When using our gifts of discernment, sensitivity, and intuition, we may be accused of being too “touchy feely.” I don’t see discernment in this light at all. I simply believe that every fact is preceded by a feeling. By understanding the feelings, we can anticipate the facts.
Three psychological principles are especially helpful:
1. Everyone is logical, according to his or her base. Originally I thought that anyone who differed with me was illogical. Psychiatrist Alfred Adler straightened me out when he wrote that every person is logical if you know the base from which he began his logic.
Now I realize I must find the other person’s logic base. Then I can understand his reactions and predict future behavior.
For example, if a person loses faith, his logic will seem askew to those who still have faith. When despair becomes a base, behavior can change anywhere from immorality to cynicism and immobilization.
Two people can have the same experience yet come to different, even opposing conclusions.
For instance, I used to drive a sports car and enjoyed putting it through the corners. My wife Mary Alice would scream, thinking I was going to roll the car.
Disgusted, I said, “I’ve done this hundreds of times, and there’s no reason to think I won’t be able to do it this time.”
She replied, “Driving the way you do, it’s inevitable that you will crash, and this may be the time.” She was perfectly logical; her base was that I was going to crash and every corner brought me closer. I had the opposite base: each corner increased my skill in making the next one.
We were both logical; our bases differed.
2. Dependence can create hostility. Another psychiatrist friend acquainted me with the term “hostile dependence,” which has been extremely helpful in business, family, and mentoring.
Often this shows up in long-term marriages when the wife becomes angry at the husband for no reason other than the fact that she is dependent on him. It isn’t his treatment of her but her dependence and lack of control that fuels her anger.
Older employees in a plant will sometimes turn against the company out of fear when in reality there is nothing to be afraid of except their dependence on the company.
Sometimes this even happens in a person’s relationship with God.
3. Respect psychic (and spiritual) space. A doctor told me of treating a lady who suddenly said, “I hate you! I hate you!”
“Did she?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I was simply violating her psychic space and she had to get me out of it.” He said he backed away, and she became quiet and conversational again.
I have seen psychic space violated in small groups where people are encouraged to open up, but later they were sorry, dropping out of the group and not wanting any contact due to things they had revealed about themselves. Private people should have their privacy respected.
Often we may invade people’s spiritual space without earning the right or being invited into that space.
Sometimes when a stranger has said to me, “What’s your spiritual condition?” I have wanted to reply, “What’s your financial position?” He probably would be horrified to be asked such a personal question, and yet there is nothing more personal than my spiritual situation. We should be interested in others’ spiritual condition, but care enough to earn the right and perceive the right time to ask about it.
—Fred Smith
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