Metanoia

While working on a paper about the role of leadership to introducing innovation in healthcare, I came across an article where the nascent state was discussed. Specifically, an Italian sociologist, Francesco Alberoni was mentioned as the one who developed this concept in his book Statu Nascenti, and then made it a world-wide sensation in his 1979 book Falling in Love.

I put down the article and recalled my first impressions after reading that book. I had read the French translation then, and actually had a discussion of this concept in my last book published April 2014. (http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/04/this-posting-will-be-different-from-my.html)

So, my mind wanted to go somewhere else, and I let it do so.

… In the opening pages of his book Falling in Love, Alberoni talks about the Weberian charismatic leader as “With his appearance on the scene, this leader breaks with tradition, drags his followers into a heroic adventure, and inspires in the latter the experience of inner rebirth and radical change in outlook of the sort which Saint Paul termed “metanoia”.

It is of course difficult to write about leadership and innovation without making reference to Weber, and since I was in that line of thinking the two concepts came together comfortably. But the nascent state and metanoia?

The nascent state is defined on Wikipedia as “… a psychological process of destructuration-reorganization where the individual becomes capable of merging with other persons and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity”. A leader is one who excels in this psychological process.  Alberoni had taken it to yet another level saying that when we fall in love, we actually are in a nascent state, but we only need one other person (instead of the masses for a charismatic leader) to create this new collectivity of extraordinary change and feelings.

Metanoia. Well, I did not know what this was, so I did some reading. It seems that it is a translation from Greek  metanoia but that it has been translated or at least interpreted in more than one way. In religious writings it may be considered to mean “repentance” or a confession of sins, but for sociologists it is more “a change of mind and purpose”.  Given the context of falling in love and creating a new collectivity, my take is that Alberoni approached the definition of metanoia as a sociologist.

… As I was pondering these concepts and definitions, I recalled a moment from my university days when we struggled to remember scientific, and especially medical, terminology. It was during an organic chemistry lab when we were experimenting with aromatic hydrocarbons. The prefixes ortho, meta, and para are used in organic chemistry to indicate the position of some molecules on a hydrocarbon ring. They are of course also derived from Greek where an ortho position means straight; meta connotes the position following ortho; and para describes the position as similar and opposite to ortho.

Somehow, and since we used mnemonics to remember terminology, I asked “if Paranoia is the exhibition of persecutory beliefs such as “Everyone is out to get me”; what would we call someone who believes everyone likes him when no one does?”  And came up with a new term “an Orthonoid!!”

Sadly, the mental health profession never adopted my brilliant new definition, but it helped me remember the position of non-hydrogen attachments on a benzene ring……

….I had to get back to the article I was writing. The charismatic leader was now an individual in a nascent state who was able to promote a change in mind and purpose. Even more, he/she was able to convince others to follow.

But what is the relationship between falling in love and being an orthonoid?

That needs another session of wondering.

June 4, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2104

This is my 100th posting on this blog which I started on June 19, 2013. I have covered topics of interest to my curiosity and am delighted that readers from different corners of our planet have visited, read and commented. My blog started with an entry called "Celebration" and I am pleased to celebrate the 100th entry with "Metanoia". Who knows what will be next!

About the picture: I took this picture in the Cementerio de la Recoleta (La Recoleta Cemetary) of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Among the notable graves are those of Eva Perón, presidents of Argentina, and a granddaughter of Napoleon Bonaparte.