This book is a must read for anyone who is a procrastinator or who lives with someone who procrastinates. Especially interesting topics addressed include lying, sublimation, ego trips, excuses, mountains out of molehills, and hypocrisy. Anyone who denies being a procrastinator is a liar. From birth, we are all born with this inherent ability. It afflicts stock clerks as well as world leaders. Its most recommendable asset is convenience and accessibility.

CREATIVE RATIONALIZATION

By Abné M. Eisenberg

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Abné M. Eisenberg
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-7166-0

Contents

Preface............................................................ixChapter One WHO....................................................1Chapter Two WHAT...................................................16Chapter Three WHERE................................................21Chapter Four WHEN..................................................27Chapter Five HOW...................................................33Chapter Six WHY....................................................38Chapter Seven MISTAKES.............................................43Chapter Eight EGO..................................................47Chapter Nine CLEAR ONLY IF KNOWN...................................50Chapter Ten CONTEXT................................................56Chapter Eleven RATIONALIZING.......................................60Chapter Twelve ANATOMY OF LYING....................................64Chapter Thirteen POWER POINTS......................................69Chapter Fourteen JUSTIFIED EXCUSES.................................73Chapter Fifteen MISTRANSLATIONS....................................77Chapter Sixteen HYPOCRICY..........................................83Chapter Seventeen TRUST............................................87Chapter Eighteen PESSIMISM.........................................92Chapter Nineteen YOU'RE RIGHT!.....................................95Chapter Twenty TRUTH...............................................99Chapter Twenty-one COMMITMENT......................................105Chapter Twenty-two MEMORY..........................................108Chapter Twenty-three SUBLIMATION...................................111Chapter Twenty-four MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS.....................114Chapter Twenty-five RULES..........................................117Chapter Twenty-six COLLECTIVE EXCUSES..............................120Chapter Twenty-seven GENDER........................................124Chapter Twenty-eight CROSS-CULTURAL FAUX PAS.......................128Chapter Twenty-nine TRANSCULTURAL IDIOMS...........................134Chapter Thirty SUGGESTED EXCUSES...................................137Afterword..........................................................139Index..............................................................141Addendum...........................................................147

Chapter One

WHO

THE INTRAPERSONAL SELF

If you were asked, "Who are you?" ten times, how would you answer it each time? Whenever possible, try not to simply repeat your last response. Interestingly, your replies will often reveal more about your inner self than you realize. Terms like self-image, self-worth, self-esteem, and self-evaluation are all designed to probe the concept you have of yourself. The perception and conception you have of who you are dictates how you behave. If you think the earth is flat, you stay away from the edge. Psychologists suggest that many people are not comfortable with the way they are mentally and physically. They would like to be taller, slimmer, better looking, healthier, more popular, or more intelligent. Few are completely satisfied with the way they were born.

MASKS YOUR SELF WEARS

We all wear masks. We present ourselves differently to our parents, friends, superiors, authorities, and lovers. Our facial expressions, posture, and gestures are subject to major and minor changes. These behavioral changes are dynamic, not static.

The following anecdote illustrates the use of a mask. There was an eighteen year old girl who lived in the French Quarter in New Orleans. She was not physically attractive and had extremely low self-esteem. As a result, when the yearly Mardi Gras came around, she refused to participate in the celebration. Her father, saddened by his daughter's dilemma, decided to have a beautiful mask designed for her so that she could go to the Mardi Gras without feeling embarrassed. Off she went wearing that beautiful mask. As fate would have it, she met a handsome young man and fell madly in love. However, when the time came to remove their masks, she experienced unbearable fear. She was convinced that once he saw how she actually looked, he would be frightened away. The critical moment came and the young man took off his mask. He was very handsome. After tenderly removing her mask, he said, "You are so beautiful." The moral of this story is that when you are loved, you are always beautiful.

When we look at ourselves in a mirror, what we see often differs from what others see. There are beautiful people who think they are ugly and ugly people who think they are beautiful. The mind is a clever trickster. While plastic surgery can change an individual's external appearance, the inner self is less amenable. Despite this disparity, people continue to wear masks. The cosmetic industry is a conspirator when it comes to altering how people look. Make-up is a form of make-believe, of pretense and deception. Shakespeare's words, "To thine own self be true" should be a constant reminder that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Facial expressions are able to reflect emotions such as anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, fear, and disgust. Although some expressions are universal, many are shared. One facial mask is the smile. It seems to fill the human penchant for bonding.

Smiles are unique. Research indicates that the preference for "pretty faces" is innate. Children born blind make the same facial expressions as sighted children. One hundred sighted infants revealed something interesting in terms of attractiveness. They were presented with two sets of images. One set of attractive faces and one set of unattractive faces. Infants spent 80% of their time looking at the attractive faces.

Masks are clever ploys. They enable disinterested people to look interested and insincere people to look sincere. Sociologist, Erving Goffman, described this mask as, "civil inattention."

There is more to people than their outer appearance. Perhaps, you have had the experience of meeting someone at a social function who was physically unattractive. After a lively and stimulating conversation, you perceived the person to be more attractive. Physical appearances can be mediated by one's intelligence, knowledge, grooming, experience, status, affiliation, and style. No determination of who you are should ever be made solely on how you look.

YOUR EVOLVING SELF

Who you are is not static. As you age, your persona changes. These changes include your pre-natal self, your post-natal self, and your post-mortem self. While there is always a readily identifiable core of who you are, the changes you undergo in a lifetime determine your character and personality.

Believing that people can change produces a safety net, a security blanket. People make minor changes in their life that could be regarded as window dressing. It could be a career change, a mode of dress, or relocating a domicile.

Some changes are easier to make than others. Paraphrasing Vladimir Lenin, "Give me a child for the first five years of its life and he'll be mine." It is those first years that shape the basic SELF people display for their entire life.

Change involves some risk. People tend to avoid change and comfortably recline into the way things are, not the way they would like them to be. Why? Because sameness is predictable, differences are not.

According to Ken Blanchard, a well-known management consultant, there are several dynamics of change. Whenever you ask people to either think, feel, or do something different, you disrupt their habitual ways of doing things. They find it difficult and somewhat uncomfortable having to eliminate old responses and adopt new ones. For instance, having to learn a new computer program and surrender an old one is difficult. People thirst for things that guarantee a predictable outcome.

Those forced to undergo an unwanted change may become dysfunctional or emotionally unsettled. Those with a damaged self-image or who have low self esteem are most inclined to resist change. Those with high self-esteem see change as a challenge.

Change does not occur in a vacuum, but in a given context. There has to be a readiness and a willingness to accept change. Change has been associated with praise, blame, guilt, shame, or embarrassment. These unpredictable outcomes cause people to resist change.

A final aspect of change involves will-power. Millions make desperate efforts to stop smoking, lose weight, stop gambling, or become more tolerant. Each of these aspirations require a change in perspective. Only will-power and committed motivation can effect a change. To administer these forces, you must acknowledge a need for change. Unless you can move your desire from an unconscious to a conscious level, no change is possible.

Few things generate more emotional gratification than making a change that nourishes the ego. Successful risk-taking encourages future risk-taking. Risk is the mainspring of change. It should not be viewed as a board game where the number of correct choices declares the winner. Each change must be judged on its own individual merits and in a specific context.

YOUR PRENATAL SELF

Newlyweds planning a family often speculate as to what kind of child they will produce. Will it be a boy or girl, will it have red, blond, or black hair, will it have blue or brown eyes? If they are convinced that it will be a boy, and they have a girl, things can become confusing. This is especially true when they insist on rearing a girl as if she was a boy, or a boy as if he was a girl.

Regardless of any parental bias, the result became your prenatal self. The instant sperm from your father fertilized the ovum in your mother's womb, the embryonic process began. Researchers are still trying to determine whether there is any congenital data resident in the genome, a set of genes that, in nine months, will become you. The prevailing belief is that at birth, your brain is a tabula rasa—a blank slate. Once you are born, your sensory nerves begin to transmit information from your internal and external environment. Those messages, not unlike a computer, are arranged and filed to form an encoded you.

YOUR POST-NATAL SELF

Your post-natal self begins with your birth and ends with your death. Whether there is anything after you die will be discussed in the next segment of this chapter. For the moment, we shall be discussing your infant self, your child self, your adolescent self, your adult self, and your twilight self. Each phases is unique. It is unlikely that you have an exact double anywhere in the world, a doppelgänger.

Your gender identity is biologically determined; you are either male or female. Before the advent of transsexual surgery, where men could anatomically be converted into women and women into men, your gender imprint was immutable.

Today, the identity of people who have had a sex-change operation only alters their outward appearance, not their sexual orientation. They might consider themselves homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or even asexual. Transgendered individuals might have difficulty answering the question, "Who are you?"

In ancient times, who you were depended upon the country, city, town, or village from which you came. For example, Saul of Tarsus or Jesus of Nazareth. You might also be known according to your reputation; e.g., Alexander the Great, Ivan, the Terrible, or Richard the Lionhearted. Your identity might also be based upon your family status; i.e., Isaac, son of Abraham.

These are a few of the ways people were identified. Each label revealed something about the person. Today, people are seldom identified by anything other than their name and social security number. However, people still use descriptive metaphors; e.g., baby doll, bullheaded, drag queen, yellow belly, or cracker. Since there is no linguistic boundary between metaphor and ordinary thought, each has the capacity to modify one's self-image.

YOUR PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SELF

A difference exists between your private and public self. People who keep a diary, or a journal, make entries about themselves that are strictly private. Survivors often find things in a diary about a deceased loved one that they never knew. Mark Twain admonished his successors not to print certain things until after his death.

Another setting in which much of a private self is unveiled is during a psychoanalytic session or in a dream. Thoughts and events that would cause serious embarrassment if they were made public occasionally seep into the unconscious mind and take up residence there for years. Since there is no such thing as "thought police," our minds protect our anonymity. Our secrets could range from the normal to abnormal, rational to irrational, or from moral to immoral. As long as these secrets remain private, they are immune to criticism, ridicule, or public disdain.

Your public self is another story. Ideally, it should comport with your private self. This form of psychological balance, however, is rare. As stressed earlier, we all wear masks designed to create a particular illusion, a counterfeit self. In theater and film, actors often play characters that are markedly different from their own. In Shakespeare's As You Like It he wrote: "All the world's a stage and all the men and women are merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."

In time, people who display a particular public self are unable to differentiate it their from their private self. Their identity becomes blurred.

ALTERING YOUR SELF

People alter their self-image in a variety of ways. Ranging from conventional to dramatic, their methods may include tattooing, mutilation, scarification, dismemberment, drugs, cosmetics, plastic surgery, and costuming.

While Westerners deplore some of these extreme methods, they spend billions each year on cosmetics and plastic surgery to alter their external appearance. Psychologists remind us that no matter how we change our exterior, the interior often remains the same.

YOUR AUXILIARY SELF

When confronted by a life-threatening disease, or a severely debilitation injury, people desperately search for their inner strength enabling them to cope with their misfortune. This auxiliary persona may take the form of a spiritual or emotional self. It should not matter what other people think, only what the sufferer thinks.

YOUR POST-MORTEM SELF

You have died. At your funeral, someone delivers a eulogy in which your virtues and lifetime accomplishments are applauded. Your method of interment, whether it be earth burial or cremation, usually includes an epitaph that either you or a loved one creates. A creative physician had this written on his tombstone: "Moved office upstairs." What would you like written on your tombstone?

Death was once defined as being forgotten. Because most people would like to be remembered, they leave behind various markers. Inscribed on many building sites are the names of those who either built it or made some kind of contribution toward its construction. Others leave behind their works in the form of music, art, architecture, literature, scientific discoveries, or certain laudable deeds. Despite their physical departure, their contribution to humanity will survive them.

Here are a dozen examples of dying words alleged to have been said by various famous people. See whether their dying words tells you anything about their philosophy of life.

Curtain! Fast music! Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good! —Florenz Ziegfeld, showman

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do. —Oscar Wilde

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive As an old curiosity, but I'm done. I'm finished, I'm going to die. —George Bernard Shaw

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. —Pancho Villa

It's very beautiful over there. —Thomas Edison

I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it. —Errol Flynn

Get my swan costume ready. —Anna Pavlov

Does nobody understand? —James Joyce

Codeine ... bourbon. —Tallulah Bankhead

How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden? —P.T. Barnum

Friends applaud, the comedy is Finished. —Ludwig Von Beethoven

I am not afraid to die. —Charles Darwin

MULTIPLE PERSONALITY

In this psychiatric disorder, the subject exhibits two or more disassociated personalities, each functioning as a separate and distinct entity. It is an innocent and physically harmless form of mental disorder that may occur in ordinary people.

Stressed earlier, we all role-play. It is only when this kind of behavior escalates into a more complicated form that it warrants professional intervention and treatment.

BEING AN IMPOSTOR

A less serious personality disorder involves the desire to impersonate someone else. People usually identify themselves by what they do; their occupation, profession, or any other societal role. Discovering who you really are, or whom you think you are, is a challenge.

In psychology, there is something called the, "Impostor Phenomenon" or the "As If Personality." Other words or phrases that characterize it include depersonalization, disorders of the self, and a failure of the superego.

In 1961, a film titled, The Great Impostor, starring Tony Curtis, focused upon the real life of a young man named Ferdinand Demara, Jr. In the film, he successfully assumed various false identities that included a university president, prison warden, monk, high school teacher, navy dental surgeon, and marine. All these impersonations were made possible by forged documents, clever acting, and quick thinking.

A decade later, a similar film was created based upon a real life character named Frank W. Abagnale, Jr.. It was titled, Catch Me if You Can starring Leonardo Di Caprio. In it, he succeeded in masquerading as a doctor, airline pilot, attorney, U, S. Army officer, and substitute teacher.

The impostor phenomenon is not a classic form of mental illness. It may, however, become chronic if the individual gets stuck in one of these impersonations. Fortunately, the illness is usually short-lived and the frustration it creates is soon over.

In theater, actors assume various characters. The ability to completely immerse oneself in another person's character and personality is an art few actors are able to do convincingly. Once the play or film is over, the assumed character should be discarded. It is not unlike putting on and taking off a costume. In the case of the Impostor Phenomenon, or the As If Personality, the ability to make these role changes comes easily and without any debilitating sense of consciousness. Impostors, not unlike pathological lairs, have superegos that they have either tamed or suppressed. According to Freudian theory, the superego is a part of the mind that acts as a conscience.

We are all quasi-impostors. On the job, in the home, or in everyday conversation, we all pretend to be something other than what other people think we are. Unkind people pretend to be kind, impolite people pretend to be polite, impatient people pretend to be patient. These rather innocent forms of deception seldom do any serious damage to the ego and constitute a minimal threat to the superego. Only the degree of deception makes a difference.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from CREATIVE RATIONALIZATIONby Abné M. Eisenberg Copyright © 2012 by Abné M. Eisenberg. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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