Our subjects are in general strongly focused on problems outside themselves. In current terminology they are problem-centered rather than ego centered. They generally are not problems for themselves, and are not generally much concerned about themselves, i.e., as contrasted with the ordinary introspectiveness that one finds in insecure people. These individuals customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside of themselves which enlists much of their energies. 2

This is not necessarily a task that they would prefer or choose for themselves; it may be a task that they feel is their responsibility, duty, or obligation. This is why we use the phrase "a task that they must do" rather than the phrase "a task that they want to do." In general these tasks are non personal or "unselfish", concerned rather with the good of mankind in general, or of a nation in general or of a few individuals in the subject's family.

With a few exceptions, we can say that our subjects are ordinarily concerned with basic issues and eternal questions of the type that we have learned to call by the names philosophical or ethical. Such people live customarily in the widest possible frame of reference. They seem never to get so dose to the trees that they fail to see the forest. They work within a framework of values which are broad and not petty, universal and not local, and in terms of a century rather than the moment. In a word, these people are all, in one sense or another, philosophers, however homely.

Of course, such an attitude carries with it dozens of implications for every area of daily living. For instance, one of the main "presenting symptoms" originally worked with ("bigness," lack of smallness, triviality, pettiness) can be subsumed under this more general heading. This impression of being above small things, of having a larger horizon, a wider breadth of vision, of living in the widest frame of reference, sub specie aeternitatis, is of the utmost social and interpersonal importance; it seems to impart a certain serenity and lack of worry over immediate concerns, which makes life easier not only for themselves but for all who are associated with them.