Heroes Not Zombies

In “The Secret Life of Pronouns”, the psychologist, James Pennebaker discusses two different kinds of thinker – categorical or dynamic. I hadn’t heard of this distinction before but in the briefest of nutshells –

A categorical thinker is someone who tends to focus on objects, things, and categories. The opposite end of this dimension are people who are more dynamic in their thinking. When thinking dynamically, people are describing action and changes

That sounds very familiar to me. In fact, its got a lot in common with Iain McGilchrist’s left and right hemisphere approaches to life. The left hemisphere RE-presents reality to itself, labelling, listing, naming, categorising. Whereas the right hemisphere focuses on what he calls “the between-ness”, connections, relationships, or the whole.

For the last few months, I’ve been sharing on this blog a series of posts under the title “The A to Z of Becoming” where I take one verb each week for you to think about, and play with. I deliberately chose verbs because I think it’s the “doing words”, the “action words” which determine the kind of life we experience. This is partly in tune with William Glasser’s Choice Theory, and partly with Deleuze’s focus on change, or difference, which provided me with the fundamental principle of this blog – “becoming not being”.

So, there is something insightful about this distinction, but, the way my mind works, I also find myself balking at the “two value” use of “or” – I SO much prefer “and”! (Which is something I picked up from the General Semanticists, before I even heard of Deleuze.

So, maybe now I can be more aware of when I am thinking categorically and when I’m thinking dynamically (and, yes, I DO have a preference!)