What sort of a name is that — “the frustration personality type”? Let us put it more simply: this is the Philosopher in its pure form, with a characteristic life position: it will all sort itself out somehow. Recall the meme: “What are you up to?” — “Watching the trees grow.” — “Always in a rush, you are”, and you will have understood the soul of the frustration types.
If you like the actors Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Harrison Ford and Gérard Depardieu, or you admire the former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, or you listen to the songs of Lolita Milyavskaya, or you follow the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, then you will recognise them by their looks as well.
And if you like the Dude in the film “The Big Lebowski”, that is the anthem of the frustration types outright.
In terms of their inner processes, the “Philosophers” are extraverts in a passive life position with the Ego type Contact with Cognition and a violated right “to achieve”
- Extraverts — meaning that they very much need a response from the world around them in order to understand and know themselves.
- Passive — these are people directed towards harmony and friendship with those around them, for whom taking part matters more than winning or social achievement
- Their Ego type, Contact with Cognition, determines their striving for meaning in existence. But they do not trust logic (since they have a weak command of it), and prefer knowledge through personal experience: they will think up an experiment, look at the result and try to understand how to arrive at the result
If you ask them to tell you about their childhood, the Philosophers will most likely recall that they had wonderful, loving parents, but that something went wrong just before school. Everything was fine, and then either the family moved to another town or a parent died. That is how the violated right “to achieve” was formed, an inner prohibition on a quick, sudden, unconsidered start, and on completions and achievements as well.
That is why they are for ever “slowing down”, prefer to take their time and to think all their actions through, and live by the motto
Better not to do something important than to do it
After all, it might not work out, and the Philosophers have big problems with taking responsibility for their decisions and for the results of their actions.
The frustration types can also be called the “Oblomovs” (after Goncharov's famously idle hero) or the “stringer-along”. The Philosophers are in no hurry: they brake at the start, and they brake at the end. And this indirectly “frustrates” both the people around them and themselves, through carrying out an agreement late or not carrying it out at all. That is, there is a constant tugging at the lead, a sort of testing.
Only the people around them never quite get round to taking offence: once a Philosopher has got going, he has got going — the movement will be methodical, measured and calm, “let us walk down the mountain without hurrying”. There are results, but they are slow and measured. So where anyone else would run into a conflict and a fine, they will often draw a smile and a handshake and make new acquaintances, of the “what a nice chat we have had!” variety.
And their psychological portrait is rounded off by a refusal to accept formality, pomp, excessive strictness and seriousness. They are a little asocial, they dislike social rules and norms. And so the Philosophers, as befits their nature, let the people around them down in this style: “What, I am supposed to be in a suit? Fine, here you are, I will put a suit on! You see, now I look like a tramp!”
