A lot of this is taken directly from Robert Zoller's texts, and Robert first studied with Zoltan Mason and learned Morin's delineation methods.
I studied with Robert, too, and he's a wonderful astrologer. But I find a lot of the above to be not always true. I've seen people with all their planets in earth and water signs who are very self-directed and wouldn't dream of asking advice, and people with a predominance of masculine planets and a masculine ascendant who prefer to not take decisions at all.
I've also not found the part about primary motivation and how the native tries to achieve it to be true, though that's a bit muddier, as anything aspecting the ascendant will modify it. But in my experience, the almuten figuris seems to hold more of a key to those things than the ascendant and ascendant ruler.
Which isn't to dismiss the importance of the ascendant and its ruler - they speak of the physical body amongst other things as well as mannerisms, and that's vital stuff.
Has anyone else run across anything like this in terms of theory versus practise? Zoller and Morin are well-worth reading, don't get me wrong there, and I do appreciate a systematic approach to delineation, but this...as I said, a lot of time this particular part of it seems not to work terribly well.