Since Freud, the psyche is complicated, both to oneself and to others.   It may have been C.S. Lewis who observed that pre-modern man looked out upon a universe peopled with powers and personalities and mysteries, and modernity supposedly erased these forces, only to have them descend into the soul.   The world is disenchanted and stripped bare, but the soul is now a kaleidoscope of mysterious energies.  And troubled.   A rag and bone yard. Roiled by a dust devil.

And a quirk of modernity is that we love being troubled.   We have come of age.  Transgression is a thrill, and only the marred is interesting.  Don’t judge me, we say to the heavens; I’m pretty in my own way.  We have passed through despair onto the other side, where the internal world is a freak ride we don’t actually want to understand because what’s outside is charmless and…bare.

This modern love of disease seems to have a natural home on the cultural left.   The left seems to like “complex” characters in fiction, “nuanced” politicians, and “sophisticated” verbal wittiness.   Anybody who is not complicated is stupid.

It has never occurred to them that the opposite of “complex” might be healthy, and might really exist.  Truth is, there are actually integrated personalities who have no neuroses, are internally simple yet look out on a rich, colored cosmos, and those who can’t believe this are just projecting their pathology.

The integrated personality is not a mystery to himself.  Looking inward, he sees to the bottom.  He understands why he reacts the way he does.

Those who see all others as Like Me respond from a sub-analytical place in the soul. They are therefore very susceptible to manipulation by symbols and tactics. They are not capable of bringing analytical acumen to bear on language BEFORE they respond to it. This is why it is impossible to argue.   They don’t think; they feel.   But the lack of thought is not a lack of intelligence; many of these folk have high IQ’s.   The function of their brains, though, is to wrap their pre-analytical responses in protective coatings of justification.   First, the feeling, then, the argument to support it.  So it isn’t a question of who is smart and who is dumb; no, what matters is the SEQUENCE in which the faculties engage.

The reactor is a person with a subconscious as thick as a large onion.   But the healthier your temperament, the less a subconscious you have.

We know as much about ourselves as we want to know.  And the word “want”, in that sentence, is the container for all that we sometimes call “character”.