The Tantalus Ration--a scaffolding for some personality-core vectors.

The two opposing vectors which are the core of our personality theory are "participation" and "separation." By participation we mean one's identification of his ego with a person(s), an object, or a symbolic construct outside himself, and his striving to lose his separate identity by fusion with this other object or symbol. Separation, of course, is the opposite vector. We use these opposing vectors of unification--fusion nad separation--isolation as the main axis of our theory in conjunction with three major developmental phages. The first is the process of birth. The second is the crystallization of an individual ego by the molding of the "ego boundary." The third phase of separation is a corollary of socialization when one reaches one's "ego identity" (12). The strain to overcome the separating and dividing pressures never leaves the human individual. The striving to partake in a pantheistic whole is ever present and it takes many forms; if one avenue towards its realization is blocked, it surges out from another channel. An illustrative case is the achievement motive which is a participation surrogate. Actual participation is unattainable by definition. The objective impossibility of participation is augmented by the countering separating vectors, both instinctual and interactive. At any given moment of our lives there would be a disjuncture, a gap between our desires for participation and our subjectively defined distance from our participatory aims. We have denoted this gap the Tantalus Ratio which is the relationship between the longed for participatory goal and the distance from it as perceived by ego. The Tantalus Ratio is dependent on, interalia, the strength of the participatory vectors, as determined by the age distances from the developmental stages of birth, ego boundary, and ego identity.