If you ever feel like you don't belong, a buzzy new term in popular psychology may help you find your place in the world.
Otroversion is a personality trait used by psychiatrist Dr Rami Kaminski to describe a person who doesn't fit in – not just in social groups, but in the existing personality types defined in the diagnostic manuals of professional psychology.
Kaminski says he’s an otrovert himself and developed the idea after recognising his own traits in patients. “When I was a child and teenager, I really felt different,” he says.
“I was popular, I had no obvious deficiencies, but I didn’t understand why I could be in a social gathering and feel alienated and remote and very lonely.”
It’s this feeling of ‘otherness’ that Kaminski says defines the otrovert. They tend not to work well in groups. They don’t ask for advice from others. They might agree with you wholeheartedly one-on-one, but the idea of consensus baffles them. They distrust institutions.
And they struggle even to comprehend how groups of people think collectively, whether those groups are religious, political or social.
None of which is to say that otroversion is a cognitive or emotional disorder. Otroverts are usually friendly and altruistic people, Kaminski says, but they prefer to have deep relationships with just one other person.
That doesn’t mean it’s another word for introversion either.
If anything, otroverts are more like faux extraverts – sociable, gregarious even, but rarely seeking any kind of group approval. But really, otroversion doesn’t sit somewhere on a spectrum between extraversion and introversion.
It’s something else entirely.
Most people have what Kaminski calls the ‘Bluetooth phenomenon’. We automatically search for connection and emotionally pair with others when possible. Otroverts don’t have this.
“It’s very hard to live a life when the entire social structure is predicated on communality and a collective identity of sorts,” he says.
Kaminski seems to have struck a chord. Last year, he published a book on otroversion called The Gift of Not Belonging: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners. Since its publication, otroversion has become something of a social media sensation.
More than 70,000 people have taken the questionnaire Kaminski devised to test for otroversion (try it yourself at: bit.ly/OtroQuestionaire) and he’s received countless letters, emails and messages on social media from people who say they identify with the trait.
Those people are in good company. Kaminski names Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka and George Orwell as people who demonstrated otrovert traits: independent thinkers who don’t naturally conform to trends or prevailing ideas in their fields.
“The system didn’t work for them,” he says. “They had irrepressible ideas, so they did it on their own. I know from my work, the proportion of entrepreneurs and founders [who are otroverts] seems to be high.”
This is where Kaminski hopes his work will help people. Many otroverts feel isolated rather than ‘free’, wondering anxiously why they’re different. He wants those people to embrace that difference and realise that it also comes with advantages.
In business or the arts, being an otrovert can set you apart in the best possible way.
That’s partly because his approach is a direct (but friendly and respectful) challenge to hive minds and tribalism in general. It’s good to challenge the status quo, he says.
Kaminski lists inventors, writers and psychiatrists as occupations where otroverts can thrive. “There may be a preponderance to any profession that you can do on your own, but you can also be a soloist in an orchestra.
"You can be marginal, but not an outsider. There’s just a level of freedom that you need that is very, very essential and without it, you cannot function.”
You won’t yet find otroversion in any peer-reviewed papers; it’s a new idea. But Kaminski is in the process of beginning new research projects that will lead to new insights about otroverts and how they can live productively and happily.
In the meantime, he has only one piece of advice for anyone who believes they’re an otrovert. “Don’t try to fit in. It’s a hopeless pursuit and eventually, you’ll see it’s not necessary.”
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