"WOMEN KNOW everything," my grandfather once told me, "and heaven help us if they ever find it out."
He was referring, of course, to feminine intuition--that mysterious faculty which enables women to answer questions before they're asked; predict the arrival of unexpected guests;identify social climbers, alcoholics and rivals as if they were plainly labeled; knowing without being told when their husbands have quarreled with the boss or daydreamed--just daydreamed, mind you- -about another woman.
Ever since Eve took the first bite out of the apple, man has
been asking woman how she knows all these things without any apparent reason for knowing.
Nothing infuriates him more than to be told:"I just know, that's all."
Does intuition really exist? And if so, is it feminine? I decided to put the question to science.
Intuition, I learned, is a normal and highly useful function of human intelligence. This fact has been confirmed by each
of the half dozen authorities I consulted. Though associated with high IQs in both sexes, it is more characteristic of women than of men.
Why? As Dr Helene Deutsch, author of "The Psychology of Women", points out, in adolescence a boy is interested primarily in asserting himself in action, while a girl's interests center around feelings, her own and others. Dr Deutsch compares the adolescent girl to "someone listening in the dark and perceiving every noise with special acuteness." From the understanding she gains of her own emotions she is able by analogy to relive the emotions of others.
Women don't pay nearly as much attention as men to what
people say, but they are apt to know a great deal more about the way people feel. One winter when I was living in New Hampshire my friend Mr White coveted a corner pasture which his neighbor Mr Perry stubbornly refused to sell. The men were no longer on speaking terms, but their wives went right on visiting over the phone. One night after a long and rambling party-line visit--in which the land issue was never mentioned--Mrs White said to her husband, "I think Mr Perry will sell that corner lot if you still want it." When I saw the Whites a few months later the deal had been completed.
Reduced to simplest terms intuition is a way of thinking without words--a short cut to the truth, and in matters of emotion, the only way of getting there at all. Dr Carl Jung defines it as "a basic psychological function which transmits perceptions in an unconscious way." This perception is based on the evidence of our physical senses. But because it taps knowledge and experience of which we aren't aware it is often confused with telepathy, clairvoyance or extrasensory perception. We all know the "psychic" card player who seems to read
another's hand;actually he notes a telltale flutter of your eyelid or lip, a hesitation in speech, the tightening of a wrist muscle when your hand touches a card. He may not be aware himself of the clues he follows.
Civilization has substituted words and various other abstractions for the direct experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and feeling. But our neglected senses still go right on operating, far better than we realize. Take the sense of smell, perhaps the least developed of the senses. We used to laugh at backwoods doctors who diagnosed certain diseases by sniffing the air near the patient. Then we discovered that these disease really did produce chemical changes resulting in characteristic odors. Experiments have shown that the odor of a person's breath actually varies with changes in his emotional attitude. The distance over which we can unconsciously pick up the scent of another human being is unknown, but it is almost certainly greater than the length of a room. How can an odor of which you are not even aware men anything to you? If you've been ever awakened slowly and deliciously by the aroma of coffee and bacon, you know the answer.
Last summer I saw an example of how the senses cooperate to
produce intuition. On the boat from Woods Hole to Martha's Vineyard my wife nodded toward a young woman sitting nearby and remarked, "I'm sure I know her. Yet I can't remember having
seen her before."
Impulsively we introduced ourselves and mentioned my wife's feeling. After the young woman had spoken, my wife said, "Now I know. You take phone calls for Dr Miller."
"Why, yes, I do," the girl answered.
Why did my wife feel there was something familiar about the girl? "But don't you see?" she explained to me later. "She 'looked' just the way she sounded over the phone." Simple as that. Come to think of it, though, can't almost any teen-ager spot a blind date from the way he or she sounded on the phone?
Most women are quite good at guessing age, particularly if the subject is another woman. If you don't believe it, try it
sometime at a party. The difference between a girl of 23 and a girl of 25 is far too subtle to put into words. Men try to reason it out and usually their guesses are not better than chance or gallantry will allow. Yet with the aid of almost imperceptible clues women can often spot the difference.
One of the few attempts to observe intuition systematically was made by Eric Berne, a former staff psychiatrist with the Army Medical Corps and later the originator of Transactional Analysis. While interviewing men at an Army Separation Center, Dr Berne and his colleagues tried to guess, before the patient has spoken, what his occupation had been in civilian life. All the patients were dressed in standard maroon bathrobes and cloth slippers. The doctors' guesses averaged well above chance. "On one occasion," Dr Berne reports, "the occupations of 26 successive men were guessed correctly." Clues unconsciously detected in the men's eyes, gestures, facial expressions, speech, hands, and so on, probably explain this success.
As psychiatry and common sense have actually proved, you know a lot more than you are aware that you know. The mind tunes into cosciousness only a few of the impressions which flow in from your sense organs.
But your brain does not waste these impulses. It stores them up in your unconscious mind where they are ready to be used. Some physicians, for instance, have only to glance at a patient to diagnose correctly a disease which others cannot identify without painstaking examination. These intuitive doctors note many faint clues and match them with relevant information accumulated over a lifetime.
Likewise, every intuitive person knows how to draw on his reserve of unconscious knowledge and experience in coping with the problems of everyday life. The American Chemical Society questioned 232 leading U.S. scientists, found that 83 percent of them depended on intuition in their research after intense conscious effort had failed to produce results.
A similar study by Dr Eliot Dole Hutchinson revealed that intuition played an important part in the creative work of 80 percent of a sample of 253 artists, musicians and writers. The unconscious part of your brain never stops working. So when you're faced with a perplexing job, work on it as hard as you can. Then if you can't lick it, try sleeping on it or taking a walk or relaxing with friends. If you have primed yourself with all available facts, the answer is likely to "dawn" on you while your mind is seemingly at rest.
In a case of a purely personal decision, the important facts are your own deep feelings, and in this case you know intuitively what to do without the need for long preliminary deliberation. Dr Sigmund Freud once told a friend, "When making a decision of minor importance I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of our personal lives we should be governed by the deep inner needs of our nature."
Life is much more interesting for the intuitive person than for the nonintuitive. People mean more when you understand them from the inside out--and because of this, you mean more to them. That is what intuition is, really--finding new and deeper meanings in people and events, making more sense out of life. How can you develop your intuitive powers? Like any other form of thinking, intuition requires an alertness, sensitivity and discipline of mind which have to be cultivated.
Take off the blinders of habit and open your mind to what's going on around you. See people as they really are, not as you think they ought to be. Don't let prejudices distort your vision. Half the trick is to let people tell you about themselves unconsciously. The way a person stands, sits, shakes hands, smokes or sips a drink will be, to the intuitive man or woman, important clues in sizing up character.
Intuition isn't the enemy, but the ally, of reason. Effective realistic thinking requires a combination of both.(#)
ARTICLE No. 1
THE BIBLE'S TIMELESS--AND TIMELY--INSIGHTS by Blanton
ARTICLE No. 2
A SIMPLE SHORTCUT TO SET YOU FREE by Davis
ARTICLE No. 3
DIARY OF A NEW MOTHER by Geissler
ARTICLE No. 4
THE REMARKABLE SELF-HEALING POWER OF THE MIND by Hunt
ARTICLE No. 5
OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE BEAUTY AROUND YOU by Rau
No. 6:WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? by Viorst
No. 7:THE SECRET OF HAVING FUN by LeShan
No. 8:PIED PIPER OF SEVENTH AVENUE by Comer
No. 9:OBEY THAT IMPULSE by Marston
No. 10:THE LOVING MESSAGE IN A TOUCH by Lobsenz
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No. 11:THE WISDOM OF TEARS by Hunt
No. 12:HAVE YOU AN EDUCATED HEART? by Burgess
No. 14:WHY KIDS ARE 20 DEGREES COOLER by Mills
No. 15:THE RIGHT DIET FOR YOU by Stare
And still some more...
No. 16:STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT THE LIVING-TOGETHER ARRANGEMENT by Montague
No. 17:...The ABC's of It by Lakein
No. 18:The Day We Flew the Kites by Fowler
No. 19:"Touched by Something Divine" by Selzer
No. 20:How to Live 365 Days a Year by Schindler
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