Government Shutdown, Political Deadlock, and The Human Personality

Biological Theory of the Human Personality


Practical Application of the Theory: Part 1

Introductory Remarks:

***Summary of the Theory: Humans are very literally the combination of their interpretations, predictions, and decisions, period. These activities define the essence of who we are and what we do every moment of every day. Consequently, human beings have life or death attachment to their interpretations of information, their predictions about what to do with their interpretations, and their resulting decisions. We do not choose this attachment; it is hard wired into our biology for our survival. The only action behaviors that stands between us and death is our ability to interpret, predict, and decide reliably and predictably. The integrity and health of the human personality, also known as mental health, depends upon one single dynamic. Mental health depends upon the human's ability to trust implicitly and comfortably at every moment his abilities to interpret, predict, and decide. If a human is constantly required to interpret information in his environment in ways that make sense from perspectives other than his own, he will be forced to adapt in order to avoid the terrible discomfort this perspective confusion causes to his nervous system.  Mental illnesses are ADAPTATIONS to avoid interpretation, prediction, and decision making confusion. Threats to how we interpret, predict, and decide are the sole cause of anxiety to our nervous system, and the root cause of all adaptations we now call mental illness. (Since the only thing we actively do is interpret, predict, and decide, it is the only place to look when trying to solve mental health problems. We do not possess an underlying psychology that influences our decisions. We possess a nervous system that helps us interpret, predict, and decide.) Chemical imbalances are a myth perpetuated by drug companies hoping to ply us with "brain balancing chemicals."  Because interpreting, predicting, and deciding are the only action behaviors we actively perform as humans, everything we need to know about ourselves resides in our understanding of how we can most reliably engage in these activities.  When we as humans stop interpreting the interpretations of other people in terms of how they affect our nervous systems, and vice versa, we will come to know what our personal perspectives really are, and we will stop modeling our current dysfunctional orientation to perspective to our children. My hypothesis is when perspective confusion stops, mental health starts.

***Practical Application of the Theory as it Relates to Government Shutdown and Political Deadlock:

What does a wailing, inconsolable 5 year old who was just denied a candy bar at Rite Aid have in common with a Tea Party Senator who is denied his way in a Congressional vote?

I was so pleased with my "clever" analogy here and was ready to really discuss how childish the far right Congress people are being by grabbing the government, lying down on the Senate floor, and wailing with angry, pouty voices, "I want this government to do what I want it to do, right now, and I'm not budging til I get my way! I don't care if the majority ruled the other way. I want what I want, NOW!"

Then I remembered my theory and my new way of analyzing self and other and realized, dang, I can't say those things any more. And childish is a term I should never use, even referring to children. It is belittling and it perpetuates inequality and bullying.

Let's start with the 5 year old. Is he being unreasonable, spoiled, difficult, self centered, and/or manipulative while screaming on the Rite Aid floor for candy? From my perspective as the mom who has 3 hungry older kids waiting in the car after soccer, baseball, and gymnastics practice respectively, 2 of whom have science fair projects to summarize and paste attractively onto poster boards after dinner that will not get cooked until at least 8pm, YES THE 5 YEAR OLD IS ALL THOSE THINGS!!!

When I understand my 5 year old solely via how he affects my existence, I will respond to him in terms of how he is affecting my nervous system and trying my patience when I don't have the time or the energy to be tried. In relation to my existence, he is acting spoiled, difficult, manipulative, unreasonable, and self centered.

But he does not exist in relation to my existence and my nervous system and my needs. He is a biological entity unto himself who is interacting in his environment in ways that make sense to his nervous system, not mine. If I speak to him in terms of how he is affecting me and my pre-conceived notions for how children SHOULD behave, he will be well on his way to a life of perspective confusion and mental health problems.

Let's look at my 5 year old from HIS perspective.

**Addendum***

***Looking at people from their perspective as best we can is the main strategy for the practical application of my theory.

***Most of us think we do this already.

***Why don't I think any of us are capable of doing this effectively and consistently , currently? 

***We were never given the opportunity to understand ourselves from our personal perspectives. We learned to understand our personal perspective in terms of how our interpretations affected the nervous systems of the people who raised us and who had authority over us. We were never allowed to have a direct relationship to and with our interpretive mechanisms, our predictions, or our decisions. We ALWAYS had to make sense to other people and/or to world views placed upon us. As adults, if we don't agree with the world view of our family of origin, we usually need to replace it with something else because we don't know that we can interpret information in ways that make sense to us because we are human not because we have the best possible world view. Humans never did, never do, and never will need a pre-packaged world view to be adequate humans any more than dogs do, or horses do, or dolphins do.

***People raised in a Fundamentalist culture had very tight constraints for how they were allowed to interpret information and their desires in their environments.  Their nervous systems were under siege even more than the rest of ours were as children. 

             ********************
Back to the 5 year old. His desire for the candy has zero to do with my tight schedule or my neat and tidy intellectual theories of what a spoiled child is and isn't. As soon as I communicate to him about how HIS desire is affecting me personally, I start teaching him how to treat people his whole life in terms of how they are affecting him personally. We were all taught how to do this. (This practice lays the foundation for bullying and abuse later in life, but that is another chapter.)

What if I take my 5 year old at face value and validate his existence for what it means for him. His desire for candy is just that. He WANTS the candy. And he is only 5. This is neither good or bad, it just is. Most humans love sugary treats and even the most disciplined adults have trouble not wanting candy. Plus, the 5 year old is not yet at the developmental level that can allow him the cognitive flexibility to mentally hold in his head his desires in relationship to how his desires are affecting his mother and the socially appropriate rules for Rite Aid. He only has room in his brain at the developmental age of 5 to think about one concept at a time. Right now that concept is, I WANT CANDY. Furthermore, he is not born with a fully formed concept of the definition for spoiled and how awful parents feel if other people think their kids are spoiled. He is just a 5 year old who really wants candy.


Analyzing further, what are the 5 year old's option to achieving his huge desire for the candy. There is only a single solution he can intellectually come up with to solve his problem of wanting candy after seeing it, and that is to eat it. If that solution is denied him, he will go to the greatest lengths he can in order to try and get that candy. Again, he doesn't have the cognitive capacity or flexibility to rationally sort through alternative options at age 5, and he hasn't had enough experience with disappointment to develop strategies that can help him deal with disappointment rationally.

He also has only one single shot at getting the candy at his age. He doesn't have a credit card or an all hours candy dispenser in his play kitchen. His only hope is to do everything in his power to convince his parent to buy it with everything he can muster.

How do we communicate with the 5 year old so he knows his interactions in his environment are under his jurisdiction, and that he is responsible for interpreting his desires, predicting how to fulfill his desires,  and deciding how to fulfill them in ways that can make sense for his nervous system? How do we handle this candy episode so our 5 year old can eventually make comfortable and reliable decisions about his more complex desires as a teen and an adult? Most importantly, how can we communicate with our 5 year old so he doesn't grow up thinking his relationship to his desires doesn't belong to him, but rather to his accurate interpretations of how his desires will affect other people?

How can I talk to my 5 year old so he can maintain his perspective integrity? Here is my recipe for perspective integrity:

***Listen, Consider, Validate, Seek Clarification***

***Side Note***

I only recently became the sole owner of my own personal perspective. It is so easy to be a human this way. Once I started engaging my own interpretations, predictions, and decisions in ways that make sense just to me because I realized those actions are literally who I am, I stopped expecting other people to interpret, predict, and decide in ways that made sense to me. Once I began to have a direct relationship with myself and my interpretations, I was for the first time able to disengage my reactivity to how other people interpret. I stopped expecting my husband to make sense to me. And believe you me, he typically makes no sense to me. But I still love him and always have. Our perspectives were so entangled because of our perspective confusion about ourselves, our marriage felt like a hair shirt. Now it is effortless.

So, back to the 5 year old:

Old school communication:

In a loud, sharp, angry tone with an angry face and stern body language I say: "Joey, get up off the floor and put that candy bar back, right now. I do not have time for another one of your temper tantrums. Your sister and brother have 3 hours of homework to do tonight and I am in no mood for this. Only spoiled children cry in the middle of the store when they can't get their way. Stop it right now or you will not earn your Sesame Street before bed time."

Result of old school communication:

Joey keeps screaming, despite my directives. I get madder and madder because Joey is effecting my interpretations of how children should behave, particularly my children, and when my interpretations are affected, my nervous system has a reaction 100% of the time. The madder I look, the louder Joey gets. The whole store is eyeing us.

Joey feels like I caused his disappointment because I made his desire for candy about how it was affecting me personally. Joey never gets to connect the dots between his desires and what they mean for him, so he has trouble regulating his desires as a teen and an adult.  

New Kind of  Communication with the 5 year old using biological principles and the perspective maintenance recipe:

..listen, consider, validate, seek clarification:

I walk up to Joey who is on the floor screaming. I say, Joey, what do you want? He says, "This candy bar." I pause to consider his desire and what it means for him so I can validate him, even though I know I won't get if for him. Joey, I can see why you want this candy bar. You are very hungry because we haven't eaten dinner yet, and you love that kind of candy. I am so sorry I can't get it for you because we have to eat dinner before sweets and I didn't bring enough money to buy the candy. (These reasons may not make logical sense to him, but some day they will, and I validate him by taking his desire seriously when I give him reasons for why I am not helping him fulfill his desire.)  We have your favorite dessert waiting at home after dinner.

Result: Joey screams louder and louder. He is very hungry and tired and beyond being able to self regulate. It's not his fault he got dragged to 3 practices on a cold night and after not eating for 3 hours was plunked smack in front of his favorite candy bar. Disappointment is awful for all of us. As adults, we complain all the time when we are disappointed, but we hate the 5 year old version of complaining which is usually crying and whining, and we expect way more self regulation from our children than we do from ourselves.

With a neutral voice and a neutral body, which I am able to maintain since I disengaged my nervous system from reacting to the interpretations of other people, including my own children, I repeat, "Joey, we can't get the candy." I make my purchases and walk out of the store without the dramatic lecture about how irritated and tired I am, how disappointed I am with his behavior, etc....

Joey is left to grapple with his disappointment because I let him own his disappointment by not making his desires and his disappointment about how they affect me. I left him sad and angry, but I did not harm the structure or function of how he interprets, predicts, and decides. In fact, I gave him a great opportunity to experience and practice dealing with disappointment. This is never easy, no matter how old we are. The more practice we have with disappointment without shame or perspective confusion, the more self regulating strategies we can develop that make sense for us.

Preserving the integrity of a human being's abilities to interpret, predict, and decide does not mean he gets to do what he wants whenever he wants to. It means we teach the rules of our family and community through example and through non-judgmental and non-reactive application of the rules. The rules aren't the valuable entity in this equation, our children are.

So, what is new about my example. We've all read parent books. I don't offer anything we all haven't read before. Well, here's what's new for me. I could not predictably use any method for when my children were upset. I was so reactive to them, and my ability to "use my words" calmly and reasonably was intermittent. I wanted to stay calm, but didn't know how.

With a new and an easy to use definition of who I am, and a little bit of practice, it is a piece of cake. Realizing all I am are my interpretations and decisions allows me to know what throws me off balance. If somebody were to read this page and tell me it is a bunch of nonsense, I would feel bad. It would throw me off balance a little, but nothing like it use to. Until two May's ago, I was literally plugged into the world and everybody in it. Other people's interpretations and decisions caused me to have reactions as if their interpretations and decisions emanated out of my nervous system.

I put the plug from my nervous system back into me so I am a closed circuit. For the first time I see people also as closed circuits. It's absurd to me now that I would react so vehemently to my children's interactions with their environment. I could not detach because I didn't know how because I did not know what my perspective was in a concrete, obvious sort of way.

So, cut to the Tea Party people who are demanding to have their needs met. I don't really know what they want because nobody has ever thought to ask them in a non-judgemental, non condescending, non-threatening way. We only get their sound bites, because we go off the rails with anger and condescension before they even finish their sound bite. If we could remain non reactive by understanding where our perspective ends and theirs begins, and see them as a closed circuit incapable of throwing us off balance with their interpretations, we could maintain the presence of mind to actually ask them what their concerns are, what their fears are, what their desires are. We could validate them and make them feel respected and less disenfranchised. We could also push them to give us concrete answers about what they desire.

If we only understand diverse political perspectives in terms of how they affect our nervous systems, we will never come to know the deeper reasons behind the interpretations of those with the most different perspective from ours. Collaboration and consensus require pretty thorough exploration of all interpretations of all parties. Dismissing ideas outright because we assume idiocy from a dramatically different perspective is to imagine the whole world should live in our head, by our rules.  

Until I understood who I was biologically, I could not understand anybody else either. I would not have given a tea partier the time of day because I was very dismissive of them. I was dismissing their ideas due to how their ideas made sense to me, which was no-sense. When I started looking at them as real people, with real fears, and real desires that make total sense from their perspective, I realized they have as much right to be listened to, considered, and validated as I do. All I have to do is ask them clarifying questions. I don't have to acquiesce to their demands in order to validate them, and vice versa.

Equal rights under the law sound good when it sits on the page inside the sentence. To afford every person equal rights, we first have to know what a "person" is. We have never been able to move beyond ideological abstractions in either party because we have been missing this very key foundational concept. When we make the definition of person concrete, we can start applying our wonderful ideologies in a concrete way.

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF THE HUMAN PERSONALITY?

          Biology of the Human Personality

Chapter 1: What is the Human Personality?

Definition of the Human Personality: The personality reflects the choices a human being is making and the evaluative processes behind those choices, every moment from birth to death. Her evaluative processes are how she is able to cognitively put information together via her unique ability to coordinate her behaviors with her sensory and nervous systems. Her sensory and nervous systems are calibrated to work precisely for her cognitive capacities. She is a fully functional, integrated, biological organism designed to make sense of information in her environment in ways that can makes sense to her.

Within the context of a human's biology, interpreting information, predicting what to do next, and making choices, or decisions, for what to do next, is the only dynamic the human being engages in actively. All other human functions are automatic or instinctive. Therefore, the main requirement of each human is to be able to interpret, predict, and decide reliably, comfortably, and effectively. Since it is the only action dynamic a human engages in, any personality or mental health disorders reflect a problem with a human's ability to effectively interpret information and make predictions. 

Our human personality is simply a reflection of our decisions. That is all it is. It is a reflection of the decisions we make moment to moment, day to day, month to month, year to year, etc.

Our decisions are not a function of underlying psychological qualities or conditions that mysteriously haunt our sinews. There are no such things as psychological qualities; there are no precise or empirically verified or verifiable definitions of them, either. As opposed to mystical psychological qualities, our decisions are a function of a very clear chain of events that anyone with a personality can ascertain. We take in information through our senses. Our nervous system, with our brain at the helm, coordinates our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions  in such a way that we can make sense of the incoming information. Once we synthesize the information, we make a cognitive prediction about what to do next. From that prediction, we make a decision. Once we make a decision, it is reflected via our personality.

Human biology is geared for humans to actively participate in one and only one single activity to keep its biological engine running. Our one singular activity is to make decisions. Every other human activity is involuntary or instinctive. We make decisions quite well because our sensory and nervous systems do most of the work for us, and it is what we are primed to do all day long every moment of every day we are alive. We are our decisions, our personalities reflect our decision making capacities and processes, and every single solitary decision we make, makes sense from our perspective. We are not wired to interpret, predict, and decide in ways that are suppose to make sense from any perspective other than our own.

How do my sensory and nervous systems work together to allow me to make decisions, the decisions that end up being reflected as my personality? 

This is a very easy answer. My eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin all allow me to take in information. My brain and nervous systems, which include my thoughts and emotions and behaviors, allow me to process that information, interpret that information, predict what to do with that information, and then make a decision about it. My personality is the reflection of the final product of my sensory and nervous system working together to allow me to interpret, predict, and decide upon an action to take in any given moment.

Other than making decisions, there is literally nothing else left up to human beings to physically do in order to be living, breathing humans. All other human functions occur automatically or instinctively, requiring nothing from us. For example, if I want a cup of tea, I decide to pour it from the teapot. My muscles take the direction from my brain and engage themselves to support my decision to pour tea. I don't have to operate a crank to make my muscles work for me. I simply make a decision that I want my muscles to do a particular task. My muscles engage until I make the decision to stop. Then they stop, pretty much like magic when you think about it. But it's not magic, it is biology.

If I wake up and drink a cup of tea, make my daughter breakfast, and then write, these action behaviors all represent decisions I am making throughout the morning. This particular morning my personality is reflecting a tea drinking breakfast maker who writes. I make many mini decisions to accomplish each action behavior on this morning, but the sum total of each decision I make is who I am at any given moment. My personality is not fixed, or something you can talk about or define as if it is a noun that never changes. You also cannot talk about my personality as if it is a thing that does something. It reflects something. It reflects my decisions. It doesn't DO anything.

The term personality disorder makes no sense, nor does the concept behind the term. A personality disorder is really a decision disorder. But there can be no such thing as a decision disorder; it is a biological impossibility to have a decision disorder and be alive. Every single human, no matter how they look to an objective observer, is always making decisions that make sense from his or her perspective.  If a person's decisions are bizarre, there is a biological need for them to be so. We are always operating within the dictates of the requirements of our biology at all times.

It seems to me we have long needed to reframe how we understand and talk about the human personality in order to get to the bottom of our catastrophic amounts of mental illness. If we reframe our understanding, I am convinced we can problem solve in ways that will alleviate most human suffering due to completely preventable mental illnesses. These mental illnesses are adaptations, not illnesses, and I truly believe most of them are quite preventable. If we stop requiring people to adapt their moment to moment decision making to fit the parameters of other people's perspectives, then people will be able to exercise their decision making capabilities comfortably, reliably, and predictably. I will expand upon this idea later.

Currently, psychologists, neurologists, physicians, biologists, etc. define and use the term personality as if it is a stable, predictable state we received at birth and are kind of stuck with, good, bad, or otherwise. Personality theorists believe our personality influences our behavior. Again, I am saying our personality reflects our decisions, it doesn't influence them. The party line you see most often when researching the definition of the personality is this:

"Although no single definition is acceptable to all personality theorists, we can say that personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person's behavior."
(Feist and Feist, 2009)

First off, the fact no single definition exists about this entity we call the human personality that is the recipient of vast numbers of diagnoses and drugs via the psychopharmaceutical industrial complex is one of the most jarring intellectual discoveries I have ever made. Secondly, this optional, imprecisely defined, and non-agreed upon definition upon which the whole field of psychology is based has literally no applicable meaning or verifiable validity of any sort. The above definition uses words put together that label a static thing, and the words used in the definition share no agreement or firm definitions among theorists either. Temperament and character traits are both completely fabricated concepts that have philosophical meanings, but can never be distilled down to anything tangible or verifiable.

The idea the psychopharmaceutical industry clears trillions of dollars each year to fund the very research that perpetuates the conclusions that will perpetuate the use of its drugs is plenty disturbing. The fact  this research is being performed to supply drugs for personality disorders when there is no mutually agreed upon definition or theory of what the human personality even is, stuns me more and more with each passing day.
Psychopharamceutical companies donate hundreds of millions of dollars every year to mental research facilities doing research for their drugs. Many foxes are guarding this henhouse.

The fact psychologists, psychiatrists,  physicians, and neurologists have not caught this inconceivable error of not providing a valid theory for the human personality  hardly seems possible. I believe one reason the field of psychology and psychiatry has let the lack of a definition for the human personality go undetected so long is because students go to school and doggedly try to master the bodies of knowledge put forth in these fields. They don't try to constantly tear down the existing theories and rebuild them like mathematicians do and other scientists.  Psychology is also weighed down with way too much homage paid to its founders, their outdated theories too precious to ever strike from the books.

Another reason psychology cannot see the stunning number of contradictions and invalid information it promotes is because it is a field constantly trying to prove itself right. The main ingredient of scientific research is that it is always trying to prove itself wrong, not right. Psychology does not apply any intellectual rigor to it's concepts. Its members vote on disorders and allow a grab bag of imprecise, vaguely defined, and non-empirically arrived at definitions and theories to serve as its foundation. You can't really disprove concepts that have never been proven, so keeping foundational concepts vague has allowed the fallacies to hide in plain sight for many decades now.  

Finally, we have come to know ourselves backwards since birth due to our incorrect ideas about how the human personality operates.  This is why the incorrect definitions remain so entrenched. We have to literally change how we understand ourselves before we can see the inconsistencies. It is a catch 22, big time. I stumbled upon one inconsistency by accident, and like a fire in a dried flower factory, all the rest of the inconsistencies lit up in my brain. The whole field of psychology is completely wrong about virtually everything. The model of supporting people can be used if they reframe, retool, and re-conceptualize literally everything.

Psychology's premise about the human personality is wrong. Literally every concept psychology has come up with is built upon a wrong premise. The definition of a scientific theory is this. "A theory is NOT a guess or a belief. A theory is based on empirical evidence found through scientific research that was rigorously controlled to avoid bias." Theories serve as guidelines for how to interpret new and existing knowledge for the scientific concept they define and explain. According to Steven Schafersman, scientific theories are the most rigorous, reliable, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. They are derived from empirical evidence, and can be utilized as reliable instruments of prediction.

The current "optional," non empirically based definition of the human personality has steered us head first into heartbreaking numbers of suicides, depression, anxiety, mental health break downs, addiction, divorce, and personalities labeled by the industry as disordered.

Human suffering due to mental health problems is real and it is staggering and it increases exponentially each year.

Is our human personality really that inadequate for the task of being human, or are we causing our personalities to break down due to our misunderstanding of what the human personality is and what it isn't?

A trillion or quadrillion dollar a year psychopharmaceutical industry, whether at the drug sales end or the manufacturing end or the therapeutic end, is not going to go looking for ways to debunk its existence. It is constantly creating research that will "prove" the need for it's diagnoses and its drugs.

People who work in these fields want to do good work and help people and pay their mortgages and make their car payments. If you are psychological researcher, with much debt, your only real hope for making good money is via grants from drug companies. You are not going to look for ways to make less money. I wouldn't. Not because I want to perpetuate invalid research, but because it wouldn't really occur to me that my foundational concepts for my research were dead wrong.  Nobody in any field spends much time trying to negate its foundational concepts. This is not how our brains typically work. I started looking into our foundational concepts of the human personality totally by accident. I was trying to use our current research to help myself and my family, not to debunk current research. Due to my 25 year long unrelenting search for answers to personal problems, I gave up, cried uncle, resigned myself to accepting the problems as part of the so called human condition. Then, one day, by accident and the help of my daughter with special needs and her friends, I uncovered a series of intellectual mistakes we have made throughout history about the biology of the human personality. I have discovered these mistakes have radiated outward and perpetuate many false beliefs about how humans are biologically wired to exist optimally. Sadly, these false beliefs perpetuate practices that cause us to undermine the integrity of the predictive and decision making structures and functions in all humans. Science, research, and practices concerning the human brain and personality have serious deficits due to the misinformation we are harboring and disseminating concerning our human personality.

Here is our first piece of false information about the human personality. My personality doesn't jump into the womb with me ready to make me who I am. I am not bathed with a unique personality state complete with character traits and a relatively fixed temperament, all of which are ready to spontaneously appear as soon as I can talk in order to make me who I am. Nor does my personality form over time as I grow and develop, mysteriously arising from my identity and creating a kind of whispering director in the spaces between cells, informing me what to do and how to do it.

However, the above descriptions are exactly the psychological view is of the human personality. The reasons psychological theorists give for why they think the human personality develops as it does is totally made up stuff based upon their imaginations only. No theorists has come up with a theory of personality for which they can say definitively, "Yes, this is what personality is."

Furthermore, one's personality is not the driver of one's personality which is how the term is thought about and used currently. This makes no sense any way you look at it.  Personality is a REFLECTION of how humans interpret information and make decisions. That is all it is. A reflection of what humans do cannot be an influencer. We don't say a mirror causes us to look how we look. It reflects our image back to us. Our personality is the sum total of how and what we think, and how we act on that thinking.

Temperament, the most oft used word psychological theorists use in describing the human personality is not the driver of my personality either. Here is one of the many baffling definitions of temperament:

Temperment: "a person's or animal's nature, esp. as it permanently affects their behavior. Example, "She had an artistic temperament." Synonyms: disposition, nature, character, personality, makeup, constitution, mind, spirit."

There is literally no meaning behind this word temperament other than "nature."  In turn, human nature is a vague, undefined quality attributed to humans. Human nature is the term we insert randomly to describe human behavior when we don't know how to describe it. Using my definition of the human personality, we do not need to use fuzzy terminology any more.

 

Moving along to the term character traits. My character traits are not the driver of my personality. Traits are hair and eye color, degree of muscle tone, skin color, bone density, etc. But character traits is another word that has no identifiable meaning behind it. Character is a made up word that every person in the world has a personalized definition for, making it virtually meaningless as a scientific descriptor of a human. Plus, character is a metaphorical and relativistic word. There is no structure in our skull or our body called a character. These kinds of metaphorical words can not be part of a scientific definition of any kind, least of all as part of defining the most elemental aspect of the human being.

My personality is what it is based on the way I am making a decision and the kind of decision I am making in any given moment. My decisions have a similarity to them quite often because of the way my particular sensory motor and nervous systems are able to perceive information. I can only understand how I understand in order to make the decisions I do in every passing moment. My decisions can become increasingly more sophisticated as I gain more experience and knowledge about any given subject.

We somehow got lost in a logical quagmire when defining human personality throughout history. In fact, I believe this mysterious thing many people like to ponder called consciousness, is simply our ability to understand how we operate as humans. We have the ability to understand how we operate, but our collective wrongess about what our personality reflects as opposed to what it does makes us think we don't know what consciousness is. Of course, this notion of consciousness for me has no relevance. People looking for it are looking for some cosmic link between the human mind and some universal distributor of "consciousness" floating around either in space, or molecules, or energy particles. This quest for consciousness I never questioned until I realized how simple the answers are for how people think. Now that quest seems funny to me.

What is not funny is that our collective wrongness and misconceptions about the human personality causes us to make grave mistakes relating to each other, mistakes that drive unfathomably massive psychopharmaceutical, divorce, therapeutic, and prison industries. These industries are not inherently bad. Given our current understanding of personality, we need these industries to do damage control.

However, the fact cannot be overlooked that psychological theorists provide exactly 8 guesses about what the personality is. There are officially 8 theories of personality on the books, up for grabs for practitioners and researchers to choose whichever they like, or to cut and paste and make up their own, or to close their eyes and choose, or to simply shoot from the hip by never choosing a theory of personality. 

Many aspects of psychology are handled this way. Psychology has several theories of emotion because it can't decide on one. Psychologists use the word emotion incorrectly, and have promoted very damaging notions about our emotions. (To be discussed later.) In researching psychological  psychological terminology, I have found most all of terms to be very vaguely defined, to lack uniform or mutual agreement, and to be guesses based upon theories that are also guesses, and to lack empirically based, verifiable evidence.

The implications of incorrect theories and optional pick whatever you want to use theories, or don't bother with a theory, is one reason psychological research cannot be replicated in order to be validated. Nobody knows which theory of the human personality, if any, a researcher may have chosen for his or her research. For this reason, there is no way to accurately interpret that research or to replicate it. Incorrect and optional pick your own theories is also why there are zero cures for the 297 disorders of personality listed in the DSM, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. In 1952, the American Psychological Association put together the first DSM-1 and listed 106 disorders. In 1980, it listed 265. And by 2013, they've moved up to 297.

These disorders all have an insurance code listed right there in the book, making it super simple for any prescribing psychiatrist or doctor or "consulting therapist" to list the code on the insurance form and be reimbursed 100% of the time from Medicare and Medicaid, no questions asked. If a private insurer covers mental health costs, they will also honor these codes, no questions asked.

Disorders of personality get listed in the DSM by a vote taken by the members of the American Psychological Association. Can you imagine surgeons basing their choice of heart medications via voting? We require thorough testing for drugs for our body, but any prescribing psychiatrist or physician can order drugs for children as young as 2 now, because a group of random psychology association members voted to approve this treatment. Research that approves psychotropic drugs for 2 year olds is sketchy at best. It is chilling.

Our choice is to do more of the same or to make some changes. We can unquestioningly accept the foundational concepts of biology and psychology in terms of how they have loosely, vaguely, and admittedly imprecisely defined the human personality. We can continue to allow the current vague, optional, and imprecise, and multiple definitions of human personality to inform and feed the psychopharmaceutical industrial complex. If we do not create and disseminate an accurate definition of the human personality, we will continue to witness increasing numbers of depression, suicide, anxiety, addiction, incarceration, divorce, domestic violence, homicide, rape, personality disorders, and insanity.

We have been waiting for a magic discovery of a magic chemical, pill, or brain finding that can give us all our answers.

Our nervous systems are indeed as complex as the solar system, but the function of our nervous system is easy to understand if we just observe ourselves as existing inside of a completely functional and integrated biological system.

I believe with these few paragraphs defining what the human personality is and dispelling the myths about what it isn't, we can begin to lift the veil separating us from reliable, predictable, and consistent mental health and well being.

How does my definition of human personality translate into practical application?

How can the practical application of this new definition put an end to  what we now refer to as personality based disorders and personality based mental health problems?
 
Essentially, we cannot harm an individual's ability to trust in his predictive capabilities. He needs to be able to make sense of information in his environment at every moment he is alive in ways that make sense for him. Threats to how a person is deciding or against what they have decided feel like attacks to their nervous system. Humans will do anything to avoid the discomfort of these kinds of attacks via withdrawal or aggression, or some form of numbing.

Stay tuned for more...