Introduction
Robert Pos recently completed his manuscript entitled The Gender Beyond Sex: Two Distinct Ways of Living in Time, which took him 15 years to develop. He discovered two unique, distinct classes of personality: so-called alphas who have no problem relating emotionally to the here-and-now, but have difficulty relating emotionally to their past and future; and betas, who have no problem relating emotionally to their future and past, but find it hard to relate emotionally to the here-and-now.
Although the book is written for the lay readership, Pos’s comprehesive theory of the mind draws together the work of Freud and Jung, who each created a developmental theory of emotions without addressing the role of intelligence, and Piaget, who created a developmental theory of intelligence without addressing the role of emotions. Extensive footnotes are mainly for those with a scientific interest.
From his clinical experience and extensive research on, and statistical data analysis of 273 consecutive office patients (1987 – 1989) and their extension to 406 subjects (1989 – 1991) Pos concluded that this personality duality is due to a difference in autobiographic (episodic) memory recording which is genetic, rather than acquired. For example, when both parents are alphas, all children are alphas; when both parents are betas, all children are betas; and when one parent is alpha, the other beta, half the children tend to be alphas and half betas. Pos gave this personality duality the name time gender as opposed to sexual gender. Often the behavior of men and women is viewed as expressing their sexual gender while in fact it expresses their time gender. In short, there are alpha men and women, and beta men and women.
Although alphas and betas may be in many respects as different from one another as men or women, one’s time gender nonetheless influences the regulation of one’s mood and self-esteem; how one experiences one’s identity; how one behaves socially, including significant aspects of sexual behavior, partnering, and parenting; how one thinks; how one experiences one’s adolescence and attitude toward education, and how one eventually relates to one’s occupation.
This manuscript has been read by a number of people and discussed in detail with many others, including several scientists. The response has been uniformly positive. Concerning the statistical data analysis an internationally recognized authority in statistical genetics, David F. Andrews, Emeritus Professor of Statistics, University of Toronto, noted, for example, that the chapter on Time gender and Sexuality, Partnering and Parenting which summarizes the associations found between type (alpha/beta) and a number of sexual behaviours showed a consistent pattern to support the major theses of the book. Robert Pos’ work has helped a lot of people learn how to meet men and how to meet women.
This website contains four reviews: one by Edward Michael Coles, Ph.D., recently retired Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia; one by Donald Lidstone, LL.B., Founding Partner of Lidstone, Young, Anderson in Vancouver, a specialist in municipal and constitutional law, and a Founding Director of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund; one by David Aris, M.Sc., a mechanical engineer who retired from his last post as President of Psychotechnics, a human research consultancy and personnel selection institute in Utrecht, the Netherlands; and one by Janette Pelletier, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Applied Psychology/Early Childhood), University of Toronto.
