ELVF - "Andersen"

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 

1) EMOTION ("romantic") 

2) LOGIC ("rhetorician") 

3) WILL ("bourgeois") 

4) PHYSICS ("slacker") 

It is impossible to comprehend "Andersen" from Andersen's fairy tales. Though, the tragic overload typical of the plots of his fairy tales already allows us to guess in him a "romantic" and a "lazy man" (1st Emotion + 4th Physics). Strangers to Andersen in his fairy tales were the optimistic endings he attached in spite of his own feelings, simply according to the laws of the genre. If genre allowed, one of Andersen's best tales would be the tale of the ugly duckling (3rd Will + 4th Physics) who knows (2nd Logic) that he cannot be a swan and who laments his bitter knowledge and fate (1st Emotion) alone in the dark corners of the bird yard in loud, gagging lamentation. Such is the true Andersen, and to see the famous storyteller and his type more clearly, let us turn to fragments of one biography of Andersen. 

His biographer wrote: "He made an impression of a funny but charming man, and in addition was distinguished by a naive and open obnoxiousness, which gradually provided him with important acquaintances, even among the wealthy townspeople. He was guided by a thirst for reading... Immediacy - or tenderness of mind, as he himself said - was one of the mysteries of his being and, over time, proved to be a strong feature of his character. But it was closely related to a congenital nervousness, which already then and throughout his later life brought him a lot of suffering, manifesting itself in particular in periodic depressions ... At the root of these fears and anxieties was the inescapable feeling that he was not yet old enough and did not meet the requirements of the adult world. "I am still as childlike as ever, but I am even happy about it," he wrote movingly... 

One sometimes suspects that, despite his anxieties, he still too often plays the role of the persecuted and resentful. Throughout his life he has been prone to gloomy and depressed moods and has often gone deeper into them instead of overcoming... 

...he was painfully sensitive; more than once the women of the family had to console and reassure him when he left the table in tears, offended by this or that innocent joke... 

He looked big and strong, and in certain situations he could give himself a lot of weight. But this strength was deceptive. In reality, he had to suffer all his life because of his very poor health. Strangely enough, none of his contemporaries were aware of this. Listening to him complain about various minor ailments, his friends attributed them to hypochondria, the self-indulgence of a lonely bachelor. So did Edward Collin. After forty years of acquaintance, he wrote to Andersen in 1865, "You have, in fact, excellent health; your nervousness is not killing you, but only tormenting. 

It was easy for others to say that he only seemed, for him the weakness was more than real... He had to constantly pick himself up, constantly try to deceive himself from his own sense of powerlessness, constantly have success or at least receive as an incentive praise and support. It happened that out of grief he would sit at home all day and cry. 

With such a constitution he was inevitably self-absorbed, restless, unbalanced and irritable... 

He never felt his composure for long, anything could cause him irritation, he lost patience over small things, at times behaved like a spoiled child or a mentally ill person... 

In his large but frail body lived an unrestrained soul, a volcano-like temperament, a fierceness and impetuosity that often enough surprised and terrified him. He was torn by enormous inner contradictions, and at times all his efforts were devoted to keeping himself in check... 

He had a nervous fear of the harsh realities of life; he lacked the masculine firmness that sometimes made him speak of his semi-womanly nature. His indecisiveness manifested itself in his remarkably cautious attitude toward some of his more opinionated friends and, most strikingly, in his more than cautious attitude toward women... His need for women was great, but his fear of them was even greater. He seemed to have an irresistible instinctive fear of intimacy with women, a puritanical fear of sexual attraction... 

Even more remarkably, all these features- immaturity, far-reaching vanity, and ridiculous self-absorption-appeared alongside opposing tendencies... There were other contradictions in him, less serious but conspicuous enough that his friends, and he himself, were struck by them: great good nature and a tendency to conceal malice, heartfelt openness and wise calculation, desire for solitude and need for society, cowardly fear and amazing courage at the right moment, pathetic weakness and steadfast endurance... 

There was every reason to fear that such a frantic and contradictory soul would one day snap, and in his later years, as his strength began to leave him, at some points he was unable to control the demons raging within him. But fortunately, there were stabilizing factors in his psyche. For example, a clear mind that allowed him to see himself from the outside and admit his weaknesses and oddities... 

Soberly and impartially he saw a strange contradiction between his own mood and the real reality... All his life he was the sharpest observer for himself and the sternest judge... 

Many argued whether or not he could be tolerated and had the right to be unbearable. But most went no further than digging into his quirks and oddities and characterized him with the simplest of clichés: childishness, pride, self-absorption, ambition..." 

I think in such a lengthy quotation the reader couldn't help but subtract all the main features of the "Andersonian" order of functions: 1st Emotion, 2nd Logic, 3rd Will, 4th Physics. 

Andersen appears to be an exceptional, pathological figure, but in fact there was nothing pathological about his psyche. It is bitter to say this, but "Andersen" does not exist as a disease, but as a norm, a psychotypic norm, a person with a certain order of functions. 

"Andersen" is the most tragic of all, rich in the tragic types of human psychology. The weakened vitality of the 4th Physique paints "Andersen's" worldview in tragic tones, makes him live in constant anticipation of disaster. Shakiness of the 3rd Will generates dislike of oneself and others, resentfulness, suspiciousness, capriciousness, hypochondria. When all this chronic nightmare caused by inferior functions is voiced by excessive 1st Emotion with its megaphone power, tears are not the strongest reaction to the polar night reigning in such a soul. I think people with the "andersen" psychotype must prevail in suicide statistics. No wonder the storyteller himself remained virgin and lonely. Such a decision should be recognized as both courageous and wise: to multiply the ranks of similar sufferers and infect his pain to others, did not make sense and could not bring joy. 

Usually the "andersen" is a thin, big-eyed, fine-looking person. The gaze is evasive, but if you catch it, you can read the longing, fear, passion, and intelligence all at once in the unusually expressive eyes of this type of person. Carelessly dressed, indifferent to food, comfort, and the opposite sex, "andersen" is a real excitement is only in communication, ready to talk, talk, talk ... Communicating with him could be a torture, if it were not for a special talent to turn his speech into a magnificent dish - the fruit of a flexible, strong, versatile mind and a soul sensitive to all the beautiful and expressive. At the same time, it would be extremely reckless to relax while talking to "Andersen. The most relaxed and heated communication can be suddenly cut off at half a word, instantly transformed into a scandal, cold, alienation, tears, because "andersen" terribly vague, painfully offensive and talented at spiteful language. One can understand Dickens, when he thankfully baptized after leaving his quiet, hospitable home Andersen. 

If "Andersen's" life is not finally made a hell, it is only thanks to the strong and flexible 2nd Logic. It is the only healthy part of his nature that can intelligently, aloofly, analyze from the outside what is going on in "Andersen's" soul, diagnose and predict the consequences. A good knowledge of oneself is a very comforting and effective tool for quenching the pain of these painful natures. After another scandal, Andersen wrote to a friend: "I am insane! But it will pass before you receive my letter..." "Andersen" knows himself, and this knowledge at least in part keeps his perpetually sideways, fractured psyche in balance. 

The "andersen" men deserve special compassion. Belonging to the most tragic of mental types, they are also the most deprived within this psychotype, deprived by gender correspondence. The "Andersen" man is an eternal teenage girl, stuffed into a bulky suit of an adult masculine being. Explaining what life is like for this girl in such a suit is difficult, complicated and better not necessary. Who knows, knows...