the central concept: passive urgency

Jimmy Powdrell Campbell

“We, most of us, would be appalled by the suggestion that normal people have anything in common with the ruthless and evil personalities who satisfy the criteria of the Hare checklist for psychopathic tendencies but, if my work has any validity at all, the psychopathic personality represents an extreme of the normal distribution.

This paper proposes an avenue of research based on an enquiry which began over 30 years ago with what amounted, initially, to little more than a hunch that there may be two types of intellect: past-orientated and future-orientated. If the hypothesis is valid, the incidence of psychopathy in a nation depends entirely upon the strength or weakness of its culture, and the omnipotence of the normal distribution.

One quote of Freud’s which made me laugh is, “everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.” What I’m about to set out here is a fairly radical postulate. It is also as ancient as the hills so please, regardless of your erudition and your status on campus, try to come to this with an open mind and with optimism.

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The Hare checklist is widely recognised as employing a well-constructed methodology providing, as it effectively does, a score above which an individual may be safely identified as being “a psychopath.” The obvious inference, however, of Hare’s checklist is that there are degrees of psychopathy. We draw a line between the psychopathic and non-psychopathic personality but I think it’s a misleading distinction.

The natural assumption has been that the psychopath is, in some way, a “damaged” personality, but the key to understanding the psychopath lies in a radical understanding of the cognitive/neurological processes governing action. Stated briefly, the model posits a degree of urgency (commonly below perceptible levels) as being pre-requisite to initiation and moderation of action and recognizes that, like action itself, urgency may be either passive or active, the healthy adult personality being motivated primarily by active urgency while the urgency of the infant is necessarily passive.

Let’s clarify the terminology. In this context, any connotations that might be attached to the terms active and passive beyond “the boy pats the dog – the dog is being patted” are inappropriate.

Much research over the past fifty years has been premised on the assumption of the universality of self-gratifying motives. Altruism has variously been addressed as a curiosity or attributed to underlying self-gratifying motives but it has never been offered as the natural motivational state of the healthy adult personality, nor, to the best of my knowledge, has it ever been suggested that extreme self-orientation is the natural motivational state of the healthy infant. That, in essence, is what is proposed here.

One psychologist who recognised a relationship between altruism and the healthy personality was Abraham Maslow. His attention was drawn by individuals who excelled in their fields: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt. He found that they had certain qualities rarely found in the normal personality: they were “reality-centered” rather than self-centred; crucially, their focus was primarily upon issues outside of their own needs and desires. Their awareness was somehow an external affair, unfiltered and pertaining to the “actual” world as opposed to the iternalized, filtered “reality” of the normal personality. He described these unusual individuals as “self-actualizing,” and he identified the possibility of two separate studies: the unhealthy personality and the healthy personality.

There have been “laws” of motivation for millenia, mostly revolving around this paradoxical concept of selflessness being somehow the optimal state of self. “To rise above your fellow man you need only become his servant.” In early writings, the mind is described as a battleground where the forces of good and evil vie for supremacy. Freud’s Eros-and-Thanatos theory of libido echoed this intuitively-satisfying view. While modern psychology has no use for such simplistic terminology, we find, in our attempts to understand the mind of the psychopath, we are obliged to employ moral terms. Psychopathy is necessarily a moral construct. Like the infant, the psychopath is utterly self-centred.

Where the psychopath is completely preoccupied by his own needs and desires, and where his motivational focus is upon manipulation, wholly passive, self-directed, i.e. referencing the actions of others to serve his own needs, the motivation of Maslow’s “self-actualizing” individuals is active, referencing their own actions to serve the needs of others. It is their complete commitment to the welfare of others that differentiates them. Their urgency, parent-like, is the urgency of the needs of others. Maslow hypothesized that the instinct to grow towards self-actualization lies within us all but, for most of us, the term itself lacks meaning.

Let’s consider the normal distribution for this model. At one extreme, we have the abnormal self-orientation of the psychopath and, at the other, we have the equally-rare altruistic personality. The position of the normal personality will depend upon the ethos of the population: where the culture is weak, encouraging self-interest and promoting values of self-worth dependent upon material success and status, the centre of the normal distribution can be expected to be translated towards the psychopathic end of the scale.

Now, let’s substitute the terms psychopathic and altruistic with something more useful: infant and adult. At one extreme, we have the extreme self-orientation of the infant personality. At the other, we have the healthy adult personality and somewhere near the middle, we have the normal personality. If the hypothesis is valid, that is a fair representation of what we should expect to find. We are no longer addressing the issue in obscure academic or self-righteous-sounding moral terms, we are discussing the plain immaturity of the normal personality in a Western consumer-orientated culture. We set our standards by our peers and, consequently, in an immature culture, there can be no personal sense of our immaturity. We accept a certain degree of hedonism and self-interest as being absolutely normal, precisely because it is.

Where, previously, any appeal to aspire to a selfless lifestyle was viewed, by many (including myself), as a tedious interference by people who were, themselves, let’s face it, generally more than a bit out of touch with reality, we are, in this model, discussing the proposition that selfishness is an expression of immaturity.

Our capitalist economy relies upon maintaining a steady increase in our desires. As consumers, we are subject to an endless stream of advertising, suggesting, always, that we should pursue happiness, consume more.

So what’s the harm in that? Well, an example of the pain and misery, in the real world, that can be wholly attributed to the immaturity of Western culture is the cruelty and inhumanity that has been inflicted upon the people of Palestine over the last sixty years. What has that got to do with us here in the UK/USA? If you’re asking the question, I could rest my case right there.

The consequences of our immaturity may not be obvious to us but they are no less real. While we celebrated New Year’s Eve at the end of 2008, a military attack was taking place on the densely-populated cities of the walled-off and blockaded Gaza strip, a 25-mile-long open prison which is “home” to 1.5 million individuals. It lasted 22 days and, produced about 5000 casualties. It also ended the lives of 1400 Palestinians, including 400 Palestinian children. With the exception, perhaps, of the settler thugs who continue to be introduced to annex, de facto, more and more Palestinian land, the ordinary Israeli people are not too much different from us. They are not murderers and they are not “evil” but they, like us, are largely somewhat self-centred and blind to the suffering for which they, the electorate, are ultimately responsible.

Without the political and military support of the UK and the USA, however, Israel’s impunity and the crushing military occupation of Palestine which the Israelis have brutally maintained for the last sixty years would not have been possible. Let me put that another way: without the ignorance and indifference of the ordinary people of the USA and the UK, the cruelty and injustice that, day in, day out, blights the lives of the Palestinian people would not be possible. The Israeli government relies upon the continued self-interest of the average British citizen every bit as much as do the bosses of Marks & Spencer.

If the hypothesis is valid, it is not the leaders of the USA who are to blame for its predatory foreign policy, it is the ordinary decent Americans. It is a statistical inevitability that in a selfish culture, the incidence of the near-psychopathic personality will be significantly greater than that of the healthy, altruistic personality. The likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are not to blame for the state-level psychopathy of US foreign policy. The incidence of these personalities is, I hope to show, a direct and inevitable consequence of a desperately weak American culture, the American Dream.

There are six months in everyone’s life when it’s healthy to be a psychopath.

That’s one of the inferences that can be drawn, given validation of this hypothesized model of the fundamental mechanism of motivation.

We were, according to this hypothesis, all born as psychopaths and remained so for the first six months of life. After that, we,  99% of us, have moved on. Before we are one year old, having been shown a measure of kindness and compassion, we have begun to imitate the example of our parents and we have begun to move away from the utter selfishness which every infant enjoys as a matter of entitlement.

The Psychology of Compassion proposes an avenue of research addressing the abnormal urgency dynamics that are characteristic of both the infant personality and the psychopathic personality.

It is outside the scope of this paper but I should stress that I am confident of the cognitive/neurological basis of the model and that experiment will demonstrate the existence of urgency as the output of a neurological mechanism, historically termed libido, inoperative only during sleep, which by maintaining the relationship between perception, time and action, initiates and moderates action.

I find it’s sometimes the simplicity of a concept that makes it difficult to grasp and, in some cases, it is also the evident simplicity that causes us to overlook its importance. At the core of this model lies an unattractively simple concept which can be expressed in an equally simple statement: urgency can be either active or passive.

adult urgency: active
Both from an evolutionary and from a psychological point of view, the parent and the infant represent the most fundamental of relationships, and the most simple of psychic forces are at work. One short and very obvious sentence defines that relationship: the parent takes care of the infant.

infant urgency: passive
Let’s invert the sentence: the infant is taken care of by the parent. The meaning is unchanged. I’ve simply expressed the relationship from the infant’s perspective. The infant has a passive relationship with the parent. It is being taken care of. In the context of this relationship, the parent’s motivation is active where the infant’s is passive: it cries because it desires to be fed. That is to say the infant’s motivation carries through not to its own action but to that of the parent.

This statement is presented not as a premise but as an introduction to the construct. Having said that, however, the parent and the infant, if we were to accept the premise, are two very different animals from a psychological point of view. They require a completely different understanding and that understanding cannot be attained without a radical understanding of the nature of action and the prerequisite neurological mechanism of assigning and evaluating urgency, historically addressed in terms of libido.

The number of erudite professionals who will say, “yes, yes, yes, we all know what libido is,” and then proceeed to demonstrate their ignorance of its most rudimentary function, is quite astonishing. The output or intensity of the “libido” is measured in urgency. It is the neurological mechanism of evaluating the urgency of the potential action which precipitates and moderates that action.

(Apologies if you find the tone here a bit puerile and inappropriate. There has been some astonishingly muddled thinking about the nature of the relationship between action and time and I prefer to make this point in my own way and without dressing it up as something profound). Let’s turn the clock back a few hundred million years and think in terms of some very simple life-forms who are in the habit of eating each other. The main thing to focus upon here is natural selection, and survival. We have the predator creature whose survival depends upon eating the prey creature etc.. The prey creature is going about the desperately difficult business of looking for something lower down the food chain than himself, when along comes the predator. By a stroke of good luck, the prey creature has inherited a few instincts and he now finds he is possessed of an instinct which has served his ancestors well over the years: it advises a temporary abandonment of the search for algae along with the suggestion that elsewhere might be a good place to be.

This instinct alone would not have been enough to save the prey creature from becoming a snack but, luckily, he was also in possession of a few neurons with a very special function which, for simplicity, we’ll call libido. With the proximity of the predator creature, the libido cranked up its output to a level that was impossible to ignore and that output was measured in an action-related term called urgency. The wee prey creature already knew how to swim but, now that his libido had increased its output he discovered that he could do it with some dispatch. In an instant, he was elsewhere, leaving the predator creature wondering what the hell just happened there?

Just to recap on the terminology, the libido’s output is a prerequisite of action. Survival depends not only upon the ability to move from here to elsewhere but upon the facility to have a care to the time taken to get there. The libido lies at the very core of motivation. It is the neurological mechanism which maintains the relationship between perception, time and action. The output/intensity of the libido is measured in urgency.

But in the most important respects, the infant is effectively incapable of action. Its survival is dependent upon the actions of its parents. The infant urgency is passive in that it references not its own action but the action of the parent, that which it desires to be done to or for it. The manipulative behaviour of the psychopath is identical in this as in all other respects.

There has been much discussion recently about violence breeding violence but it is much less misleading to say that weakness breeds weakness, and that violence is only one of many forms of weakness. There is a world of difference between a parent who eventually resorts to a smack to end a tantrum and a parent who uses violence against his own child out of his own anger or frustration.

The weak parent tends, I submit, to be passively motivated: he will use violence against his child not because he (rightly or wrongly) genuinely believes that, in this instance, the child will benefit from physical discipline but simply because the child has annoyed him. Not unlike a child, his first concern is how he, himself, feels. His action is passively-motivated: it arises not from his concern for the welfare of the child but from his concern for how the child’s behaviour impacts upon him.

By placing his own needs above the needs of his child, the weak parent has reversed the psychologically-fundamental relationship between parent and child, depriving the child, at least for that moment, of the security and care upon which it relies and, in this way, he passes some of his weakness to the next generation.

Healthy and unhealthy passive motivation

Few would disagree that the psycopathic personality has some parallels with the infant personality. All he thinks about is how he is being treated, what he wants, what he needs. He hasn’t, at any point, learnt to care for anyone except himself. He has absolutely no compassion for anything other than himself. Like an infant, his first recourse is to manipulation; he feels instinctively that he is entitled to be treated well. If the hypothesis is valid, however, these similarities are not accidental. If it is valid, the infant and the psychopath have in common a very special kind of immaturity: immaturity of the mechanism of motivation, the libido.

The infant has the cognitive facility to generate urgency but it is important to remember that, if the model is valid, the infant’s motivation is passive. It wants to be cared for. The action which the infant requires is not its own action but that of the parent. When it feels the need for food, it cries. When it wants food urgently, it cries harder. It wants to be fed… passive. The infant urgency is directed entirely passively, i.e. its vector is entirely opposite to that of the (healthy) adult. The infant’s “reality” is entirely internal, populated by “person” complexes, representative of the infant’s subjective view of the actual world. The infant’s understanding of the complex it knows as its parent is in terms only of how and to what extent that “person” serves the needs of the infant, how that “person” impacts upon the life of the infant. Beyond that, the “person” it knows as its parent has no existence and no value.

The relationship between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people is a manifestation of a similar psychopathic disregard and contempt for the lives of the people who, inconveniently, happened to be living in the so-called “land without a people for a people without a land,” but that similarity is not a mere coincidence; the Palestinian people have been at the mercy of infants for over 60 years, very powerful infants, perhaps, but there lies the very essence of evil. This, of course, is not news to them, only to us.

We start out in life weak, entirely dependent, needing, wanting, utterly self-orientated, utterly selfish and completely passive in motivation. As we grow, we grow stronger. We grow towards becoming the parent. We learn to care for and care about people and things external to ourselves, external to our own needs and desires. We learn to give, not just to take. The mature adult libido is active in orientation. It references its own action. The libido of the psychopath, on the other hand, is almost identical to that of the infant; it is almost 100% internalized, almost 100% passive in orientation, referencing the action of others. He may appear mature in his manners and show no obvious sign of his dangerously immature libido but he has merely learnt to act like an adult even, perhaps, to the extent of showing apparent compassion and empathy (which he has observed in others) but, in reality, his entire motivation and outlook is totally passive, manipulative, requiring, infant-like, the action of another party, self-orientated, unchanged from the early days of his life when he naturally expected to be cared for and treated well by his parents. He has, I submit, a sense of entitlement because his libido is identical to that of an infant… passive.

What I am about to set out is a psychological construct that might, I believe, have been discovered many years ago but for an unresolved argument between three of the founders of modern psychology: Jung, Adler and Freud. The disagreement was on the most fundamental question facing them. It caused a divergence in the course of the science that is reflected in three irreconcilable “schools of thought” to this day, and followed by an inevitable marginalization of the whole field of psychodynamic theory in favour of behavioural then cognitive theory.

All three concurred upon the existence of the libido but they could not remotely agree upon its nature, its effect or its mechanics. Tragically, they split up precisely because of their common fascination with the question of motivation. Had they considered, in this context, the psychologically-absolutely-fundamental relationship between the adult and the infant, had each only seriously considered the possibility that the other was correct, I believe they would have found that all three arguments were sound, each addressing merely a different aspect of the mechanics of the libido.

The Psychology of Compassion

The conflict of active and passive urgency in the normal personality and the relationship of that conflict to root/branch intellectual type and past/future motivational orientation.

Let me start with what may seem to be a wild assertion. There is absolutely nothing clinically wrong with the mind of the psychopath; he is purely a statistical phenomenon. In the simplest and, perhaps, most accurate terms, he’s just a weak person, in the extreme. The psychopath is presently understood only in terms of a combination of various typical characteristics – lack of empathy, lack of remorse, manipulative behaviour etc.. In other words, he is effectively known to us and understood mainly by and in terms of his behaviour. This paper revisits some early psychodynamic concepts that, understood in the context of a cognitive-neurological model of the construct of urgency, indicate that the urgency stasis, the "libido" of the psychopath is unlike that of the normal personality, and that the fundamental and defining attribute of the psychopathic personality is the relative absence of a feature which I hope to show to be of the essence of the normal personality: urgency conflict. It is further postulated that this absence of urgency conflict is characteristic of the libido of the normal infant.

As a foreword, I have to say 1) that I’m expressing the concepts to the best of my ability, 2) but I also realize that maybe that’s just not good enough, in which case, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and give me a chance to try to put it another way.

Apologies, also, if I seem to conflate of the the terms motivation and urgency – urgency is, strictly speaking, a measure of motivation. It is the level of urgency which dictates 1) whether or not we initiate an action and 2) the physical energy we assign to the action. In ordinary usage, we might perhaps speak of undertaking an action with no urgency at all but this paper posits urgency as being both a data-stream and a threshold trigger mechanism. It posits a relationship between urgency and action which, with the obvious exception of autonomic reflex, requires that a degree of urgency be present in order to initiate action, that degree of urgency governing, also, the physical energy assigned to action. That we are not necessarily conscious of urgency does not assume that no degree of urgency is present. When we walk with apparently no urgency, it would be more accurate to say that we walk with little urgency; no urgency would mean no action at all, inertia. In consciousness, therefore, urgency/motivation is serving up a continual input. The existence of urgency as a governor of action, in any system, whether animal or mechanical, pre-supposes that some component in the system has the function of monitoring time. There are important questions, therefore, for neuroscience but I think it’s it is important to keep in mind that we are discussing a neurological process where, historically, earlier models have attempted to understand action solely either in a psychodynamic or in a spiritual framework.

A large section of those in the worlds of academic and practical psychology have absolutely no use for psychodynamic theory and yet it is probably precisely this group to which I must address this request for co-operation in preliminary research. The model is best expressed in psychodynamic terms but those psychologists who currently espouse psychodynamic theory are possibly least likely to have an interest in the cognitive-neurological research proposed here.

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The existence of libido conflict was first asserted by Freud who expressed his understanding in terms of the life and death instincts. The concept of a bi-directional libido was also introduced by Jung in his theory of extraversion and introversion. In spite of a period of collaboration, neither succeeded in coming to an understanding of the mechanism of the libido. They argued from thoroughly polarized positions on the subject but neither appear to have seriously considered the possibilty that they could both be correct and, incidentally, that Adler, who presented yet another contradictory libido theory, could also be following thoroughly sound reasoning. The conflict of active and passive urgency is, I hope to demonstrate, not only characteristic of the normal personality, it is the most fundamental dynamic mechanism of the psyche – the mechanics of strength and weakness. If the model is valid, compassion is not a mere attribute of personality, it is the essence of life itself.

Before discussing the concept of libido conflict I should try, briefly, to clarify my terminology. The term libido is often understood to be interchangeable with the term psychic energy. But what is psychic energy? Unfortunately, the most balanced response to that question must be to dismiss the idea that it has any existence outside of the imagination but I’m obliged to make reference to it briefly, as did Freud and Jung, at length. The libido, or psychic energy, pertains almost entirely to action: if animals were incapable of action, there would be no need for the psychic mechanism we (some of us) call libido. In this model, it is the function of the libido, both consciously and unconsciously, to govern action and the output/intensity of the libido is measured in urgency.

Modern theories of extraversion have reduced the construct almost to the level of entertainment. The term “extraversion” is now widely used as a wooly measure of the individual’s enjoyment of and need for social interaction. Once again, let’s clarify the terminology in use here: extraversion, in this context (in any meaningful context)! means outwardly-directed libido. The term was coined by Jung and was applied to the construct of the libido or psychic energy – now widely regarded as being obsolete, i.e. we don’t believe in it any more (so I can see a bit of an uphill climb here).

Jung’s extraversion (an upward and outward flow of libido) and introversion (a downward and inward flow), and Freud’s altogether different bi-directional libido (life instinct and death instinct) both relate to an imagined flow of psychic energy. Even in that short sentence, however, it can be seen that the Freudian and Jungian theories of libido are utterly incompatible:

• The Jungian theory of libido leads us to the idea of two personality types, extravert and introvert – neither one any “better” than the other, just different: one tending to be more outgoing, the other more reserved.
• Freudian libido theory confronts us with a much more serious proposition: a positive and a negative flow of energy – life-instincts and death-instincts – one desirous of giving life and the other of taking it away, one building and the other destroying.

If the attributes of Jung’s extraversion/introversion libido are valid, clearly, one might think, those of Freud’s life/death instinct are wrong and vice versa. They might both be wrong but they cannot possibly both be right, or at least, so it seems. Paradoxically, however, both can be shown to be, in practice and in fact, valid theories of the libido, provided they are considered independently – both valid and yet their validity is mutually exclusive? This is a riddle that has been swept under the carpet almost since the dawn of Psychology and the key to the riddle is time. It is impossible for a mechanism to exist that has its output measured in urgency without there being some form of input relating to time.

Of all the senses, the sense of the passage of time is perhaps the most subtle and difficult to conceptualize but for as long as you are prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt, I invite you to substitute the notion of the flow of psychic energy with that of the flow of time, and to put aside the idea that the libido is energy at all. Time is, in fact, as central to psychodynamics as it is to physical dynamics and the way in which the mind processes time differs from person to person. In the case of the psychopath, it differs markedly. All that being said, if you’re not comfortable with the idea, it doesn’t really matter at this point. The notion of the flow is enough for the moment.

Coincidentally, I came to this by observing a phenomenon and following an enquiry very similar to that which had led Jung into the same territory: I had realized, instinctively, in the midst of an argument, that the other fellow was (erroneously) forming the same opinion about my intellectual shortcomings as I was (possibly erroneously) about his. It was almost as if we were not speaking the same language – two diametrically opposed ways of understanding the same thing. The actual subject of discussion is irrelevant but the communication problem is something which we have all experienced, if unknowingly. What it came down to was this: every event, every action and, more importantly, every motivation is, for me, explicable in terms of its origin, its cause.  Why do I behave as I do?  Because, (I think) to a great extent, my upbringing, my past dictates my behaviour.  This cause-orientated view, that the past explains all, is always true for me but it makes absolutely no sense to someone – let’s say 10% of the population – for whom the aim or goal of every event and every action is what is plain to see, and is all that really matters.

It was many years later that I discovered that Jung, as a third party, had been witness to exactly the same communication phenomenon: Freud who saw only the cause and Adler who saw only the goal. In the introduction to only one of the editions of “PsychologicalTypes” does Jung come clean and explain that the origin of his theory of extraversion and introversion was his observation of that communication problem between Adler and Freud and his recognition, in the first instance, of the possible existence of an intellectual typology in terms simply of past or future intellectual orientation. This was Jung’s starting point and it was also mine but Jung was soon to abandon the idea of an intellectual typology – (I’ll come back to this) – and, in its place, he postulated his well-known libido typology.

Intellectual Orientation: Root Intellect and Branch Intellect

The premised past-orientated intellect (evidenced by let’s say 90% of the population) is typified by the tendency and aptitude to get to the root of the issue. Especially where motivation is under discussion, he or she will always focus upon cause.  Where there is a need to understand, it is in terms of the radical.  It has been suggested that this is a difficult concept to establish experimentally but, in truth, it is as simple as that. The intellectual orientation can be established by testing for this alone: does the mind tend to the radical; does it focus upon the root of the issue; is the aptitude root and cause related?  If it is, then it is a past-orientated intellect – a root intellect.  It follows also that, for the root intellect, a high score for root/cause aptitude should be accompanied by a negative score for branch/goal aptitude.

I am relying upon memory here but I believe, as an example, I can best cite the actual discussion which caught Jung’s attention.  Freud (root intellect) and Adler (branch intellect) were discussing a particular case, a married woman whose hysteria, according to Freud, could be attributed only to an event or events in her past.  Find the repressed memory and her hysteria could be cured.  There was, Freud insisted, no other way of looking at the case.  Adler conceded that her childhood may hold some secrets but he was equally adamant that, regardless of her past, she was in control of herself to a much greater degree than Freud seemed prepared to accept and that her behaviour was her way of gaining power over her husband.  Her behaviour was not explained by something in her past but by understanding her aim, her goal – what she wished to achieve in the future. Both Freud and Adler were imposing their own intellectual type upon the woman. Freudian (root intellect) and Adlerian (branch intellect) psychologists are doing the same thing to this day. I make this observation not as a criticism but as a matter of plain fact to be kept in mind. I say “intellectual type” as opposed to “psychological type” with, I believe, good reason. This is the very foundation of Jung’s theory of extraversion and introversion and, in spite of the empirical evidence of its validity, I believe his hypothesis addresses only a part of the mechanism (as does Freud’s and as does Adler’s). As I have said, Jung’s observations led him to postulate the existence, in the first instance, of an past/future intellectual typology. But there is, and was, no need and no justification for taking the next step of assuming that this intellectual typology has its foundation in the libido when the reverse (i.e. the direction of the libido being in some way dependent upon the intellectual type) was at least equally likely.

The less common future-orientated intellect is typified by the tendency and aptitude to extrapolate and to deal with the goals, aims, consequences, and ramifications of the issue.  These, therefore, are the two “types” upon which this model is founded. Literal extraversion and introversion does finally come into the whole picture but it is the existence of root/branch intellectual type (as opposed to Jung’s libido typology) which is the first premise that requires to be tested.

Our concern, here, is with the neurological mechanism which addresses action and the urgency of that action. The suggestion is not being made that the intellectual typology necessarily extends beyond that motivational context, therefore, while the corresponding past/future-orientated aptitudes may be observed universally, investigation of the persistence of the past/future-orientated paradigm should be constrained to testing for intellectual type in a motivational context.

I think it can be seen that the Freudian psychologists provide the most obvious ready-made pool of past-orientated intellect and, likewise, the future-orientation of the Adlerians pervades all their work. Since the past or future-fixated view of motivation, in both cases, is generally derived – if you will permit the assumption – from their imposing of their own intellectual type, responses elicited from within these two groups should facilitate refinement of testing for intellectual type in a more diverse population. (I believe, also, that there are some parallels to be found in Guilford and Hoepfner’s work on Convergent and Divergent intelligence – “The Analysis of Intelligence,” New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971).

Intellectual Type

orientation	type	focus	aptitude
past (most common)	root intellect	source, cause, origin	to reduce to the fundamentals
future	branch Intellect	goals, aims, consequences	to extrapolate, to see ramifications

Motivation

The intellectual orientation or type is, I believe, immutable. Whatever the origins of this differentiation might be, rightly or wrongly, I am assuming that it has a biological basis, that if you are born with a branch-intellect mind, you will enjoy the aptitudes of a branch-intellect mind for the rest of your life. Consider, now, the concept of motivation.  The idea that we are not necessarily conscious of our reasons for doing what we do does not appeal to some but there can be no serious dispute as to its validity; and motivation can be seen to have anything but a fixed orientation.  It might be said that the only constant is its potential to change from hour to hour.

On the subject of motivation, I had, at one time, in the back of my mind, some nebulous but useful thoughts about the association of dualities and opposites and, in particular, the idea of positive & negative psychic energy (I was about twenty years old and had been reading about Zen). I became focused upon the concept of positive & negative motivation.  (By negative motivation I meant generally destructive motivation). The unconscious associations I had in mind were such as day & night;  awake & asleep; creation & destruction;  giving & taking;  life & death etc. Accepting that association is a fundamental mechanism of the intellect, all of these seemed to me to have a bearing upon and to be in some form of perpetual relationship to motivation.

In this model, the concept of positive and negative motivation is, therefore, dependent upon the validity of at least some of these associations and upon the validity of certain moral value judgements. If, for example, an individual were to avail himself of the opportunity to profit by the sale of heroine to some school children, I would consider him to have been negatively motivated. Psychology has created a generation of victims; the heroine dealer is, according to some, a victim of his upbringing, his deprived social background or whatever, but, to the “man in the street,” this drug dealer is nothing more or less than a “selfish, evil bastard.” If this model of the libido is valid, the man in the street has been right, all along. His value judgements may not always be justified but, in this case, he is correct in recognizing that this drug dealer is “different” in some fundamental way; that his selfishness has gone beyond the bounds not only of acceptable behaviour in the neighbourhood but beyond the bounds of some sort of universal morality.

Let me digress for a moment (again). The whole area of morality is, of course, a minefield. There are so many layers of conflicting morality within every society, it might seem impossible that there can be any absolutes. Survival, however, is the key to understanding all morality. Survival of any community depends upon certain codes of behaviour, unique to that community and completely alien to some others. It is survival of the nation which dictates the unique moral code which applies during wartime. (The morality of war itself, in the 21st century, is another issue entirely but, even there, it can be seen that the questions surrounding the uncertainty of nations surviving a nuclear conflict have (or should have) changed concepts of international morality which might have seemed so clear in Victorian times).

There is, of course, honour and dishonour in the animal kingdom and the relative simplicity of some relationships sometimes facilitates an understanding of moral issues which may have some parallels in our own jungle. The leopard, for example, often uses the signal of raising its tail to convey to its potential prey that they are, for the moment, in no danger. The herd will carry on grazing as the leopard passes within striking distance because they instinctively recognize the signal and can be confident that, having raised its tail, the leopard intends, for the moment, to pass by. The need for the predator to go about her business – to tend to her young without chasing off tomorrow’s dinner – has evolved a relationship based upon trust and honour. Survival depends upon adherence to the code.

Morality is always clearest when the link to survival is most obvious. The drug dealer, unchecked, threatens the survival of a few schoolchildren. We, however, prize the survival of all children – at least those within the compass of our individual realities – and the immorality of the heroine dealer is, therefore, put beyond question. The laws of morality are far from being universal but, given a defined community, it is possible to identify certain codes of behaviour upon which the survival of that community will depend and to anticipate, therefore, that which will be generally acceptable as being right or wrong, positive or negative.

It is simply, and importantly, a matter of degree. There is extreme negative motivation – which is very easy to identify – and there is slight negative motivation – which is something which we, all of us, give free reign to every day but who cares? As a youth, one of my most frequent errors, arising out of post-adolescent lack of self-esteem, was to attempt, in conversation, to improve the other party’s opinion of me- not so much to brag as to impress subtly.  In this case, to become conscious of what had been unconscious was a fairly simple matter of being honest with myself in answer to the question, “why am I telling this person this story” etc.  The story would have had a purpose – a goal – (N.B. future-orientated, in my case) arising out of my desire to be thought on (passive) as being, in some way, worthy of respect.  This, however trivial it may seem, is an example of what I termed negative motivation. (At the time, I only came to realize it was pathetic behaviour – I think I still do it sometimes)!  My main concern, at that moment, was how the world is treating me – what the world thinks of me. Unfortunately, such is our capacity for self-deception, that some erudite professionals will argue that there was nothing negative in my attempts to impress. Can’t be helped. I only mean to stress the importance of the varying degrees of negative motivation. Everything we do has its motivation and no-one is permanently positively motivated.

Active and Passive Motivation

The concept of positive and negative motivation has a pivotal relationship to that of root/branch intellectual orientation but there is still a component missing from the machine:  the twofold nature of action.  The libido is the psychic manifestation of the neurological mechanism that governs action. We must, therefore, be clear in our radical understanding of the nature of action. There is, firstly, the action where the subject is acting upon the object and then there is the action in which the object is being acted upon by the subject. It probably sounds like gibberish but it is a most important and fundamental concept. The question being: am I the subject in my own actions or am I the object? Is my motivation, at this moment, active… or could it possibly be passive? i.e. do I, at this moment, really just want nice things to happen to me? To understand the meaning of the mechanism which we darkly perceive as “introversion and extraversion” without reference to this concept is simply impossible. It is to describe the basics of the four stroke engine in ignorance of the induction stroke.

Consider the “Normal Personality.” For many, it has become almost a sort of ideal. The term suggests a well-adjusted and social individual with a fairly healthy capacity for work and recreation – no serious vices and no obvious psychological problems. Leaving the semantics aside, there is a problem with “normal” which is common to both the scientific and the popular usage. As a measure, it has no frame of reference. It means different things in different places. By definition, it’s a relative term and, in fact, the normal personality in any civilized nation is generally something surprisingly undesirable.

It is quite normal, for example, for a young man, having attained a certain semblance of maturity, to effectively halt his motivational development. He strives to become a man for only as long as he believes that in that way his desires will be satisfied. He also believes that the process of growing up is somehow automatic and inevitable but, in reality, he will settle for a degree of immaturity far beneath his potential. He has no benchmark for maturity because all around him are much the same.

“Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Each of us gives expression to our immaturity in different ways but there is one single underlying factor. As a child, our relationship to the world is almost exclusively passive. The infant is concerned not with what it is doing in the world but with what the world is doing to or for it. When it cries, it gets the attention it needs but even where it is (foolishly) allowed to manipulate the adults around it, its relationship with those adults is still passive. It is completely and exclusively preoccupied with its own desires and that selfishness is the essence of its immaturity. It is perfectly healthy and natural for the child to exist at the centre of its world because its survival is dependent upon those around it but, thirty years later, that same degree of selfishness would be judged very unhealthy (possibly using the Hare checklist for psychopathic tendencies).

The most fundamental element of growing up is, I submit, not the acquisition of power or knowledge but the transition from that passive relationship with the world, the community and the family, to the active relationship which is natural to the (healthy) adult.

There coexists, in the normal personality, a bit of both the active and the passive but they are not just attributes or qualities which merely contribute something to the overall personality. They are the two conflicting vectors of the libido, the dynamic mechanism of the psyche. Terminology becomes muddied and loses its value because different terms serve the purposes of different schools of thought but when we speak of motivation and when we talk about the libido, we are discussing the same mechanism. It is the libido itself which is in perpetual conflict -but libido conflict (motivational conflict) is not a matter of the violent opposition of forces we might expect from emotional conflict. It is, in any measure, necessarily an enfeebling conflict that ensures that the full motivational potential is never quite reached, in either direction.

Libido can be measured as a fraction of unity, a percentage. It could, theoretically, be 100% active or 100% passive but, in the real world, we – ALL of us – sustain a percentage of passive libido throughout our lives – in other words, to a greater or lesser extent, we’re wrapped up in ourselves – what’s going to be good for me? – what’s going to happen to me? – what will I get out of this? – it is all passive libido. The opposition, cancelling-out or, more accurately, the summing of active and passive libido results in a libido stasis (an energy level, in Jungian terms). It inevitably results, at any given time, in the marginal prevalence of one over the other. It is only when this inequality is pronounced does the mature-libido (or immature-libido) personality emerge as a force to be reckoned with. Being normal falls far short of what any of us should hope to achieve.

The Mechanics

The conflict of active and passive libido in the normal personality and the relationship of that conflict to root/branch intellectual type and past/future motivational orientation.

Employing the concept of negative and positive extraversion (and introversion), the following hypothesis proposes the coexistence, in the normal personality, of active and passive libido – and postulates that coexistence as a mechanism -a conflict of extraversion and introversion – which, regulating the effective “energy” level and effective direction of the libido, determines, dynamically, the strength or weakness of character of the individual, at any given moment. The proposition is made that strength of character can be quantifiable, that the outcome of potential ethical conflicts can be predictable, and that the "saint" and the psychopath represent the extremes of the normal distribution.

While this arises, in fact, from an attempt to address the question of principal motivational conflict in the normal personality, it can be arrived at, also, from a re-examination of the original observations which led Jung to develop his typology.

As I have said, Jung recounts that he became aware of an apparent fundamental intellectual difference between Freud and Adler: Freud’s analysis, interpretation and understanding being persistently in terms of cause and origin and Adler’s, equally persistently, being in terms of aims and results (Psychological Types, Vol. VI in the Collected Works – edition forgotten but, curiously, this crucial clarification of his foundation for the entire theory of Psychological Types was omitted in the last edition I borrowed so if anyone can help there, please get in touch).

Jung went on to hypothesize “object fixation” as an explanation for Freud’s apparent preoccupation with causes and origins. Assuming a direct relationship between the motivational orientation and the intellectual orientation, he dismissed the possibility of Freud’s evident intellectual past-orientation being, in itself, fundamental. By proceeding to question what lay behind the phenomenon, and then identifying the individual’s “placing of emphasis” upon either subject or object, he moved, I believe, from the principle to the derivative.

What I am suggesting, firstly, is that, in this instance, experiment should proceed from Jung’s observations, not his conclusions. Freud’s intellect (and intellectual aptitude) was, I premise, fundamentally past-orientated (which I have termed root-intellect) while Adler was, equally unmistakably, future-orientated (branch-intellect).

Before proceeding, I think, on a basic point of logic, it’s worth noting that Jung’s “subject/object” concept of introvert and extravert differentiation related to perception and to value rather than to action, i.e. in Jung’s model, the subject is aware of the object and attributes a certain relative value or importance to it. But the concept of extraversion is, of course, meaningless without reference to the libido, and the concept of the libido assumes that the relationship between subject and object is not inert. If the libido is object directed, it is not a matter of mere awareness. The relationship must have reference to the potential, either active or passive, of action, in the widest sense. Perception, in this context, is, I believe, relevant to the psyche only in as much as it is prerequisite to action. It is the possibility, potential, and, above all, the urgency of action of the subject-upon-object or of object-upon-subject (which can be termed passive potential) that is the business of the libido, the (Freudian) “root-intellect” mind requiring, at the most fundamental level, to conceptualize action in terms of cause, the (Adlerian) “branch-intellect” mind, in terms of its result or goal.  The apparent importance which these two types attach to either subject or object is, if that is the case, a consequence of the two interpretations of that which is the principal concern of the psyche: the potential actions and events which either actively or passively relate subject and object.  That is to say, Jung’s observed fundamental intellectual orientation is, in fact, the reason for the extravert/introvert differentiation which was hypothesized to explain it.

If the premise is accepted, the “personality type” is properly determined not by establishing the subject’s social tendencies but by first examining the subject’s intellectual aptitudes: the less-common Adlerian branch-intellect mind should tend, always, to the consequences and the ramifications (the branches of possibility), whereas the mind which tends to delve to the roots, enquiring after cause, or attempting to resolve each issue to a radical understanding must be, regardless of any indications of apparent introversion (which I will come to later), that of the root-intellect type.

Incidentally, one of the most famous branch intellects of the 20th century was British Premier, Margaret Thatcher. Her outstanding aptitude for extrapolation was well-known in Government circles. She was also strongly past-motivated: equally well-recognized for her sense of British identity, her sense of her own identity and her sense of her roots in the spirit of wartime England. In short, she was a strongly-past-motivated branch-intellect personality and, as such, her place in history was virtually guaranteed. For many, her lack of compassion was almost her trade mark. Amongst other widely-lamented monumental achievements, she was instrumental in shifting the culture of the UK further towards a general ethos of greed and self-interest from which we have yet to recover.

Thatcher was commonly described as a strong leader but it was her great weakness which defined her personality – weakness mistaken for strength – namely that she was stubborn, self-willed and headstrong. Her ability to push through ideological reforms was widely attributed to strength of character but, in reality, it was her immaturity which differentiated her; it was her ruthless ambition and her lack of adult compassion which brought her the great respect of men who were ambitious, perhaps, self-serving, perhaps, but not quite as ruthlessly ambitious as Thatcher herself.

Unfortunately, such is the ethos in some political circles that self-serving ambition is not generally recognized as a mark of the grossly immature personality but contrast that with the service to the nation of the wartime Churchill or the compassion and humanity behind Nye Bevin’s determination to establish the National Health Service. Politics, for the mature personality, provides an opportunity to serve and, behind the greatness of these outstanding men, lay simply their unqualified commitment to serve their constituents.

In a weak culture, the near-psychopathic personality will always rise above less-self-serving men whose ambitions are, to some extent, mitigated by conscience. Psychology is well behind the curve on this but it is common knowledge in the real world that the weak are invariably led by the most weak. In this model, the phenomenon is entirely predictable, the higher level of motivation, the “drive” (strictly speaking, the high-level urgency stasis) of great weakness necessarily being greater than that of lesser weakness… but I digress

Communication, as Jung observed, between root-intellect and branch-intellect types is frequently a frustrating business, neither being aware of the need to express themselves in terms which, from the other’s perspective, appear central or pertinent to the issue.

At this point, I should touch, once again, on the premise that action cannot take place without some degree of urgency. It is futile to attempt to understand “motivation” without factoring in the relationship between time and action. A “sense of urgency” might be more accurately described as a sense of hightened urgency. If the model is valid, some degree of urgency is ever-present and a defining component of consciousness. The absence of any sense of urgency merely suggests that the level of urgency stasis is close to normal for the individual. The model posits the “libido” as the neurological mechanism which 1) processes the passage of time 2) initiates and governs action, the output of the libido being measured in urgency. The logic of this proposition might be better suited to the physicist than the psychologist but it can also be addressed from an evolutionary perspective. The earliest forms of action, in the simplest life-forms, can be seen to be predicated upon an essential relationship between time and action: urgency.

It is perhaps worth noting that, for more sophisticated animals, “action” need not involve an observable physical event. When a web developer sits, relatively motionless, in front of a computer, it is a degree of urgency which maintains the concentration and intellectual stamina required, firstly, to go over the logic, then to code the application (and then to fix what should have worked first time around)! The “sense” of that urgency only arises when its level is hightened, as in the code failing second time around!

In developing this hypothesis of the libido of the normal personality, it is helpful, firstly, to consider that of certain individuals – Maslow’s self-actualising personalities – whose level of motivation would place them at the far reaches of the normal distribution. (Forgive, for the moment, the apparently dogmatic assertions).

Because his intellect is past-orientated (origins, causes), the Freudian root-intellect type, in its healthiest (or most extreme) form, instinctively derives motivation from the past, shaping his actions according to a cause or principle and almost totally without reference to consequence. Nothing is more empowering to the root-intellect personality than the vow, – “Ich Dien”- the oath of service. Honour persists as a principle motivation in the root-intellect type’s (dynamic) motivational hierarchy and the (extremely rare) completely positive (which I will come to later) root-intellect type will obey its dictates even with the understanding that the outcome may yield several possibilities for disaster for himself. The apparent disregard for consequence which seems to accompany extraversion is not, I submit, a derivative but the very essence of healthy extraversion.

Consequence is, for the extremely positive (root-intellect) extravert, merely an intellectual consideration and not a factor in the motivational mechanism. The healthy root-intellect’s self-perception is that of the originator of action and the libido is, therefore, outwardly directed toward the object, extraverted. His unusually high level of urgency stasis is referencing the needs of others. His well-defined self-image includes his own system of values, convictions and principles and he brings his sense of identity to every situation. The libido is highly extraverted because he is intellectually past-orientated and almost exclusively (positively) past-motivated.

Where the healthy root-intellect has a sense of identity, the healthy branch-intellect, as Adler fully understood, has a sense of purpose. His personality is thus less obvious, less defined. His identity is inferred from his aims and purposes. His reputation of appearing to be more secretive or reserved is, to an extent, deserved but principally because his sense of purpose rather than identity is central to his existence. With the motivational hierarchy pertaining often to justice, the mind of the branch-intellect type, in its healthiest (or most extreme) form, has a clear aim in view. It looks to the future and understands action in terms of the intended result. As regards aptitude, there is frequently a marked tendency to be observant, to absorb, without effort, a proliferation of detail but there is, invariably, a distinct ability and tendency to extrapolate, to consider the purpose or consequences of an event – the ramifications. In this way, above all else, the branch-intellect can and, for reasons which I hope will become clear, should be identified. It is an intellect that, “by design,” is future-orientated and, out-of-the-box, it has the facility and the functionality to address the business of action in terms of consequence. The libido of the healthy branch-intellect is highly-introverted, having its origins in the future, being derived from its purposes.

This intellectual basis for the typology which, (I apologize for repeating myself … again), was the original basis for Jung’s enquiry, exposes a presumption which, I believe, has undermined a clear understanding of the mechanism of the psyche: the presumption being that the individual who scores high on extraversion is necessarily an extravert-type or, to put it another way, that the libido of every root-intellect type is necessarily extraverted.

Jung recognized that “every individual possesses both mechanisms – extraversion as well as introversion,” but the presumption that the highly-extraverted libido is always indicative of the extravert-type destroyed almost entirely the immeasurable potential of his typology to place the relationship between morality, strength and maturity on a scientific footing.

Jung’s understanding was that “only the relative predominance of extraversion or introversion determines the type.” Introversion/extraversion, however, is not a trait; it is, of course, a manifestation of a cognitive-neurological mechanism. However unavoidable it may seem, it is not, I submit, appropriate to talk simply in terms of degrees of extraversion. The abnormal (super-healthy) extraversion and introversion scores of the previous examples do not represent the two extremes of a single scale. It is commitment, on the one hand, to a cause (the past-orientation of the healthy root-intellect), or, on the other, to a goal (the future-orientation of the healthy branch-intellect) which results in these abnormally highly-extraverted or highly-introverted libidos. It may sound like a statement of the obvious but it is the degree of personal commitment to the cause or goal which is the determinant of the degree of extraversion/introversion, the outcome, in each case of complete personal commitment, being a single, unchallenged principle motivation: virtually unchallenged positive libido.

That degree of commitment is sufficiently rare as to lie outside of the experience of most psychologists (Maslow being the obvious exception) but it is only by understanding the mechanics of the completely-committed personality, be it the saintly figure or the freedom fighter, that we can understand the enfeebling conflicting nature of the libido of the normal personality. At the other end of the scale, it might be said that the psychopathic personality is completely committed to his own interests.

More “normal” individuals (and this is central to the concept) are, I submit, accustomed to or, rather, unconscious of a state of conflicting libido (which was recognized by Freud in his life/death instincts theory of the libido), each branch-intellect type sustaining, continually, a proportion of the total libido as negative libido (semi-extraversion) and the reverse being the case for each root-intellect type. That is to say, I dispute the validity of the widely-accepted extravert/introvert continuum and would propose the creation of a separate scale for measurement of apparent “extraversion tendencies” for each intellect type, in much the same manner as e.g. that of sexuality for each sex, my prediction (the reasons for which, I am about to set out) being a correlation of negative libido with weakness and immaturity.

The measurement of the degree of effective extraversion for each intellectual type ranges from complete introversion to complete extraverson.

The model anticipates the extreme difficulty of properly investigating the motivation of the normal personality in a Western culture since the predicted near-equal conflict of active and passive urgency renders the urgency stasis – the effective level of motivation – weak, indistinct and obscure. I imagine the simplicity of this model also lends it a fanciful-seeming quality but the foundation of the model is the simplicity of the active/passive relationship between parent and child and, again, the simplicity of root/branch intellect differentiation.

For the healthy root intellect, urgency has its origins in the past. The radicalized root-intellect freedom fighter has no goal in mind; he is motivated by those experiences in his past which aroused his compassion and his contempt for the criminal regime whose actions aroused that compassion. (Recent research tends to refute theories of indoctrination being a predominant factor in the radicalisation process). The radicalized branch-intellect freedom fighter may be able to recount similar formative experiences. He is motivated, however, by a vision of his country governed not with brutality and corruption but with justice and compassion.

Future-related motivation can only be in conflict with the root-intellect’s natural past-rooted and identity-based extraverted motivation. Motivation which relates to e.g. an aim, hope, goal or consequence is, for the past-orientated (root-intellect) extravert-type, always negative. In spite of all appearances to the individual, it is, in Freudian terms, a death wish. In the absence of any commitment to a cause, (perhaps having watched the 22-day Gaza massacre on TV or having become a parent – both are life-changing causes in my experience) it is vital for the root-intellect type to learn to consciously avoid goal-seeking and to cultivate the ability to live in and to “achieve” in the present.

This is immediately obvious from my own (root-intellect) motivation-fixated point of view but, to put it another way, in the case of the future-motivated root-intellect, the energic relationship between subject and object is reversed. It’s passive in potential, rather than active. He or she is no longer the originator of action, but a potential recipient of what the future will bring. (The flow of time is unconsciously perceived by him to be downward and inward). The intention or rather the unconscious wish of the motivationally future-orientated root-intellect personality is that the object act upon the subject. The self, instead of being the giver, the originator, is passive, in anticipation of future pleasures or, on the other hand, imagined miseries but, in both cases, the subject’s desire is that the object (the world) be at least kind to him.

The predominantly passive relationship with the object, the condition of the common negatively-orientated personality, is something with which we are all familiar – “a man who is wrapped up in himself makes a very small package”. He tends to think the world revolves around him. He may tend to self-consciousness, seeking approval and popularity. Preoccupied with his own desires and fears, his primary concern is how the world treats him. He may score high on neuroticism but, more importantly, this unhealthy root-intellect type will consistently score high on introversion.

Thus, two personalities which are effectively opposite in the most important respects have customarily been classed together as belonging to one type: both the healthy branch-intellect and the unhealthy root-intellect being identified as introverts. The distinction is obviously crucial. The introverted libido of the unhealthy root-intellect personality is passive in potential; the introverted libido of the healthy branch-intellect personality is active in potential.

Altruistic motivation – an area almost completely neglected by modern psychology – is, I submit, a commonplace dynamic determinant of adult behaviour, marginally influenced by but effectively independent of basic needs and gratification drives.

Active and Passive Libido for each Intellectual Type

Intellectual Type	Active (Positive/Adult) Libido	Passive (Negative/Infant) Libido
Root Intellect (past intellectual orientation)	Extraversion (past-related motivation)	Introversion (future-related motivation)
Branch Intellect (future intellectual orientation)	Introversion (future-related motivation)	Extraversion (past-related motivation)

 

I am, therefore, proposing a model of the libido in which the conflict of urgency is expressed in terms of an assumed principle motivational conflict. This vector-sum conflict can be best understood as a form of cancellation (more akin in its effect to the principle, in physics, of reversed-polarity wave cancellation). The non-violent, almost mathematical nature of the conflict is, I think, not an unreasonable inference, given the lack of testimony as to its very existence. Broadly speaking, for any individual, in any given situation, the sum of conflicting urgency can be considered to be an urgency stasis, analogous to an energy level: on the positive side, the higher the level, the stronger the character (and drive) of the individual (i.e. the ability, in the case of the extravert, to act consistently in accordance with his principles etc. rather than in response to his passive motivation… related to e.g. fear, desire etc.), the greater the awareness, the clearer the judgement. Beyond the lowest levels (i.e. beyond the area of enfeebling maximum conflict), and in to the negative area where passive outweighs active urgency, the subject may be prey to his own fears and desires. His subjective interpretation of experience will mean that reality may be distorted and censored and, regardless of the level of intelligence, the judgement may be clouded and flawed. The level of urgency stasis, however, will again increase and the classic phenomenon of the weak being led by the weaker will generally present.

the libido of an infant in the body of an adult

The measurement of the degree of effective extraversion for each intellectual type must range, in theory at least, from complete introversion to complete extraverson. Should the passive component substantially outweigh the active, the resultant high level of negative libido can easily be mistaken for strength. Certain motivationally-immature but powerful and charismatic individuals in history and in the worlds of business and politics readily spring to mind – sometimes referred to as the industrial psychopath. Any degree of morality, from the point of view of the near-psychopathic personality, is weakness. His “strength” derives from his commitment to his own interests, his lack of conscience, his lack of empathy, his lack of conflicting motivation. What he doesn’t understand is that his “strength” amounts to no more than a gross immaturity of the libido. The psychopath can be defined as an individual who possesses the almost exclusively passive libido of an infant. Regardless of any apparent emotional and intellectual maturity, we’re talking about a baby. The most fundamental and sovereign mechanism of the psyche, that which determines action, is still working in reverse; it’s still approaching 100% passive, 100% selfish. Devoid of empathy, devoid of responsibility, devoid of conscience, resorting to manipulation to get what it wants, it moves among normal people causing untold damage and suffering, but nothing matters except that it gets what it wants. We were all born as psychopaths but we, most of us, grew out of it while we were still too small to do any damage.

In both the very weak and the very strong, the relative absence of libido conflict indicates the existence of a single, more or less unchallenged principle motivation: either commitment, on the one hand, to a cause/goal or, on the other hand, a complete surrender of the individual to his own desires to the exclusion or detriment of all other interests and considerations.

It follows, therefore, that this model provides, also, an altered perspective on morality as being not only a learned code of behaviour but as being an integral parameter of the most fundamental dynamic mechanism of the psyche. As I have said, the key to understanding morality is survival. Survival of the family and of the community places certain obligations upon its members. The healthy adult is aware that the needs of the family must take precedence over the desires of the individual. Weakness, however, breeds weakness. The unhealthy parent tends to impede libido development in their offspring by placing insufficient emphasis upon encouraging empathy and upon the correction of selfish behaviour both by instruction and by example. The selfishness of the individual in one situation emerges as an equivalent weakness or inadequacy in another. The child which is exposed to the extreme selfishness of its parents can generally be expected to follow in their footsteps and treat us, perhaps, to the joys of his narcissistic personality disorder. Depending on the depth of his pain, he may achieve some local notoriety as a sociopath. As long as we fail to recognize the simplicity – the direct relationship between our own selfishness and our own immaturity – we lack sufficient understanding to break the cycle.

Our instinctive recognition of what we perceive as “strength” in others can be attributed equally to either side of the scale. When we speak of a “strong” leader, we make no distinction between active and passive motivation; we instinctively recognize only that the individual has more drive, more focus, more motivation: a higher level of urgency stasis than more “normal” people.

At the extremes of negative libido, we may, on occasion, identify the psychopathic personality but between mere selfishness/weakness and the absolute ruthlessness of the psychopath, lie some of the most dangerous personalities in existence. They can be found both in business and in politics. If an example helps, as I write, the name Rupert Murdoch springs to mind as a prime candidate. They have sometimes been termed the industrial psychopath. They owe their success not to their strength of character but, it might be said, to the strength of their weaknesses and to their defining failure to curb these weaknesses as might a more “normal” individual. They can generally rationalize their lack of compassion by reasoned argument – “someone has to be strong enough to take the hard decisions” – but it is their great weakness, their motivational immaturity, their negative strength, be it plain greed or ego-driven ambition, that facilitates their rise in the corporate or in the political world.

Crucially, if the model is valid, the psychopath represents only the extreme of the normal distribution but the destruction that he leaves in his wake does not begin to compare with the catalogue of death and destruction that can, in some cases, be attributed to the near-psychopathic personality whose ability to integrate successfully into society, together with his psychopath-like qualities, may have placed him in poll position for a highly-successful career in politics (or, perhaps, in a media empire which exerts a dangerous and corrupting influence upon politics). Unlike the mere psychopath, he can acquire power and influence; he can use his glibness and his skills as a dissembler to advance his position. His manipulative skills, his ruthlessness and his lack of remorse are qualities that are rewarded with continued success, and his confidence that these attributes only indicate his innate superiority to ordinary human beings lends a charisma to his personality which fools “enough of the people, enough of the time.”

Psychopathy is, necessarily, a moral construct and, understood in terms of libido conflict, “weakness” and “evil” are effectively quantifiable, occupying merely different positions on the same finite scale (of passive/negative libido).

The moral implications are, I think, far reaching. Above all, however, this is intended to propose an avenue of research that reaches towards a clearer insight into the dynamics of the normal personality. There is an implicit assertion that the normal adult is much diminished by his motivational-immaturity and that that immaturity may be quantifiable. It offers the possibility that, for any population, “normal” need no longer be the benchmark. And, from that, there follows an inescapable statistical inference: the occurrence of the phenomenon of the psychopath can be expected to increase proportionately as the centre of the normal distribution moves to the passive side. The more selfish the culture, the more psychopaths it can be expected to generate.

The weak recognize, always, and identify with the apparent strong leadership qualities of the most weak. The culture which promotes self-orientated motivation can be expected to be led by individuals who are closer to the psychopathic end of the scale, the normal distribution guaranteeing the high incidence of the near-psychopathic personality while diminishing the incidence of the mature altruistic personality. From that, it can be inferred that the universally-assumed inherent good of democracy obtains only in a healthy, broadly unselfish culture. All of which brings us, full-circle, back to the USA, the American Dream, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islamophobia, neo-con ideology, support for Israeli impunity, the mind-numbing childishness of the contrived acronym of the USA PATRIOT Act in furtherance of the even more mind-numbing stupidity of the “War on Terror” … and lends, I think, a degree of urgency to this research.

I entitled this paper, “The Psychology of Compassion,” but it could equally have been entitled, “The Essence of Evil.” The relationship between the parent and the infant is pivotal to the psyche of both. There is absolutely no evil in the child’s passive relationship with the parent. Evil is the word we use when that deeply self-orientated state persists into adulthood.

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My conclusions, in no particular order:

• there is an essential moral dimension to personality which is fundamental to the mechanism of motivation
• the transition from motivationally-passive infant to motivationally-active adult is not an automatic process; it is a journey that only a very few ever complete
• at the extremes, the psychopath can be described as an adult who has the motivational maturity of an infant. He is completely devoid of the prime attributes of the healthy parent, namely compassion and responsibility. Like a healthy infant, he feels a sense of entitlement, an instinctive expectation that the world should provide for him, see to his needs. Like an infant, he is virtually 100% self-orientated, completely passively-motivated.
• there is a continuum, on a scale of strength and weakness, ranging from the extremes of great weakness – the unchallenged infantile motivation of the psychopath – to the equally-rare unchallenged adult motivation of the competely-committed altruistic personality
• selfishness and motivational immaturity are one and the same
• a culture that promotes or encourages passive motivation whether in the form of a greed/consumer/market-driven economy or in the form of endemic racism can be expected to produce a greater proportion of genuine psychopaths, the centre of the normal distribution having been translated toward the psychopathic end of the scale. Likewise, a lower proportion of “strong” altruistic individuals can be predicted.
• the American Dream, a culture that promotes self-interest, measuring success in terms of status and wealth is an expression of immaturity. Altruism and generally taking cogniscence of the welfare of others is indicative of the mature personality. To qualify that, it has to be observed that many instances of what might be termed “Christian charity” are (passively) motivated by the self-interest of perfectly normal individuals whose selfishness takes the form of acting in such a way as they imagine might cause their God to look favourably upon them (no criticism intended – just a necessary qualification).

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Predictions

• Experiment will demonstrate, firstly, the existence of urgency stasis (the libido) as a cognitive-neurological mechanism, inoperative only during sleep, which by maintaining the relationship between perception, time and action, both by continual data-stream and by threshold trigger mechanisms, initiates and moderates action.
• Secondly, experiment will demonstrate the existence of the root/branch intellect typology. (I have, as yet, been unable to find any research which has been undertaken in this area although, as I mentioned earlier, there are some parallels in Guilford and Hoepfner’s work on Convergent and Divergent intelligence – “The Analysis of Intelligence” [1971] New York: McGraw-Hill).
• I would predict, finally, for each intellect type, a substantial correlation between the degree of identifiable non-pathological character weakness (ranging from the psychopath to the neurotic) and the level of passive-urgency stasis. I already mentioned that we have a ready-made pool of root-intellect minds in the Freudian School together with an equally clear pool of branch-intellects with the Adlerian School. Additionally, initial testing of sociopaths for intellect type might help refine testing methods for a more diverse population.

I would be pleased to hear from anyone who might care to comment, and particularly so in the context of any proposed or pre-existing research touching on this.

Copyright © Jimmy Powdrell Campbell 1996, 2011.