Intellectualizations and Rationalizations

Note the prominent knuckles over the waist shaped base phalanges.

With intellectualizations and rationalizations, a cognitive style which appears to be largely an inherited feature, perhaps open to some modification, we come upon the complete reverse. Here, thinking powerfully overtakes feeling. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that thinking overwhelms feeling. However sincere and convincing the emotional expressions of these people may seem, they would, as a rule, have exercised considered thought – the rational mind – to determine and virtually dictate the exact color, direction and intensity of these expressions. 

When I would encounter this development in the hands of a client referred to me by a therapist my first suggestion would invariably caution the therapist from undertaking a program of intervention based on how this person chooses to represent himself, or herself. Just about everything in the client’s description of his or her circumstances would be plausible… entirely believable. There would be a perfect alignment between cause and effect. Everything this person describes would have good reason and adequate explanation, all carefully packaged and delivered. Inasmuch as it would not be their intention to mislead the therapist, this “package,” would have just about everything in it other than the truth.

This is not to say that they are necessarily bereft of the libidinal investments that extend from an inner world rich in color and substance. This is not to say that they are without a capacity for abstract conceptualization and creative invention. Neither is this meant to imply that they cannot be emotionally motivated with manifest passion related to personal ambition or their career. But we are saying that in those frequent instances where individuals feel impelled to invite the intervention of a therapist, the entrenchment of intellectualizations and rationalizations would have seriously corrupted any alignment between their core identities and the lives they had, in fact, designed for themselves. Almost invariably these people find themselves in their forties overtaken with the sense that there is little connection between who they are and the choices they made through the years. They feel themselves literally as strangers in the world into which they had consciously delivered themselves.

Now, I will provide a word about the construction of a core identity. In the simplest terms, within every person – from the moment of birth – there is an innate program that is unique to that person. Essentially, it delivers a response mechanism to specific stimuli, and this mechanism would be thick in the weave of a certain and very fundamental knowledge of what is inherently good and inherently wrong for this person. We know that even the youngest infant can respond with a happy smile to one stimuli and cry in the wake of another. But the same mechanism in the adult delivers an unlearned but certain knowledge of whatever is in genuine symmetry with his or her true needs, talents, feelings, sensitivities and sensibilities. If one can imagine how easily a key can turn in the lock it was designed for, one would have a fair picture of the quality of any individual’s life if it effects a loyal representation of his or her core identity.  The born singers and dancers would reach their respective stages, the born writers would write, and the born mathematicians would find their waiting blackboards (or whiteboards).

The cerebral displacement of emotions is equally the displacement and abandonment of the core identity. With intellectualizations and rationalizations there is always the risk that by committing one’s life to forced cerebral formulas in line with a practical analytical mindset – one aimed at delivering the acceptable responses to real world circumstances – the life of this person invites feeling not unlike a key forced into the wrong keyhole. Pushed too hard it may bend or even break, but it will not turn that lock.

These people do have the benefit of at least three distinct attributes.

1. They strive in compulsive fashion for controls.
2. They persevere however long or arduous the program undertaken with a measured investment of energies.
3. They perform their best under stress conditions. They would not be averse to creating those stresses themselves.

The features that identify intellectualizations and rationalizations are prominent knuckles over easily discernible waists, or narrowing, of the base phalanges of the middle and ring fingers.

Men with these features most often gravitate to careers in engineering. Women with these same features are more inclined to identify with the behavioral sciences. It is not rare to come upon instances where the reverse is true. Where this feature is coupled with a strong motoric development we would often meet long distance runners and those that commit their lives to the theatre.