The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 10.23.19

My guest, David Mark Keirsey, is a researcher in Artificial Intelligence but the show is nothing about that.  He has decided to spend a portion of his life promoting the work and telling the story of his amazing father David Keirsey, a brilliant psychologist who has since passed on.   David knew that his father and I were friends who shared many interests and so he got in touch with me.   His father wrote the multi-million best sellers Please Understand Me and Please Understand Me II. The first of those two books had a healthy influence on my understanding of myself and I of recommend it to my clients.  The show mostly focused on Keirsey’s concept of the four temperaments:  The Idealist, Artisan, Guardian and Rational, which is an area I have not studied.  You can listen and check out who you are.  If you’re interested, I talk a lot more about myself than usual and conclude I am an Idealist and a Rational.   To me, most interesting, is Keirsey’s concept that madness is a choice that is made when we feel unworthy and want to defend against it or run from feeling unworthy.  I used to think that madness was a choice, but that's hard to argue when anyone can be driven made if systematically driven over the edge.  I’ve been working on a similar, more universal concept that most or all psychological overwhelm (not only the extreme of madness) comes ultimately from feeling unworthy of love.  Keirsey concluded that people can feel unworthy about many different things—but I tend to think that feeling unworthy of love is ultimately psychological calamity.  Tune it: It’s an interesting conversation.