PTypes Personality Types
PTypes A Correspondence of Psychiatric, Keirsey, and Enneagram Typologies Vigilant Type

Idealist



Sensitive Personality Type


The Sensitive type represents a particular irrational strategy for obtaining happiness.

Values of the Sensitive Type New!

Needs of the Sensitive Type New!



Idols

Compulsive attachment: acceptance
Compulsive aversion: rejection

more...

Idols of the Types



Strategy

Strategy: avoidance

Goals tagged "sensitive" on 43 Things


I now see Dr. Oldham's Sensitive Personality Style construct from a Niebuhrian perspective, whereby it represents an attempt to find our source of security and significance in a strategy rather than in a trust in God (Cooper); or, in Karen Horney's terms, it represents a search for glory. See the outline of my personality theory.


Dr. John M. Oldham has defined the Sensitive personality style. The following six characteristic traits and behaviors are listed in his The New Personality Self-Portrait.

  1. Familiarity. Individuals with the Sensitive personality style prefer the known to the unknown. They are comfortable with, even inspired by, habit, repetition, and routine.

  2. Concern. Sensitive individuals care deeply about what other people think of them.

  3. Circumspection. They behave with deliberate discretion in their dealings with others. They do not make hasty judgments or jump in before they know what is appropriate.

  4. Polite reserve. Socially they take care to maintain a courteous, self-restrained demeanor.

  5. Role. They function best in scripted settings, vocationally and socially: when they know precisely what is expected of them, how they are supposed to relate to others, and what they are expected to say.

  6. Privacy. Sensitive men and women are not quick to share their innermost thoughts and feelings with others, even those they know well.

Source: Oldham, John M., and Lois B. Morris. The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love, and Act the Way You Do. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 1995.



Idealized Image

I did conceive of "character strengths and virtues" in a positive way as Martin Seligman does in his Positive Psychology, but now see them as images of perfection that inflate the idealized self theorized by Karen Horney.



Character Strengths and Virtues (what the Avoidant type is proud of)


The "Character Strengths and Virtues" are attributes of the idealized self, or ego ideal. As "conditions of worth" they are idols.


  1. Familiarity, comfortability with the familiar, the known, habit, repetition, routine, predictability; family orientation, strong family ties, closeness, home life, family values; within the family and with familiars, warmth, giving, openness, spontaneousness, likability, friendliness, loyalty, kindness, confidence, self-confidence, a sense of humor, and strong opinions.
  2. Concern, empathy, care, awareness, cautiousness, reserve, reticence; highmindedness, refinement, idealism; reliability, steadiness, effectiveness, thoroughness, concentration, responsibility.
  3. Circumspection, thoughtfulness, deliberativeness, discretion, ability to concentrate; attentiveness, watchfulness, alertness, vigilance, anticipation, bravery, courage, protectiveness.
  4. Polite reserve, courtesy, self-restraint, politeness, coolness, well-mannered, conforming, self-effacing, self-discipline, self-control.
  5. Role-seeking (scripted settings, what is expected, defined role, role-play).
  6. Privacy, creativity, artistry, imagination, spirituality.



Signature Strengths*


"Creativity [originality, ingenuity]: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it"

"Love: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people

"Humility / Modesty Letting one's accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding oneself as more special than one is

"Prudence: Being careful about one's choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted"

"Self-regulation [self-control]: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one's appetites and emotions"

"Appreciation of beauty and excellence [awe, wonder, elevation]: Noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience"

"Spirituality [religiousness, faith, purpose]: Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort" (Peterson & Seligman, 29, 30).


* Selected from Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford: Oxford UP.




Sensitivity


1. Sensitive: "Susceptible to the attitudes, feelings, or circumstances of others" (AHD)

Synonyms: "susceptible, subject, exposed, open, liable, prone" (MW, 723)

"Liable, open, exposed, subject, prone, susceptible, sensitive are used with reference to persons or things and mean being by nature or situation in a position where something stated or implied may happen. Liable ... is used particularly when the thing one incurs or may incur is the result of his obligation to authority, of his state in life, or of submission to forces beyond his control ... Open suggests lack of barriers or ease of access ... Exposed presupposes the same conditions as open, but it is more restricted in application because it implies a position or state of peril or a lack of protection or of resistance ... subject and prone ... both suggest greater likelihood of incurring or suffering than liable and even less resistance than exposed; they may both connote the position of being under the sway or control of a superior power, but otherwise they differ in implications. Subject implies openness to something which must be suffered, borne, or undergone for a reason (as a state in life or a social, economic, or political status or a quality of temperament or nature) ... Prone, on the other hand, usually implies that the person, or less often the thing, concerned is more or less governed by a propensity or predisposition to something which makes him or it almost certain to incur or to do that thing when conditions are favorable ... Susceptible carries a stronger implication than the preceding terms, with the exception of prone, of something in the person's or thing's nature, character, constitution, or temperament that makes him or it unresistant or liable to a thing and especially to a deleterious thing or a thing that exerts a deleterious influence ... When used attributively the word often implies a readiness to fall in love ... Sometimes, however, susceptible stresses openness by reason of one's nature, character, or constitution, rather than liability, and when followed by of is equivalent to admitting or allowing ... Sensitive differs from susceptible chiefly in implying a physical or emotional condition that predisposes one to certain impressions or certain reactions ..." (494-95)

Analogous: "impressed, influenced, affected ... : predisposed, inclined ... "

Antonym: "insensitive" (723)

Contrasted:


2. Sensitive" 1. "Capable of perceiving with a sense or senses" 2. "Responsive to external conditions or stimulation" (AHD)

Synonyms: "sentient, impressible, impressionable, responsive, susceptible"

"sentient, sensitive, impressible, impressionable, responsive, susceptible can all mean readily affected by stimuli, usually external stimuli. Sentient implies a capacity to be affected through the senses; it may describe inclusively the lowest thing in animal life that feels, or the infant aware only of rudimentary sensation, or the man with the most highly developed powers of sensation or perception. The term sentient creature or sentient being may apply to a creature or being within these classes or between them ... or it may apply to something animate or inanimate to which similar powers are ascribed ... Sensitive ... applies usually to human beings who are quick or sharp in sensing anything. It may imply senses that respond to the most delicate stimuli ... or it may imply quick emotional reactions that are the outward signs of one's being easily moved or stirred ... an acuteness or mind that is linked with acuteness of sense and of emotion ... Sometimes sensitive is applied not only to a part of the body (as a section of skin or an organ) which is abnormally or excessively reactive to stimuli but to inanimate things (as a photographic film, a thermometer, or an explosive) which responds quickly to some specific influencing factor (as light, heat, or shock) ... Impressible implies occasionally and impressionable regularly a readiness to be influenced, not only by a stronger power, but by a power that succeeds in producing an impression. They so not imply, as sensitive usually does, a power to judge accurately and delicately; rather they suggest crudeness or immaturity or indifference to the quality of the thing that impresses ... Responsive, which implies sensitiveness to stimuli in particular or in general, suggests in addition a readiness to respond or react in the way that is wanted. Since it usually occurs only in a good sense, it is likely to connote alertness, cooperativeness, and enthusiasm ... Susceptible ... suggests a fitness in disposition or in temperament to be affected by certain stimuli. Though it comes close to impressionable or responsive it more often implies weakness than does either of them, the weakness sometimes being stated by more frequently implied or suggested (as by the person considered or the circumstances attending) ..."(MW, 724)

Analogous: "alert, watchful, vigilant, wide-awake; sharp, keen, acute; aware, conscious, cognizant, sensible, alive" (723)

Antonyms:

Contrasted:


The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1981, c.1969). William Morris, Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Merriam-Webster (1984). Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.




Careers and Jobs for Sensitive type

Google Answers: selecting the right career for me



This list represents careers and jobs people of the Sensitive type tend to enjoy doing.

career counselor
psychologist
educational consultant
special education teacher
librarian
artist
playwright
novelist/poet
editor/art director
information-graphics
...designer
HRM manager
merchandise planner
environmental lawyer
marketer
job analyst
mental health counselor
dietitian/nutritionist
research
educational consultant
architects
interpreter/translator

Source: U.S. Department of Interior, Career Manager - INFJ.



Noteworthy examples of the Sensitive personality type

Many people (and not just those of the Sensitive personality type) have sensitive traits or behave in an sensitive manner. But the traits and behaviors of the Sensitive personality type are not so inflexible and maladaptive or the cause of such significant subjective distress or functional impairment as to constitute

Avoidant personality disorder.
The noteworthy examples of the Sensitive personality type are examples of a *type*, not of a disorder. It is my opinion that the ideal type which is described above is best characterized as sensitive, and that the Sensitive personality type represents the pervasive and enduring pattern of the personalities of the people listed below better than any other type.

Famous persons on this list may serve as ego ideals, idealized images, and idols for individuals of the Sensitive type.

Noteworthy examples of the Sensitive personality type are: Index of noteworthy examples

Jane Austen, Ingmar Bergman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Emily Dickenson, Joan Didion, Bob_Dylan, Gustav_Flaubert, Janeane_Garofalo, Nathaniel_Hawthorne, Soren_Kierkegaard, D.H. Lawrence, Madame Bovary, Margaret Mead, Joni Mitchell, Rollo May, Anais Nin, Camille Paglia, Rita Rudner, J.D. Salinger, Jerry Seinfeld, William Shakespeare, Kenneth Starr, James Thurber, Edith Wharton



He thought that fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund.



Weblogs






  "Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

I hypothesize that the personality theories of personality theorists best describe themselves and those of their own type.



Rollo May

  • Rollo May - C. George Boeree.

    Rollo May is the best known American existential psychologist. Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig Binswanger is great. Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in that he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and more interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud?s.
  • Google Search: anxiety avoidant
  • Personality and Consciousness Bookstore: Rollo May


Madame Bovary

In an essay about the novel, Madame Bovary, Erica Jong says that the heroine "dies because she has attempted to make her life into a novel":

Emma Bovary is deluded by literature. Because she is in search of ecstasy and transcendence, she falls madly in love with a cad, then with a coward, ignoring the plodding husband and child who both adore her. She is looking for a higher, more spiritual life than the one available to her as the wife of a bourgeois country doctor, and in this quest she finds only self-destruction. We identify with her because we too look to fantasy for salvation. If Emma Bovary, with all her self-delusion, still stirs our hearts, it is because she wants something authentic and important: for her life to have meaning, for her life to bring transcendence.

A lengthy excerpt, compiled by Mark S. Micale in Approaching Hysteria (pg. 226) from a number of passages in the first half of Madame Bovary, supports this idea:

Emma was becoming capricious, hard to please. She would order special dishes for herself and then not touch them; one day she would drink nothing but fresh milk; the next, cups of tea by the dozen. Often she refused absolutely to go out; then she would feel stifled, open the windows, change to a light dress....She no longer hid her scorn for anything or anyone; and she was beginning now and then to express peculiar opinions, condemning what everyone else approved and approving things that were perverse and immoral--a way of talking that made her husband stare at her wide-eyed....She grew pale and developed palpitations....Some days she chattered endlessly, almost feverishly; and such a period of overexcitement would suddenly be followed by a torpor in which she neither spoke nor moved....Her carnal desires, her cravings for money, and the fits of depression engendered by her love gradually merged into a single torment....She reacted to the drabness of her home by indulging in daydreams of luxury and to matrimonial caresses by adulterous desires....Such a crisis always left her shattered, gasping, prostrate, sobbing to herself, tears streaming down her face....A woman who had assumed such a burden of sacrifice was certainly entitled to indulge herself a little. She bought herself a Gothic prie-dieu and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons to blanch her fingernails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere dress; and at Lheureux's she chose the finest of his scarves....She decided to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, a supply of paper. She went in for serious reading--history and philosophy....But her books were like her many pieces of needlepoint: barely begun, they were tossed into the cupboard; she started them, abandoned them, discarded them in favor of new ones...."I have a lover! I have a lover!" she kept repeating to herself, reveling in the thought as though she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was going to know the joys of love, the fever of the happiness she had despaired of. She was entering a marvelous realm where all would be passion, ectasy [sic], rapture....She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.

This need to have another life, an ideal life--the need to be other than what one is--is a manifestation of Dramatic perfectionism.

Micale, Mark S. (1995). Approaching hysteria: disease and its interpretation.Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP.





D. H. Lawrence



J. D. Salinger



Soren Kierkegaard



Book: The Highly Sensitive Person

The Highly Sensitive Person : How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
by Elaine N. Aron.

Customer Review:

If you are one of the 'highly sensitive people' that Dr. Aron is describing in this book, I encourage you to read it: I think you will find it a very helpful collection and summary of insights into some aspects of your personality that (perhaps) you have never understood. Unlike one or two rather uncharitable reviewers, I found her conversational style of writing greatly preferable to a dry-as-dust academic textbook style. Sincere thanks to Dr. Aron for sharing her obviously hard-won self-knowledge with the rest of us.

The Highly Sensitive Person Homepage

Self Test



Support for the Highly Sensitive Person

A Highly Sensitive Person Center for HSP Intuitive Shy Introvert

HighlySensitivePeople.com



Authors



Margaret Mead

  • Gale Group - Free Resources - Women's History Month - Bios - Margaret Mead

    Always Mead seemed to return to studying the family. Every few years she commented on the problems facing American families amid changing social conditions. She was concerned about the loss of extended families and the isolation felt by people living in cities. An early feminist, Mead wrote in 1946 about the need for changing gender roles. Perhaps her most profound impact was as a counselor to American society. With Rhoda Metraux, she wrote a monthly column in Redbook for 17 years (1961-1978), offering advice to American women. Though married and divorced three times, Mead firmly stated, "I don't consider my marriages as failures. It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed." Mead was critical of the women's movement when it was anti-male, calling for a truly revolutionary vision of gender relations.


Writing



Emily Dickinson



Poetry



Singer/Song Writer

  • Joni Mitchell - In Her Own Words [via Robot Wisdom]

    Judy really felt I should be at Newport, so she gave me instructions on how to get there. When I played there, I got that large roar and it made me incredibly nervous. That night, my girlfriend Jane, who was road-managing for me, and I went to a party at one of those old mansions. Standing at the gate was like being at Studio 54 in New York. People all over the place who couldn't get in. A guard asked us for credentials. I kind of waxed passive and backed down. Jane, who was always trying to get me to use my existential edge, said, "Do you know who she is?" Well, she said my name and these kids standing at the gate went, "Aaaah," and sucked their breath in. My heart started to beat like crazy. I turned around and ran in the other direction like some crazed animal. I ran, and I ran, and I ran. I must've run about five blocks before I realized how strange my reaction was.
  • Joni Mitchell, still untamed - USA Today. [via Robot Wisdom]


Philosopher: Plato



Fiction





Literary character



Fairy-tale Character



Columnist: Camille Paglia



More Sensitive personality type





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