Good morning everybody,
I am subscribed to the MBRadio archives and am looking for an episode that discusses the electric fence personality. I used the search function in the archives, but came up blank. I used the forum search as well, but apparently it gives you all the responses that have ANY of the key words, so that was fruitless, as well. Does anybody remember hearing an episode, where the electric fence personality was discussed in detail? And if so, can you help me to find it? Or perhaps there are better ways to use the search function? Thanks in advance!

Hi Grace,

I can remember hearing Dr Harley on the radio saying something about his article on the "electric fence personality" being "about as psychological" as he gets. I heard this years ago. I believe he was talking in the context of his not approving of popular psychology approaches such as labelling personalities, or focusing on childhood events as explanations for current problems. I think he was talking about his insistence on using the behavioural approach, in which he focuses on current problems and taking steps with every interaction to eliminate them.

I can't remember when that episode would have been, but even if I could, it wasn't actually about EFP, but about why he doesn't really use such diagnoses. EFP was barely mentioned, so it might not turn up in a search. I must say that when I first came here and read through all the articles, that one stood out as odd - as different from the focus of all the others. It doesn't really fit with the majority of his approach.

Other people might respond to you with a specific episode, but I would nonetheless recommend writing to Dr Harley at the radio station and asking him directly whether he ever covered EFP in an episode. As well as answering that question, he would probably offer to help you with whatever issue is behind the question - for free, either on or off air.

I did find the article where Dr. Harley talks about "the electric fence personality". Have you read that?

Recovering Sexual Desire

I will also search the radio archives.

I did find a few radio episodes where they talk about it.

Air date June 4, 2018 Program 1920 segment 11165

Air date December 8, 2017 program 1848 segment 10668

Air date July 28, 2017 program 1794 segment 10290

I think there might even be a thread where it was discussed here on the forum, but I'm not 100% on that.

Wow, you guys are great! ...and fast!
I have read the article.
How did you find those radio episodes? I will look into those.
Thank you all very much!

Brainy, what search terms did you use to find those episodes? Did you need to use "..." so that the individual words did not pop up all the time?

In the radio archive I just searched "electric". If you put in fence it has too many hits and so if you do the least, but it's an odd word you usually can find things.

I believe Dr. Harley has written about the electric fence personality in his book, Buyers, Renters, & Freeloaders. I can't confirm because I loaned my copy to one of my daughters, but I'm pretty sure he wrote about it there.

On the February 12, 2024 show he talks about the electric fence personality. He answered your question.

Dr. Harley confirms that he wrote about it in Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders