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?

Going back several decades, to my first years in graduate school, many of us beginning our career were in the habit of thinking of psychopathologies as variations on the normal. Not uncommonly psychotherapy trainees would refer to themselves or others as “that borderline… narcissist… obsessive… hysteric, etc” This way of thinking has an honorable history going at least as far back as Freud’s early work in the late 19th century, and probably much further. It is in this vein that I have often referred to core-styled/fuser/pursuer personalities as “borderline styled” and outer-styled/isolator/distancing personalities as “narcissistic styled.” The point here is two fold; that borderline and narcissistic pathologies are intensifications/extensions/elaborations of two normally occuring personality styles and that the normally occuring styles and the pathologies have important tendencies/dynamics in common. Psychotherapy lore has much to say about the characteristics of individuals who manifests these two styles.  In particular, I can confirm from my personal clinical experience in the long-term treatment of both individuals and couples, a very interesting finding sometimes spoken of by others; that inside every borderline styled individual is on unrealized narcissistic styled person, and inside every narcissistic styled person is a borderline styled person waiting to come out.       (to be continued)

I, along with others, have found it useful to divide core-styled self organization into three different types. The “pursuer form” is the most common and has been the subject of much of our discussion here.  A second type is the “core with outer-styled defense form,” also a common form of organization, but one which we will discuss elsewhere. The third, which in my experience is least common of the three, is the “distanced form of core-style.” We have seen in prior discussions how the core-styled can pull-away/push-away from their partner as a means of protecting from dissappointment on the one hand and engulfment fears on the other. For most core-styled these distancing behaviors are less prominent than pursuing behaviors. There are, however, a sizeable number of core-styled who adopt the push/pull-away adaptation to the exclusion of the pursuing mode. These are individuals who deep down inside long to reach out to others but who have come to feel so imperiled by the terribleness of the outcome, they commonly push/pull-away in advance. (to be continued)

Some days ago a colleague reminded me of the Harville Hendrick’s focus upon mutual empathy as central to fulfilling marriage. Thinking of Hendrick’s contribution, though many factors contribute to the successful MarriageOfOpposites, few are more important than well-developed empathy. Empathy is necessary in all marriages but it is especially important in the MarriageOfOpposites because of the huge foundational differences of the two psychologies. Almost always, when a MarriageOfOpposites is in trouble, a good part of the difficulty is inadequate or absent empathy. Likewise, healing in such a marriage requires the return to empathy where it has been lost and the creation of empathy where it has been absent.

The empathic failings of the two types are generally different. The core-styled readily loose awareness that much of their outer-styled partners emotional distancing is motivated by various forms of underlying fear/shame/self-sufficiency defense. Likewise, the outer-styled readily loose empathy for the pivotal role that abandonment/engulfment anxieties play in the core-styled’s emotional escalation/aggression/rupture.

For the core-styled, the containment of “aggression” is almost always a good thing. Negative repercusions generally follow when the core-styled discharge anger at their partner. The crux of the matter rest with two interacting dimensions. First, angry discharge meant “to shake” the more distancing partner into an awareness of their pursuing partner’s pain almost always results in the opposite; rather than “step up” or “awaken” to challenge, the outer-styled partner tends to shut down, defend, or become compliant. This leads to a compounding of pain and threat in the core-styled. Originally seeking redress for some issue related to the marital distance, the core-styled ends up receiving that which they fear most… more distancing. This deposits in the core-styled a feeling of being abandoned/rejected because of a “badness” inherent in their emotional reactivity, generally resulting in a powerful need to self-protect by even more attack, eventually resulting in reenactment of rupture in the marriage.

Second, the escalation that almost always follows the discharge of anger, has a damaging impact on the core-styled’s inner life. One person I worked with described it as “the monsters are loosed inside and walking the land.” Though this may seem an extreme example, it actually captures the feeling of many core-styled when they are caught up in rupturing escalation with their partner. At these moments the core-styled is thrown back into their most primitive selves, resulting in intense primal feelings and highly permeable boundaries. In this state, intense feelings of anger/rage/hate also result in intense anxieties regarding retribution and endangerment. This moves into a kind of normative paranoid state wherein the world is not safe. Throughout it all, it is very hard for the core-styled not to feel quite badly about themselves during these conflictual moments. At these times the core-styled often function as if their “worst case scenario” of the marriage is reality, resulting in increased polarization and often the spectre of marital breakup.

Core-styled individuals vary greatly, as do relationships, in the extent to which actual behavioral rupture result from marital conflict. The actual expression of the dynamics will vary depending upon particulars of the relationship, developmental level of the couple, and the emotional health in both partners. However, with varying degrees of both activation and restraint, most core-styled individuals will cycle through some degree of the above rupturing dynamic, following the highly predictable frustrations inherent in the marriageofopposites.