There are people who are always right, who always know what to do and who are, what is more, ready to push civilisation “towards a bright future”. And they really do lead: they will found a new school of psychoanalysis, they will plant a whole country with maize, they will even raise a nation to victory in a war. Whether many people like it is another matter. These are people of the Manic personality type. But so as not to confuse them with “manic-depressive disorder”, let us call them the Judges.
Nikita Khrushchev, for example, knew better than any agronomist that maize alone would feed the whole people, and planted the entire USSR with maize. Thanos, whom the Avengers fought in the Marvel cinematic universe, knew that the world was overpopulated and that saving humanity therefore meant wiping out every second person.
These people put the interests of society first, at their own expense; they are ready to throw themselves onto the enemy's gun-slit, and just as ready to set repressions in motion. The Judges are introverts in an active life position, with the Ego type “Contact with Cognition”.
- An introvert — meaning that he “knows” everything about himself, and about other people too
- From an active life position, the Judge sees and accepts himself as the exclusive bearer of the truth.
- They are “logicians”, that is, they decide with their head. Or, more precisely, with an idea.
- In the manic personality type the right to autonomy is violated. That means they are locked on to the subject of correctness, norms and legality.
Almost every person of the manic personality type takes himself for the Pope.
“Only God is above me.”
They are the bearers and the mouthpieces of some overvalued idea. Their main fear is the fear of error, and their main neurotic striving is towards infallibility and being beyond refutation.
Where the “Correct” people, the Compulsive ones, fit into the system, the Judges, the Manic ones, create the system. And yet a manic person never says that he is the king. Instead he takes on the role of a guide, a preacher, a senior shepherd:
“It is not I who am giving you orders, it is the system speaking. And the system is subordinate to the idea. Which means the idea stands above me and above you.”
Recall that an introvert in an active position is called a Choleric. There are three choleric personality types: the Hedonist (Psychopathic), the Judge (Manic) and the Free Spirit (Schizoid). Now, where the Hedonist says: “I exist, and you do not”, the Judge, also a choleric, will say: “Of course you exist, but the idea matters more.”
How the Manic type serves an idea
Among people of the Manic type there are many who give voice to ideas. They are the ones who create their own systems, their own schools and their own approach. It is not the only personality type that does so, of course, but Manic people do it rather well. Even among their “neighbours” in the violated right, the Compulsive ones, it is already very hard to find reasonably well-known figures, because they are rarely very visible.
If an idea is good enough, it finds plenty of followers. Ideas can be of many kinds, and they need not be militarised, as they were with Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (who comes from this type as well). They may be esoteric ideas — those of Alexander Sviyash, a man of the same cast, for example.
It is another matter that the Judges follow that line very rigidly, and carry it just as rigidly to everyone around them. One could name several well-known figures in psychology who have written a great many books and created systems of personal growth (as, incidentally, did Freud, who created the system of psychoanalysis). And yet they will write in plain words that a human being is a brick in the wall of the bright future being built. Their attitude to people, in other words, is an attitude to a tool that allows an idea to be brought to life.
“The whole life of my family and my colleagues is subordinate to my order.”
As Stalin said, “we soldiers do not exchange generals” (his own son was a soldier too). The demands, in other words, are very strict, and the bar is usually set rather high. There are demands on themselves and demands on others. In this respect they are servants of the truth, servants of an idea, and at the expense of their own personal interests. How does that come about?
People of the Manic type have one more thing going on: an inner prohibition on feeling good. Literally: I am not allowed to feel good. I have to be in a state of struggle the whole time — with myself, with circumstances, with some external obstacle. The other choleric, the psychopathic personality type, also fights a great deal, attacking openly and aggressively, and that has to do with the concrete physical world. For Manic people the world consists of thoughts, ideas and their application to reality, and the war goes on all the same. Only it now begins, for the most part, with themselves. Exactly as in the film "Michael":
If we look for an equivalent among parental injunctions, Manic people have had the prohibition “don't make things good for yourself” laid on them. These are the people who will work with a fever, and demand the same of others. One of the most striking examples is Korchagin (the hero of Nikolai Ostrovsky's novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”), a man of the Manic type who will cut timber knee-deep in water for the sake of an idea, because it has to be done now — and will line everyone else up as well.
Harmonious Traits of the manic personality type
They are clear-cut, unambiguous, consistent people with a gift for briefing and for command. They really are good generals. To put together a good general staff you need a fair number of people of the Manic type, capable of calculating everything, building a strategy, working out the tactics and casting it all into orders and instructions.
They are able to make a decision, but they will change it only if their rightness does not suffer — that is, if I still come out right in the end. But if I am to be left in the wrong, then I am sorry: “the battalions request fire”.
Their theme is to reach the goal by any means: if a hill has to be taken, we will lay down the whole army there, but we will take it. That they are good generals does not mean they are the best. But at staff war games there is nobody better than the Manic type.
They have a well-developed structure of values and meanings. It is very clear, easy to grasp and easy to pass on. The soul-searching and the vacillation you see in Epileptoid people do not happen in Manic ones: for them it is all clear — how a thing should be done, where to go, what is right and what is wrong. It is a little black-and-white, but it is very clear and definite. Everything is in its place. Searching, incidentally, is a very nerve-racking state for them.
The logicality of the Judges follows from their Ego type. As a rule these are people of fairly well-developed mental ability. Depending on their level of education, there are Manic people who are not especially bright — but with one peculiarity.
Because of their neurotic striving for infallibility, the fear that they are wrong can drive them to lose a very great deal and to look like complete idiots, so long as they turn out to be right. They will make any sacrifice to preserve their own rightness. And that is exactly what people regularly catch them with:
“as you rightly said yesterday...”,
— and then your own words, which have nothing to do with what the boss said yesterday. The Manic boss is then faced with a choice: either admit right now that he said something wrong somewhere, which makes him an idiot, or say “yes, I said it right, go and do it”. That manipulation works if you do not do it too crudely. If you do it very crudely indeed, you may well be told “yes, fine” during the conversation and be sacked half an hour later.
Children of the manic type are more grown-up. When the other children run off to play, the Manic child will finish his homework first — not to be praised for it, but because it has to be done now. The Compulsive child will do his homework too, but more gently, not without a touch of fanaticism.
Disharmonious traits of the manic personality type
For Manic people the world divides sharply into allies and enemies.
“Everyone must act and live the way I have said”
because if the truth belongs to me alone, then everyone must live by the commandments I have laid down.
“Good is only the one who supports my rightness. Anyone who tries to refute me is bad.”
Not even into allies, in fact, but into the like-minded, who are walking with me towards this bright idea, and those who are against.
In Manic people the emotions are likewise under the control of the idea, which brings difficulty in empathising with others. They are excessively serious, with a reduced sense of humour. Some jokes they simply do not get, because they take things too seriously, and their own sense of humour is very idiosyncratic.
