1 Aug 2008 @ 09:10, by John Grieve
Dual Nature as applied to Personality
It is a mystical belief that everything has a dual nature. This can be applied to personality in a number of different ways, but the one I want to focus on in this writing is the Yin/Yang divide which is observable in most people and which represents separate states of being. This is similar to Eric Berne’s assertion in his Games Theory and Transactional Analysis of there being three distinct Ego states: Parent, Adult and Child. In fact there are almost an infinite number. It is my belief that any collection of archetypes or sub-personalities can be made the basis of a theory of personality or therapy. When dealing with the neuroses brought about by the interactions of family life, then Berne’s choice of Parent, Adult and Child is obviously relevant. From a different perspective, and there are many, we can say that there are two distinct and separate states which we can call Yin and Yang.
The Yin state is loving, generous, kind, co-operative, patient and many of the qualities we normally associate with the feminine Yin polarity. The Yang state, as I have observed, whether in man or woman, is aggressive, provocative and uncooperative and many other traditional Yang qualities which vary from individual to individual. People seem to be in one state or the other and “flip” from one to the other as the result of different things such as stress, depression, intimacy, boredom and many other reasons. Just like Berne’s Parent, Adult and Child (PAC), these states are accompanied by distinct and characteristic body postures, movements, gestures, verbal quirks, phrases and patterns of speech which are repeated. Yin and Yang can be very different and extreme, completely different opposites, and so can the behaviour which I have observed in myself and others, which corresponds to them. This view accounts for the seeming inconsistency of human behaviour, and its extremes, and suggests possible courses of action to deal with it. The alienated behaviour Berne terms “games” can also be examined from this perspective.
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