The Flying Romanian / Romanul Zburator

In my last article I talked tangentially about the workplace. But it is a vast topic. It tells an interesting story about our society, ourselves and the position we occupy in that society. Let’s play a bit with it by adding two factors in: culture and gender. The questions which arise are: What are the different rapports to the workplace as per the culture around ? And do men and women have the same position ? For the sake of the demonstration, let's take two countries where hierarchy is overly important. France and Japan, for example. In both countries, one’s honor depends on their position in the workplace . But the stakes are different. In France, it is power for oneself and – potentially – the inner circle. In Japan, it is responsibility for the others. In both cases, high position (therefore high power and/or responsibility) is associated with the dominant gender . Battles are fought against the other (men), from other circles or other clans. Those wh...

Back in the 70's Romania, psychology was a prohibited topic of study. In case you are wondering why, well, in a totalitarian regime, one couldn't allow people to think too much about themselves and their rapport to power and to those who held it. The mere existence of the Leaders' personality cult did not allow any doubt (or an inner leader).   Psychology made its way back as a topic of study in the '90s. However, it lacked professional “popularizers” until very recently with Dr. Cristian Andrei (a Romanian equivalent of Dr.Phil ). In these conditions, everybody used their own filter of interpretation for the other’ mental health problems – real or imagined - with “crazy” on top of their favorites. Thus, I'd never heard of personality disorders before I got to France. Here, people spoke openly (compared to Romania) about their disabled brothers or sisters, their parents struggling with alcohol or with narcissist disorders, etc. However, while mental hea...