First of all, it is important to know that an experienced psychological investigator and interviewer will always try to empathize with the person he is interviewing. If you do this for a long period of time, as I have since 1984, you are able to feel your way in to how the other person is thinking and feeling, and if you interview a lot of similar types of people, you are very able to get on to their wavelength, and inevitably that will ”rub off” on the interviewer. So, yes, my time with the eccentrics has affected me personally.
Initially, this was very exhilarating, as I was finding the eccentrics very intelligent, articulate, creative and intriguing, and perhaps, as is my nature, I saw them in a much more positive light and was more sympathetic towards them, even when they temporarily misbehaved or were non-conforming in their behaviour.
Perhaps that has made me increasingly tolerant of people who are very different, and from a slightly different perspective than the average psychologist. Most of my professional colleagues (psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and counsellors) I came to see as too conformist, stuck in a rut, and sometimes boringly uptight. From that there were minor arguments and personality clashes, and if what doesn’t kill you makes you strong (and more independently single-minded), it helped me to become more self-actualized, original, and go off in slightly unusual directions personally and professionally.
I no longer want to be just another face in a faceless crowd, and have become a little quirkier and, in my thinking, more idiosyncratic.
Have these changes become permanent? Yes, definitely. Do I view these changes positively? Yes, indeed.
I have come to the conclusion that being a non-conformist makes one happier, more laidback, less egoistic, less bound by social conventions that are out of date, more sensitive to others, more interesting as a person, less anxious about keeping up with the Joneses, more charismatic and sexier.
I am no longer worried about being seen as controversial. I know that people now want to hear what I have to say, and have recently received overtures from people who organize the North American “lecture circuit”. So, yes, doing the research on eccentrics has been life changing!