The compulsive personality type has two basic fears: feelings, and making a mistake. The main, primary one is the fear of feelings — or more precisely, of losing control over one’s own feelings and emotions. Compulsives need all their schemes, rituals and rules in order to keep feelings under control, because feelings make you get things wrong.
That is exactly why they are such traditionalists. How do you declare your love when your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth? You go wooden, you produce inhuman noises, you look like a complete idiot. So the whole situation has to be built in advance, and preferably rehearsed. And it would be as well to write the whole speech down, or learn it, or read it off a sheet of paper — otherwise these feelings will wash over me and I won’t be able to do a thing.
Incidentally, this “rehearsedness”, or the habit of reading off a sheet of paper, can be observed in public speakers. When someone reads from a sheet, you can already put the label of compulsive dynamics on them. Unlike everyone else, the compulsive uses paper because of the fear of a mistake. The fear of a mistake, because feelings may sweep over him: “I don’t know what to say next. So I’d rather look like this than get it wrong.” Reading off a sheet gives him a way to keep control, it removes uncertainty, it gives him something to lean on.
And so it turns out that if a compulsive person declares his love, it will be done very precisely, properly, by the rules — that is, it will either be a repeat of his parents’ story (the way dad proposed to mum), or it will follow the accepted standards to the letter (a café, flowers, a ring, down on one knee, and some fool with a violin alongside).
So let us sum up what the compulsive personality type is afraid of.
- The absence of a reliable, stable moral and ethical footing, of its clarity, its logic, its consistency, its intelligibility. Social chaos, anarchy.
- Being unable to make the right choice.
- Not measuring up to the existing rules and traditions, being unable to carry them out.
- Stupidity, illogicality, inadequacy
- Changes to the existing order and rules, their being called into question or adjusted.
The needs of the compulsive personality type
To have an effect on the compulsive personality type, you have to speak to them in the language of their needs. The “Correct” people need clear, concrete, intelligible and logical structural limits and rules, taken “to the very limit”. With no limits in place they feel truly awful. If it comes to it, they will invent the limits for themselves and find a system to believe in. Even so, compulsives still make the decision themselves; the last word is theirs. Which is why they feel that all of this restricts them a great deal.
And here is what this personality type takes pleasure in (act this way, and everything will be “just right” for you):
- Observing the rules and traditions of their family, their society, their religion with zeal.
- Praise and rewards for the correct, righteous, precise carrying out of rules and traditions; confirmation that their behaviour and thinking are adequate.
- Being aware of themselves as part of a society, a firm, a clan, a social mechanism that works faultlessly for the good of the great idea of the leader of the nation, of the boss, of the head of the family.
- Having clear traditions, instructions and rules in life, at work and in relationships, and an understanding of what is right.
