A Journey into Paranoia helps to validate the 7MTF

Recently I came across an interesting book review of Paranoia: A Journey into Extreme Mistrust and Anxiety by Daniel Freeman.? The author is a professorial fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, ?a consultant clinical psychologist, a recipient of the British Psychological Society Presidents’ Award for distinguished contributions to psychological knowledge, the author of almost a dozen books and hundreds of journal articles, and a co-founder of the Feeling Safe Programme, a cognitive-behavioural treatment for patients with psychosis, which is proven to be the most effective psychological treatment for persecutory delusions.

The reviewer is Ian Sanson who poses the question: Have we all become more paranoid since the pandemic? (The Spectator, 20 January 2024).? What caught my attention was the following estimate by Professor Freeman.

Between 1 and 3 per cent of the population experience severe paranoia, that another 5 to 6 per cent have occasional distressing delusions, and that an additional 10 to 15 per cent suffer from ‘regular, albeit milder, paranoid thoughts’. Last year he and his team conducted a survey of 10,000 UK adults in which he found that no less than 40 per cent reported feeling more fearful of others than they felt they should be.

This estimate is an interesting validation of the 7MTF Temperament Model..

For readers unfamiliar with the7MTF this is how the it developed:

In 1924 an American psychologist, Rosanoff, first proposed the basic model.? Until the work of Rosanoff, doctors defined abnormal psychological conditions in black and white: people were either mad or not.? Rosanoff suggested that such a distinction between the normal and abnormal states was artificial and the difference was not one of kind but of degree.? Normality and abnormality should not be thought of as black and white but as different shades of grey on a continuum.

Rosanoff further noted there were few mental illnesses and proposed a theory of temperament based on the most common four:

- schizophrenia

- epilepsy

- hysteria

- cyclodia (manic-depression or the Bipolar Personality Disorder)

and a fifth component called the Normal.? This component may best be understood as the desire for order and is associated with behaviour such as social adjustment or integration with society.?

In 1935 two southern Californians, Humm, a statistician, and Wadsworth, a clinical psychologist, using multi-variate factor analysis extended the Rosanoff hypothesis by sub-dividing both cyclodia and schizophrenia into two new components.? Cyclodia was divided into manic-depression and schizophrenia divided into autistic-paranoid.? The Humm-Wadsworth model thus has seven personality temperament components.?

The copyright to the personality test they developed was then purchased by Chandler&Macleod in 1968 who used the model to develop management and sales training courses.? I attended the first sales training course in 1974.

I then combined the Humm-Wadsworth Model with the TNT selling system while I was a Divisional General Manager with TNT.? The end result was the publication of Empathy Selling in 1991.? The revised model changed the names of the 7 EQ components to the more user-friendly terms of Normal, Hustler, Mover, Doublechecker, Artist, Politician, and Engineer.

In 2007 I retired from Venture Capital and decided as a side-hustle to playing golf and bridge to coach and run training courses and coaching on the Humm-Wadsworth technology to increase your emotional intelligence.? As I read more and more, I realised that the Humm-Wadsworth model needed modification.? I ended up presenting the 7MTF at the Sixth International Congress for Emotional Intelligence held in Oporto in July 2017.? You can read the paper here.

The changes were to the names and underlying illnesses.? The new names were GoGetter, Regulator, Artist Socialiser, Politician, Engineer and Doublechecker which conveniently form the acronym GRASPED.? The underly mental illnesses were psychopathy, neuroticism, autism, mania, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.

The essence of the 7MTF is that you may apply Freeman’s percentages to each of the seven components.? 85% of population have at least one strong component and typically most people have two strong, three average, and two weak temperament components. ?I have included my 7MTF profile in this blog.? If you are interested in discovering your profile do this 5-minute quiz.

Finally I have to refer to an article that appeared in last Weekend’s Australian: by Natasha Robinson Did Winston Churchill suffer from bipolar disorder?

If you know the 7MTF which take 5 hours to learn you know the answer is Yes to the question posed in 5 minutes.? Yet again this is another article that tries to associate mental disorders with intelligence.? As far as I am concerned both are genetic but there is no relationship.? If you are blessed with high intelligence, you are genetically lucky.? If you combine it with emotional intelligence, you will likely be successful.

Finally as explained in my February 2024 Newsletter I am offering to all my readers a free copy of The Humm Handbook: Lifting Your Level of Emotional Intelligence plus the Australian cost of packing and postage.? Just send me an email ([email protected]) with your name and mailing address and I will post it to you.? So far 16 people have availed themselves of this offer.