Psychological Types

Psychological Types: Translation vs. Oscillation

Pavel B. Ivanov

4 Jan 2000
HiLight p03j0400

As I could observe, there may be relatively stable psychological types distinguished by their motivation dynamics. Thus, some people can never be sure in their own moods and desires, changing their mind every now and then, often a second before an action that has already been firmly decided upon is to be committed. Then they try to return what has been lost, and return to that action—and this may demand hard efforts, to restore the other people's intention to do that... Such oscillations may repeat many times. Some oscillator personalities feel it as a personal problem, painful discomfort and fatal pre-determination. Some other oscillator persons feel quite at ease, while changing their mind many times within an hour, or a day, with no trace of discomfort; usually they learn with surprise that the others may suffer from such a behavioral instability.

Another type of people are like heavy bodies in free motion: they choose a straight line and are hard to divert from it, or stop. Such people try to do what has been decided, despite the possibly changing circumstances, and the wills of other people. Some powerful external force is usually needed to turn such a person in another direction, to replace one mode of activity with another. For those who are still able to modify their activity themselves, every change in an earlier accepted plan is a painful process requiring much effort and causing severe stress.

If persons of these two types have to do something together, conflicts are bound to arise. If a translation type person tries to adapt to the interminable oscillations of the companion, he/she will soon become mentally exhausted by continuing effort needed to often change the state of motion. This like the motion of a quick pendulum, which needs minimum energy supply to oscillate for ever—and a fat man trying to run after the shadow of the pendulum on the floor.

If an oscillator type person tries to live straight, to please a translatory companion, he/she will soon feel like being trapped and suppressed, forced to do what is obviously wrong (and everything is wrong for an oscillatory person); under certain conditions, this may develop into a heavy mental disease.

Luckily, real people rarely represent a pure psychological type, and one can only speak about dominating traits. However, the difference of psychological types still remains a source of conflicts, which may be damped or amplified by the incoming circumstances—and manipulated by dishonest people.

Translation type personalities are often characterized with a strong mental inertia, which is an indicator of the complexity of the inner motion. Such persons are independent and self-contained, they may become famous if they happen to express the interests of some social groups, but they will never catch a favorable chance. Yet another category of translatory personalities is represented by dull persons, who are not sensitive enough to adequately reflect the social processes in their inner activity, so that their inner world is almost plain; even with low inertia (mental mass), they are not diverted from their motion by external influences simply because these influences get heavily attenuated. If these two qualities develop in the same person, a socially dangerous personality is produced.

An oscillatory personality appears when either its mental mass is too small to resist to slightest external influences, or its inner world has a too complicated relief, with numerous peaks and cavities preventing any mass from moving straight. The latter case may either reflect the abnormality of the social environment of the person, or be an indication of a mental disorder, inadequacy of world perception. An oscillatory behavior is different from neurosis, when there is an inner singularity, so that inner motion becomes trapped by that singularity, ever turning around it; in an oscillatory person such pseudo-neurotic behavior may develop from time to time, but the focus of oscillation is likely to shift with time to a different motive.

The more massive is the personality (that is, the inner motion is highly hierarchical), the more the person is likely to experience communication problems and stresses in contacts with the people of a different psychological type.


[Psychology] [Science] [Unism]