OxfordPress.com

While the Psychiatric profession deserves much criticism for “medicalizing” individual differences, their observations can come in handy when dealing with perplexing people. Each of many defined “personality disorders” is based upon countless hours of observations and represents a collection of traits often seen in real people. Making the information useful for everyday life is the viewpoint--commonly held--that each disorder is merely an extreme exaggeration of a reasonably healthy personality “style”.

A Psychiatrist, John M. Oldham, even wrote a book on the subject, The New Personality Self-Portrait (1995). All of us, by the way, are said to have commonalities with one or more of his 13 identified “normal” personality styles. And by extension, we all share traits with some of the personality disorders. So nobody is left out of this jolly party, including you and me.

As we all know, the Cincinnati Bengals suffer from a chronic lack of success on the football field. Yet year after year we see the same old issues come up with precious little change in approach. With one winning record in 17 seasons, one has to wonder about the people who run the team. What on earth makes them tick? Rather than falling back on standard sports-fan ranting, we might as well see if Oldham has anything to offer.

One suspects that the dominant personality style among Bengals team management is the "Conscientious Personality". Perfectionist, hard working, sticking to convictions, and always seeking to do the “right” thing in the “right” way. It all seems honorable enough, and it would be pure conjecture to think that anybody goes too far. But from this we can start to make sense of why they do the things they do.

It’s even more interesting is to look at team management as a single entity. It’s a stretch to apply personality classifications to an entire group, but maybe we are on to something here. Sometimes reasonable people get together and mutually reinforce certain behaviors. The behaviors, although initially quite reasonable, get magnified to the point they become a problem.

So with that, we can take a look at Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). It’s the Conscientious Personality taken to the extreme. To be diagnosed with OCPD, one has to exhibit at least four of nine criteria. Here then are the key four, paraphrased for simplicity:

- Focuses more on process than results (the point of the activity is lost).

- Miserly spending style.

- Reluctant to delegate tasks.

- Very stubborn.

If we consider chronic losing (or chronic mediocrity) to be a significant problem, then the team is very dysfunctional. Could it be due to a kind of group OCPD? It surely can’t help a team win in the NFL. But please keep in mind that we’re not claiming that any particular individual has OCPD. It’s just that management, as a group, comes off that way.

The implications are all very grim. The losing isn’t due to a lack of business or football acumen. Frugality is a symptom, not a cause. Same with the lack of a General Manager. The real problem is the core approach to life shared by the people who run the franchise. It’s not conducive to fielding a winning NFL team, and things are not going to get any better.

And what of us, the Bengals fans? Well, the answer to that goes without saying. We all obviously suffer from a severe form of Masochistic Personality Disorder. But that is a topic for another day.