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The Quick Retort An acquaintance of mine is outwardly very successful and very popular, almost charismatic. He appears not to care what people think of him, a quality that many people find quite endearing, and he is able to joke in an apparently uninhibited way. It's an attribute of many successful people that they are cut off from their emotions. The reason for this is that such people have no self-doubt about what they do - the questioning voice of conscience is kept very quiet. Of course, such people often pay a high price later on in life when the consequences of their actions come to pass. The person who dedicates himself to climbing the corporate ladder is made redundant when he gets to middle age and his wife leaves him because he has become impossible to live with. I say 'him' because in the past this was invariably men. Nowadays however, many women fall into the same trap - and think that they are 'enlightened'! What I want to examine here is a rather strange characteristic. I've mentioned before that things are often the opposite of how they appear. The charismatic person I described appears to not care what people think about him. However what happened was that when he was a child he was extremely self-conscience of fitting in and, as a result, he cut himself off of any criticism and developed defence mechanisms to protect himself. If someone criticised him he would make a joke out of it or pretend, by some means or another, that it was compliment. Later in life he used alcohol to blunt the introspective side of his nature. The appearance, that he didn't care what other people thought, was actually the opposite of the reality. When he got to middle age a series of events caused some criticisms to hit home and he hadn't developed the insight to enable him to deal with them in a mature way. The situation is a common one: you are at a meeting or in shop and someone makes a comment. You are initially disarmed but as soon as you walk out of the meeting or leave the shop you suddenly think of the perfect answer. So why couldn't you think of it at the time? The usual thinking is that it took time you to formulate the response, but this isn't the whole story. The real reason is that the comment effected you emotionally, (this is particularly true when men deal with attractive women), and it's the emotions that blocked your reasoning ability. It's like working under emotional pressure with a demanding boss on your back. As soon as the pressure is released you are able to think of the quick retort. The charismatic person I mentioned didn't have this problem and was always able to think of the quick response. This added to his popularity - and made him very successful with women.