The problem with outer-styled organization is that this method of managing in life so effectively hides and shields against personal need/vulnerability that there is little inside to propel/motivate personal growth. The challenge for the therapist is to somehow penetrate the protections of an overused outer-self, in order to bring out more truly personal experience from within, but to do so in a way that “brings the patient along” rather than frighten/damage/or wound. This can only happen within a therapeutic atmosphere permeated by patience and support. Without patience/support and empathy for the underlying fear that often drives the outer-styled, the outer-styled will have nothing to hold onto during the moments of marital conflict, crisis and confrontation.

It is my experience that all individuals have, to varying degrees an empty place within. One of the most difficult things in marriage is the extent to which the relationship evokes “the empty” within each of the partners. In fact, assessing the degree to which this is the case in any given marriage is one way of describing the extent of the functionality of a marriage. Intervening with this process, and learning to come into a “mutual quality of presence” that counteracts it, is one of the central challenges, and most important goals of a healing marriage.

Of late, I am reminded that it is not only “what couples say to each other” but also “how they say it”, that determines the outcome of couple’s interaction. However, behind the “what” and the “how” are even the more important “inherent assumptions” that underly all verbal communication and interaction in marriage. When negative, “the mutual assumptive process” does more to undermine and destroy relationship than any other dimension in marriage.

In working with outer-styled individuals, whether in marital therapy or long-term individual therapy, the biggest issue that must be addressed, and the biggest barrier to healing, is the failure to come forward as a “truly personal individual.” Depending upon their “level of maturity/developmental level/personal evolution,” the outer-styled will tend to offer up various “over-identifications with externals” in place of a “full-spectrum self.” Why is this pattern so resistant to change? What are the barriers to the emergence of the full sense of self?

The evidence from my clinical work is that the barrier is some varying combination of fear/anxiety related to core-self expression on the one hand, and over-identification with/allegiance to the outer-self on the other hand; that the outer-self so feels like the “true self” that to shift to core-self expression feels like not being who one truly is, that loosing a sense of “familiar self” is akin to loosing the sense of self at all.

Turning first to the issue of the need to keep core-self experience at a distance… what does the outer-style fear about connecting-with/operating-from core-self? In the web document Healing The Marriage Of Opposites http://marriageofoppositesproject.typepad.com/chapter_one_marriageofopp/ I posited that it is the vulnerability that goes along with functioning from core-self that the outer-styled most centrally want to avoid. To add to that, it is not simply vulnerable experiences that the outer-style do not want to have, they also want to banish the awareness/knowledge that they have a fear of such experiences. In essence, they fear knowing that they have such fear; hence they erect defenses to ward off this knowledge (minimization, intellectualization, compartmentalization, isolation of affect, grandiose self-estimation, denial).

In pushing away much of core-self experience, the outer-styled tend to become overly attached to their self-image and their place of exterior value in the world. In protecting their self-image, and the image that others have of them, the outer-styled fear the intrusion of core-self images of themselves; of viewing themselves as helpless, weak, needful, confused, incapable, or dependent. Having aligned with outer self-images, the integration with the more vulnerable images from core becomes increasingly dissonant and anxiety provoking. Akin to this understanding, having already rejected core-self experience in favor of a safe/reliable/controlled outer-self, having set out on this life path with this self-identity, it is compoundingly difficult for such an individual to opt to function from core-self at latter times in their life. This becomes a matter of maintaining congruent identity as much as fearing the vulnerability of cores-self longings, fears and desires. Said differently, there is as much fear of loosing congruence with ones chosen self-identity as there is fear of the particulars of core-self vulnerability. In essence, core-self feeling is a threat to a self-identity based upon not having such feeling, and this dissonance is likely to compound with time.

It likely that the day will come when there will be evidence from the neuro sciences of two broadly different patterns of neuro-physiological activation underpinning the two types. This eventuality is likely because the core and outer-styled are so profoundly different with respect to emotional activation and cognitive control that it is hard to conceive of such differences  without there being parallel differences in limbic system and cortical activation. Though the neuro-sciences may eventually lay bare a more complex truth, it is likely that broad differences in neuro-physiology will still be evident. Because a preponderance of core-styled tend to be women and outer-styled tend to be men, it is likely that these findings would bear some similarity to findings concerning the differences between male and female brain functioning.
      
The question then comes up, what are the psychological differences between the two types that a rich neuro-physiological model would have to account for?
   
The tendency towards escalating  emotional activation among the core-styled versus much more restrained or absent emotional activation among the outer-styled. The tendency towards cognitive activity devoid of strong emotion (“signal emotion” versus “compelling emotion”) among the outer-styled versus much less cognitive activity without emotion among the core-styled. The tendency “to approach conflict/creating more conflict” among the core-styled versus “to avoid conflict/reducing conflict” among the outer-styled.  The tendency to feel compelled to activate emotional/personal encounters among the core-styled, versus an absence of compelling need to activate but rather react to such encounters brought to them, among the outer-styled.  The tendency to strongly experience the feelings of others among the core-styled versus to weakly experience the feelings of others among the outer-styled.
   
Two general ways of thinking about the two types is evident here, possibly competing, possibly complementary models.  First, that it is a matter of under-controlled personality organization versus over-controlled personality organization. Second, that it is a matter of over-activated versus under-activated personality organization. Or some mix of the two. How would these dimensions pan out neuro-physiologically?