How rare is this kind of person?

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How rare is a person who is deeply interested in others minds? I have one friend who has a mind that is very fun to explore, he is very resistant, stubborn, and has very well constructed defense mechanisms. I enjoy trying to break them down. I also enjoy exploring my other friends minds. Sometimes i wish there was someone like me who would try to explore my mind. So how rare is this kind of person?

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Last edited by Ante on 09 Nov 2005, 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ooooooo! On the rare occasion I encounter people like this (recently, an almost-former friend with whom I was sort of involved romantically last year - long, messy story, don't ask...), I relish picking their brains to find out what makes them "tick". Most people bore the crap out of me, though... Needless to say, the person being scrutinized tends to not appreciate my insatiable inquisitiveness, and often gets royally pissed off. Alas.

I'm VERY interested in other people's minds...

I can't really understand most of them...

Dunno, but I'm one of them. That kind of stuff fascinates me to no end.

me too! i've studied people and their minds for about 25 years. helps with the lack of theory of mind and empathy thing, no end.

Heh. I have to. Psychology isn't a subject u get away w not understanding other people's minds in

I'm constantly exploring other people's minds, I usually don't find much in them though.

very rare, not a lot of people are like that.

Ah you read one mind, you've read them all. Sleep. Eat. Sex. Sleep. Eat. Sex. Thats about it.

The only friends i've made are other tortured nerds, so they all have well developed defense mechanisms. Personally I intentionally try to figure out my own head, looking for any irrational judgements or knee-jerk reactions and trying to explain why i think them. If i find something where i think it may just be a lie to protect my ego I try to rid myself of it. And if there is something irrational I can't manage to get rid of I at least admit it is just a defense mechanism.

I really pride myself on that. Even when i'm blind pissed I can say to myself. I am soooooo angry but i know i'm being irrational and unreasonable, and my judgment of that person is just because i'm protecting my ego.

So it is a little frustrating when i explain to someone that theyre just behaving in some way to protect their ego and it would be more productive to admit it and change their behavior, and they believe they have a right to behave that way. Theyre right, it is their right, but it is counterproductive.

You've got to keep in mind the way emotions work. If a person's being irrationally defensive about something, odds are it hides a deeper issue - you probably already know that. But until the deeper issue gets resolved, the emotion won't go away, it can just get suppressed or overridden in the name of logic. Really their defesiveness is their own warning signal to protect themselves, and while your explanation may make perfect sense, chances are that what they're hearing is really "You have no right to protect yourself, just like you didn't when people hurt you in the first place."

If you really want to get past their mental blocks, it's a far more effective tactic to indulge the emotion a little, let them feel like it's real, and then it will dissolve instead of just being shoved aside.

Feh. Sure, if you're talking about reading "normals'" minds, silly. They don't really have all that much up there to begin with, so you're just setting yourself up for disappointment...

I'm really good at analysing people when I'm not directly involved in the situation being analized. For instance I was off by two days on my prediction of when when this couple at school were going to break up two and a half months ahead of time on top of the general working on what was going to happen before and affter said break up. However when I'm trying to analize a situation that I am in it is so much harder because it's so much harder to observe the entirety of the situation because of people not telling the truth.

<Unsuspecting victim trying to read my mind>

tea... email... science news...

All fairly normal.

Electron waves... hypercubes... AI...

Less normal.

Weaponry design and (mental) simulation... methods for radical political and economic change... psychological effects of extreme violence...

Um.

KingChaosNinja; that's a really great av.