Psychological Operating Systems

An introduction to Personality Mechanics

A primer on understanding temperament differences and why they matter that I often use with Clients is as follows;

Imagine a Samsung Galaxy and an Apple iPhone. Hold them up, side-by-side and examine them. Observe their characteristics and components. To the largely uninitiated, they appear to be basically the same thing. There might be a few design differences, but they’re essentially identical. And that’s not too far off from reality.

Both the Galaxy and iPhone have front and rear facing cameras. They both have a large touch screen, volume controls, home buttons. They have a motherboard, a processor, memory and a SIM card. Many of the parts for each phone are even made in the same factories! They both keep us connected to the world through the internet and social media. They both keep us organized with various apps, take pictures, and even allow us to make phone calls (for those of you still doing that sort of thing with your smart *phone*)

So the question then, is;

“Why do I have to go to Google for my Samsung apps? Why can’t I go to Apple?”

The simplified and obvious answer is;

“Well, because each phone has a different operating system”

And with that difference in operating system, comes a necessary variation in the coding of the particular app you’re trying to install.

You can’t install Apple apps on a Samsung phone, because they’re not written for a Samsung system.

How those apps are executed on each platform is very different, even if the end user experience is virtually the same. Angry Birds on an iPhone looks identical to Angry Birds on a Samsung, but their coding, the way the app interacts with you and with the hardware is very different.

And it is important for us to understand these differences, especially if our app develops a bug and we need to troubleshoot it. I’m not a lot of help to you in repairing an app on a Samsung, if I am an iPhone technician.

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Biologically, you and I are basically the same. We have a heart, lungs, a brain, a central nervous system, a limbic system and eyes and ears. With a few exceptions between men and women, we are all virtually identical. Our hardware is the same.

What if, however, at some point in our development (either in utero or in the earliest stages) a particular operating system gets installed, and our experiences from then on out are viewed through it’s lens? And what if the things that we “do” or the roles we fill are simply apps being run on our operating systems.

Things like play, school, friendships, jobs, careers, family, hobbies etc. are all just apps. But because my work app looks very similar to the guy in the cubicle next to me, there is an assumption made that we must be running the *same* app on the *same* operating system. And when my job at “Globocorp” starts to feel a little unfulfilling and stressful, When my app gets buggy, a well meaning Samsung technician may come along and offer me advice on how to fix my iPhone problem.

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Understanding the differences between operating systems, understanding what contributes to healthy apps, vs unhealthy apps on a foundational level, is paramount to taking charge of the outcomes of our lives, strengthening our most important relationships, and refining our characters.

In future posts, we will deep dive into the various operating systems (there are four) and their differences, as well as many of the supporting elements of the theory. We will look at real-life scenarios and examples of this theory in action. We will troubleshoot some of the problems inherent in psychoanalytics and “self-report” models. We will gain an appreciation for our own strengths and weaknesses, and develop a generous patience and understanding for others.

I hope you’ll stick around!