Understanding Psychology

I have had a strange relationship with psychology for most of my life. I think my first encounter was with a counsellor when my parents were getting divorced. I was around fifteen or sixteen at the time. I was interviewed and then given a test which in retrospect I think was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. I just thought it was peculiar and no, the counseling didn't help my parents who got divorced anyway. The counsellor suggested that I was kidding around when I answered the questions! Then there was some kind of career aptitude test administered in high school. I did the test but never went to the counsellor's office for the results. I guess you could say I was aggressively uninterested! Later on, in my late 20s and 30s, I got interested in Zen, Chinese philosophy and Carl Jung, which led me to Karen Horney, a neo-Freudian who specialized in neurosis. I read a few of her books, but I seemed to get more neurotic with every one, so I developed an interesting theory about modern psychology: it's all crap!

For a few decades, therefore, I carefully avoided psychology, psychological gurus, the use of psychological terms and so on. Anytime anyone referred to their "ego" or "subconscious" or "id" or whatever, I just tuned out. Hey, it completely cured my neuroses because I no longer believed there was such a thing. Ok, this was a somewhat extreme view, but it worked very well for me. But then I encountered Jordan Peterson and now I have had to re-evaluate psychology.

Last night I was watching his September Q&A on YouTube:

He mentioned a personality evaluation test that sounded quite interesting so I signed up for it. Here:

https://www.understandmyself.com

If you watch the video you will hear that if you type "September" into the code field you will get a discount from $9.95 to $7.95. I think you might find it worthwhile to do. If I, very skeptical about psychology and a notorious self-analyzer, found it worthwhile, you might too. Unlike those free tests online, this one gives you a pretty substantial report. Mine came to nearly 6,000 words. Oh, so you want to know the highly-confidential results? Ok! There are five categories, each of which has two sub-categories:

• Agreeableness: typical, 43rd percentile (which means I am slightly less agreeable than the norm) this divides into Compassion, 48th percentile and politeness, 38th percentile which is moderately low. Odd for a Canadian, eh?
• Conscientiousness: moderately high, 72nd percentile, this divides into industriousness, 56th percentile and orderliness, 80th percentile.
• Extraversion: high, 80th percentile, this divides into enthusiasm, 59th percentile and assertiveness, 88th percentile, which is why my mother could never tell me what to do!
• Neuroticism, typical, 42nd percentile, this divides into withdrawal, 41st percentile and volatility, 43rd percentile.
• Openness (to experience): exceptionally high, 96th percentile, this divides into intellect, 86th percentile and openness, 96th percentile.

So obviously I have to get working on that composition!

For an envoi, let's have a piece I wrote for violin and guitar. This is Cloudscape with Claudia Shiuh, violin and myself on guitar: