BIOLOGY IS DESTINY
(Transforming Idealistic to Realistic Personality)

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

As a child, I spent some time with my grandparents. They were farmers.  Naturally, they took me to their farms. They expected me to engage in the backbreaking work that they engaged in.  I tried it, just for one day and decided that I was not going to do it, again.  Every person around me was surprised that the eight years old I simply refused to go to the farm with his grandparents while their other grandchildren willingly did, as they were told. I just dug in my heels and refused to go to the farm, no matter what other people said. I could not be persuaded to change my mind. I can be as stubborn as a mule; if I said no, not even God himself can make me change my mind. Folk around me learned from experience that it was useless trying to make Tom do what he did not want to do.

     Why was I stubborn?  As a child, I probably did not understand the entire reasons why I was so stubborn. On this particular question, farming, all I knew was that I tried to farm, to till the soil with a hoe, as our folks did, and felt tremendous pain on my entire body and knew that I could not do that backbreaking work. Apparently, something in me recognized that if I persisted and defied the feedback my body gave me that I would die; to survive, to live I simply refused to engage in physically strenuous work. 

        The adults around me, of course, did not understand the biological reasons why I refused to work, all they could say was that Tom was inordinately stubborn and unruly and gave me a moniker, Agu (Igbo for tiger), the boy who could not be told to do anything that he did not want to do and he did it.  It was either my way or the high way, the adults used to say with obvious disapproval.

      My seeming stubborn streak repeated itself at school.  At school, we used to have what was called P.E (Physical Education).  Three times a week, the pupils would be brought to the field and made to run, play soccer and generally engage in other games.  Initially, I tried to participate.  But upon running around the field, as we were made to do, and or trying to participate in soccer playing, my heart beat as if it would fall out of its chest cavity and my legs felt like they were on fire and, ultimately, numbed; I experienced excruciating pain upon the slightest physical exercise so that I simply refused to participate in further sports. 

         Imagine a six year old boy refusing to do what his teachers, who, in our then Nigerian world, were looked up to as if they were gods, told him to do! I simply refused to participate in sports and other physical activities.  The teachers naturally felt flabbergasted that I defied their authority and tried to punish me. Did I say punish me? 

      A teacher tried to flog me and all hell broke lose. I practically destroyed our class room! How dare the teacher touch me with his filthy hands, I asked and fought like a tiger. It took many teachers to restrain me and when they let go of me the battle resumed, all over.

        As these things always work out, the teachers, like every one else around me, quickly assessed who they were dealing with, a stubborn child, and left me alone.

      So why did I refuse to work for my grand parents, refuse to participate in sports and resent it when punished corporally?  Was I antisocial? 

       I was anything but antisocial; in fact, if there was a child who was pro-social, it was I.  I did everything that my parents and teachers asked me to do, as long as they did not ask me to engage in physical activities. I did my school work rather diligently and generally was perceived by the teachers and adults in my life as very compliant. In fact, I was a model child and a model student.

       I refused to engage in physical activities because I inherited physical disorders that generated inordinate pain in my body, especially if that body is subjected to physical work. I was born with a disorder of the fifth lumber vertebrae, spondilolythes and a weakness in one of the valves of the heart, Mitral Valve Prolapse. The slightest physical activity produced enormous pain in my body (it felt like someone was electrocuting me, my body felt on fire, literally) and the slightest run made my heart pound like it was about to fall out of its thoracic cavity. 

        Given these physical discomforts, something in me told me to eschew physical activities and if any one thought that he knew better, my desire to survive made me fight him. You simply did not tell Tom to engage in physical activities, you left him out of that department of life. Ask him to go clean the house, wash dishes, do his homework etc and he cheerfully complied, but ask him to do what would generate pain in his body and he fought like a boy possessed by the demon and other evil spirits.

      The adults in my life simply left me out of their physical chores. I was more likely to be found at school or on my bed reading novels. In standard five and six, I used to walk to Lagos Central Library to borrow books, take them home, lie on my bed and read them, sometimes all night long. That was my life. I do not recall spending time playing with the other kids. The only physical activities that I enjoyed were riding bicycle and swimming. On Saturdays, my friends and I went to the only swimming pool in our world, Onikan, and practically spent all day there. Alternatively, we would ride rented children’s bicycles along the side streets of Lagos .

       I was in elementary school when the first man from our area to have a doctorate degree (?), Eze Ogueri, was celebrated by our people. Our people gathered to pay homage to this man for his high achievements in America .  They related to him like he was God himself. I remember attempting to touch the man, to see what it felt like touching a man said to have learned everything there was to learn in this world!

     What is important is what happened during that episode. There and then I resolved to be like the man, to go to America and become a doctor of knowledge, as he was reported to be. Thereafter, I completed elementary and secondary schools and immediately left to America and did not stop until I had the PhD.

        I do not believe that I had any moment of rest from the time I had seen the brother from America to the time I completed my dissertation at the University of California . Ambition your name was I. 

      After achieving the so-called golden-fleece, I felt deflated, like I had accomplished nothing. I had felt that attaining that degree would somehow transform me into somebody special. But, I was still good old Tom, the boy who felt weak and struggled to seem strong. I became disenchanted with the whole idea of becoming somebody important and dropped out of the first teaching job I was offered. I threw myself into the study of psychology, to understand human thinking and behavior.

IDEALIZING, FANTASY

        What is clear to me is that from a very early age I was always thinking, day dreaming and imagining how everything could be different and better.  I would see something and immediately appreciate its imperfections and use my imagination to visualize how it could be made better.  Nothing, as it is, was ever good enough for me.  Everything had to be different and better. This included things like trees, animals and people.

       As a boy, I would stand in front of a tree wondering how it could look better than it is. I loved dogs and was constantly preoccupied with how they could be different and better; if it is not their bodies, their behaviors. I would stand in front of a house and appreciate its imperfections and imagine how the architect that designed it could have designed a better house and the engineer constructed a better house.

        People, ah people, none of them seemed good enough for me. I would see a person and quickly appreciated his or her physical and behavioral imperfection and used my imagination to figure out how he or she could become better. No ones behavior was ever good enough for me; I would imagine how people ought to behave to approximate what seemed to me how a perfect human being should behave.

       What the individual does to other people is what he has first done to himself and what he did to himself he must do to other people.  I imagined how I could be better in every imaginable way.  To me, I was never good enough and was always positing ideal self concepts and ideal self images and aspiring to become like them. As I approach one goal post, it is shifted by my mind, wish, and another, a putatively better goal post replaces it and I would aspire after it.  Nothing I ever did was ever good enough for me. I was my own worst critic.

        As an adult, I tried to understand my mental processes. I believe that this pattern of thinking is rooted in my problematic body.

        Nobody who inherited my body would like it. My God, on hot summer days my body felt on fire and would itch all over. Sometimes, I would feel like someone set me on fire and I would douse my body with cold water. It was always one thing or another wrong with my body. Looking at me from the outside that you would not know any of the things that I am describing here. In fact, you could take me for one of the lucky specimens of human beings; I was considered handsome; the women in my world tended to prefer fair complexioned children and since I met the bill, I was their darling.

       My body was diseased (dis-at-eased).  Food made my stomach upset and I had to choose carefully what food I ate. I remember what happened when I tried to smoke cigarettes.  I was twelve years old and had just completed elementary school.  My friends and I smuggled some cigarettes into a vacant house and smoked them.  I smoked a cigarette and it made me so dizzy that I felt like I was dying. Here we were, the other kids, apparently, having fun and I was faint! What a humiliation in the presence of my peers. 

        In secondary school, the same pattern was repeated when I joined my dormitory boys and tried marijuana.  Only a puff of that smoke and I fainted. I tried it a few more times, and gave it up. I have never tried any other drug. (I take a glass or two of beer once in a blue moon.)

       The boys at my school drank a whole lot of coffee, usually to keep them up at night as they studied, so, I attempted doing what they did. Peer pressure is strong among teenagers. Caffeine made me so excited that I felt like I would jump out of my skin! I persisted in drinking coffee and somewhat got used to it; it was later in adult life that I decided that I did not have to subject my body to chemical abuse and gave it up.

       Clothes, particularly synthetic ones, made my body itch all over. Sometimes, I removed all my clothing just so that I did not feel physically irritated. If you caught me at home, the chances are that I would be skimpily attired.

       Walking a long distance made my legs become numb…with electrical sensations coursing through them.

       When I began driving, I noticed that when I drove long distances, the foot on the pedal felt like it was transferring heat and electrical energy from the car’s motor to my legs and my legs would feel so hot that if I did not stop to ease them, they would become numb and I would feel no sensation in them. I once drove from Portland , Oregon to San Francisco , California and when I got to my hotel, I could not get out of the car. My legs were simply dead and had no life sensation in them. Eventually, I managed to get myself out of the car but could not walk. It took over an hour of trying before I managed to walk, holding unto something. And as I tried to walk up the stairs to my room, I felt jarring electrical sensations on my legs; I had to hold unto the rails, constantly stamping my feet on the stairs to make them seem able to hold my weight.

        One could understand such things happening to decrepit old men, but to a young man barely past twenty?  It was embarrassing, to say the least.

      Simply stated, my body was not friendly to me and I hated it. I rejected my body and wished that I had a different and better body.

        This self rejection was in place by the time I stated elementary school at age six, for I remember detesting my body for not enabling me do what other children did very easily, play. I resented having always to go sit on the sidelines or lay on my bed to feel comfortable while other kids seemed to be having fun out there.  I hated my body and rejected it. I believe that my hatred of my bother was based on rational grounds; only a masochist would like my body.

       This type of self hatred has nothing to do with race-induced self hatred. There are white and black folk who hate their bodies for medical reasons. I find it necessary to say this for sociology and psychology, both largely pseudo science, have managed to convince folk that self hatred has its origin in social hatred. I have never wished to be white nor do I care that much for what passes as Western civilization. Of course, I like science, but science is not a Western but universal phenomenon.

     Because of my somatic issues, I gravitated to idealistic thinking; I indulged in wishful thinking, imagining how things could be better. I spent inordinate amount of time in fantasy, constructing castles in the sky and wishing to live in them. Alas, I could not live in those castles, for man is condemned to living in his imperfect body.

       As a result of my proclivity to idealistic thinking, I gravitated to idealistic philosophies and consumed the writings of German idealistic philosophers, such as Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche etc. I must confess that I liked these German dreamers, but in time, I came to realize that they were merely dreaming and returned to our beloved English logical positivists, the empiricists who insist that we study the world as it is, without escaping into what seems ideal alternative to it. I fell in love with Francis Bacon, David Hume, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, William James, even the somewhat dreaming Irishman, George Berkeley (minus his solipsism). French and other thinkers were also fascinating, such as Descartes, Voltaire, Pascal, Rousseau, Spinoza etc.

       In college, I took psychological tests, such as the MMPI and WAIS. The tests indicated that I had elevated obsessive-compulsive and avoidant personality traits. I tend to think obsessively and fear social rejection and to avoid rejection keep to my self (avoidance). My intelligence tested out at superior ranges (any thing above 132 is considered superior.)

        In this essay, I am not invested in Western psychological categories, for they are exactly those, Western, not universal. I do not believe that we have a real science of psychology, yet. What currently passes as the science of thinking and behavior, psychology, is mostly derived from the Western Experience. Western experience is obviously useful but is by no means the entire human experience. We have to add the African and Asian experience before we can have a universal psychology, a real science of thinking and behavior.   

        If I were to give me a diagnosis, I would say that I have an idealistic personality. This type of personality can be subsumed in several of those posited by Western psychology, two of which I mentioned above. If I placed me on the current Western psychiatric diagnostic nomenclature, it would look like this:

Axis 1:  Rule out Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Axis 11: Idealistic Personality (with obsessive-compulsive and avoidant features).

Axis 111: Medical issues, Spondilolysis and Mitral Valve Prolapse.

Axis IV: Psycho-social stressors, minimal.

Axis V: Highest level of functioning, optimal functioning.

       I do not believe that I meet any of the diagnostic categories described in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. None of those nosological states could explain me. I certainly do not have psychoses (schizophrenia, delusion disorder, bipolar affective disorder, depression etc) for, to the best of my knowledge, I have never had hallucinations and delusions (may be some illusions?).

       I doubt that I could be described as having obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. I say so because though I think rather obsessively, as if I have to think, it certainly is not compulsive. Moreover, I believe that I think obsessively because something in me wanted to find out what is the matter with my body. 

       I tend to have an urge to investigate phenomena, to do research and find out the reasons why things happen the way they do. When one of those urges takes hold of me, nothing else matters until I get to the bottom of my inquiry, even if it means reading all the books in a typical library and going without sleep for several days.

       I tend to have an urge to complete whatever assignments I am working on before the somatic pains that have dogged me all my life take over. As it were, my body says: go ahead and do that thing and get it over with before I visit you with pain, pain that is so unbearable that you must desist from doing what you are doing.

       For example, I am sitting in front of my computer tying away. Suddenly, my back is in pain and my lower back feels like it is on fire, and, soon, the burning sensation migrates to my stomach and legs. I experience an urge to type very fast and complete whatever it is I am typing before the pain incapacitates me and I have to go lay down on a couch to reduce that pain. Thus, I type very fast, like a driven man, trying to complete the task before me before the pain takes over.

       The point is that what seems like compulsion is really biologically mediated effort to complete tasks before one dies and exits the stage of constant pain. One wants to accomplish what one could before one dies and disappears into the oblivion that is the human fate. (Please do not pity me. Zeno, Epictetus, Virgil, Cicero, Marcus Aureoles, Ovid and the other stoic and epicurean philosophers prepared me well to endure my pain. Seize the day, for tomorrow we shall die, is my motto.)

        Avoidant personality?  I probably have aspects of this personality type, for, as a child, I was extremely shy and worried about social rejection and mostly kept to myself to avoid anticipated rejection. I tended to feel fear while anticipating social rejection and to avert that anxiety withdrew from people. I recall feeling stage fright when I was part of my secondary school’s debating club and participated in debating in front of a large audience.

       I believe that my pained body is what made me to develop anxiety, which was then generalized to social situations hence to avoid social and other interactions that aroused pain/fear in me. My childhood avoidant behavior was mediated by my problematic biological constitution. (I say childhood, for, as an adult I could care less whether other people accepted or rejected me; what matters to me is articulating the truth, as I see it, not social approval.)