Who is Procrustes?<\/p>\n
And for what reason should you (quickly…) get off of his bed?<\/p>\n
Procrustes<\/strong> is a character recorded in Greek mythology<\/strong> as living on Mount Corydalle, along the sacred road linking Eleusis and Athens, who offered hospitality to pilgrims<\/strong>: a generous dinner was followed by a rest on a bed that he wished to conform perfectly to the body of the wayfarer.<\/p>\n And since he could not change the size of the bed, he used to change the size of the victim<\/strong>, who was stretched to the desired length or amputated if he protruded from the bed itself.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, Prokroust\u00eas in ancient Greek means ‘the stretcher’.<\/p>\n The expression “Procrustes bed”, originated from this myth, indicates the<\/p>\n As you can imagine, a pathology that psychologists have been and still are dealing with extensively.<\/p>\n However, there is a different and more interesting connection<\/strong> between our behaviour and Procrustes bed<\/strong>, which can be found in our way of dealing with knowledge and the unknown<\/strong>: the two opposites that we find so difficult to deal with.<\/p>\n Procrustes tried to fill the bed by submitting his victims to stretching, whereas<\/p>\n Alternatively, we persuade ourselves that the knowledge we own is the only knowledge that has value<\/strong>, or even the only one that exists; hence, we neglect what we do not know<\/strong>, cutting off the unknown that frightens us.<\/p>\n I have seen (and see today…) many uses for the Procrustes bed, of which I have long been an unconscious user (and I am not sure I am completely free of it…).<\/p>\n Let us look at some of them:<\/span><\/p>\n Do you find all this plausible?<\/p>\n Here are 7 tips that I do my best to follow<\/strong> and that I want to share with you:<\/p>\n If you think I have forgotten something, please feel free to add it to the list.<\/p>\n I don’t know if I succeeded in communicating how dangerous Procrustes bed is, because there is an aspect of the myth that our instinct for self-preservation probably makes us ignore: namely, that<\/p>\n But getting out of the Procrustes bed is only an individual choice.<\/p>\n Or organisational.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t you think so?<\/p>\n <\/p>\ntendency to reduce people’s behaviour to a single pattern,
\na single way of thinking and acting or, more generally,
\na difficult and intolerable situation,
\nor even a tormented state of mind.<\/h4>\nwe tend to reduce knowledge to pre-packaged and standard models,
\nand the world view to a few clear-cut ideas
\nin which there is no room for uncertainty.<\/h4>\n\n
How can we get off the Procrustes bed without getting injured?<\/h4>\n
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we simultaneously wear both Procrustes’ and the victim’s clothes.<\/h4>\n