The Pygmalion Project
In 1929 the internationally famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, a concrete, practical joking, restless ISTP Artisan Operator, met and married Anne Morrow, an abstract, soulful, deeply introspective INFP Idealist Healer. Although the early years of the marriage had many "Golden Hours," as Anne termed them, she soon felt strong pressure from her husband to tone down her idealism and her poetic sensitivity, and to become more worldly and adventurous -- more like Charles himself. Anne went along with Lucky Lindy as best she could, learning to fly, and accompanying him on expeditions to map airline routes, but in her diary she recorded her private longing to meet with
sympathy and understanding and a kind of respect and acceptance of me and how I was trying to live and what I was trying to do, without the unrest of trying to change me, reform me.... Why can't one keep that admirable distance when one is married, that respect for another person's solitude, that withdrawal before what they are doing and being? Is it incompatible with a real and powerful love, or is it the result of one's preconceived ideas of marriage, one's preconceived standards?
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's notion of keeping admirable distance in a marriage is an important insight, for all too often -- again, after the honeymoon is over -- mates who have been in part attracted by each other's differences turn to what they regard as the true, serious business of the marriage, namely, to change their spouse into a person more like themselves. This intention to reform the mate is the Pygmalion Project I mentioned in Chapter 2 (or what Andras Angyal originally called the "Pygmalion theme" in interpersonal transactions). And the Grand Hypothesis of this discussion is that Pygmalion Projects are not only the primary source of ruptured marriages, but a common source of irritation in even the best of marriages.
It is a familiar pattern in our mating behavior. We go to all the bother of finding mates more or less unlike ourselves -- in some cases exactly opposite in all important respects -- and then we pull out all the stops in our attempt to transform them into our own image. The marriage license seems almost construed as a sculptor's license, giving each spouse the warrant to chisel away in a Pygmalion Project, trying to make the other into the mirror image of the sculptor. And, sadly, our sense of success in the marriage becomes all the greater, the greater the transformation we think we are bringing about.
Not that we want our mates to abandon their own natures completely. We merely want them to take up our task as well as their own, since we all assume that our particular aim in life is the most valuable for everybody. What we fail to realize, however, is that our mates cannot take to heart another aim as their own, not at least without violating their own character. For example, the Artisan, whose basic search in life is for exciting sensations, is simply not very concerned about the Guardian's search for social and economic security, the idealist's search for personal identity, nor the Rational's search for useful knowledge. And so it is for all the temperaments. They might be able to fake other goals to please their mates -- for a while -- but they will never adopt another's way as their own. Such differences can be integrated successfully in a marriage, but not in a single person. A leopard cannot change its spots.
Although there is no way we can transform our mates into ourselves, we all seem to want to try, and the attempt does great damage. By chipping away on our spouse we say, in effect, "You are not good enough. I want you other than you are." Here it is only fair to see a little Pygmalion in all of us, an all-too-human desire to control our nearest and dearest, to shape them up according to our wishes. Yet consider the supreme irony were we to succeed in transforming our loved ones. Attracted in the first place by their differences, can we be anything but dissatisfied by changing them into copies of ourselves? In other words, if we win the battle -- and it is a battle -- to change our mates, do we not actually lose a great deal of satisfaction in our relationships? Or is our desire to control our mates more satisfying than accepting them and loving them as the persons they are?
None of the temperaments are immune from the Pygmalion impulse. Do not Artisans urge their mates to lighten up? Do not Guardians work on their mates to be more responsible? Do not Idealists try to inspire their mates to be more soulful? And do not Rationals pressure their mates to be more logical? If it can be assumed that Pygmalion Projects are an inevitable part of any mating, then the task for all of us is to keep our coercion as loving and sympathetic and playful as possible. If we cannot -- if our manipulation becomes bullying or nagging or exhorting or intimidating -- then we have to expect our mates to defend themselves, and what might be called the "battle of the types" is joined, a conflict much more serious than the "battle of the sexes."
This does not mean that we should only marry someone exactly like ourselves. Many of the joys of complementarity -- the delightful sparks that fly from reconciling different styles -- would surely be lost if we only married our exact likenesses. And, indeed, observation shows that types who are exactly alike (two ISTJ Inspector Guardians, say, or two ENTP Inventor Rationals) are highly unlikely to marry each other. No, we seem to prefer opposition on some level in our mates, and Pygmalion Projects happen to be the price we have to pay.
But suppose we could recognize our natural impulse to reform our mates, pause each time the impulse strikes, and hold our tongue -- then some interesting phenomena might begin to appear. For example, if we could suspend our efforts toward trying to make our mates change in our direction -- to become more adventurous, or more reliable, or more soulsearching, or more rational -- then we might, just might, remember to appreciate what attracted us in the first place. Then, and to that extent, could different temperaments live happily ever after ... maybe.