I’m an otrovert! Who are you?
Are you — an otrovert — too?
Elaine and I have been reading a book that showed us to ourselves with uncanny accuracy: The Gift of Not Belonging: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners (Little, Brown Spark, 2025), by psychiatrist Rami Kaminski, who posits a personality type to place alongside those of the extrovert and introvert: the otrovert. I got the book from a library after taking an online test from Kaminski’s Otherness Institute. (Yes, I used a fake name.) I scored very high: “You are an otrovert.” Elaine took the test too: we scored a point apart. I took the test again (with a different fake name) a few weeks later, not remembering my answers, and came out with my previous score. It’s a good test.
After a lifetime identifying as an introvert, I think the word otrovert better describes me: someone who’s fully capable of being social but always inclined to feel a sense of not belonging, of being apart from any group. In every group situation I can think of — a workplace meeting, an effort with a civic group, a large social gathering — I always feel apartness. It’s not a bad thing, and I don’t mind at all — see the book’s subtitle — but it’s quite different from being an introvert. My favorite way to engage with other people: in a group of two or three or four.
Not all of Kaminski’s examples of otrovert tendencies will fit someone who identifies as an otrovert: I, for instance, don’t feel uneasy standing on line or in an elevator, and I have attended political gatherings and picketed my workplace. But if I do show up for a cause, I cringe when I’m expected to chant — or, worse, sing “This Land Is Your Land.” (And I have a half-dozen Woody Guthrie CDs on a shelf.) I’m just not a joiner. And are my interests idiosyncratic and of little interest to most people? Okay, fine.
As Elaine wrote after taking the test and starting the book: “Never in my life have I felt so ‘seen,’ not that being ‘seen’ is going to change anything.”
[How did we learn of otroversion? Neither of us knows. ”On line“: I was born in Brooklyn, where people wait on, not in, line.]
Thursday, January 1, 2026
Otroversion and me
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
comments: 5
I'd say I'd join you but. .., Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look for that book.
Ha! Best borrowed from a library, I'd say. I don't think there's a lot to go back to.
My library doesn't have the book but i can interlibrary loan it. this is an interesting theory as i, too, am an introvert at heart but can be social but even in a group feel a sense of not belonging. i was tempted today to rejoin an online group but realized why do so when i never felt i was part of it and that was the reason i quit it before.
kirsten
Fun!
I took the test and it said I am a “communal introvert” – – I didn’t give my email for full definition, so I’m not sure what that means,
but it sounds like something I’ve often claimed – –
that I am a “friendly introvert”.
One of the few questions I
“ very strongly agreed” with was “I consider thinking an activity”
(Of course!)
– – and the only one I “very strongly disagreed” with was
“I get my best ideas in a meetings” – –
are they kidding? Is this actually true for anybody?
Kirsten, it sounds like you figured it out.
Fresca, I can't find a definition of "communal introvert" in the book. (There isn't ne.) But he does say that communal people want to be invited into the group and that they can be introverts, extroverts, or outsiders who have been marginalized.. Also, that they're looking toward the center, while the otrovert is facing outside, even when on the inside of things. If you take the test and give your e-mail, you'll get a document that tells you more. I've had nothing but the one e-mail from them.
Post a Comment