The article below is nasty. It describes nothing but composite portraits of all the personality types and does not refer to any one particular person. Rather, like the description of any clinical picture, it takes in the extreme manifestations, the ones where everything has gone completely to pot. So if you are of a delicate disposition, please do not read any further. Everyone else: dig out every last reserve of your sense of humour. Right then, off we go.
The other day the S-Theory came in for some criticism. Poor science, they said, everyone comes out far too nice in it. Not the first time, by the way. So I would not be a schizoid if I did not smear the whole lot of us with metaphorical tar, my own schizoid tribe first and foremost. But in such a way that everybody has fun. So fasten your seat belts and pull on your helmets and ear defenders. The journey begins.
Introverts
Let us start with the introverts, since the author is one. Introverts have not the faintest idea how the world works, which is why they regularly get a kicking; admitting that they are getting a kicking is congenitally beyond them, so they hand out verbal thumps left and right.
Cholerics
Cholerics first. Cholerics are the kind of headcases who delegate absolutely nothing.
They charge into battle with windmills in splendid solitude and without the slightest need to do so. But with a triumphant howl of "Battle!", like Travolta's Michael at the sight of the bull.
A run-up, a collision, an explosion, and the whole damn lot goes to hell in a handcart, the choleric included.
Cholerics come in three sub-species.
Psychopathic cholerics
Psychopathic cholerics will not see any difference between you and a kitchen stool. And thank God they will not, because if they did, they would sincerely believe that you were about to charge off with them to take out that very bull by way of a head-on collision. And when you refuse, you will be called a welsher and demoted back to the ranks of the stools.
Manic cholerics
Manic cholerics will see the difference between you and a stool, but they will announce that since you are not a stool you must be a table, and so you have to stand on all fours, because that is what all tables do, and manics, damn them, are always right. Always, however long you argue with them. So they will go on droning and pushing until you are down on all fours, and that bull along with you. And all of it with the wearily long-suffering air of a martyr single-handedly saving the world. And it is not because they are not getting enough sex — no, of course not, they had sex once in a blue moon and until the next blue moon the subject is really not a topic at all.
Schizoid cholerics
Schizoid cholerics, on the other hand, are no martyrs. They are tormentors through and through, because they will start slagging off and doing the heads in of the psychopathic ones, the manic ones, the bull and that very stool. And the means will be the most elaborate three-storey metaphorical descriptions of bodily sensations (swearing, in other words), theatrical arm-waving and spraying spittle. But it is not they who are negative and jumpy, it is you; they are calm and Zen incarnate. Well, all they need is a sledgehammer to bring you up to their perfect level of Zen.
Phlegmatics
Phlegmatics. Phlegmatics are the kind of headcases who gestalt everything. You, the cholerics, the bulls and the stool. Like that calf in the cartoon who counted everybody, whether they wanted it or not. And sometimes they gestalt away so thoroughly that the cholerics go off and smash the place up, but the phlegmatics could not care less: they will gestalt the fact of the smashing too.
They come in three sub-species too.
Autistic phlegmatics
The autistic ones are damned stubborn. Not ambitious, not goal-driven (though that is not ruled out either), just plain stubborn. They dig their heels in and you will not shift them for love nor money. Not even with the combined forces of all the cholerics and the bull along with them. And the very attempt to shift them will send them into a stupor and be ignored as something that cannot be gestalted. So even if the world ends, the autistic ones risk ignoring it, because it does not fit their picture of the world. They will simply carry on doing what they always did.
Compulsive phlegmatics
The compulsive ones are damned correct. And they sincerely expect everybody else to be just as correct. Sex only after the wedding, the wedding only after ten years of holding hands, and the hand-holding only once the compulsive one has acquired a dowry, a place to live and a physical form worthy of a future other half. Why? Because that is the correct way and that is that.
And that is the great tragedy of the compulsive ones: being correct for everybody is physically impossible, and not being correct is psychologically unbearable. So compulsives usually sit up to their ears in excrement while tediously assuring everyone around them that organic matter is good for the skin, so they will sit there a while longer.
Paranoid phlegmatics
Paranoids, by contrast, do not sit in organic matter and even realise that the world is large, chaotic and not subject to gestalting. Much as they would like it to be. So instead of gestalting, paranoids nag. About everything: about the chaotic world, and about the idiots who still try to plan and gestalt something in it. And above all about how they themselves have done nothing and are guilty of nothing, whereas the others...
Extraverts
Now for the extraverts. It gets even funnier there, because they do not know themselves at all, yet actively convince everybody of the opposite and take offence beautifully.
Sanguines
Sanguines are the posing kind of headcases. They do not enter a room, they reveal themselves to the people, with a crash, with music, with the swearing of introverts and often with an announcement of "here I am!" And then they invariably start stirring things up and muddying the water.
Like everyone else, they come in three sub-species.
Hysteroid sanguines
The hysteroid ones burst in, breaking the door and everything the door hits on its way. And they immediately start demanding. Attention, a stiff drink, kisses, cuddles, your money or your life, the last trousers you own and, without fail, whatever is left of your nerves. And all of it at once, otherwise you are a smug horned butting farm animal who does not love them. The first rule of the hysteroid ones is that everybody talks about the hysteroid ones.
Narcissistic sanguines
The narcissistic ones do not burst in. They step elegantly over the hysteroid one and start proclaiming that they, at least, are not the herd and the rabble that those hysteroid ones over there are, and are generally not like that at all, although waiting for a tram is hardly a royal occupation either. And your job is to agree with them in good time, because otherwise it will turn out that the rabble is you, since you are utterly incapable of talking to sane, well-brought-up people who are never guilty of anything, unlike certain others.
Frustrating sanguines
The frustrating ones, though, are carried in on a whirlwind of chaos that transforms everything in its path. Ideas, ventures, projects, plans and prospects, and looots of sex and jokes below the belt (but they are allowed). And so much charisma and energy that somehow everybody gets drawn in without noticing and starts doing something, and by the time they do notice and decide to give the frustrating one what he has coming to him, he is long gone, and the pile of unfinished projects is left for the introverts to finish.
Melancholics
That leaves the melancholics. These are the kind of headcases who lie to everybody. All right, absolutely everybody lies, but melancholics do it more aesthetically, more subtly and more universally, illogically and first and foremost to themselves. Saying something straight out, to your face and without a little dance around it, is death itself to a melancholic.
Epileptoid melancholics
The epileptoid ones lie so that they get fed. Because they are so airy, so tender, so emotional, and they excrete nothing but rainbows and soap bubbles, and yet you still have to eat. And there is no way to admit that directly, so out come the songs about love and about everything a real man owes to every woman — not to them, of course, but if he does not do it, he is no man!
Depressive melancholics
The depressive ones lie so as not to be told off. Because they are such good sorts, while the whole world hates them and is against them, and everything is bad anyway. So if things suddenly go well, it is the depressive ones who will start fussing and changing everything, straightening the blanket, moving the furniture, giving away the last trousers of their nearest and dearest to complete strangers and shaking everybody up. And when everybody has been shaken up enough and comes to beat the depressive ones black and blue, they will meekly lower their eyes and sigh with satisfaction that the world really is against them, just as they always said...
Frustration melancholics
But the most sophisticated liars of all are the frustration ones, because they lie in order to do damn all. Only doing damn all is bad, so the frustration ones whip up a frenzy of activity that is about nothing and needed by nobody, but they were sooo busy, so rushed off their feet and so worn out that you just try telling them they are doing damn all. In that case they will spend the next hour and a half very energetically slagging you off and devaluing you, and then, to top it all, they will take mortal offence at you, and it will be you and you alone who are to blame for the fact that they have done damn all and now definitely never will.
To finish the article, let me remind you once again that I did not mean anybody in particular (except the schizoids, because yes, I am that kind of pest, and I am proud of it).
