What if you're not an extrovert or an introvert?

A new category for those who don't fit in

I talk to American experts every day and while they are always nice, interesting and articulate, it’s very rare that I’m stopped in my tracks. But I was this week.

A kind and brilliant psychiatrist told me that he had discovered a third category of person, beyond introverts and extroverts. I’ve never felt that either term quite fit for me, and even Victoria who knows me best (and has a masters in psychology) tends to shrug her shoulders and call me “a mix”. Nobody wants to be a mix.

Dr Rami Kaminski has pioneered the term otrovert -

…from otro, the Spanish word for “other,” and vertere, Latin for “to turn.” Otroverts are people who turn in a different direction: not inward like introverts, not outward like extroverts, but elsewhere. They turn toward something else entirely—independence, clarity, and observation.

Central to this idea is the concept of otherness (Rami has founded The Otherness Institute to recognise and celebrate these people). It gets to the feeling these people have that they are always outside of the group, that they don’t really belong, that they are happiest and most contented when they are by themselves.

If that sounds like some other sort of disorder, it’s not. Otroverts have close personal relationships, but with fewer people. They can lose their natural social style when they’re in a group dynamic and prefer to pair off even at a party. So, they are not asocial but they are different. They “know no other way to think other than to think for yourself”.

Childhood and adolescences can be particularly challenging for otroverts. Part of Rami’s mission is to encourage parents not to try and change their otrovert children but to let them be who they are. He says young otroverts tend to

• Have an affinity for adults over peers

• Have a curious and inventive mind

• Be popular but have very few close confidants

• Feel happier when left alone

• Not want to attend organized events

• Be unusually considerate and generous

• Be careful and risk-averse

• Not do well with change

Rami’s book is going well. It is looking like a bestseller and he told me off air he is getting “three to four hundred emails a day” from people who have found themselves in his book (he is not the self-aggrandising type and I believe him).

“You’re talking about Autism Spectrum Disorder” said about three people who texted into the radio station when the interview played out. I’m not an expert on ASD but I suspect Rami, a psychiatrist, knows the difference. Interestingly I see ASD affects men at a 4 to 1 ratio over women. Rami tells me 80 per cent of his correspondents are women, though admits this may just reflect who is more likely to write an email and get in touch.

“Oi,” I said to my female colleague after coming out of the interview. “You should do this online test and see if you’re an otrovert.”

She did it, and she was. How did I know? Because she’s the only young woman I’ve come across in media who uses an Android rather than an Apple.

Boy, did my friends at The Project used to mock me over that one. “It’s so embarrassing’, they used to laugh. “Just get yourself an iPhone!”

I used to be so confused that these grown adults (and some of my favourite people) would even have an opinion over what sort of phone someone should have. I didn’t choose an Xiaomi smartphone to rebel, but because it didn’t occur to me to get the same phone everyone else in my industry had. This is not a story about me being a hero, it’s a story about me being on my own and not thinking twice about it.

The test is here. I’ll be interested in what you get, and what you make of it. I scored 209.

If you’re interested in my interview with Rami you can find it here.

Much of Rami’s work is to help otroverts be happy in their personalities and to not feel as though they have to pretend to be something they’re not. I guess I would caution us to use his work to justify our feelings, but perhaps less to justify our behaviour. You may wonder why, as someone who doesn’t belong, you should have to bake cookies for your colleague’s morning tea. But community makes the world a nice place to live - you should still show up, even if you don’t quite fit in.