Psychology Primer: Preparation: Difference between revisions

The last part of this tutorial will cover the importance of preparing yourself to serve aboard your vessel as the counselor. First and foremost you need to review the bio’s of everyone serving aboard your vessel, both PC’s and NPC’s. Fortunately, SB118 has an excellent practice of posting the bio’s for everyone in the fleet. Study them closely, because you can assume that any major life experiences that are recounted within would be on file in your office for you to review. These provide you with clues as to how to approach certain characters and provide hints as to where certain behaviors are stemming from that you need to keep an eye on. Pay special attention to entries which indicate a failure to follow orders in the past, lapses in judgement, the entries of other counselors concerning growth in certain areas of emotional maturity, indicators of “lone ranger” mentality (which can be seen by repetitious disregard of the chain of command, over-reacting in sims in an effort to be the one who always saves the day, the previously noted failure to follow lawful orders resulting in injury or death of innocent parties, etc.), severe trauma’s in the character’s upbringing, references to obsessions with revenge, etc. Knowing such things can allow you to bring your powers of observation to bear in current sims where such tendencies must be avoided. Also watch for signs of tension between characters, either positive or negative. While some CO’s are more laisez-faire with regards to allowing tension between characters, others are more strict in what they allow so be careful when addressing confrontations. Of course its your duty to bring your observations to the First Officer concerning any potential confrontations between characters due to those confrontations negatively impacting the current mission with regards to the morale of the other officers, and the distraction it provides which can be deadly if left unchecked.  

Lastly, do some research on the character’s ethnobiology and culture. I am not going to begin to try to present a “character study” for each and every race and culture in Star Trek in this tutorial. I will present some strategies with regards to dealing with some of the more common races in Tutorial #3, however you should utilize the numerous Trek resources on the net and in books such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia to help you understand the mindset common to most members of a given character’s race.