Are You Depressed?

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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Start here:

google.com/search?source=hp … ent=psy-ab

Way back when there came to be this great debate about depression. Some insisted it came about as a result of “clinical” misfirings in the brain. Others like Norman O. Brown intertwined psychoanalysis with Marxism and focused instead on the manner in which the dog eat dog alienation and exploitation inherent to capitalism creates any number of contexts that precipitate depression.

Then the “anti-psychiatry” proponents like R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz.

The idea was to change “society” into one or another more perfect union and depression would disappear.

And then of course William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which from my own reading of it, took depression back to the brain itself.

Me, here and now? Fractured and fragmented as usual.

62

Getting a root canal is one of the most critically important things a country can do when at war over seas. For example, panama. It was the root canal for transporting ships during ww2. If it weren’t for that canal, them muhfuckas woulda had to sail them ships all the fuck the way around sowf America.

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Let’s see.

Basically, what I said is that a combination of terms can be a logical contradiction and that this also applies to psychological terms.

But then, you disagreed with me. Why?

I expect anyone who agrees with what I said in the above to respond with a simple “Yes, that is true” and anyone who wants to add that they do not think that “choleric introvert” is an instance of a logical contradiction to respond with a simple “But I don’t think this particular combination of terms is a contradiction.”

But did I get that? I don’t think so.

Instead, I get to hear about how what I say is “truer in geometry than it is in psychology”. So what am I to think other than that you think that contradictions are “truer in geometry than they are in psychology”? I have no choice but to assume that you think that logic does not apply to psychological terms.

The word “introvert” does not mean “not choleric”. That’s not my position. I don’t know who told you that, but trust me, it is not my position (:

The word “square” does not mean “not circle” since there are things (such as hexagons) that are “not circles” and at the same time “not squares”.

My position is that the two concepts, “choleric” and “introvert”, do not overlap in the same exact way that the concept of “square” and the concept of “circle” do not overlap.

Binary classification, you may say. Well, when it comes to temparements, it is actually a quaternary classification. Without such a classification, it is impossible to put people in one of the four groups. How many classes do you want? An infinite number of them? What’s the point of having so many of them? But then, this isn’t about MY method of classification. It’s actually Greeks who came up with it and they just happened to settle for four classes in total – no more and no less.

On the other hand, someone is either choleric or they are not. That’s binary classification. You can also say, binary membership. A thing either belongs to a set or it does not. Without it, you can’t say someone is choleric. Instead, you are forced to be verbose, in many cases unnecessarily, by making statements such as “John is 89% choleric”. Nothing wrong with that sort of thing, it’s just that it’s not useful in every situation. Binary classification isn’t evil. (And a method of classification cannot be true or false, it can only be useful or useless in relation to a goal.)

You are merely reasserting your opinion that the concept of “choleric” and the concept of “introvert” overlap. But do they? How are we going to resolve this without studying definitions? (Obviously, you don’t want to bother with definitions. Nothing wrong with that per se, each one of us chooses how they are going to spend their time, but then, there can be no further discussion between the two of us on this particular subject.)

I already did. He’s a Phlegmatic / Choleric and an INTP. As Biguous likes to say, I might be wrong. But he’s most definitely not a choleric.

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Ha ha ha! Yeah…

65

If a person is subjected to spontaneous occurrences due to imminent commitments and so forth, would that make them a spontaneous person?

Same question… regarding all the other traits, in that having to be something in one situation wouldn’t necessarily be applicable in another, so it becomes somewhat difficult to separate the learned from the innate.

“Someone with a pure choleric temperament is usually a goal-oriented person. Choleric people are very savvy, analytical, and logical. Extremely practical and straightforward, they aren’t necessarily good companions or particularly friendly.“ -does that sound like FC? I think so…

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It was Jung who coined the terms. And what he meant by them, as I interpret it, is that introversion refers to preoccupation with what’s inside one’s mind (memories, imagination, thoughts, etc) and extraversion refers to preoccupation with what’s outside of one’s mind (sensations, body movements, etc.)

Thus, an extreme introvert would be someone who is completely oriented towards what’s inside one’s mind i.e. a man who, literally or figuratively, has no body and who has no experience with the external world; similarly, an extreme extravert would be someone who is completely oriented towards what’s outside of one’s mind i.e. a man who, literally or figuratively, has no brain and who lives completely in the present.

An average introvert would be someone who spends less time experiencing the external world and more time thinking about it (e.g. building a model of it or figuring out the most efficient way to attain a goal given a model and a starting point.) Thus, an average introvert has short periods of interaction with the external world (observation and action) and long periods of reflection. An average extravert would be precisely the opposite – someone who has short periods of reflection and long periods of interaction with the world. (And ambiverts would be people who think as they act and act as they think.)

So it is not that extraverts do not think, it’s just that they spend less time thinking than some introverts. (Obviously, by definition alone, not all introverts are thinkers. To be an introvert simply means to spend most of one’s time inside one’s head – thinking isn’t the only process that can take place inside one’s head.)

Brainstorming sessions typically consist of people who, extraverted or not, think in an extraverted manner during those sessions i.e. who think for a very short period of time before coming up with an idea. The average generated idea is most likely to be of low quality but since there’s a lot of them the probability that at least one of them is of decent quality is high.

So my point that introverts spend more time “figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong” than extraverts do remains unaddressed.

By the way, notice that nothing about the definition of the words “introvert” prohibits introverts from exhibiting any degree of anger. In theory, an introvert can exhibit the highest degree of anger conceivable at every point during his life. And yet, even such an introvert would fail to qualify as a choleric. Why? Because the word “choleric” means more than “someone who is very angry”. It refers to specific kind of anger. It’s a specific expression of anger – exclusive to extraverts – that one can call “outwardly expressed anger” or quite simply “extraverted anger”. “Yellow bile” is related to this type of anger. “Black bile” (or “melan chole”) is related to inwardly expressed anger. Make a choleric become introverted and you get a melancholic.

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Aren’t cats said to be INFJs too? Do you get on with cats, Magnus?

Having taken the above tests, they all seem to suggest that I’m Saguine, Choleric/Melancholic, and Phlegmatic, in that order, but my Myers-Briggs deems me INTJ/P, with my J and P being very very close, and my F… undisclosed.
Ahhh, so this is why… “INTPs aren’t intentionally rude, it’s just that because they’re so truth, fact and logic focused, they tend to appear cold and aloof, but they really are one of the most sociable of all the introverts, only not when they need their periods of time alone to re-charge”.

“So no, the stereotypical female INTJ in real life probably won’t be that attractive personality wise. And usually the ones that are attracted to them tend to be XNFPs who seem to be strongly disliked by INTJs, ENFPs more than ENFJs in general, and if it’s not dislike it’s mostly annoyance that are felt by INTJs”.

Lol

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the 2 or 3 chicks at a philosophy place are always intj

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ill reply andy
ive been busy having beers and whatnot

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…or slight variations, there-of.

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You are most definitely not an INTJ or any other “T” type. You are not particularly interested in analytical thought, aren’t you? (I’d say you are an ISFJ and a phlegmatic / melancholic.)

As far as depression is concerned, it goes without saying that it is melancholic temperament that is associated with it. So if you have regular bouts of sadness or depression, that indicates strong melancholic tendencies.

Depression is no more than paralysis brought on by excessive mental activity. If you’re excessively motivated, you have no choice but to appear completely unmotivated, since no drive gets the chance to be expressed for longer than a split of a second. It’s an extreme sort of multi-tasking.

Typically, when a drive is denied expression, it isn’t completely removed from the system; it persists but its expression is limited. When you get angry at someone and want to hit them, but at the same time feel it’s not the right thing to do, the automatically initiated process of you making an effort to hit the other person is typically not completely cut off. Its external expression is denied (hitting the person) but its internal expression is not (the need to hit them.) The limited expression is felt as some sort of tension within the body that persists, and being a motivation to act in a certain way, that consumes your resources thereby draining your energy. It’s like having a person inside yourself constantly nagging you for attention so that they can tell you that they want to hit that other person (but you know you shouldn’t, so they should just shut the fuck up, right?) If you don’t make an extra effort to silence that voice or otherwise make a deal with it, your resources become limited, making you tired and less efficient at accomplishing your tasks. And the more you accumulate such annoying voices, the more tired you become, eventually reaching the point where you no longer feel like doing anything – depression. That’s the point at which you have no choice but to address the internal rebellion.

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Sure… go with that option, but seeing that you had to question an aspect of my being, that you are uncertain about, then you are obviously unsure of your analysis.

You act like you know me so well… anyone would think we’d been talking on Skype.

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Well, I am sure you’re not a “T” type. As for what type you are, that’s just a guess.

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i wouldnt have guessed mags as INTX either
just cuz you’re not the type to be hanging out in the math threads
or relentlessly arguing the logic of some point
that is usually the give away for those types
like our boy andy here
totes intj

i used to get intp in my 20s
now i get intj
been hardened by life n all

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Perhaps… I’m simply fluid, like water.

Perhaps… I am all of them, or none of them.

Perhaps… I became none of them, and so was flooded and intoxicated by them, when they all came back to me.

Perhaps… it’s best that you remain unsure…

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you assume
hm

ok true i’ll grant you that one

though they do overlap if you consider the transition from square to circle I wrote above
anyway, all of the four types come in introvert and extrovert form

we need as many classes as necessary to comprehend all human behavior
and allow for distinction and grouping
but not as many as to cause redundancy
the greek method is useful in its limited way
like if a friend will introduce someone to you, and beforehand they tell you they’re sanguine
you can go ahead and tell them you’d rather stay home

the ocean method actually has some decent scientific foundation to it
enough for me to consider it valid
i recommend looking into the technical bits of it if you care to

since there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1
the only way to categorize a person as one type rather than another
is when there is a distinct prevalence of one over the others
and then when there isn’t a prevalence
you simply can’t say that a person is either choleric or not
you have to settle for “kinda”

i’m cool with looking at a dictionary
you can make a case here if you want to, i’ll read it
but then i’ll just come back to you and say that’s not what those words mean
that the meaning you are assigning to them is biased by your living experience and whatnot
and what a word means to you in particular is entirely of irrelevant to me

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You know full well that circles and squares do not overlap and that what you’re doing here is changing definitions. A polygon is a polygon, and not a circle, no how matter how similar to circle it is.

Not impressed by it.

It has to do with definitions e.g. if you say that a person is choleric insofar the prevalence of their choleric tendencies is greater than or at least equal to the prevalence of other tendencies, then someone who is 25% choleric, 25% melancholic, 25% sanguine and 25% phlegmatic is a choleric. And definitions are chosen based on the prupose of classification. But this doesn’t strike me as particularly relevant to our discussion.

What’s important is that someone who is 25% choleric, 25% melancholic, 25% sanguine and 25% phlegmatic is also 50% introverted and 50% extraverted. The same applies for other types such as 50% choleric, 50% melancholic, 0% sanguine and 0% phlegmatic. Someone who is not predominantly choleric or predominantly sanguine cannot be predominantly extraverted.

Actually, you have to read Jung and Hippocrates. Dictionary definitions are of no use.

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For Magnus… in how to differentiate your S from your N: S function dominant people will place emotional importance on specific details. N function dominant people will place emotional importance on the environment surrounding the memory.

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When two people cannot agree on the definition of a particular word the problem can be resolved very easily by
each one accepting the definition of the other and then demanding that they stick to it as rigorously as possible

Dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive and so what ultimately gives words their legitimacy is how they are used NOT how they are defined
Also words can have multiple definitions and do not always refer to clearly defined concrete things but unclearly defined abstract things as well
Such as for example the two words being questioned by you here . The reason why language is ambiguous is because human beings are ambiguous

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Not when we’re dealing with other people’s words. In such a case, both parties must come to an agreement how this other person defines their words.

Remember that it is FC who said “I am choleric”. The question is: is he defining the word “choleric” in his own way or is he referring to how someone else defines it? If the former is the case, then what matters is how FC defines it; if the latter is the case, then what matters is how this other person (most likely Hippocrates) defines it.

I assume he’s referring to Hippocrates’s definition given that he said what he said in response to MagsJ’s post.

And since it is me who introduced the terms “introvert” and “extravert” here in this thread, it is me who gets to define these terms. And I define them in a way roughly similar to how Carl Gustav Jung, their originator, defined them.

It’s just that phoneutria is not interested in playing this game. Nothing wrong with that. But then, no further discussion can take place on this particular subject. (Remember that phoneutria said she has low enthusiasm. I guess that’s what it amounts to :smiley: I am much more of a maniac than she is.)

Do you think there are cholerics on this board?

Trump is a choleric. Does FC look like Trump to you? I know that FC adores Trump but that proves nothing. Phlegmatic women are typically attracted to choleric men – what does that prove? (Not saying that FC is a phlegmatic woman, by the way.)

Hopefully, FC doesn’t mind the fact he has become the subject of this thread. There is certainly no ill will from my side.