Thought Process Differences: The New Prejudice

“What’s alike between an apple and an orange?”

That’s a question frequently posed on a psychiatric mental status exam. Typical responses are “they’re both fruit,” “they’re both round,” “they both have seeds,” and “they’re not alike, they’re different; one is red and the other is orange.”

People who think more literally and people who think more abstractly tend to have difficulty understanding one another. Prejudice takes root in misunderstanding.

“You would prefer to be the ‘single parent’ for your new business, wouldn’t you?” 

I made that interpretation to a young divorced mother I sensed would easily understand the parenting-partnership metaphor. If I had been working with a different type of person I would have addressed the difficulties with her business partner more directly, focusing on the specific area of conflict between them rather than making the leap to a different level of abstraction. A person with yet another thinking style might have heard me present the analogy in a more explanatory way, asking if her angry feelings toward her partner felt similar to the feelings she felt toward her husband that led her to prefer single motherhood to marriage.

If Person #1 had made that statement to her friend, Person #2, the response would probably have been “Huh? What do you mean? I don’t get it.”

The ability to conceptualize ideas in abstract and metaphorical ways has long been considered the hallmark of mental health, but I believe we need to think differently about this issue. The fact is that some people think more literally while others think more abstractly. That can change to some extent given the right education, but generally speaking, the way we think is the way we think. Extremes on either end of the spectrum are problematic and may require treatment, but most of us fit somewhere on the wide range of normal.

If I ask someone who comes to see me for the first time, “What brings you here today?” and I’m told, sincerely, “the subway on 42^nd street” or “I’m not sure if the problem is Apollonian or Dionysian,” I can pretty much assume the person has a problem with abstract thinking; response #1 is too concrete and #2 is too abstract. “I’m here because I’ve been fighting with my partner, who’s a jerk” and “I’m here because I have trouble expressing myself appropriately when I get angry with people that matter to me” would be within the range of normal.

Most of us fit somewhere on the normal spectrum, but the range of normal varies widely. Some of us get lost in our imaginations and can’t do our taxes, while others have the opposite set of strengths and weaknesses. We all think using different linguistic frameworks.

We need to learn to listen to one another’s communication styles with an ear for “new music” rather than feeling annoyed or ashamed when people speak in a way that confuses us. If we could learn to ask for clarification without feeling defensive or offensive, we’d bring out the best in ourselves and one another. We would listen, relate, and even think, in new ways.