Chrissy's Share: The Gift of Not Belonging

From Chrissy: Once upon a time at a family dinner of my youth, my older brothers went around the table and assigned dog breeds to my sisters and me. Unfortunately the resulting assessments were less than flattering. When they finally reached me, I held my breath. "Assuming everyone else is a dog," they said — "YOU would be a cat."

All of this is to say that when I saw the book, “The Gift of Not Belonging” by Rami Kaminski, MD on the “new” shelf at the library, the title tugged at my inner-cat. It turns out that the book represents Kaminski's opening salvo at establishing “otrovert” as a third personality type to the existing dyad of “introvert” and “extrovert.” In case you knew as little as I did at that point, here is the definition he uses in Chapter 1:

Otrovert: 

[noun, adjective ot-truh-vert; verb ot-truh-vert] An “otrovert” embodies the personality trait of non-belonging: remaining an eternal outside in a communal world. Unlike those with relational disorders, otroverts are empathetic and friendly, yet struggling to truly belong in social groups, despite no apparent behavioral distinctions from well-adjusted individuals.

Essentially, he argues that introverts and extroverts are “communal” people in the sense that they are naturally inclined to want to be part of a group and so willingly and loyally adopt the beliefs, behaviors, and norms of groups over their own. Meanwhile otroverts, he claims, lack this communal impulse. Though otroverts are often members of groups and are generally well-liked people, they tend to feel apart from and resistant to the idea of a unified group identity. 

Reminds me of Grouco Marx who famously said that he refused to “join any club that would have me as a member.” Also reminds me of Tina Wigle who in 8th grade called me a “dork” because I didn’t like or want to dress like Madonna. 

The good news is that you don’t have to read the whole book to familiarize yourself with the concept. Check out the Otherness Institute organization and webiste, both of which Kaminski created to "educate and empower otroverts and those who care for them.” There is even an online test you can take to gauge your ‘otherness!'

Okay, so…my ultimate question after reading the book is of self-identification or self-reference, I think. Because it’s clear that Kaminski himself identifies as an otrovert. To what extent does this limit or bolster the entire idea and research — e.g., is he objective enough? How do we account for implicit or explicit bias in social science research?

I was also annoyed early on when he insisted that being an otrovert is binary. “There’s no such thing as being a 'a bit otroverted’, he said, “you either are or are not an otrovert.” This felt unnecessarily rigid to me, as in a my-way-or-the-highway type of way. 

Bringing self-reference back into the conversation, though, how do I know if I’m disagreeing in principle on the argument’s merit or instead acting out my otrovert nature by refusing to agree with everything he says? 

Also, to what degree do we need a label for free thinkers? By labeling such a temperament, do we risk standardizing something that doesn’t need standardizing…watering down the essence to fit the straightjacket of language…or creating more ways to arbitrarily define boundaries between people? 

Or, does shining an affirming light on this phenomenon provide a helpful, even life-saving framework, as he argues in the book, for those in Western cultures who feel lonely, isolated, misjudged, or socially exhausted from pretending to like small talk and large gatherings in an effort to fit in and make connections? 

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gift-of-not-belonging-how-outsiders-thrive-in-a-world-of-joiners-rami-kaminski-md/73221a9eb80cceba?ean=9780316576086&next=t