
but feels guilty towards others and himself and is creatively integrative at
higher symbolic levels. “The creative type” Rank writes, “ must constantly
make good his continuous will expression and will accomplishment and he
pays for this guilt towards others and himself with work which he gives to
the others and which justifies him to himself. Therefore he is productive,
he accomplishes something because he has a real (sic?) guilt to pay for, not
imaginary guilt like the neurotic, who only behaves as though he were
guilty but whose consciousness of guilt is only an expression of his will
denial, not of creative accomplishment of will which makes one truly
guilty.”** **I find this statement truly disturbing as it does not elaborate
on why a person who has been truly creative has more right to feel the
guilt for his creativeness than does the neurotic who is only make believe
creative. I wonder of Rank had been Roman Catholic. Arasteh’s statement
correlated more highly with my experience.
*It was reported to me recently that a British revision broadcast documented an experiment
with 10 children of about eight years of age to see how many and which ones might attempt
to deceive an adult under specific conditions. The conclusion, as reported to me, was that 8 of
he ten children would attempt to deceive the adult and these children, it was reported, were
both more intelligent as intelligence was measured by IQ tests and more successful in school.
While my research does support the finding that being willing to deceive someone and
achieving academic success are significantly correlated my findings are enriched by the
information that selected on the basis of a creativity measures, both verbal and nonverbal, the
uncreative subjects are more willing to deceive than the creative subjects leading the
researcher with the impression that the creative person is unwilling to deny the evidences of
his senses in order to gain the approval of his peers. I, therefore, fund the presentation of
this televised information leaving the viewer with the impression that success in life is
achieved through deceit to be an immoral broadcast.
This statement must, I think, be compared to the following one by Arasteh:
“The experience of creativity in the state o final integration is an
overflowing of man’s life style. It has nothing to do with sublimation. “In
sublimation a half-integrated man utilizes a media to reduce his inner
conflict and that is why in his relatively relaxed state he fails to create.
Furthermore, in terms of quality, the result of sublimation does not all
compare with the creative product of integrated persons. In the life if
integrated persons creativity is a process, as an end in itself; in the half-
born, sublimated person it is a means. The truly creative phenomenon is
the most basic manifestation of man’s final integration. Creativity in
integrated persons is highly related to their anxiety-free expression, their
positive feelings, and their spontaneous expression.”

This statement by Arasteh, in its turn, must be followed by these

rearranged excerpts from Havelka (1968): “The problem is to understand
some of the conditions which are created by individuals who do not agree
to recognize as reality only that part of experience which can be
collectively classified. The penalty for such a rebellion is heavy: the rebel is
left to his own resources, in isolation, to attempt to decipher and classify a
variety of strange stimuli which cluster on the fringes and outside the
collectively acknowledged boundaries of reality.” (This description closely
approximates my understanding of the relationships governing the
judgmental performances of the inexperienced yet perceptive judged and
the history of their recorded academic accomplishments.) “…once
communal agreement about reality becomes the criterion the introduction
of any change is apt to cause difficulties and confusion; a certain degree of
organization is already imposed on a variety of processes and that
organization has a tendency to prevail. …The transgressor is abandoned by
his society a t the point where realty seems to change into appearance.
Hence appearance in this context will be characterized as a particular
property of some of the stimuli activating the human nervous system, but
failing to be organized inside the collectively assumed agreement about
what is real. Although it is as much the product of the mental functioning
as is the limited cognition of reality, appearance does not secure for itself
the support of a collective agreement because it has a tendency to
undermine the communally accumulated appraisal of reality. …it is possible
to imagine that any civilization aiming at an absolute domination of
collectively accepted reality at the expense of appearance , and being
successful in this attempt would eventually cease to be psychologically
fertile. …Human communication would deteriorate into a series of
monotonous and highly predictable sequence of coding and decoding. And
while there would still be receivers, the messages would become void of a
unique personal significance, and although logically impeccable the end
would be tautology.

“The dominant factor of differences existing between the creative and the
non-creative individual seems to be the presence of a disposition that
organizes experience with an emphasis in the inexhaustible and unlimited
meaningfulness of reality. And while both of these individuals accept
experience as the basic point of departure in their mental organization, the
non-creative man tends to cultivate and preserve the conventional
classification of it, received as a collective heritage imposed upon him by
the social environment, while the artist mistrusts any such restriction.

I should like to interject a definition of aesthetic functioning. It might

logically be expected to include references to responses to sense data. I t
might logically be expected to include references to sense data.
Suggestions that the arts of dance, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, etc.,
are above involvement with matter and unconcerned with the refinement of
this involvement are rejected. It is suggested that a range of sensitivity of
sense stimulate exists (4) and that it is theoretically possible to assess
individual performance in a sensitivity continuum. It is further suggested
that aesthetic constructs amounting to an aesthetic vocabulary, syntax and
grammar rooted in the sensitivity to sense stimulate exists and that
reference to this aesthetic language is basically what explains the
appreciative aesthetic response and that alterations in existing aesthetic
constructs and the development of different aesthetic constructs is what
illustrates the creatively productive aesthetic response.

Both aspects of the aesthetic response and their personality correlates

concern us. The aesthetic sensitivity continuum describes the average
person as exercising an habitual pattern of response to consensually
originating aesthetic input and tend to represent themselves as closer to a
perceived ideal than they believe themselves to be in actuality.

On the lower end of the continuum we find the non-integrative personality

type which is selectively aware of the general consensus
regarding aesthetic values, rejects this organization (for aesthetic or other
reasons) but does not reorganize. This person tends to be dogmatic.

On the upper end of the continuum we find the integrative personality

type. This type is selectively aware of aesthetic values peculiar to the
population but experiences a lack of satisfaction with them and reorganizes
and/or changes the components to reflect a higher level of aesthetic
awareness.

Creativity and Aesthetics

It is beginning to appear that there are recognizable differences in function

between an act we identify as creative and one we identify as aesthetic.
One of the differences seems to be that a creative act is considered, at
least among those who are concerned about it, to be an act which stands
out from among other acts as a singular, a noteworthy, a possibly valuable
(that is, consumable) act. The aesthetic act seems to be a more private
affair and for that reason the word “response” might be substituted for
“act” which sounds too aggressive and, therefore, not private. Also thee
word “act” suggests a consciousness on the art of the person performing it
which, in an aesthetic “response” may not be the case.

In following this line of thought I am, for the moment, at lest, rejecting
Arateh’s state of moral creativeness characteristic of the integrative
person. It is in the state of creative attitude that one finds joy in needs
that benefit others regardless of hoped-for rewards. It is also in the state
of creative attitude that one functions naturally and spontaneously without
having a desire to record, to write, or to create in terms of physical
objects.” Professor Arasteh seems quite oblivious to the world of the
aesthetic as I comprehend it. In fact, the subject appears twice in the
index, once when describing the value structure of H. Rickert and where, in
a quotation from Maslow the tern “esthetic experiences” is used. It seems
as though Arasteh is unaware of the topic even as a subject of discourse for
he makes no reference to it, to my knowledge, beyond the two references
made by others. Maslow, on the other hand, in the quotation mentioned
above lists aesthetic experiences and creative experiences separately so it
might be profitable to ascertain how he distinguishes. If he does, between
them.

The following quotations are taken from Arasteh and begin, I believe, to
point to a prejudice…an admirable one, perhaps, favoring the non-material
‘Eastern’ world at the expense of the material ‘western’. Professor Araste
is too intelligent a man not to be equally sensitive as is Martin (5) to the
meaningfulness of sense.

Arasteh writes on “sense” and it is hoped that the following might promote
productive thought in those areas wherein he fails to be specifically
concerned.

“His life never seems to have been extinguished by the pragmatic (in the
narrowest sense of the word) , he has never been a “realist” to the
exclusion of everything else, his imagination has thrown a we of magic
thought over the world of the senses, to which he has given a new
meaning.”

“…the first crisis appears with the transition from unawareness to

awareness, which is actually the first step toward becoming a social man.
Symbols come to represent emotional communication. As children gain
increasing awareness of their environment they seem to enjoy whirling
around in a circle: could this be a recapitulation of a unity prior to
awareness? Id so, this hypothesis might be further tested and examined in
adults in terms of sensory deprivation, a procedure which the Sufis of
Mowlavi’s order strictly followed in their whirling dances: a method they
used to empty their consciousness, then regain the state if awareness,
followed by a regression into consciousness for proceeding further into the
unconscious in order to attain a state of identification with all, that is,
conscious existence. Thus the first and last stages of identification show
some similarity: one is the process of going from unawareness to
awareness, the other of going from social awareness, into an awareness
with naturalness, and thereby completing the circle of existence.”

“rather, the perception of value is an experimental act, not an intellectual

phenomenon. Pleasure, pain, the senses and affections are the early means
of the perception of value. In the later stages of development the
conceptualization of value (Werteinsicht) and intuiting values
(Wertachatzung). Value is “object as aim.”

“Such methods as, “among others a sensory deprivation,” are favored by

the impatient subject who would like to enter paradise without salvation
and arrive at ha[pines without transformation of character. Yet such a
state of happiness without drugs remains an unexplored reality.”

“…relatedness in the final state of integration is accompanied by a sharp

sense of awareness and subjective kinship which makes each atom of the
non-human environment an expression and symbol of life.”

“…in Sufis the state of union involving a state of suspension of sense

perception…”

Arasteh is disappointing in that he appears to reject the opportunity to

relate sense perception to the development of aesthetic sensibilities. These
topics are not discussed by him at all. His greatest emphasis in the matter
of sense is in its deprivation, the absence of sense cultivation in the service
of attaining to final integration. The ardent nature of his belief in this
almost approximates my own in the matter of the development of sense
perceptions as a means to the actualizing (Maslow’s term) my potential, my
development, my life. In this way, by distinguishing, polishing, cultivating
my power, might I appear before God while Arasteh by sublimative I-ness to
the development of a succession of identities finally culminating in creative
reintegration suggesting a oneness with the Creator. Perhaps the
difference between the concerns of Arasteh and myself are suggested by
him when he states “…an integrated theory of man considers that basic
human drives have a variety of manifestations, which are a means of
furthering growth culminating in reintegration, characterized by
satisfaction, certainty and creativity. Yet in the natural state the drive of
activity is immediate and is controlled by the pleasure principle; in the
highest state of social and cultural existence, it is controlled by ego in the
existential state of insight into human life.” And later, as mentioned
earlier, there may be a creative attitude in which one functions naturally
and spontaneously without the desire to create in terms of physical objects.
It seems that my orientation is somewhat more materialistic than that of
Arasteh.

Arasteh’s usefulness in guiding our attention in aesthetic matters ceases at

this point and only the perspicacity of F. David Martin restores our comfort
by means of the simple device of agreeing with our own perceptions. Each
part or region (of an abstraction) is a calculated trap for sensuous
meditation and consummation.” Aside from the sensation that this
sentence possess a certain sensuousness…a kind of “Suzanna-and-the-
Elders-Drooling-at-the-Mouth”…It contains the recognition that the
sensuousness is planned (he uses the word “calculated”) and successful in
its plan in seducing the observer to meditate and be consummated. These
well-chosen words recreate as closely as any I’ve known to do the rewards
of an aesthetic experience and to do so even as they report on the event is
no small accomplishment.

The above comments were discovered in a collection of papers, drawings,

notes, etc., that had finally survived several disastrous events including
several floodings, physical moves, and mental distractions of various sorts
over the course of thirty-five years. Their relationship to my present
intellectual interests and their connections to the research discoveries
made while I was at The University of Northern Iowa (1968-1970) regarding
how academic and social achievement was more related to how well one
accommodated oneself to the group’s self image than to anything
objectively real argued in favor of its being included in the offerings made
available through this web site, www.tcp.com.mt .