Sunday e-mail 15th June: Introversion, wine, and arousal
What to expect on Wednesday
Our local psychologist has spent every day this week grading papers. It’s that time of the academic year. He spends all day in the house on his own. The last time he took a personality test, (he thinks it was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but can’t be certain) the psychologist confirmed that he was indeed, as he’d expected, an extreme introvert. He is not troubled by the fact that nine or ten hours pass every day before he breathes a word to anyone. It gives him time to be alone with his thoughts. What does bother him is that he has only about two thoughts.
Yesterday evening, he needed some new ones. He asked his wife. Did she have an creative ideas for his regular Sunday e-mail? - the one he sends out every week to his loyal readers to tell them what to expect in Wednesday’s newsletter.
They were cooking at the time. She took a moment to reply (nutmeg, grater). Quite reasonably, she asked what the newsletter was going to be about.
‘It goes by the doubtless inadequate name of “Eyewitnesses, Arousal, and Crime”,’ said our psychologist.
‘Arousal?’ she asked. She’d have raised just one eyebrow if she knew how. ‘I see. Do I have to read it?’
‘There is no compulsion. Nevertheless, it would assist me greatly if you would venture an opinion as to what might encourage hundreds of other subscribers to do so. I think they’ll like it.’
‘Tell me more,’ his wife said, and he did. He explained that the newsletter was going to deal with the fact that human performance on difficult tasks – such as remembering the details of a crime or giving testimony in court – can be affected by stress, anxiety, or just plain nerves. A task that seems relatively easy when we are relaxed can become quite difficult once we start overthinking or remembering that the entire justice system depends on us.
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His wife said she thought it sounded like a terrifically interesting subject but, not being a specialist herself, she herself was unsure how he should advertise it in his Sunday e-mail.
‘Perhaps I need a glass of Pinot Grigio,’ she suggested. She’d been at work all day, fixing sick animals. Naturally, she was a little wired herself. She too was an introvert and has what psycholoists call high internal arousal. Her husband’s unreasonable demands weren’t making it any lower. Her cognitive faculties were strained.
‘Yes,’ our psychologist said. ‘I know what you’re like. Sometimes, in the manner of all great thinkers, you take a while to get started, but after a glass of wine your estimable mind starts whizzing along like the clappers.’
There followed a lengthy discussion about what the phrase ‘like the clappers’ actually meant. Neither of them knew but they were not short of ideas, many of which might puzzle or offend readers of a nervous disposition. Our psychologist thought it might have something to do with bells: his wife reckoned it was more along the lines of a sexually-transmitted disease.
Alcohol, being a depressant, soon had them both calm down enough to remember the proximity of their phones. They Googled it. Turned out, for once, our psychologist was right:
‘It’s supposed to give the entire town a sense of urgency.’
‘That’s the last thing I’d want,’ his wife suggested, ‘if I had to deal with some sort of unanticipated cataclysm. I prefer a calm and Zen-like approach, featuring perhaps the occasional koan or mantra. I don’t think I’d be very good in a situation filled with loudly-ringing bells and suchlike clamour.’
‘Being an extreme introvert, according to the last personality test I took, I think I’d try to avoid the town square. It would be full of people.’
‘Which test was it?’
‘I think it was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator but can’t be certain.’
‘This episode has given me an amusing idea worthy of your Sunday e-mail.’
‘Oh, really? Pray expand.’
‘Well, it’s a little postmodern. You, I am given to understand, are no very enthusiastic supporter of the postmodern ethos.’
‘You mean all that meta stuff? I am not wholly ill-disposed towards in in the context of a fictional narrative,’ said our psychologist, ‘but feel it has little place in science. In fact, it may spell the downfall of western civilisation.’
‘Now that really does sound interesting! Will you write a newsletter about that, once all the grading is done?’
‘I may do.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes. Now, about this idea for a Sunday e-mail…’
‘My thoughts grow clearer as the level of wine in my glass grows higher…’
‘While I’m doing that,’ the psychologist remarked, apropos of nothing, ‘I must take the opportunity to remind my readers that, if they enjoy Crime & Psychology, it would be kind of them to like, share, and subscribe or even tell one other person about the Substack! They could click a blue button or even consider buying me a coffee. They can do so by clicking the link in the middle of this sentence.’