There is a psychiatrist with name Rami Kaminski who has written about what he believes to be a further social personality style, in addition to introverted and extraverted people, which he calls “otroverted”.
Here is an article by him:
Introvert, extravert, otrovert? There’s a new personality type in town
Psychiatrist Rami Kaminski says he has observed a previously unrecognised personality type – the “otrovert”. Here is what he thinks these people can teach us
What is the most salient characteristic of this type, he writes, is that they have neither the ability nor an internal need to belong to larger or abstract groups. They are kinda able to unterstand their rules, even if unspoken, but they do not really belong, he writes, which leads them to be strongly independent persons.
But, as he writes, this does not inhibit them to make meaningful and strong individual connections - just with people, not groups.
Our communal society often conflates belonging with connection. However, while it is true that people who struggle to connect might find it hard to achieve a sense of belonging, it isn’t true that not belonging means no connections at all. In fact, without the noise of popular culture, gossip, family conflicts or political tribes (all disinteresting to otroverts), you are free to focus on deepening bonds with the people you feel genuinely close to.
It also looks like some of these people (assuming that we agree to Kaminski’s typology, which I think might still seriously lack supporting data) do something akin to autistic masking, when trying to fit in “normal” society, and this costs them energy.
There is a questionaire by an institute which he set up to support such people:
https://www.othernessinstitute.com/traits-of-otherness/
(Before you fill out forms there, consider it is on a server in the US).
Myself, to some degree I seem to match this description. Being a physicist, I work in science and IT and there are so many things now which I think about “nah, that’s pure bullshit”. Being it generative AI to generate software architecture or battery-powered passenger planes or planting trees to puportedly offset emissions by plane travel… I could go on.
I also seem to have some autistic traits (I once met somebody at a dance event which whom I had a bit of conservation, and he mentioned he is autistic and thinks I am too). So of course I am curious how these things are related.
It looks like in the list above there is quite some overlap with some properties which seem frequent in people with autism.
For example, could preference for small groups not just be due to the aspect that it is more effort to follow a lot of people at once and the noise level of larger gatherings?
I don’t think you can really “lack supporting data” for this, it’s more an arbitrary categorisation than a causal link. The important question is more “is this an effective way to categorise things for a given objective”. Is it an easy diagnostic that leads to solutions that are likely to work for the diagnosed population, or a good predicator of other behaviors, or something. I don’t think you can estimate how good is a categorisation without an objective, all combinations would be as good as each others.
Now, about the article. It is annoying. This is one neuro-psychiatrist vibing, writing something that sounds cool based on his 50-years-ago childhood and how his patients match his highly-modified and motivated memories. This is the famous method that led to psychoanalysis, with psychiatrists running around saying autism was caused by mothers not really wanting the childrens. It doesn’t disqualify the concept (see above) but it is annoying to see this again and again
Thanks!