What is Openness?
What is open is smaller in the British than in the American school. What you see is only “outward appearance”—not reality. This is the world of manners and pretensions. We see it repeatedly portrayed in the early 20th Century novels of Henry James, Edith Warton and John Galsworthy. Many of us in the 1960s (from both the United States and England) were wrapped up in this world of manners and pretension in the dramatic television enactment of the Forsythe Saga –a television series that swept the British community and helped to establish PBSs Masterpiece Theater in the United States.
We witnessed the power of restraint to be found in the interactions between Sommes and Irene Forsythe. We were swept away by the passion that erupted in virtually all of the main characters, as Quad Two, Three and Four invaded Quad One and demanded to be expressed. Earlier, I described the multi-tiered psyche that is embodied metaphorically in the Victorian house. Victorians with small Quad Ones lived in small drawing rooms and parlors. Their conversations were often quite extensive; yet, their conversations were also highly constrained and often convoluted.
In offering the New Johari Window, I suggest that Quad Two and Three are leaking all over the place. This is particularly the case with regard to the British school. As Agatha Christie’s British murder mysteries repeatedly suggest: “people aren’t what they seem to be!” We must pay attention to what is not being said and what is slipping out in the nonverbal behavior of people with whom we affiliate. As occupants of this world of mystery and betrayal, our task (if we are to survive) is to figure out what is going on behind the scenes (like a crafty Hercule Perrot or Mrs. Marple). This is the essence of a British school version of Quad One.
