If we were to write down a list of strengths and then of weaknesses, we’d find that almost everything on the positive side of the ledger could be connected up with something on the negative. The theory urges us to search a little more assiduously than is normal for the strength to which a maddening characteristic must be twinned. We can see easily enough that someone is pedantic and uncompromising; we tend to forget, at moments of crisis, their thoroughness and honesty. We know so much about a person’s messiness, we have forgotten their uncommon degree of creative enthusiasm.
