Do You Suffer From Reactionary Personality Syndrome?
WARNING: Only read this write-up if you are prone to bouts of excessive introspection. Otherwise you'll just get bored.
Lately I've started to suspect that most of the beliefs and behaviours I cling to strongly are just a result of crude reactionism. Do you ever believe something passionately, but feel in the back of your mind that something about it is not quite right? "Like a splinter in your mind". It may well be that you dislike, or wish to avoid, a certain characteristic of yourself so deeply that your personality has gone into denial and reacts to this by doing the exact opposite of the aspect it does not like.
To conjure an example ... imagine a person with a basic shyness problem. They find it difficult to communicate because they are trapped in a permanent social wince. They wish desparately that they could simply break out of their fear shell and emerge into the bright blue land of extroversion. Might they not create a "mask" which swings to the polar opposite of this characteristic, and behave in the manner of someone over-confident, gassed up on self-esteem, easy-going and socially powerful? I've seen this happen to several different people.
It's interesting the way that a person's masks can infiltrate their real personality until the two are difficult to distinguish. After some time you begin to wonder if the real personality remains a separate entity at all.
Which brings me to the personal note. What if the personality I have today is merely the product of a series of fervent denials of my original personality? It's a frightening thought. Could certain personality types have an in-built tendency to run away from themselves?
So what's the conclusion? Is such a personal inversion recoverable? Furthermore, should one even attempt to recover it? Perhaps having these things on your conscience is somehow bad for you - in the sense of an emotional conflict which could (maybe) act like an infection.
All comments appreciated.