According to evolutionary biology, in the process of development of any living organism, the importance of its individual uniqueness increases. What if we apply this law to psychology?
Each human organism has a unique mental world - or personality. From this point of view, improving one's individuality can be called a strategy of biological development.
This is why teenagers want to stand out from the crowd: to be noticed and considered attractive. Therefore, they dye their hair bright colors and strive to live a unique, interesting life.
However, uniqueness is not an easy burden: the individual must establish strong psychological boundaries so as not to merge with the environment.
Why are personal boundaries a flexible concept?
The idea of the psychological boundaries of personality is borrowed from the theory of psychophysical isomorphism of Gestalt psychology. According to it, mental processes are similar to bodily ones: like our physical body, the psyche has the same obvious boundaries.
But if with the boundaries of the physical body everything is more or less clear (when someone steps on your foot, your boundaries are quickly revealed and require restoration), then with the mental ones the situation is much more complicated.
The environment is changing all the time, and we have the ability to adapt to it. Therefore, individuality also transforms: today it is fashionable to be a brunette, and tomorrow - a blonde, yesterday everyone was Marxists, and today they are democrats. To adapt but maintain yourself, you need to have a good understanding of your boundaries - and their flexibility in contact with the world.
Trust your intuition
All people are divided into open and closed. The latter are not always in a hurry to share their experiences, thoughts and views on various situations. But to build a harmonious relationship with a person, you need to know what character traits are inherent in her. In this case, to give an objective assessment, you can only rely on your intuition.
The first impression can be made about a stranger in just a few seconds, but it almost always turns out to be false and superficial. It is believed that any intuition is based on previous logical conclusions and observations. Therefore, in order to correctly characterize a person, you just need to carefully observe him for some time, paying attention to external manifestations, including speech, gait, gestures, looks and behavior.
What does the doctrine of uniqueness require of us?
The strategy of biological diversity is well understood by modern people: few people do not consider the individuality and uniqueness of the individual to be an important value. We all want a diverse social fauna and admire some of the visible manifestations of it, such as European values that promote greater diversity among individuals.
Individual psychology and psychotherapy perform the evolutionary task of stimulating diversity, because the main result of therapy is the individual’s adaptation to his own uniqueness and a good relationship, first of all, with himself. “Love yourself” is the motto of our time, which means “get to know and accept yourself as you are, because your uniqueness is the goal of evolution.”
That is why - in order to maintain diversity - the modern world sets the task of adapting to the lives of all children, with almost any developmental characteristics.
The doctrine of uniqueness requires a special attitude towards personal boundaries: they are prescribed to be carefully guarded, and their violation is equated to an attack on uniqueness and development.
Tell me a secret
To test a person and find out what he is like, you should reveal a fictitious secret to him. It is important to call him for a frank conversation, talk about a variety of topics, and then tell him a secret that concerns his personal life or work. If the very next day after the conversation all friends and colleagues know about this secret, then it is better to immediately exclude such a person from your friends.
Why are personal boundaries not universal?
The development of an individual personality is an intricate and long process, during which the individual psyche, gradually socializing, acquires pronounced personal boundaries. All psychological schools more or less agree on this opinion (except for details).
A newborn is helpless not only physically, but also mentally. His personal boundaries appear in the process of learning and mastering the environment. Parents take care of his body, tell him where his hands and nose are - and thus form his sense of his physical boundaries. The same with mental boundaries: the mother, rocking the child, forms its boundaries, literally singling out herself as an object external to the baby, interacting with which you can calm down.
At the same time, the little person faces an interesting task: to be both similar and different from his parents. A child takes his genes from his parents, and in this he is their flesh and blood. But in his body, the “old” material creates a new, unique combination, which makes him unique.
The same thing happens from the point of view of psychology: by separating his mental world from the world of his parents, the child develops. First, he adapts to the parental world, then, in adolescence, he rejects it, and then throughout his life he integrates the parental worlds and his own, constantly discovering the limits of his uniqueness and his capabilities in this process (at each age this process has its own characteristics).
The process of separation is culturally determined.
For example, in Chinese culture, gaining individuality does not come through outright rejection and rebellion, as in the West. In China, there is a different type of organization of the family system: relations between three generations are built there according to the fen'erbuli model (“to separate, but not to move away”), which corresponds to the expectations of all family members and traditional values and emphasizes the special role of motherhood.
In the Western model, children are “obliged” to physically separate from the family and go to study, for example, abroad or to another city, in order to gain experience of independent living and strengthen their personal boundaries, testing their strength in the big world. Only then will they be able to build “adult” relationships with their parents.
Since the diversity of cultural parenting practices is quite large, the personal boundaries formed by them will vary quite greatly from culture to culture - this is our human uniqueness, entirely woven from the culture and history of the country in which this or that person develops.
Go on a trip together
Along with behavioral psychology and physiology, there is another force that clearly characterizes personality. This is a situation that, like a spotlight, can illuminate one or another facet of human character. It is not difficult to create such a situation by going on a joint trip. The more time you can spend with a person, the more you can learn about him. During a journey, things are revealed that cannot be recognized through simple communication:
- Leaving their comfort zone causes stress for many people. One person, getting lost in a foreign city, immediately becomes lost, begins to worry and perceives the situation as some kind of catastrophe. Another, on the contrary, would rather enjoy a new adventure, happily exploring the surroundings and attractions of unfamiliar places.
- If a company of several friends goes on a trip, it can easily fall apart based on the interests and goals pursued by each of those gathered. One will immediately go to the beach, another to a museum, the third to a trip to shopping centers. Based on such signs, it is not difficult to determine what an individual lives and is interested in.
- It happens that during a vacation it pours rain outside the hotel window and you have to spend time within 4 walls. At first, communication freezes, there is a thematic pause, after which philosophical debates often begin that can tell a lot about the priorities and thoughts of each interlocutor.
- If people skillfully hide their true colors in everyday communication, then when traveling they can reveal an unexpected side. An individual who bypasses exhibitions and museums, gorges on food or runs around shopping shows how alien spiritual development is to him. It also happens the other way around: at home a person is only concerned about income and real estate, but on a trip he, like an inveterate idealist, continuously and enthusiastically admires the surrounding landscapes.
- If a person in a restaurant was served the wrong soup, and he grumbled all day about the actions of the waiter, then we can conclude that he is boring.
During the period of stay outside the usual environment, the individual gets rid of the role that he plays every day at home and at work. A person is no longer constrained by rules, he can commit rash acts and simply be himself. This freedom of action can demonstrate who he is and what to expect from him.
Society: mass or individuals?
Humanity belongs to “personified communities” - this means that we are capable of personal interaction based on the recognition of the existence of other people in their own separate mental world.
It just seems like a simple idea. In fact, the discovery of the psychic world of the Other is a dramatic process and is often associated with great disappointment and rage.
And sometimes this is completely inaccessible to a person: such people are usually called “difficult” or “specific”, since they are prone to authoritarian dominance and do not take into account that other people also have feelings and their own interests. They simply do not realize that others have a separate mental world - and it is just as important as their own.
There are such people in many families: they are usually not told spiritual secrets or communicate with them only out of a sense of duty. We now call this behavior “underdeveloped emotional intelligence.”
Undeveloped emotional intelligence is also a problem of too strict boundaries, when the world of the Other turns out to be dangerous or uninteresting. The Other, different from us, requires flexibility and the ability to accept multiple realities and versions of the truth. If there is no flexibility, then the Other is a threat.
A clear process of border contact on a large social scale is happening right now when faced with a collective danger—the virus. Prolonged uncertainty forces each of us to daily decide the question of our security boundaries and constantly discover people who solve it differently than we do. Moreover, every panic attack associated with an increase in the number of cases changes positions and moves boundaries.
All this causes anger. If I decide that wearing a mask, gloves, social distancing is my protective system, then everyone who does not share my rules is not respecting my boundaries. And exactly the opposite: those who force me to wear “muzzles” destroy my business and support social monitoring, that is, they attack my boundaries and do it very aggressively!
These are two mental realities of equal importance, filled with mirror (identical) emotions and arguments.
Using the example of a virus, we can see, as if under a microscope, the process of regulating boundaries in large groups. For an individual, everything is the same.
Fear and anger are on the same emotional scale: overcoming fear, we are filled with anger and energy for appropriate action. Personal boundaries are created based on these emotions. Their mechanism is clear and predictable: the more we are afraid, the more anger, aggression and revolutionary sentiments we then develop.
In this sense, a civilizational battle is now taking place: should we become conditional Chinese and accept common rules for everyone, or remain in our value-biological positions, supporting a variety of behavioral strategies, and hope for the best? The results of the experiment will be clear in the coming years.
Human character by behavior
Behavior is a purposeful, systematic set of actions. Depending on the situation, stimuli and related factors, a person's behavior may differ. Only constant observation can formulate a vision of a person’s character based on his behavior.
Of course, you won’t get a complete picture of character when observing behavior. However, repeated gestures, facial expressions, etc. can help you formulate a set of qualities of a certain person.
Human character by speech
When observing pronunciation, you need to pay attention not to the words, but to the correspondence of the phrase with the person’s facial expressions and gestures. For example, if a person expresses regret, but the emotions of joy are recognized on his face, then the true emotion is joy. In addition, the analysis must take into account:
- intonation;
- verbal pace;
- hesitation;
- reservations;
- hidden meaning of words.
By observing speech, you can unmistakably learn about a person’s interests, hobbies, likes or dislikes, level of intelligence, and emotional maturity.
Character of a person by face
By observing a person's facial expressions, you can learn a lot. Movements of the facial muscles are the first indicator of emotions and feelings. The most informative facial expressions are:
- astonishment;
- disgust;
- fear;
- joy;
- anger;
- sadness.
Depending on what emotions are most often observed on a person’s face, we can draw a conclusion about his emotional-volitional sphere, dominant feelings, mood, attitude to life, character and temperament.
Character of a person by gait
Purposeful people have a fast gait. They stand straight and look forward. They are not at all insecure people. They are characterized by a leisurely shuffling gait. The face is down. If a person keeps his hands in his karmas even in the heat, this may indicate his secrecy and power. If a person often looks back while walking, he is cowardly and anxious. When walking slowly and looking “into nowhere,” you can recognize a passive or pessimistic person.
Separately, you need to observe how a person walks in a pair or group. If he tries to impose his pace on others, he is used to taking the lead. If he walks alongside, keeping the pace of his companion, the person is concentrated or hiding his excitement.
The character of a person by sight
A person's perspective can be the most informative. In this case, you need to observe the reaction of the pupils. For example, if a person hides delight or a smile, then the pupils will dilate in any case. This reaction is also observed with sexual arousal, joy, happiness, and fear. Constriction of the pupils can be noticed if a person experiences irritation, anger or hatred.
If the interlocutor avoids eye contact, then he experiences negative emotions. However, this can also be evidence of shyness. A shifting gaze indicates a lie. Frequent blinking is a sign of anxiety. But if a person looks intently into the eyes during communication, this indicates aggressiveness or interest in information.
Human character by postures and gestures
Tilt of the body and head forward, combined with turning the toes of the shoes towards the interlocutor, indicates the interlocutor’s interest in communication. Even more indicative of affection is copying the posture and gestures of the interlocutor.
If a person moves away, crosses his arms in front of him or behind his back, and also crosses his legs, then this means his hostility or a sign of a negative assessment of what is happening.
The uniqueness of the individual - the uniqueness of boundaries
In personalized communities, there is ambivalence: the need to live in a group and at the same time have one’s own uniqueness. We need both belonging and distance.
The need to be around people and keep distance creates tension. From this we periodically get tired - and then we begin to feel sad from loneliness. Striving for uniqueness, deep down in our souls we dream of meeting a creature exactly like us and merging with him in romantic oblivion.
Sometimes this happens, but in the end we are overtaken by disappointment: the fog of love dissipates, and the Other turns out to be a truly different person. A classic human story about love: at first - “we are so similar”, after a while - “after all, we are very different.”
Everyone has a different understanding of distance, so there are a lot of misunderstandings: some need to communicate every day, while others need to communicate once a month - this difference is normal and is the price to pay for uniqueness.
Of course, sometimes we turn into anonymous communities (where differences are leveled out) - into a herd or flock. Then we are driven by group instinct, in which nuances are lost and personal boundaries are erased. Wars, revolutions, fierce group struggles for a just cause and various extreme events traumatize and deprive us of our uniqueness and clear boundaries.
Observe a person in a critical situation
The surest way to get to know a person is to observe him in a critical situation, when important decisions must be made immediately, almost without thinking. Here no one will be able to, and simply will not have time to put on a mask and will act according to their instincts. A trusted person who can be trusted is valued in any society. But emergencies don't happen that often, so it's a little easier to get the big picture using other methods.
Why do Russia have problems with personal boundaries?
In the post-Soviet space, the issue of borders is closely connected with collective trauma.
The “imperial” consciousness of Soviet people abolished many borders, trying to establish social and national equality. Collective socio-psychological theories were popular in the USSR, and collectivity was generally recognized as the pinnacle of group development, as opposed to bourgeois individualistic models.
After the collapse of the Union, the country swung in the other direction, but people were not prepared for this - primarily in terms of family organization and methods of education. The fall of the empire and the rapid export of Western values are still experienced traumatically, forcing us to react to any challenge with hostility, panic or depression.
So Russians are not yet individualists, but rather frightened and confused “cultural bipolars”, trapped between the West and the East. We are swayed first one way and then the other.
It is precisely because of the lack of flexibility that pseudo-individualists find it difficult to work in large corporations that are designed for team work: social anxiety and difficulties in relationships (that is, schizoidism and a lack of social skills) are mistaken for individualism. On the other hand, people who need a sense of belonging to a large group feel not fully realized and lonely in private entrepreneurship.
Since we are bipolar, any changes and uncertainty immediately split Russian society into opposing sides and lead to an increase in the level of aggression. Hostility and fragmentation are characteristic of any group, and no matter how tolerant they consider themselves, this is a general cultural and psychological process.
I have noticed many times that communities that consider themselves elitist are internally organized in the most totalitarian way: they have strict group norms and a narrow identity.
Uniqueness in such a situation becomes dangerous: the group instinct requires each individual to decide and adhere to one of the sides so as not to be trampled.
Every time after such an outbreak, the model of Manichaean delirium begins to work - when people really believe that before their eyes there is a struggle between good and evil, and they cannot help but take part in it. This model assumes only two options: you can be either “for” or “against”.
And where there are only two sides, there is and cannot be any individuality. In a situation “with us or against us” there is no room for diversity of differences - and therefore there is little creativity and personal initiative, little daring.
In these conditions there is no individualism, no uniqueness, no personal boundaries, no respect for them. All that remains is vulnerability, and you have to fiercely defend yourself for any reason. After all, almost every manifestation of the Other (and it can be any person who does not answer you, like an echo) at the border of contact will be perceived as an attack.
In such conditions, it may seem that by joining the “right” side, you yourself as an individual become less vulnerable, since your personal boundary becomes the boundary of the group. Therefore, people can find comfort in belonging to a group, merging with others in the fight for a just cause. However, this peace is temporary - the peace of the drunken type. A just cause requires the destruction of the enemy and is not able to withstand his existence.
That is why, after some bright scandals dividing a group into “us” and “strangers”, when the group merger “releases” the psyche, many feel ashamed. I think that's why people don't like to talk about war: because of the shame we feel when we lose ourselves in the crowd. We inevitably then restore the boundaries of our own personality - and then we have to somehow live with the experience of merging.
Shame also serves as material for personal boundaries—after experiencing it, people change, and so do their boundaries.
Why do borders need flexibility?
Reality is more complex than any identity and the boundaries built around it. The level of development of modern human psychology implies flexibility and empathy in dealing with any boundaries. Rigid boundaries are broken and pushed through, flexible boundaries are adapted to the situation.
Flexible boundaries imply responsibility for personal choice and the freedom not to belong to reference groups.
This means that an individualist with well-developed boundaries does not have a standard set of beliefs: he discovers his position or interests in each specific case. Each time he chooses how to adapt to the environment, maintaining his boundaries and not merging with large groups in a whirlwind of emotions that captivate them.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it difficult? Very.
Sometimes the world of individualism looks like an uncontrollable chaos where everyone has their own opinion; sometimes - as abstinence and silence (non-joining the group); sometimes - as a union of opposites with the birth of an unexpected, “third” solution.
Often people show interest in some situation (for example, political), because many in their group do so, but at the same time, deep down they don’t care, they are busy with their own affairs - their concern is ostentatious. This mechanism is clearly visible in social networks, when users one by one begin to speak out on a certain topic: it’s as if they cannot help but say
what their group expects of them.
It looks like a party meeting in the spirit of the best Soviet traditions. Generations that do not know what a party meeting is unknowingly reproduce the social matrix.
Democratic mechanisms also provoke such splitting, because democracy is the dictatorship of the majority. In any developed democracy there are majorities and minorities and corresponding dynamics between these groups, so that in the process of great historical and social change the individual boundaries of the individual are attacked by group instincts.
At one time, I was deeply struck by the houses of worship in Vietnam. In Buddhist temples there are special places where adherents of other, smaller religions (for example, Caodaists) are allowed to pray. They cannot afford to have many houses of worship of their own - but this is not necessary, since no one is driving them.
Can you imagine something similar here? It was a revelation to me how much more culturally integrated the people of Vietnam are than we are, and how much higher their level of consciousness is in this matter.
In order to be an individualist, you need to know and understand yourself. And also - learn to tell other people about yourself, since telepathy is still inaccessible to us.
True individualists feel the boundaries of others as well as their own, and support all kinds of diversity (sex, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, etc.)
The school could develop emotional intelligence; it would be nice to introduce psychology into the compulsory curriculum. But for now, this still remains a personal problem of the individual and lies almost entirely in the field of private practice of psychology and therapy. We are going through (and have not yet completed) the initial period in the culture of psychotherapy: we are still learning to say “no”, destroying the institution of family slavery, allowing ourselves to enter into a marriage contract and talk openly about money, sex and feelings.
So we are still far from advanced individualism - we need to go to group therapy and learn to recognize the presence of others in a mental world separate from ourselves, that is, to work for the benefit of evolution.
Look at the attitude towards the service staff
It is important to pay attention to how a person communicates with service personnel. If, for example, having arrived at a restaurant or other establishment, he busily snaps his fingers, calling the waiter to the table, then this cannot characterize him on the positive side and does not indicate a breadth of soul and great mental abilities. The individual at this time does not even understand that he is being watched and his behavior is being assessed by other people.
