Maria Anna Mozart Was a Musical Prodigy Like Her Brother Wolfgang, So Why Did She Get Erased from History?

When peo­ple ask why we have specif­i­cal­ly black his­to­ries, or queer his­to­ries, or women’s his­to­ries, it can be hard for many who do his­tor­i­cal research to take the ques­tion seri­ous­ly. But in fair­ness, such ques­tions point to the very rea­son that alter­na­tive or “revi­sion­ist” his­to­ries exist. We can­not know what we are not told about history—at least not with­out doing the kind of dig­ging pro­fes­sion­al schol­ars can do. Vir­ginia Woolf’s trag­ic, but fic­tion­al, his­to­ry of Shakespeare’s sis­ter notwith­stand­ing, the claims made by cul­tur­al crit­ics about mar­gin­al­iza­tion and oppres­sion aren’t based on spec­u­la­tion, but on case after case of indi­vid­u­als who were ignored by, or shut out of, the wider cul­ture, and sub­se­quent­ly dis­ap­peared from his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry.

One such extra­or­di­nary case involves the real sis­ter of anoth­er tow­er­ing Euro­pean fig­ure whose life we know much more about than Shakespeare’s. Before Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart began writ­ing his first com­po­si­tions, his old­er sis­ter Maria Anna Mozart, nick­named Nan­nerl, had already proven her­self a prodi­gy.

The two toured Europe togeth­er as children—she was with her broth­er dur­ing his 18-month stay in Lon­don. “There are con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous reviews prais­ing Nan­nerl,” writes Sylvia Milo, “and she was even billed first.” A 1763 review, for exam­ple, sounds indis­tin­guish­able from those writ­ten about young Wolf­gang.

Imag­ine an eleven-year-old girl, per­form­ing the most dif­fi­cult sonatas and con­cer­tos of the great­est com­posers, on the harp­si­chord or fortepi­ano, with pre­ci­sion, with incred­i­ble light­ness, with impec­ca­ble taste. It was a source of won­der to many.

18th cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal audi­ences first came to know Wolf­gang as part of a broth­er-sis­ter duo of “wun­derkinder.” But the sis­ter half has been air­brushed out of the pic­ture. She does not appear in the defin­i­tive Hol­ly­wood treat­ment, Milos Forman’s Amadeus. And, more­over, she only recent­ly began to emerge in the aca­d­e­m­ic and clas­si­cal worlds. “I grew up study­ing to be a vio­lin­ist,” writes Sylvia Milo. “Nei­ther my music his­to­ry nor my reper­toire includ­ed any female com­posers.”

With my braid­ed hair I was called “lit­tle Mozart” by my vio­lin teacher, but he meant Wolfi. I nev­er heard that Amadeus had a sis­ter. I nev­er heard of Nan­nerl Mozart until I saw that fam­i­ly por­trait.

In the por­trait (top), Nan­nerl and Wolf­gang sit togeth­er at the harp­si­chord while their father Leopold stands near­by. Nan­nerl, in the fore­ground, has an enor­mous pom­padour crown­ing her small oval face. Of the hair­do, she wrote to her broth­er, in their typ­i­cal­ly play­ful rap­port, “I am writ­ing to you with an erec­tion on my head and I am very much afraid of burn­ing my hair.”

After dis­cov­er­ing Nan­erl, Milo poured through the his­tor­i­cal archives, read­ing con­tem­po­rary accounts and per­son­al let­ters. The research gave birth to a one-woman play, The Oth­er Mozart, which has toured for the last four years to crit­i­cal acclaim. (See a trail­er video above). In her Guardian essay, Milo describes Nannerl’s fate: “left behind in Salzberg” when she turned 18. “A lit­tle girl could per­form and tour, but a woman doing so risked her rep­u­ta­tion…. Her father only took Wolf­gang on their next jour­neys around the courts of Europe. Nan­nerl nev­er toured again.” We do know that she wrote music. Wolf­gang praised one com­po­si­tion as “beau­ti­ful” in a let­ter to her. But none of her music has sur­vived. “Maybe we will find it one day,” Milo writes. Indeed, an Aus­tralian researcher claims to have found Nannerl’s “musi­cal hand­writ­ing” in the com­po­si­tions Wolf­gang used for prac­tice.

Oth­er schol­ars have spec­u­lat­ed that Mozart’s sis­ter, five years his senior, cer­tain­ly would have had some influ­ence on his play­ing. “No musi­cians devel­op their art in a vac­u­um,” says musi­cal soci­ol­o­gist Ste­van Jack­son. “Musi­cians learn by watch­ing oth­er musi­cians, by being an appren­tice, for­mal­ly or infor­mal­ly.” The ques­tion may remain an aca­d­e­m­ic one, but the life of Nan­nerl has recent­ly become a mat­ter of pop­u­lar inter­est as well, not only in Milo’s play but in sev­er­al nov­els, many titled Mozart’s Sis­ter, and a 2011 film, also titled Mozart’s Sis­ter, writ­ten and direct­ed by René Féret and star­ring his daugh­ter in the tit­u­lar role. The trail­er above promis­es a rich­ly emo­tion­al peri­od dra­ma, which—as all enter­tain­ments must do—takes some lib­er­ties with the facts as we know, or don’t know, them, but which also, like Milo’s play, gives flesh to a sig­nif­i­cant, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly frus­trat­ed, his­tor­i­cal fig­ure who had, for a cou­ple hun­dred years, at least, been ren­dered invis­i­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

2,000+ Architecture & Art Books You Can Read Free at the Internet Archive

Some­body once called writ­ing about music like danc­ing about archi­tec­ture, and the descrip­tion stuck. But what’s writ­ing about archi­tec­ture like? Even if you already know — espe­cial­ly if you already know — know that the Inter­net Archive makes it easy to binge on some of the finest archi­tec­ture writ­ing around and find out, and com­plete­ly for free at that. The site, as Arch­dai­ly’s Becky Quin­tal reports, has imple­ment­ed a “lend­ing fea­ture that allows users to elec­tron­i­cal­ly ‘bor­row’ books for 14 days. With over 2,000 bor­row­able books on archi­tec­ture, patrons from across the globe can read works by Reyn­er Ban­ham, Wal­ter Gropius, Ada Louise Huxtable and Jonathan Glancey. There are also help­ful guides, dic­tio­nar­ies and his­to­ry books.”

Quin­tal rec­om­mends a vari­ety of titles from Glancey’s The Sto­ry of Archi­tec­ture and Ban­ham’s The­o­ry and Design in the First Machine Age to Gropius’ The New Archi­tec­ture and the Bauhaus and Tom Wolfe’s famous jere­mi­ad From Bauhaus to Our Our House.

Oth­er bor­row­able books in the col­lec­tion can take you even far­ther around our built world: Boston Archi­tec­ture, French Archi­tec­ture, Japan­ese Archi­tec­ture, Moor­ish Archi­tec­ture in Andalu­sia, The Art and Archi­tec­ture of Chi­na, The Art and Archi­tec­ture of Medieval Rus­sia. As you can see, and as in a “real” library or book­store, writ­ing about archi­tec­ture at some point tran­si­tions into writ­ing about art, quite a few vol­umes of which — on art his­to­ry, art tech­nique, and even muse­um work — the Inter­net Archive also lets you check out.

But before you get your two weeks with any of these books from the Inter­net Archive’s vir­tu­al library, you’ll need your vir­tu­al library card. To get it, vis­it Archive.org’s account cre­ation page and come up with a screen name and pass­word. As soon as you’ve agreed to the site’s terms and con­di­tions, you’ve got a card. If you’d like to read these books on devices oth­er than your com­put­er, you’ll need to down­load Adobe’s free Dig­i­tal Edi­tions soft­ware. Out dig­i­tal cen­tu­ry has made bing­ing on all kinds of read­ing mate­r­i­al incom­pa­ra­bly eas­i­er than before, but just like brick-and-mor­tar libraries, the Inter­net Archive has only so many “copies” to lend out, so be warned that if you want an espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar book, you may have to get on a wait­list first. Me, I’m hop­ing Exper­i­men­tal Archi­tec­ture in Los Ange­les will come in any day now, but the art or archi­tec­ture book you most want to read may just be wait­ing for you to check it out. Scan the col­lec­tion here.

via Arch­dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 200+ Free Mod­ern Art Books from the Guggen­heim Muse­um

Free: You Can Now Read Clas­sic Books by MIT Press on Archive.org

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Alan Turing Algorithmically Approximated by Ellipses: A Computer Art Project

Just a cool find on Twit­ter, a work of com­put­er art cre­at­ed by Jere­my Kun, a math PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Chica­go, and now an engi­neer at Google.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Com­put­er Artist Makes “Dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans” in 1964: When Giant Main­frame Com­put­ers Were First Used to Cre­ate Art

When J.M. Coet­zee Secret­ly Pro­grammed Com­put­ers to Write Poet­ry in the 1960s

Hear the First Record­ing of Com­put­er Music: Researchers Restore Three Melodies Pro­grammed on Alan Turing’s Com­put­er (1951)

 

Ingmar Bergman’s 1950s Soap Commercials Wash Away the Existential Despair

Ing­mar Bergman is usu­al­ly remem­bered for the intense­ly seri­ous nature of his films. Death, anguish, the absence of God–his themes can be pret­ty gloomy. So it might come as a sur­prise to learn that Bergman once direct­ed a series of rather sil­ly soap com­mer­cials.

The year was 1951. Bergman was 33 years old. The Swedish film indus­try, his main source of income, had just gone on strike to protest high gov­ern­ment tax­es on enter­tain­ment. With two ex-wives, five chil­dren, a new wife and a sixth child on the way, Bergman need­ed to find anoth­er way to make mon­ey.

A solu­tion pre­sent­ed itself when he was asked to cre­ate a series of com­mer­cials for a new anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap called Bris (“Breeze,” in Eng­lish). Bergman threw him­self into the project. He lat­er recalled:

Orig­i­nal­ly, I accept­ed the Bris com­mer­cials in order to save the lives of my self and my fam­i­lies. But that was real­ly sec­ondary. The pri­ma­ry rea­son I want­ed to make the com­mer­cials was that I was giv­en free rein with mon­ey and I could do exact­ly what I want­ed with the pro­duc­t’s mes­sage. Any­how, I have always found it dif­fi­cult to feel resent­ment when indus­try comes rush­ing toward cul­ture, check in hand.

Bergman enlist­ed his favorite cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er at that time, Gun­nar Fis­ch­er, and togeth­er they made nine minia­ture films, each a lit­tle more than one minute long, to be screened in movie the­aters over the next three years. Bergman used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with visu­al and nar­ra­tive form.

Many of the styl­is­tic devices and motifs that would even­tu­al­ly fig­ure into his mas­ter­pieces can be spot­ted in the com­mer­cials: mir­rors, dou­bles, the tele­scop­ing in or out of a sto­ry-with­in-a-sto­ry. You don’t need to under­stand Swedish to rec­og­nize the mark of the mas­ter.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 1, “Bris Soap,” which is per­haps the most basic of the com­mer­cials. They become pro­gres­sive­ly more imag­i­na­tive as the series moves along:

  • Episode 2, Ten­nis Girl: An inno­cent game of ten­nis sets the stage for an epic bat­tle between good (Bris soap) and evil (bac­te­ria). Can you guess which side wins?
  • Episode 3, Gus­ta­vian: Bad hygiene in the 17th cen­tu­ry court of King Gus­tav III. Plen­ty of fop­pish­ness, but no Bris.
  • Episode 4, Oper­a­tion: “Per­haps the most intrigu­ing of the com­mer­cials,” writes Swedish film schol­ar Fredrik Gustafs­son. “In this one Bergman is decon­struct­ing the whole busi­ness of film­mak­ing, using all the tricks of his dis­pos­al to trick and treat us.”
  • Episode 5, The Mag­ic Show: Anoth­er bat­tle between good and evil, this time in minia­ture.
  • Episode 6, The Inven­tor: A man hero­ical­ly invents anti-bac­te­r­i­al soap, only to awak­en and real­ize it was all a dream. (And any­way, the mak­ers of Bris had already done it.)
  • Episode 7, The Rebus: Bergman uses mon­tage to cre­ate a game of “rebus,” a heraldic rid­dle (non ver­bis, sed rebus: “not by words but by things”), to piece togeth­er the slo­gan, “Bris kills the bacteria–no bac­te­ria, no smell.”
  • Episode 8, Three-Dimen­sion­al: Bergman thought 3‑D films were “ridicu­lous­ly stu­pid,” and in this episode he takes a few play­ful jabs.
  • Episode 9, The Princess and the Swine­herd: In this rein­ven­tion of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­son­’s “The Swine­herd,” a 15-year-old Bibi Ander­s­son, who went on to star in many of Bergman’s great­est films, makes her screen debut as a beau­ti­ful princess who promis­es a swine­herd 100 kiss­es in exchange for a bar of soap. Not a bad deal for the swine­herd.

To learn more about Bergman’s soap com­mer­cials you can watch a 2009 report by Slate film crit­ic Dana Stevens here. (Note the video requires a flash play­er.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mir­rors of Ing­mar Bergman, Nar­rat­ed with the Poet­ry of Sylvia Plath

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Hallelujah!: You Can Stream Every Leonard Cohen Album in a 22-Hour Chronological Playlist (1967–2016)

Every­body knows the war is over. Every­body knows the good guys lost.

Per­haps no one since Thomas Hardy has matched Leonard Cohen in the dogged per­sis­tence of lit­er­ary bleak­ness. Cohen’s entry into a Zen monastery in 1996 was a “response to a sense of despair that I’ve always had,” he said in an inter­view that year. Ten years lat­er, Cohen told Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, “I had a great sense of dis­or­der in my life of chaos, of depres­sion, of dis­tress. And I had no idea where this came from. And the pre­vail­ing psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic expla­na­tions at the time didn’t seem to address the things I felt.”

Only a hand­ful of peo­ple on the plan­et have expe­ri­enced the “life of chaos” Leonard Cohen lived as an acclaimed poet, nov­el­ist, singer, and one of the most beloved song­writ­ers of the last sev­er­al decades. But mil­lions iden­ti­fy with his emo­tion­al tur­moil. Cohen’s expres­sions of despair—and of rev­er­ence, defi­ance, love, hatred, and lust—speak across gen­er­a­tions, telling truths few of us con­fess but, just maybe, every­body knows. Cohen’s death last year brought his career back into focus. And despite the mourn­ful occa­sion for revis­it­ing his work, he may be just the song­writer many of us need right now.

The great themes in Cohen’s work come togeth­er in his most famous song, “Hal­lelu­jah,” which has, since he first record­ed it in 1984 to lit­tle notice, become “everybody’s ‘Hal­lelu­jah,’” writes Ash­ley Fet­ters at The Atlantic, in a suc­ces­sion of cov­ers and inter­pre­ta­tions from Jeff Buck­ley and Rufus Wain­wright to Shrek and The X Fac­tor. It is here that the depths of despair and heights of tran­scen­dence meet, the sex­u­al and the spir­i­tu­al reach an accord: “This world is full of con­flicts and full of things that can­not be rec­on­ciled,” Cohen has said of the song. “But there are moments when we can… rec­on­cile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hal­lelu­jah.’”

Every­body knows it’s a mess. But it often takes a Leonard Cohen to con­vince us that—at least sometimes—it’s a beau­ti­ful one. If you feel you need more Leonard Cohen in your life, we bring you the playlist above, a com­plete chrono­log­i­cal discog­ra­phy avail­able on Spo­ti­fy—from the sparse, haunt­ing folk melodies of Cohen’s first album, 1967’s The Songs of Leonard Cohen to last year’s grip­ping swan song, You Want It Dark­er. In-between the leg­endary debut and mas­ter­ful sum­ma­tion are sev­er­al live albums, the clas­sics Songs from a Room, Songs of Love and Hate, and oth­ers, as well as that odd 1988 album I’m Your Man, in which Cohen set his grim ironies and uni­ver­sal truths to the sounds of eight­ies synth-pop, inton­ing over slap bass and drum machine the indeli­ble, gen­tly mock­ing lyrics he co-wrote with fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Sharon Robin­son:

Every­body knows that the boat is leak­ing
Every­body knows that the cap­tain lied
Every­body got this bro­ken feel­ing
Like their father or their dog just died
Every­body talk­ing to their pock­ets
Every­body wants a box of choco­lates
And a long-stem rose
Every­body knows

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Say Good­bye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hal­lelu­jah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Oth­er Tracks

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

A 17-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Jour­ney Through Tom Petty’s Music: Stream the Songs That Became the Sound­tracks of Our Lives

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Art of Hand-Drawn Japanese Anime: A Deep Study of How Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira Uses Light

Ani­ma­tion before the days of mod­ern com­put­er graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy may impress today for the very rea­son that it had no mod­ern com­put­er graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy, or CGI, at its dis­pos­al. But if we real­ly think about it — and we real­ly watch the ani­mat­ed mas­ter­pieces of those days — we’ll real­ize that much of it should impress us on many more lev­els than it already does. Take, for instance, Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo’s 1988 cyber­punk vision Aki­ra, one of the most beloved Japan­ese ani­mat­ed films of all time and the sub­ject of the Nerd­writer video essay above, “How to Ani­mate Light.”

Aki­ra, says Nerd­writer Evan Puschak, “is well known for its painstak­ing ani­ma­tion. Every frame of the film was com­posed with the clos­est atten­tion to detail, and that gives it an unmatched rich­ness and soul.”

But he points up one qual­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion in par­tic­u­lar: “I see the film’s many lights, their dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties and tex­tures, as a pow­er­ful motif and sym­bol, and a vital ele­ment of its genius.” But ani­ma­tors, espe­cial­ly ani­ma­tors using tra­di­tion­al hand-paint­ed cels, can’t just tell their direc­tors of pho­tog­ra­phy to set up a scene’s light­ing in a cer­tain way; they’ve got to ren­der all the dif­fer­ent types of light in the world they cre­ate by hand, man­u­al­ly cre­at­ing its play on every face, every object, every sur­face.

“The lines between shad­ow and light are dis­tinct and evoca­tive in the same way that film noir light­ing is,” Puschak elab­o­rates, “and like in film noir, light in Aki­ra is inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to the city at night.” In the dystopi­an “Neo-Tokyo” of 2019, elab­o­rate­ly craft­ed by Oto­mo and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, “author­i­ty is as much a blind­ing spot­light as it is a gun or a badge” and neon “is the bit­ter but beau­ti­ful light that sig­ni­fies both the col­or­ful radi­ance and the gaudy con­sumerism of moder­ni­ty.” And then we have Tet­suo, “at once the pro­tag­o­nist and the antag­o­nist of the film, a boy who gains extra­or­di­nary psy­chic pow­er” that “so often pro­duces a dis­rup­tion in the light around him.” When the end comes, it comes in the form of “a giant ball of light, one sin­gle uni­form white light that eras­es the count­less arti­fi­cial lights of the city,” and Aki­ra makes us believe in it. Could even the most cut­ting-edge, spec­tac­u­lar­ly big-bud­get­ed CGI-age pic­ture do the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

The Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Cow­boy Bebop, the Cult Japan­ese Ani­me Series, Explored in a Thought­ful Video Essay

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Power of Introverts: Author Susan Cain Explains Why We Need to Appreciate the Talents & Abilities of the Quiet Ones

Ours is a loud cul­ture of non­stop per­son­al shar­ing, end­less chat­ter, and 24-hour news, opin­ion, and enter­tain­ment. Even those peo­ple who pre­fer read­ing alone to the over­stim­u­lat­ing car­ni­val of social media feel pres­sured to par­tic­i­pate. How else can you keep up with your family—whose Face­book posts you’d rather see die than have to read? How else to build a pro­file for employers—whom you des­per­ate­ly hope won’t check your Twit­ter feed?

For the intro­vert, main­tain­ing an always-on façade can be pro­found­ly enervating—and the prob­lem goes far beyond the per­son­al, argues author Susan Cain, reach­ing into every area of our lives.

“If you take a group of peo­ple and put them into a meet­ing,” says Cain in the short RSA video above, “the opin­ions of the loud­est per­son, or the most charis­mat­ic per­son, or the most assertive person—those are the opin­ions that the group tends to fol­low.” This despite the fact that research shows “zero cor­re­la­tion” between being the loud­est voice in the room and hav­ing the best ideas. Don’t we know this all too well.

Cain is the author of Qui­et: The Pow­er of Intro­verts in a World That Can’t Stop Talk­ing, a book about lead­er­ship for intro­verts, the group least like­ly to want the social demands lead­er­ship requires. And yet, she argues, we nonethe­less need intro­verts as lead­ers. “We’re liv­ing in a soci­ety now that is so over­ly extro­vert­ed,” she says. Cain iden­ti­fies the phe­nom­e­non as a symp­tom of cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism over­com­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly agri­cul­tur­al ways of life. Aside from the sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion of whether we can change the cul­ture with­out chang­ing the econ­o­my, Cain makes a time­ly and com­pelling argu­ment for a soci­ety that val­ues dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty types equal­ly.

But can there be a “world where it’s yin and yang” between intro­verts and extro­verts? That depends, per­haps on how much cre­dence we lend these well-worn Jun­gian cat­e­gories, or whether we think of them as exist­ing in bina­ry oppo­si­tion rather than on a spec­trum, a cir­cle, a hexa­gram, or what­ev­er. Cain is not a psy­chol­o­gist but a for­mer cor­po­rate lawyer who at least seems to believe the bal­anc­ing act between extro­vert­ed and intro­vert­ed can be achieved in the cor­po­rate world. She has giv­en talks on “Net­work­ing for Intro­verts,” addressed the engi­neers at Google, and tak­en to the TED stage, the thought leader are­na that accom­mo­dates all kinds of per­son­al­i­ties, for bet­ter or worse.

Cain’s TED talk above may be one of the bet­ter ones. Open­ing with a mov­ing and fun­ny per­son­al nar­ra­tive, she walks us through the bar­rage of mes­sages intro­verts receive con­demn­ing their desire for qui­etude as some­how per­verse and self­ish. Nat­u­ral­ly soli­tary peo­ple are taught to think of their intro­ver­sion as “a sec­ond-class per­son­al­i­ty trait,” Cain writes in her book, “some­where between a dis­ap­point­ment and a pathol­o­gy.” Intro­verts must swim against the tide to be them­selves. “Our most impor­tant insti­tu­tions,” she says above, “our schools and our work­places, they are designed most­ly for extro­verts, and for extro­verts’ need for stim­u­la­tion.”

The bias is deep, reach­ing into the class­rooms of young chil­dren, who are now forced to do most of their work by com­mit­tee. But when intro­verts give in to the social pres­sure that forces them into awk­ward extro­vert­ed roles, the loss affects every­one. “At the risk of sound­ing grandiose,” Cain says, “when it comes to cre­ativ­i­ty and to lead­er­ship, we need intro­verts doing what they do best.” Para­dox­i­cal­ly, that can look like intro­verts tak­ing the helm, but out of a gen­uine sense of duty rather than a desire for the spot­light.

Intro­vert­ed lead­ers are more like­ly to share pow­er and give oth­ers space to express ideas, Cain argues. Gand­hi, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, and Rosa Parks exem­pli­fy such intro­vert­ed lead­er­ship, and a qui­eter, more bal­anced and thought­ful cul­ture would pro­duce more lead­ers like them. Maybe this is a propo­si­tion any­one can endorse, whether they pre­fer Fri­day nights with hot tea and a nov­el or in the crush and bus­tle of the crowds.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in a Rare Inter­view (1957)

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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