Most of us know someone who is clueless. Perhaps they are a friend or relative - maybe even someone we love dearly. We call them clueless because we think they know nothing about themselves, or perhaps they know nothing about us, but somehow they go on in life, bumbling through. Often, they are successful - even rich. Every culture has such an archetype - the fool - the simple schlemiel who stumbles into wealth, love or whatever, while the rest of us work hard and pay through the nose for every good thing that ever came our way.
Does psychoanalysis have anything that would account for the success of clueless people?
Well, psychoanalysis has something to say about nearly everything, but by my lights, if you were to distill all of analysis into one concept, one prescription, it would be this:. Study, study and more study. Once you study a behavior or a feeling or other phenomena it almost always yields clues.
But you have to know how to study: When we study a behavioral phenomenon we not only study the behavior itself, but also its psychological purpose. So for example, if one is "lazy" or "disorganized" we want to understand how this behavior is useful psychologically even if in a negative or perverse way.
There is a school of thought that holds that people are as smart or as dumb as they "need" to be. People engage in behavior that is psychologically useful to them. A clueless woman will remain in the dark about her husband's comings and goings because she may not want to see.
A friend of mine used to tell me about an obnoxious salesman who routinely managed to piss people off: He was brusque and loud-mouthed and yet he was extremely successful. Others who were more sensitive never made it to first base. How could it be this lout was so successful? How could he rack up orders and rake in money, while being rude and crude and completely out of tune?
The answers to this question are legion and diverse, but studying this one person revealed that he was not so clueless at all. What was salient about him was his enormous appetite for money and action. It was this lively narcissism in him that triggered other people's appetite for life. It was infectious. He was a short fat man, who would say all day in a nasal whine, "I need your business. I need it."
Those that he ticked off were not going to be his customers anyway, but most were not. He was vulgar and crude, but full of life and order they did, sheets, towels, pillowcases, linens. (This was the sheets and linen business.) Upon closer look it was the sensitive salesmen who were clueless. They would spend time with people who agreed with them, who were similar to them in temperament. They gravitated toward people who would give them good feelings, but they were not customers. They were much more clueless.
Of course, this begs the question. Why do some clueless people succeed and others are serial failures? The answer seems to be in where they locate themselves. A clueless person is not necessarily a hapless one. If he is firmly and snugly located next to his desire, his clueless-ness places him at distinct advantage. If he is the meandering, hapless sort, he will find himself thwarted most of the time.
