@SW-User
Thank you for your explanation. It is an interesting way to see oneself.
I agree with your observation about seeing things as positive or negative, but I don't think I try to distance myself from my own traits or weaknesses at all. Rather, I try to accommodate them, which is not easy and can be disheartening.
In any case, surely you cannot make a judgement on what is "there" unless you determine if it is positive or negative, or advantageous or not, to you? I'm not sure if it's a good analogy or not, but try this:
I know objectively there are public swimming-pools offering swimming-classes not far from my home (I have tried them). I also know objectively that I cannot swim because I am one of those rather unusual people who cannot float, not in fresh water anyway - that means most of a swimming-stroke is expended in keeping on the water surface rather than in propulsion. These are "just observing" facts. They are not in themselves biased. However, if I yearned to learn to swim properly, the first statement is immediately positive as the facility exists locally; the second is immediately negative because I realise it would be futile to try again. Now, if I were to say "I cannot swim" it would be true - but would that be "just observing, or negativity?
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What you say about IQ tests supports what a friend in medicine told me a while ago; that most standard IQ tests given to children have all been about ability to learn facts to pass exams. I asked her what an adult IQ test would do, and she said it would go further than just puzzle-solving an pattern-recognition, into areas such as creativity and lateral thinking - e.g., list uses for an empty cardboard carton.
I do though disagree with your falling into the trap I described - the notion that somehow our abilities to learn are limitless. They are not. We might learn a couple of hundred French words and something about irregular verbs by rote; but that does not mean a future in the Diplomatic Corps. We leant the times-tables by rote, and might similarly remember rudimentary trigonometry and algebraic rules, but will never work at CERn. This is because:
1) We are not automata each with a vast but identikit memory, but individual animals with individual memory skills.
2) To learn anything beyond its rudiments we need to understand it as well as remember it - an exam based purely on memory is not really much use as it records only what you remember on the day. Again, we are not automata - our ability to understand a subject is very much our own. This is why someone who cannot grasp calculus or speak fluent French might instead end up as a professional artist of repute - he or she has the flair to be an artist, but none to learn maths or languages.
I know there is no such thing as a "child prodigy" - most such alleged beings had some gift but were forced by pushy parents for the latters' own ends, and I call that bullying. I know most people who are top of their field, are so only because they drive themselves to practice, practice and practice - but they also have the innate aptitude. Not everyone can emulate their skill despite all the determination they have. If you do not have the ability you will not learn beyond a personal cut-off point.
I can vouch for the artificiality of the standard IQ tests. I discovered that mine was assessed when I was 8, as over 130 - theoretically high enough for me to have become a lawyer, doctor, scientist or engineer; and my leanings were to the latter two disciplines. WRONG! That high IQ meant nothing. I finished school with mediocre qualifications, failed a technical apprenticeship and could take only semi-skilled factory work. Why? Simple. Apart from one or two teachers incapable of teaching anyway, there was nothing wrong with the schools. I genuinely had no aptitude to learn - remembering some of the facts is not enough.
This is why I regard as nonsense that old "you can do anything if you put your mind to it" sneer: you cannot without the mind for it.
I support the following philosophical model for how we learn individually. It's not mine, I heard it somewhere some years back, but I agree with it:
Essentially, our capacity to learn each and every discipline, subject and topic is like filling buckets with water on a beach. Each bucket, labelled by subject etc, has an individual, fixed volume. The "words" bucket might hold 100 gallons, let us say; that labelled "athletics", 45 gallons; that for maths, only 10gall. No matter how much water you add to any bucket, once it is full, the extra merely overflows to waste in the sand.
No individual has the same mental buckets as anyone else despite having nominally similar brain volume and physiology. That example gives a highly-literate amateur-athlete who can barely rearrange a simple formula; the next person might be that Olympic-competing, piano-playing physicist in my previous message.
Saying you can do anything with effort is not right - you also need innate aptitude and sufficient memory. I have proved this to myself time and time again, academically, professionally and in my hobbies. To someone who is struggling to learn, such "encouragement" is false and demoralising, so cruel.
Mere determination is not enough - you need innate ability to understanding, not just memorise, facts or practical skills. I could not follow my science or engineering dream because they are deeply mathematical. (Dad was a Chartered Electrical Engineer, so such ability is not genetic.). Lacking the aptitude, no matter how hard I try, I cannot learn mathematics; nor indeed foreign languages or music.
Those like me, frustrated by own inability, have no choice but to see things as they are. So I do not regard myself as having a shadow, because I know and do not reject my traits, strengths and weaknesses. I try to accept them as my nature. I do not push them off onto a "shadow". I may not like them, but they are "me"!
