What I Learned from Personality and Its Transformations

Took me a while, but I got through Personality and Its Transformations by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. I had to rewind lectures more than a hundred times and probably drank just as many cups of coffee along the way. That is because Dr. Peterson connects so many ideas together in a genius-level way. Freud, Jung, mythology, developmental psychology, all mixed into one continuous argument that takes real effort to follow.

It was a challenge to fully understand for me, but I get the main ideas now. Especially the part about exposure, submersion, and transformation, and how the goal you have shapes what becomes real to you. The last lecture of the course really helped me understand this more in depth, pulling the entire course together into something I could actually apply. The course is quite long, by the way. I think it took me a week to finish.

Exposure to me means you come into contact with something new. Submersion is when the new thing stops being just an idea and starts breaking apart the way you normally think. This is the part most people avoid, because it is uncomfortable by design. Then transformation happens as a byproduct, but only if you actually act on what you found during exposure and submersion. Without action, the submersion is just disorientation with no destination.

Having a goal is the thing that decides what you actually notice in a world full of too much information. Two people can go through the exact same experience and walk away seeing two totally different realities, just based on what they were aiming for the whole time.