The difference between mature personalities that are Concrete and Abstract is not one of height, but one of breadth.
The concrete are irrefutable because their rationale extends 1 to 1 to 1 down to a specific event, person, thing, emotion. Surely you have some "Uncle Max" who believes the most outrageous things about all people because one person 'did him wrong.' Racism based on specific incidents where the other race [once or repeatedly] did them wrong, is impossible to argue as invalid. One must resort to exceptions, a typically weak response. Therefore, the Concrete has a blind spot on Contradictions. To the Concrete, contadictions in his philosophy are differences in the real world, or a projection by the Abstract of a flawed logic onto them.
Another aspect of reality based thinking is that it has uncountable levels of maturation. A truck mechanic who masters his skill by tearing down motor after motor, is a rank novice when tearing down a vacuum motor. It is not only people working with things that have transference problems: my father was a CPA, [misc. impressive credentials] but when I asked him about my 1st qtr. of Calculus, he was at a loss, and said so. There are no longer any Renaissence people. Living with contradictions presented by other people can not be escaped. And we must deal with our own contradictions, since they've become highlighted by others.
Moral reasoning was not my purpose, I should have added 'also' to my 'abstract religion is fully legit'. I had intended to show that it is Concrete thinking that accepts the 10 commandments. Abstracting from the specific 10 yields exceptions. Fundamentalists have good reason to fear any departure from literal.
Assuming that BC was reared and most comfortable in a very Concrete culture, then Abstracting is an efforted stretch. Enough horsepower can make the stretch 2nd nature, but enough stress disengages the clutch, and he is back to his most comfortable structure, of Concrete. The psychological problems of the man, allow this normal unstretching, regressive response to stress to freefall into pathological structures. This is how he can be both Presidential and *the President Baby from Hell. It is a contradiction he lives with, more painful for his awareness of it; we each have our own similar contradictions, expressed differently, and the pain from living with them.
We caregivers deal with those of us who show the worst contradictions, and show it the worst. Sticking *TPBFH with the country's most important, publically, and not taking him back, is an option we don't have with our charges. When the difficulty and rewards of getting him trained are apparent, national life can go on. [Best viewed in a font of cut out magazine letter.] |
