Mercy Strategy 43reminds my mother of her „ghost of Christmas past‟ and brings back the
pleasant feelings of childhood.
The associations of the Mercy person do not always involve dolls,
dresses, atmosphere and Christmas. The Mercy person is naturally talented
at finding unorthodox solutions to practical problems. He will pull together
experiences and objects from here, there and anywhere until an answer is
found—a behavior which I call „doctoring.‟ The Apple II personal
computer, for example, was designed by a Mercy electronics whiz called
Steve Wozniak. It contains a number of very efficient but highly
unorthodox circuits. In a similar way, my mother is always „doctoring‟
food in order to make it taste better. Some of her culinary solutions are also
quite unusual.
Mercy Automatic Thought
I suggest that the Mercy person is good at „doctoring‟ because he
„lives‟ in a mental room which is surrounded by experiences. Remember
that each of the four simple styles contains an internal world at the front of
the cortex, and a corresponding automatic part at the back.^ A One could
think of the automatic fragment as a sort of mental toolshed. While all of
the significant experiences are pulled into the front of Mercy thought to
form the internal world, the other less important memories are stored in the
back. Therefore, when the Mercy person faces a practical problem, he only
needs to go into the „back‟ of his mental room and rummage around in his
„storage shed‟ in order to come up with an appropriate response.
My sister-in-law‟s brother is a Mercy person who designs and builds
electronic devices for underwater applications. His lab provides a perfect
example of the way in which Mercy „doctoring‟ uses bits from the „storage
shed.‟ He constructs his testing and production equipment out of plastic
pipes, light bulbs, meters bought at estate sales, scrap pieces of lumber, and
stepper motors salvaged from ancient computer disk drives. The gizmos
that emerge from his „storage shed‟ of external parts and internal ideas are
truly amazing.
Sheds are great for holding odds and ends, but have you ever tried to
find something in a cluttered shed? You move aside the lawnmower, and a
pile of rakes and shovels comes tumbling down. You get the tools out of
the way and a mouse scurries from the corner. What you need may be there
somewhere, but where?
A Our analysis of MBNI indicates that the Mercy person‟s toolshed or
automatic part spoken of here is in Introverted Feeling, a region in the back
of the brain. The internal world would then be in Extraverted Feeling,
which is located in the front. A similar parallel can be made for the other
four strategies. The details are covered elsewhere, and are not relevant to
the arguments in this book.