There are people whose psyche is honed for movement — unlike others, who are driven now by emotion, now by rationality. These people are masters of non-judgmental perception and of the “nothing personal, it is just business” style of communication. They are people with the naturological Ego type, and their basic mental instrument is “Contact with Reality”.
What is “Contact with Reality”? First of all, it is one of the three Ego types.
What is special about “Contact with Reality”, or, to use the technical term, the naturological Ego type? One of the basic tasks of the nervous system is to provide physical contact with the external environment. Without judgments of the “do I like it or not” kind and without other emotionalising — through simple observation. Hence the name, “Contact with Reality”. It is important to note that for the psyche reality comes in two kinds: external and internal.
Internal reality is our idea of the world we are striving towards. It is a world of fantasy. We paint it with our imagination, we “model” reality. In this state we isolate ourselves completely, we abstract ourselves from the outside world. For example, at moments, when we sink into sweet daydreams, external reality ceases to exist for us. In those moments we model reality, we create it, we invent it, we decide, what we want it to look like.
When we are in contact with external reality, we are in a pure state of perception without analysing what is happening. We perceive everything around us, and every incoming signal has equal weight and significance.We are rarely in such a state of perception, because we have perception filters, that is, our inner notion of reality.
We are always in contact with reality in some combination, that is, when we perceive external reality, the internal one seeps in, and the other way round.
Usually a person either observes reality or decides what it ought to be, that is, invents it for himself. We cannot be in a state of pure, complete perception of reality, that is, take in the signals coming from outside, and at the same moment make decisions about how we want to change it, that is, create our own signals directed outwards.
Their sore spot
Let us come back to people “honed” for contact with reality. What is worth knowing about them? First, their basic reactions are excitation and inhibition. They are either hyperactive or they freeze like lizards. Second, in life this shows in their sore spot — partnership.
For partnership, hyperactivity shows up as a constant sense of a lack of cooperation: «I am responsible for everything, everything is my fault”, as hyper-responsibility, as an attempt to control everything in the world. The psychopathic and the autistic personality types are of this kind
Partnership in inhibition mode looks a little different: I bear no responsibility at all, «you lot are the ones who messed everything up, and I am in white”. Deception always comes from your side, I am not breaking the partnership in any way. “I said that I would do it this way, so that is what I did.” “I changed my mind, and everything is fine”. I am the master of my word: I want to – I give it, I want to - I take it back.
