MERCURY PERSONALITY
REPORT

 

 

 

PERSONALITY FEATURE

 

 

 

1.                 
PERSONALITY TYPE: Dependent, Authoritarian Personality
(Identity) at Trust-Building Stage:
Authoritarian, Dependent

 

 

 

People with Mercury personalities tend to be trustful and compliant with the
authorities within their social context. Under a form of benevolent leadership,
such individuals find it easy to get along with others, displaying a basic
trust for others within their in-group, whom they consider
akin to family or tribe. During childhood, this personality is most prominent
in early infancy, between birth and up to the
age of eight months to one year.
However, features of this personality are also identifiable in adults. Infants at this stage tend to be calm and peaceful
under the care of a trusted caretaker. Such individuals can become overwhelmed
by uncontrollable emotions or impulses, lacking the ability to reason
when they feel unhappy, due to hunger, for example, or out of fear of being
left alone by the caretaker or someone to depend on. However, suppose
uncontrolled emotions are tamed through good parenting by a trusted caretaker. In that case, the
child’s personality is expected to grow strong enough for them to move on to
the next stage, where they begin exploring the world around them, as long as
they believe their caretaker is there to support and protect them. Mercury can
adopt a personality formed without the process of thinking but through
feelings alone. At this stage, infants need to be symbiotically dependent on their parents. In turn, and throughout
childhood, parents have to play a benevolent but authoritarian leader to meet infants’
survival needs, including physical needs such as food
and the provision of safety or protection from the danger of an external
threat. Here, parents need to anticipate their children’s needs
and actions while making timely authoritarian decisions to address infants’
moment-to-moment needs in contexts where they engage in uncontrollable tantrums
when these needs are unmet. However, through their experience of bonding or Attachment with their primary caretakers, who take on
benevolent but authoritarian roles, infants learn to trust someone and be
vulnerable to receive care. To meet this
need, infants show undivided blind loyalty to the caretakers, displaying
absolute obedience and compliance.

 

This stage may roughly
be equivalent to what psychoanalyst Karen Horney (1945) calls “moving toward people” (pp. 40-62) and what
Winnicott called id-relationship (Winnicott, 1958).
Infants learn to be vulnerable with someone who assumes the role of the
benevolent authoritarian, upon whom they can depend to satisfy
their need for care and the protection necessary to their survival. Though infants at
this stage are constantly fearful of external threats, at times helpless, and unable to feel in control, caretakers allow
them to feel safe enough to trust their authority. When they demand to have their needs met by their caretakers, toward whom
they show unconditional trust and loyalty, such dependents do not necessarily
fear the potential failure of their caretaker in performing their role or not
succeeding in protecting them. It is the reason the infants’ anger can
turn into extreme hatred if the caretakers fail to meet their essential needs
while they are in complete trust. The persistence of the unmet bonding need between dependents and caretakers may
become problematic if it persists into
adulthood. However, this stage of boding or Attachment through trust is necessary for all children to
develop adult relationships based on trust later in life and risk being
vulnerable, including in the case of building healthy romantic or professional
relationships beyond their immediate family.

 

 

MERCURY,
ACCORDING TO THE BIG-5 OR 5-FACTOR MODEL (OCEAN):

 

Neuroticism

Extra-version

Openness

Agreeable-ness (Empathy, care for others)

Conscientiousness (Responsibility, self-discipline)

Very
high

High
(In-group) or Low (Out-group)

High
(In-group) or Low (Out-group)

High
(Identified in-group) or Low (unidentified out-group)

Low

 

 

 

MERCURY ACCORDING TO JOSEPH CAMPBELL‘S HERO’S JOURNEY

 

 

Mercury

The hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell

A
safe haven
of home or childhood

 

 

PERSONALITY-BUILDING OBJECTIVES AND REQUIREMENTS

 

 

Self-objectives for mastery

Self-identity
and authority

Psychological Task
accomplished

Id (Pleasure
Principle)/ Object Seeking and Bonding

Time orientation

Moment to moment

Emotional objectives
for building

Trust/

loyalty

Inter-personal
dependence

Dependence

Order of operation of Emotion, Cognition, and Action

Feelings govern
the physical condition of action and
inaction:

“I feel helpless, so I don’t want to go out.”

Primary feelings

Fear and helplessness

Types of Compassion

Identification

 

 

 

DYNAMICS
OF INTERDEPENDENCE

 

 

 

 

Inter-dependence among members

Dependence/co-dependence

Individual psycho-social objectives
in feelings to overcome

 

Feeling
of Safety and protection through the resolution of fear and ambivalence about
powerlessness and power through trust and dependence and Attachment

Emotions to cope in relation to the fulfillment of objectives

Fear of losing parental protection and care,
feeling of powerlessness or vulnerability/fear of parental abandonment

 

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT
STYLE

 

The FIVE personality types

Dependent-Authoritarian Personality

Attachment Style (Bowlby, 1969, 1973; Ainsworth 1989; Blatz 1966)

Insecure
(neurotic) Attachment

Modification of Attachment Theory based on the PLANET PERSONALITY
theory

Insecure (fearful) Attachment or dependence

 

 

TYPE OF DEFENSE MECHANISM

 

 

Sandler (1987, as cited in Clarke, 2001): “PI is ubiquitous.”

Projective
Identification in phantasy or internal
object

Rosenfeld’s (1988) communication types (as cited in Clarke, 2001)

Non-verbal distortion

Gedo’s (2005, pp. 87-88) phases 2-4 of
development in defense operation

Projective
Identification resulting in splitting off without symbolic processing

Roland Kim (2021) (Sandler, 1987; Young 1994; Segal, 1964 cited in Clarke)

 

Projective
identification of fear; projection based on phantasy
or internal object and distortion;  

Intrapsychic;
Identification

 

 

 

 

 

TYPE OF COMPASSION COMMONLY USED

 

 

MARTIN HOFFMAN’S (2000, 2011)

5 CATEGORIES OF EMPATHIC
DISTRESS AND AROUSAL

 

Hoffman’s (2011) 5 Categories of Empathic
Distress (p. 235)

C1:
Newborn reactive cry from mimicry and
conditioning before the age of one

Hoffman’s (2011) 5 Modes of Empathic Arousal
(pp. 232-234)

Pre-verbal:
mimicry

The interpretation from Planet
Personality  perspective

Emotional
enmeshment and unconscious and autonomous identification and imitation -Classical conditioning

Types of Compassion

Identification from Attachment towards in-group members when they are not a threat to their
survival

 

Group Selection

Kinship
selection/identification

 

 

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE USE OF EMPATHY

 

Positive use

Identification / Instant Fusion /
Caring/ Imitating

Negative use

Rejection / Attack/ Bullying/ Fear-inducing/ Threatening

 

 

 

 

BOUNDARIES: PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL

 

 

 

Development of human physical
boundaries

Complete
containment through physical bonding

Development of human emotional outer
boundaries

Complete
containment and emotional enmeshment and bonding

Emotional Inner (in-group) and outer (out-group) boundaries

In-group:
Parasite or dependent self with Loose or “unformulated” ego
boundaries through a merger
with no privacy (Roland,
1988, p.227)/Out-group:
Paranoiac mistrust

Organization of we-self vs. individual self (Roland, 1988, p.224)

Symbiosis-reciprocity
or affective and experiential dimension
of I as part of the mother (we)-self

Type of emotional communication

Autonomous
emotional identification through the merger

 

 

 

 

 

Due to their lack of
boundaries, people with Mercury personality will be defenseless and easily
vulnerable to others’ physical and verbal attacks or transgression. They also
tend to please others for fear of not being loved, accepted, and validated. They tend to show instantaneous emotional Attachment
without considering any harmful consequences, manifested in their instant
desire to be cared for, be in love, care for the poor, sick, or helpless if
others come within their projected in-group circle, with whom they immediately identify.

 

ATTITUDE ABOUT SELF AND OTHERS

 

 

 

 

 

Mercury’s attitude about Self

Selfless

Partner’s Boundary

Protective
solid outer/

Enmeshed
loose inner

Mercury’s Self Boundary

Trustful,
dependent,
and uncontrolled loose outer and inner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COMMUNICATION

 

Communication level defined by Spitz (1957):

 

Spitz’s stages of communication 

3 months – 18 months

 

Primary narcissism; discrete physical
entity; Only aware of non-I

 

Non-verbal;
Passive submission

 

 

communication of emotions vs. thinking

 

Private
self to the out-group and public self to the in-group

Somatization
through acting within or explosion of feelings through violence

Thinking
will be mixed with emotions expressed
through an uncontrolled outburst

 

 

Prevailing modes of Common
communication/decision-making:

Order and directives of authoritarian ruler’s decision
and no communication required between
members

 

 

STYLES OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION:

 

Styles of expression:
(in-group vs. out-group)

Uncontrolled, volatile, or violent screaming or wailing
through an outburst of anger and sadness, individually expressed

Modes of emotional
sharing: (individual vs. collective)

Individually expressed through identification without control;

 through
psychosomatic physical fainting or violent outburst

 

 

 

 

LEVEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE defined by Goleman (1995)

 

(a) knowing one’s
emotions

Lower in certainty regarding their feelings due to their
tendency for projection

(b) managing
emotions

Low in controlling own emotion due to constant
battle with distress while venting through an explosion

(c) motivating
oneself

Lack of self-motivation except for impulse-driven passion
due to difficulty to recognize and mobilize emotions

(d) recognizing
emotions in others

Poor recognition of others’ emotion due to projection

(e) handling
relationships

Poor skill in the handling of a relationship due to misinterpreting
other’s emotion and dichotomous in
thinking

 

Daniel Goleman’s (1995) examples
of emotional problems

Emotionally engulfed; impulsive;
emotional flatness or alexithymia with no words to express feelings
w/o through physical symptom;

Predominant
area of brain
function

Amygdala; limbic – driven linked directly to motor
cortex;

Typical coping strategy

drinking and drugs (college male); eating (College female)

Why grief is difficult

The urgency of the fight-or-flight response demands no
time needed for emotional processing; engulfed by emotion with the fear of no
control

Effective Remedies
suggested

Aerobic or physical Exercise; socializing

 

INTERPERSONAL AND INTRAPERSONAL AWARENESS

 

 

 

Intrapersonal or
self-awareness and management

No self-control in feelings leading to acting out
behaviors; lack of ability to stop and think

Interpersonal or
social awareness and management

Interpersonal ability to bond through Trust; Ability to
obey the authority and tradition of the system;

 

 

LEADERSHIP STYLE

 

 

 

 

Leadership skills

Use power and threat to control or manipulate others;

Challenges

Coping with Excessive fear (panic) of life; controlling
emotional outburst and acting out of revenge and hatred; exchange of
non-verbal body language; self-initiation and care

Types of people in
the worst situation

Authoritarian dictator; Chronic complainer; the impulsive avenger

 

 

 

 

TYPICAL PARENTING STYLE

 

1.     
Authoritarian

2.     
Persmissive

3.     
Overindulgent, Over-protective

4.     
Overly-involved (Helicopter mom and Tiger-mom)