Perceiver Strategy 67be any size. Small bits of information are assembled to form big pictures,
and general principles are broken down into their component parts. Just as
Mercy strategy is the part of the mind which is responsible for storing
memories of experiences, so Perceiver thought is responsible for building
the connections between the forest and the trees of mental facts.
The Diagram of Mental Symmetry
We have talked a little about Perceiver thought. I would now like to
illustrate Perceiver thinking by looking at the diagram of mental symmetry.
As you know by now, I am a Perceiver person, and I suggest that this
diagram provides a picture of my way of thinking. In particular, I would
like to tell you why I chose to call it the „diagram of mental symmetry.‟
First of all, what we have is a diagram. I have just stated that Perceiver
strategy thinks in terms of mental maps. A diagram is a type of map. It
takes words and symbols, and depicts them in a way that shows the
connections between these various items. The diagram of mental
symmetry labels the major processing modes of the mind, and indicates the
connections between these strategies of thought.
As a Perceiver person, I found that my research was usually driven by a
search for connections. I developed this theory of the mind by taking the
concepts of others, and by connecting them together to form a general
understanding. I analyzed the mind by looking at each mode of thought
and by seeing how it connected with other ways of thinking.
Second, it is a diagram of mental symmetry. The Perceiver person is
naturally attracted to the facts behind experiences. What we are examining
here are the general principles which lie behind human thought and action.
I suggest that this approach can be very helpful. We live in a world of
complex human interactions, a sea of people and institutions. What lies
behind every human interaction is the human mind. Therefore, if we can
work out a map of thinking, this can help us to keep our mental directions
straight when we interact with other people or with other rooms within our
own mind.
For instance, open a newspaper and see how many of our problems
involve people and mental conflict: An ex-employee walks into the office
and kills six people before committing suicide; a country erupts into ethnic
conflict because one group of people hates another; part of a country wants
to secede because it either feels that it is being mistreated or else it senses
that its culture is being threatened; a terrorist blows up a building or derails
a train because of some perceived injustice. The list goes on and on.
Occasionally we read about a real catastrophe like a flood or a hurricane
but even here the human element seems to intrude: If a spaceship blows up,
then there is a suspicion of improper engineering; if a hurricane strikes, the
story centers upon the slow response of the emergency teams. You can see