"A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent." -  Jerome Lawrence, famous American author and playwright.
Summary: Stating is simply, there are two types of people, the personality disorder and the neurotic. The neurotic says "it's my fault." The personality disorder says "it's your fault." One takes responsibility for their behavior and the other doesn't. The neurotic will take responsibility for a problem and can try to fix it. The personality disorder will unconsciously or consciously blame others for their predicaments and wish the world would stop screwing them. In business, the neurotic will work with you, admit mistakes and may try to fix problems. The personality disorder will blame others in their organization for their misfortunes and can hold grudges. Either type make good allies of salespeople. In reality, we are all an unequal combination of the two.
When you look at how people take responsibility for their lives, they fall into two categories. Some take responsibility and some do not. In actuality, we all fall somewhat in between the two. Psychologists call these two categories the personality disorder (used to be called the character disorder) and the neurotic. The personality disorder says "it's not my fault" and the neurotic says "it's my fault." Whichever of these two categories are more pronounced in you depends on your childhood upbringing and other factors research is still discovering. In more pronounced cases of each, the symptoms can seriously effect your life, but I am only going to discuss "normal" people. One of the unfortunate factors of life is that you encounter problems from time to time. These problems can be external, which effect you but didn't originate with you. Then there are the ones you created by your behavior. (There are psychiatrists who believe all problems originate with you, no matter what source you "perceive" they originate from).

The neurotics and the personality disorder are simply categories which conveniently help categorize a common set of behaviors. As with any type of behavior, there are degrees of how strong or weak these characteristics are. Normal people are somewhat in the middle, but weighted to either neurotic or personality disorder. The more the weight to one side, the stronger the tendency toward the characteristic.

The neurotic person will take responsibility for their behavior. This means they view themselves having an effect on the world around them and what the world presents to them is the result of what they do. Usually, people you encounter in business take responsibility for their behavior. At least people that hold down jobs that depend on relationships with other people. They can be trusted and are capable of trusting you. These people can have excellent character traits and are overall, good people. You will find neurotics everywhere in an organization. Depending on how neurotic they are, they will be easy going or take some energy to deal with. If they are too neurotic, they may have issues which may hinder how effective they can be at their job, how people view them as team members. Someone who is very neurotic can be obsessed about screwing up, so much so they eventually screw up. They can be insecure, which happens when they take too much responsibility for their behavior and also feel they are incompetent at managing themselves. This puts them into a bind which is self-generated and can consume them with worry. Excessively neurotic people are distracted by worry, which is bothering them constantly. They may even be having panic attacks. Someone who is very neurotic may seem overly hyper, have short attention span and not be dependable. These symptoms may also be caused by other personality issues, but should be a warning to you to be careful if you must work with a person like this.

Most of the time you will deal with mildly neurotic people who have no outward symptoms and take responsibility for their actions, a key component in business. Most all these people are good to work with and as long as they aren't too neurotic, can be depended to be good teammates.

The personality disorder is a different game altogether. These people don't take responsibility for their actions. They will blame outside influences for issues with their behavior, including other people. Again, not all people have strong characteristics but can be somewhat on the personality disorder side of the spectrum. Many of these people lead normal lives just like the neurotic. These people cannot be trusted. This is because they blame outside forces for their problems. Therapists never see these people because they blame everybody else and refuse to see themselves as the root of a problem. They can't be helped and won't do anything unless they have severe behavioral problems. A very troubling problem with these people.

You have to be careful if you need to work with the personality disorder. If they ask you to do something and whatever you do has a problem, you will get blamed. Also, they may have powerful unconscious forces which use manipulation and even betrayal as methods to get what they want. Usually, people who "set people up" are personality disorder types. They can be very intelligent and survive in an organization whose culture promotes advancement over character. These people can be introverted or extroverted, not trusted by their peers and can be very charming. You can detect a personality disorder type by listening to the way they talk and how their peers describe them. If you talk with one long enough, you will begin to detect they view themselves as a victim of the world around them. They can have a dark view of their company, of the people around them and the world in general. This doesn't have to be black and white and their comments may be subtle. In fact, the more intelligent the personality disorder person is, the better they will be at hiding their contempt for the world around them. Their peers will have neutral or off-hand comments about them. Also, but not all the time, you may hear they don't socialize well. Since these people view their problems as not theirs, they aren't concerned with correcting their behavior and rationalize issues they have with other people which are clearly of their own creation. In your travels through an organization, you will encounter these people. Be careful if you have to depend on them and make sure you cover your tracks. Fortunately, there aren't many of these kinds of people but I'm sure everybody knows one.
Copyright 2005 by Tony Rea
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Sales Tip: Never cross your arms while you are talking with someone. This is bad body language and transmits an unconscious negative message. Also, try not to use lead-in phrases like "To tell you the truth" or "To be honest." While we all are tempted to use phrases like this to create a more confidential air, they really imply that previously we weren't telling the truth. This has negative effects on both the conscious and unconscious person.