Are You a Feeler, Doer, or Thinker?

Introduction:

Simplicity because everyone knows the meaning of feeling, doing, and thinking. Power because we’re prisoners of the values behind them. Power because they allow us a test of how we organize and exercise values for better or worse. Power because we now have a science of values and can measure them…a new science, a second science that never existed before.Power because we all stand to benefit from the cultivation of an expanded awareness of what’s behind Our "Three Little Words."

“Three Little Words” happens to be the title of a popular song of the 1930s by Kalmar and Ruby. With minimal paraphrasing, I give you a few lyrics of Their "Three Little Words" to help us remember Our "Three Little Words:" 

Oh I need to remember that wonderful phrase

To hear those three little words

“Feeler, Doer, Thinker”

For the rest of my days

And what I feel in my heart

They tell me sincerely

What no other words can tell me so clearly

Three little words

Seventeen letters

Which simply mean “Feeler, Doer, Thinker”

And what I feel in my heart

They say sincerely

What no other words can tell me so clearly

Our version refers to the Feeler, Doer, and Thinker in all of us. Our scientific and clinical interest in them derives from the convergence of psychological and philosophical thought following the publication of philosopher Robert S. Hartman’s Structure of Value, and autobiographical Freedom to Live; followed by my New Science of Axiological Psychology summarizing my twenty-five years of research supporting Hartman’s approach to values, their clinical relevance, and the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive powers of these dimensions of value-vision lurking behind beliefs and thought styles resulting in emotions and behavior.

Hartman called them the Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Systemtic dimensions of value. I will more intuitively refer to them as the Feeler, Doer, and Thinkerdimensions respectively. They strongly influence all behavior and the construction of identity, personhood, self, and self-esteem. This is the story of Feeler, Doer, and Thinker ways of sensing and behaving, and how each of us organizes and exercises them in different ways for better or worse.

Each dimension has its "moment in the sun" responding to different situations with different degrees of sensitivity, influence, balance and plasticity. The goal is always adaptation, survival, choices, and flourishing in the moment with a sense of past and future, history, and consequentiality. Biosocial and psychosocial evolution produced these centers of valuation to protect us from “choking” on the growth of values with roots in the "protoplasmic irritability" of cells. They are centers of cognitive processing organized around and dedicated to the three dominant forms of "seeing-with-values" which results in beliefs and thought-styles behind “normal” pro-self, pro-social behaviors and “abnormal” anti-self, anti-social behaviors, including all that is said to be good or evil.

The existential or identity values among them contribute to the construction of self and the “architecture” of the “puppeteer mind” pulling the strings of the “puppet” brain; although at times their roles are reversed in response to genetic influences, prescribed and recreational drugs, and environmental pollution. I also have in mind not wanting to see today's fashionable neuroscience steal the show while a some like me work to advance axiological science and psychology. This is valuecentric psychology based on the science of values without which a science of psychology and critical thinking are impossible. Some believe this new science is more important to our survival than all the natural sciences...including today's neuroscience! What do you think?     

The ideal state of Feeling, Doing, and Thinking centers on balance while retaining sufficient flexibility to allow the dominance of one value dimension over the others even as it recruits the others to serve a useful purpose before giving way to the dominance of another dimension. Hopefully this dynamism serves the right reasons and not the wrong reasons. There can be unhealthy deviations or bending of Feeler, Doer, or Thinker dimensions resulting in “garden variety” or “more serious” problems in living. In the case of more serious Feeler-Deviations, we have the examples of manic excitement, depression, narcissism, and loss of empathy to the point of psychopathic behavior. Doer-Deviations can result in self-defeating perfectionism and procrastination. Thinker-Deviations can trigger obsessions, paranoia, fanaticism, anger, extreme nationalism and religiosity; or whatever “flavor of the moment” influences susceptible and suggestable personalities and imaginations. Today’s zeitgeist appears to favor terrorism wearing the mask of religiosity and protest. Is political correctness a clinical or subclinical mask of some underlying pseudocultural pathology as discussed in a previous blog?

Less acute, “Garden variety” Feeler-Deviations might include flattened affect, inappropriate affect, shyness, cynicism, alienation, and disturbed communication. Doer-Deviations may result in compulsive behaviors and rebellion against authority. Thinker-Deviations may cause one to become more an observer than participant in life. My point is that the organization and exercise of “not so little” dimensions of value is behind "big" emotions and behaviors. They are also behind the “thought-styles” psychologist Ellis made important in his approach to psychotherapy (e.g., catastrophizing, musturbation, helpless-hopeless conscious "self-talk" or unconscious and internalized "thought-shorthand"). 

Each of these dimensions finds expression as “building blocks.” They impact all of us as habitual self-evaluators. Some become the “existential dimensions" of self and self-esteem;” where the Feeler-Self “makes love,” The Doer-Self “makes work,” and the Thinker-Self makes plans, solves problems, and searches for meaning.

The Thinker-Self is "home" to ideologies and utopias which can become existential when the Feeler-Self gets involved with the "business" of the Thinker-Self. Freud called this involvement "cathexis."  It ranges from the casual to the fanatical. Do you suppose this cognitive "mechanism" is involved with today's excessive and fashionable "political correctness?" I hope to return to the question next month!  

Different moments and challenges call for different “valuational styles” giving rise to different “belief systems,” giving rise to different “thought styles,” giving rise to different emotions and behaviors. This involves rotating permutations having to do with prioritizing or ordering of Feeler, Doer, Thinker capacities and sensitivities. Making matters more complex is the fact that conscious and unconsciious thought-styles lurk behind emotions and behaviors as discussed in the pages of The Guide to Rational Living and Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy by Ellis. This is consistent with the basic assumptions of axiological psychology and today's interest in philosophical counseling. "Our Three Little Words" stand for the "not so little" core dimensions of value and valuations that have great consequences.   

Who Are You?

Are you a Feeler, Doer, or Thinker? In some ways, let’s hope you’re none of them, and in other ways let’s hope you’re all of them. On average we may be seen as one of them as we struggle to be all of them in responding to the moment, the past, and what the future might hold for us. It helps to be on friendly terms (i.e., be aware) of our Feeler, Doer, and Thinker selves remembering that flexibility beats rigidity coming from either the axiological mind or molecular brain.

Source: Google free image

You wouldn’t want your hand to freeze on the steering wheel, or your foot to freeze on the accelerator of your racing car. The same may be said of our Feeler, Doer, Thinker selves under the control of our General Capacity to Value where “carpe diem” (i.e., “seize the moment”) rules, and hopefully without the bias and excesses of Feeler-Fears like anxieity; Doer-Don'ts like procrastinations; or Thinker-Thoughts like paranoia and obsessions, etc.

Carpe Diem flexibility is important to getting the good things in life for ourselves and those we love. It’s important to own and not disown our deceptively simple, powerful and "Not so Little Selves." Axiological psychology and axiological science makes the study of three dimensional "mind space" a priority much as historic natural science has made the study of three dimensional physical space a priority for many years. Psychology must have both systems of science rather than "piggy back" on the asymmetric evolution of natual science without value science. This is a matter of great clinical relevance beyond academic preoccupations with behaviorism, learning theory, or operant conditioning over the years. The new science of the Feeler, Doer, and Thinker cuts to the heart and soul of everything psychological because they are taproots of all that is psychological.       

As to "carpe diem flexibility," consider the boxer in the ring making moves towards, away, and against his opponent. This metaphor captures the “dance” of Feeler, Doer, and Thinker sensitivities and behaviors. This is also consistent with the distilled wisdom of the ancients and Biblical wisdom found in the Book of Ecclesiastes (The word Ecclesiastes means teacher) datilng back to 500 BC when Jews lived without a king in a province of the Persian Empire. After contemplating “carpe diem flexibility” and the Book of Ecclesiastes, I then discovered by accident a book by J. Borg at Barnes and Noble. I was interested in what he had to say about such things. According Borg, Ecclesiastes is the most “user friendly” book of the bible because it speaks to the modern world. Ecclesiastes also resonates with Zen Buddhism and Eastern wisdom exposing the universality (i.e., cross-cultural, cross-national) of human values and valuations discussed in my book. This ancient voice offers a modern critique of conventional religious and sacred wisdom, and advises us to beware of ego (i.e., self-esteem) “chasing after the wind.” It speaks to the question of whether life is worth living, knowing we’re from dust and destined to return to dust.

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Borg, is professor emeritus of religion and culture at Oregon State University. He rightly observes that “scholars don’t agree on how to interpret the Book of Ecclesiastes." He and I are in agreement. We find it "life affirming" with useful reminders on how to live our lives...then as now! It’s a voice that encourages us to live simply, fully, strongly and vigorously rather than tentatively. This is consistent with my belief that life is a construction, that we must find meaning and vital absorbing interests on our own, and then pursue them strongly and vigorously. Professor Borg suggests the Book of Ecclesiastes is a kind of “alternative wisdom” much as axiological science and psychology are forms of "alternative wisdom." I want to believe the two are converging after thousands of years of separation. Both Ecclesiastes and axiological science are roads less travelled, and the best years are ahead of them given today's hunger for values appreciation and clarification. If there is such a thing as “true wisdom,” my guess is it involve the wisdom of both. The wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes would have us believe Life is a gift. Deal with it. Enjoy it. Before returning to the wisdom of "Our Three Little Words," let's consider the following quotation which is the best known passage from Ecclesiastes:         

"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die, 

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

    a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh,

    a time to mourn and a time to dance,

    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

    a time to search and a time to give up,

    a time to keep and a time to throw away,

    a time to tear and a time to mend,

    a time to be silent and a time to speak,

    a time to love and a time to hate,

    a time for war and a time for peace."

The Big Picture:   

That is a voice from more than 2000 years ago that speaks to the modern world that has only recently discovered a scientific approach to values. It's enough to make us ask "what took us so long?" So much for the "alternative wisdom" of the ancient world, let's consider the "alternative wisdom" of this new science and Feeler, Doer, Thinker ways of seeing-with-values made important because we're all habitual self-evaluators. Who hasn't experienced or felt the impact of self-esteem? This is the "business" of psychology, and it is a "business" too important to be left in pre-scientific (i.e., literary, religious, philosophical, today's psychology) hands alone! 

From my perspective, today’s psychology is still a pre-scientific disciplinebecause it continues to ignore the scientific and clinical relevance of values and their contribution to the “puppeteer mind” pulling the strings of “puppet brain.” Clinical psychology has ignored how “twisted values” produce “twisted thoughts,” be they “garden variety” or “more serious.”  Brain neuroscience has raced ahead of axiological science and this is a gap we hope to close by drawing attention to axiological science. Meanwhile I will leave “twisted molecules” to neuroscience and focus on “twisted values” with axiological science. I suppose this makes me a new breed of psychologist. One who makes values in the world of facts equally important. Facts have long been the subject of natural science while values have remained beyond the reach of natural science.

In order to reach values we must embrace and pursue a second system of science. This failure of psychology is an accident of history (i.e., because a science of values defied the best minds for thousands of years). This historical accident is the tragic flaw in the character of my profession and beyond that, the character of societies and civilization with their growing number of discontents.  

Our science of values and new thinking in psychology (remembering that morals are normative values) originated with the convergence of psychological thoughts and the philosophical thought unfolding in Hartman’s theory of value which predicted the existence of three core dimensions of value having descriptive, explanatory, and predictive powers.My published research supports these predictions and effectively transformed philosopher Hartman’s theory of value into an empirical science of values and valuations. 

This is a revolution in science and psychology! It is a new paradigm as defined by historian Thomas Kuhn in the pages of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The evidence is now so strong that this science can no longer be ignored. This is a “paradigmatic shift” in science and psychology and one that never existed in my college days at Amherst and Austin. The only “voice” concerning values at the time that made any sense to me was that of Professor Milton Rokeach who argued that the concept of value is the most important, least understood and least studied concept in psychology and the social sciences including economics; the weakness of which gave us the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008, from which we’re slowly recovering at present while its delayed impact in Europe and China has them struggling to do the same. I mean to imply that value science gives us hope that the future will bring a transformation of “opportunistic capitalism” to “humanistic capitalism,” and all that this implies.      

The foremost applications of axiological science are valuemetrics and axiological psychology amounting to an “alternative psychology” and “alternative to psychological testing” without psychological testing. This is because of the ability of value science to go deep and to tap into layers of values at the “heart and soul” of everything psychological. This is not science fiction and is sometimes difficult for those steeped in clinical and historical psychology  (e.g., classical conditioning, learning theory, operant conditioning, instrumental conditioning, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, positive psychology, behavioral economics, and the intuitive psychology of Freud, Jung, and various schools of clinical psychology) to appreciate. Few suspect how so much rides on so little. This is to say that much rides on the organization and exercise of three dimensions of value making values clarification, values appreciation, and values measurement the Holy Grail of psychology and the social sciences!   

Source: Google free image

The universality of what "Our Three Little Words" stand for means values are at work everwhere and at many levels ranging from cognition to emotion, to the constructing of self, self-esteem, and all behaviors aimed at coping with the moment and making choices while vaguely aware of past and future.  

We are dealing with the building blocks of being and becoming. They must be studied and understood with the same precision natural science brings to the study of facts, and neuroscience brings to the study of the brain. Our Three Little Words represent an approach to mind that natural science has problems with and has neglected! The mind, as much as the brain, is too important to be left to ideology, philosophy and religion alone, and here we have a lot of catching up to do.    

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We are now on the threshold of a new era with our new science and none too soon! We have tomorrow’s psychology today. We have the “seeds” of tomorrow’s preventive psychology today because value science enables culture-free, religiously-neutral, moral education which is tomorrow’s preventive psychology. All this remains one of the world’s best kept secrets in spite of the fact that entrenpreneurs are successfully marketingaxiological science and valuemetrics every day to business and corporate interests the world over.     Conclusion:   

For years psychology modeled itself after medicine and the natural sciences, and failed to grasp the clinical importance  of a scientific approach to values and morals. This included Abraham Maslow’s speculation that the concept of value might be obsolete for lack of precise meaning. Psychologists Milton Rokeach and Albert Ellis rejected the dea and later Maslow came around to accepting that philosopher Robert Hartman (a professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The National Autonomous University of Mexico is a public research university in Mexico City...it is the largest university in Latin America) was onto something! That something inspired my independent research for more than twenty-five years while engaged in private practice and work as a senior staff psychologist at the outpatient clinic of a government hospital in New York City.  

Axiological science, or the science of values, is based on Hartman’s theory of value, and my collaboration with some of Hartman’s students and others interested in advancing his contributions. My published data established the validity of Hartman’s test of habitual evaluative habits, including those ofhabitual self-evaluators like you and me. We’re all self-evaluators caught up in habits that concern identity and self-esteem. I’m referring to the test Professor Hartman developed in Mexico City in collaboration with his student Dr. Mario Cardenas who was a student of both  philosopher Hartman and psychoanalyst Eric Fromm. Mario, whom I got to know, told me that Fromm and Hartman never got along, and that he had to avoid any mention of Professor Hartman in the presence of his psychoanalytic mentor Fromm. Both were expats living in Cuernevaca at the time. 

Their value profiling methodology amounts to “psychological testing” without psychological tests, and this should get your attention. It is the product of a system of “alternative wisdom” embedded in a rigorously developed, testable, a priori theory of value, and a very unusual approach to test construction by psychological standards (i.e., based on the definition of good that avoids examples of good, and based on the logic and mathematics of set theory...which is mathematical modeling of values and valuations) . The empirical validation of this interesting theory, and its predictions gives us an “alternative psychology” and “alternative psychometrics” which promise to enrich psychology. This also gives us the beginnings of a true science of psychology fulfilling the vision of many, and this should get the world’s attention. This achievement clears a path for other "social sciences" to follow. It provides a solid foundation for the development of tomorrow’s preventive psychology today, which is merely science-based, moral education. This is also the substance and promise of philosophical counseling in years to come! 

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Medicine involves the “artistic” application of natural sciences such as chemistry, biology, physics, anatomy and so forth. Valuecentric or values-based Axiological Psychology involves the “artistic” application of axiological science. We must have an “integrated science approach," and not merely the integration of the natural sciences, but the integration of two systems of science including natural science and value science. This is a rejection of Abraham Maslow’s suggestion the concept of value might be obsolete and fulfills the wisdom of Ellis, Rokeach, and Hartman while clarifying what is meant by a "tragic flaw" in the character of civilization and its discontents identified by Sigmund Freud...and it promises to give our civilziation a "soul" that some of our enemies claim is lacking!   

We all end up juggling all that the Three Little Words of “Feeler, Doer, and Thinker" represent. We do so in order to meet the demands of the moment, deal with our memories, make choices, and plan for the future. This involves Feeler-empathy and emotional intelligence or the lack of it. It involves Doer-actions and pragmatism or the lack of it. It involves Thinker-reasoning and rational problem solving or the lack of it. Hopefully we execute our value-vision with carpe diem strength and flexibility much as the boxer in the ring makes his "three moves towards, away and against" his opponent...and with the Ecclesiastical flexibility and awareness of “a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

Let’s remember that responding to a Feeler-oriented or biased person as a Doer or Thinker won’t work. Responding to a Thinker-oriented or biased person as a Feeler or Doer won’t work. Pacing Feelers with feeling, Doers with action, and Thinkers with reason works better. Otherwise, segue (i.e., transition) with caution and skill. We “instinctively” know this to be true; but often forget. Always remember the deeper meaning of "Our Three Little Words" as representing more than meets the eye! If the 1930 lyrics of Ruby and Kalmar's "Three Little Words" helps, then let us remember that song as well.