There are people who always observe the rules, who live correctly and by the rules, and who follow prescriptions and regulations. These are the “Correct” people. Or, in more psychoanalytic language, this is the compulsive personality type.
Even Correct people act beautifully in films and sing very correctly indeed. Tom Hanks, for instance, makes correct films about the war, Céline Dion sings correct songs, and Jennifer Aniston can even become a correct star. Igor Nikolaev with his correct moustache can become a pop star, and so can Yadviga Poplavskaya. So the compulsive personality type does not have to end up as a guardian of law and order.
For people like this everything has to be correct — even the cutlets. One day the shop had none left, and a wife decided to make her husband home-made cutlets. The “Correct” husband sits there eating and delivers the line: “Tasty cutlets, but the wrong ones.” In other words, the fact that they are wrong matters more than the fact that they are tasty.
“That’s wrong, that’s not how things are done”
“That’s indecent, amoral, immoral”
“Tell me what to do — where did I go wrong?”
“That contradicts the laws of logic”
A Correct person is an introvert in a passive position, with a violated right to autonomy and the Ego type Contact with Cognition. And therein lies a certain dilemma, which is exactly why they are called compulsive:
- The main axis is cognition, logic. Their thinking is quite strongly developed, because such a person relies on logical appraisal. They need to think a great deal, to process a great deal of information, to stay permanently in the process of computing the correct structure.
- Being people with a passive life position, however, they deny themselves the right to decide for themselves and the autonomy of their own thinking. In this way they submit to the rules, canons and regulations already in place. That is, the system comes before the person. The system comes first, I come second: “That’s how it’s done”, “that’s how it should be”, “that’s the proper way”, “it’s a tradition”.
- Where is the difficulty? If this were an extravert, there would be no problem: there is an instruction, we carry it out. But introverts have their own, inner appraisal. And so they very easily fall under someone else’s influence — not just anyone’s, though, but an authority’s! Being introverts, they choose that authority themselves. But if the “chosen one” fails to serve their interests, fails to supply a system that is correct from their point of view, the authority will be overthrown. Then the “Correct” person moves into another system and sets about implementing that one.
Harmonious Traits of the compulsive personality type
One can sing the praises of the compulsive personality type. These are very decent, reliable, fairly honest and predictable people; they are quite easy-going by nature. As a rule they are able to adapt to any rules and any situation, and they are also very good at making sense of systems.
They are able to fit into practically any system.
At the same time they are clannish and keepers of tradition. They honour family ties, and going to the park with the whole family on a Sunday is very much their thing. As a rule they are quite good family people, the men as much as the women.
Compulsives are very tidy people. It comes from their drive to systematise: everything must be in order at all times. Most of us, for instance, have a toolbox with everything thrown in together. For a compulsive who has taken tidiness to its highest expression it will be a cabinet with labelled shelves saying what goes where, and a little box on top marked “all sorts of useless junk”. Meaning: it might come in handy somewhere, someday, though there is no telling when.
A striving for the definite is common to the manic and the compulsive type alike, with the difference that the latter embodies the existing order and system. That is, not “I demand that the towels hang in this order”, but “it is correct for them to be like this”. The manic type, by contrast, will set up a system of their own and demand that everyone observe it.
Compulsive personalities are ideal implementers. Better than anyone else, they carry out “instructions” precisely, accurately and dutifully. Given their trouble with making decisions, though, everything has to be clear, comprehensible and spelled out. If you have managed to explain the scheme step by step, the algorithm of actions and the result required, you need supervise no further — everything will be done exactly as you explained, and you will get exactly the result you stated.
Let us sum up once more what makes the compulsive personality type such pleasant company:
- Decency (I will not sell out a friend or my country).
- The ability to adapt to any rules, traditions and instructions of society and of their surroundings (adaptability).
- Compliance, “good” behaviour.
- Predictability, reliability, stability.
- Clannishness, traditionalism (keeping traditions).
- Honesty.
- Respect for “eternal values”, traditions, rules, norms and canons.
Disharmonious, conflict traits of the compulsive personality type
The main disharmonious trait of the compulsive personality type is their inflexibility. They find it hard to depart from an instruction, from logic, from the rules. In their worldview, their actions and their thoughts they lean on the traditions, canons, logic and rules already in place — those of their family, their milieu, society or the law.
“That’s how it’s done”, “that’s how one should live”, “that’s the correct way to act”
On the one hand, they are capable of cruelty if it is “traditional”, logical and justified. On the other, if facts and reality cannot be described by the existing laws and rules, they will close their eyes to them and deny them.
“There is no such thing, it cannot be, because it cannot be.” “That contradicts the laws of logic, of physics.”
They have no developed inner core of their own, independent of external rules and stereotypes: it seems to be there, and at the same time it is constantly called into question. These are people with very sound minds who nonetheless do not trust the results of their own conclusions. If their conclusion coincides with the conclusion of the system, then it is correct, but even so
“I do not believe the result of my own thinking
That is why a compulsive is forced to think again, and again, and again, and again. And there is never enough information, as we know: we keep learning something more. So the compulsive personality type is forever finding fresh grounds to think everything over and analyse it.
All passive introverts — phlegmatics — try to analyse. Where the autistic type is constantly “gestalting” the environment, trying to take every small detail into account, the compulsive, a phlegmatic just the same, does exactly that with information. They collect it all the time, try to process it, systematise it, bring it into some kind of norm, form and order.
The hardest thing of all for the compulsive personality type is a choice with no obvious, correct solution. On the whole they try not to choose, not to make a decision, to get out of it.
And their main trick for avoiding a choice is gathering information.
This can reach the point of absurdity: if their mother never taught them in what order to tie their shoelaces (the right one first, or the left?), then tying their shoes will be an agony every single time, and such a person will switch to shoes with elastic. The need to make a choice, to decide which side to tie the laces on, is there, but there is no rule — so how is one to fit into a system like that? This is how they can be thrown by the uncertainty and unpredictability of life.
Compulsives easily fall under the influence of people more confident in their own rightness, people able to argue and prove everything logically. What is more, they need external guidance: without such reliable, stable support they are tormented by doubt and by the difficulty of choosing “the correct way”.
If the instruction comes from an authority and stays within the system, there is nothing to discuss — that is how it should be. Moreover, one has to keep checking against their opinion. For example, an acquaintance of the compulsive personality type decided to buy a fridge. He went to a big shop, where he liked one particular appliance. After that he toured every shopping centre, talked to every sales assistant, read reviews, became an expert on refrigerators, and two months later he bought... the very fridge he had liked in the first place. What did he spend those two months on? On proving to himself that his choice was correct, that the system confirmed the correctness of the choice he had made.
Dissatisfaction with an authority sets in when the authority says something that contradicts the system. Since the system outranks the authority, the authority has to be changed. But a system, too, can become too “cramped”, and then the compulsive, being an introvert with an inner appraisal of their own, will swap it for another.
Appearance of the compulsive personality type
Outwardly, compulsive personalities are “correct” people. As a rule they are very “straight”, sometimes even a little wooden, stiff in their movements. Compulsives have a straightened spine, and the outward impression is that they are “sitting on a stake”. The gait is “hesitant”, “timid”, “checking itself”, “the way they were taught”.
The difference between compulsive men and women is slight: in women the waist is weakly defined. Whereas hysteroid and epileptoid women often have a large bust — a natural one, without fail — among compulsives that is rare. All in all, a striptease or a belly dance performed by a compulsive woman, where the whole point is the plasticity and fluidity of movement, is a sorry sight.
As for “excess weight”, compulsives are fairly lean people, and stoutness is rare among them. The most surprising thing one can say about them is that these are people of normal build: neither thin nor fat, if anything inclined to thinness.
Compulsives control their emotions all the time, and as a rule their emotions are barely expressed. Their face is not very mobile, because of that characteristic emotional restraint.
They very rarely shout: to make them do so you have to push them very far indeed. After all, shouting in company is “not done”, and if the system does not provide for it, they hold themselves back. On the other hand, if the local culture accepts it, they will not restrain themselves at all.
The compulsive personality type dresses precisely, within the bounds of tradition and the rules. The clothing shows restraint and a modest colour palette matching the norms of their surroundings. Often these are the “men in black”, who dress very precisely to the dress code: for a long stretch of time that means dark trousers and a light top, and best of all a suit.
When it was correct to go to work in a suit, compulsives wore one on holiday too. These are people who often put on a tie even at the weekend. All in all, this is the uniform they live and work in: everything easy, correct and clear.
Compulsives have house clothes, and on coming home they always change into a different, indoor “suit”. The paranoid personality type also changes into house clothes, but in order not to drag street dirt onto the beloved furniture.
