Fear of flying?

“They are, so to speak, driven from behind rather than pulled from the front. They have to achieve, not from the satisfaction which achievement brings but because only by doing so can they bolster up their constantly sagging self-regard …. But herein lies their special dilemma. Though they need to achieve, it is the very act of trying which exposes them to what they fear most – failure. … Thus the person who fears failure prefers tasks which are very easy or very difficult. If they are easy, he is unlikely to fail; if very difficult then the disgrace attaching will be small, for no one really expected him to win.”

Does “carbon pricing” fit-in here as a task that is “very difficult” for Gillard?

PERSONAL LIFE

After a series of relationships with influential people, Gillard has now settled on a hairdresser who has given no sign of any intellectual ability. 

Dixon wrote that authoritarian personalities “are taught (by their parents) to judge people for their usefulness rather than their likeableness. Their friends, and even their future marriage partners, are selected and used in the service of personal advancement; love and affection take second place to knowing the right people.”

While this may play out in various ways, this sort of “usefulness” may conflict with another need noted by Dixon – the “tendency” to be “preoccupied with dominance-submission in their personal relationships”.

Is his is where the hairdresser ultimately came to fit into the psychological picture after Gillard had a series of “useful” relationships?

OTHER ISSUES

Dixon wrote that authoritarians “fear of failure predisposes toward secretiveness”.

Kelly wrote that “the electorate saw Gillard as loyal to Kevin Rudd until the evening she knifed him” and that “she ascended under the worst circumstances, as a willing recruit to a leadership assassination”.

Gillard was inordinately angry about the public release of US diplomatic cables by Julian Assange and the Wikileaks organization. But was this because of her view of the US (and its alliance with Australia), or does Gillard have a “predisposed toward secretiveness”?

Dixon wrote that “is a common observation that those over-concerned about their image devote considerable attention, energy and time to a continuous self-assessment against some external standard, usually another person”. He continued: “There are really two components to this process. The first concerns the way an individual sees himself in comparison with his competitors, the second the way in which he thinks others will see him in comparison with his contemporaries. In either case, he may try to elevate his own self-estimation by choosing a low standard with which to make comparison. Hence the phenomenon of people who tend to shun the company of individuals more gifted and even to choose workmates or select as subordinates people whom they consider inferior to themselves.”