[INFJ] How confident are you in your type?

[hauteur]

It's so good to hear this. We gotta end this "INFJ the nice pushover shy empath" myth

YES!! And they have no idea. lol

I know, right?

 

[John K]

I can't speak for other INFJs, however for me I usually do that connection thing if someone is worthy/interesting. I am currently sitting in a hair salon and this woman is talking so much shit and her stylist is dying a slow death. I hope dummy at least tips very well. She is painfully stupid. HAS NOT SHUT UP! lol

I asked her a few questions but then had to move so my daughters stylist could cut her hair (they’re seated next to each other).

Why did I ask her questions? Because I wanted to troll her.

Fe = Harmony Discord sometimes. :lol:

 

[John K]

I use it more in a language/logic/definitions fashion

would you mind developing that thought on clarity and looping?

I'm not sure I have much clarity in what the Ni/Ti loop really looks like

As Charlatan says in his comment, typologies like MBTI can provide a useful vocabulary even if you don't support all the content of the detailed psychological approach. I've seen the term Ni/Ti loop used a lot and it does summarise quite a complex idea very succinctly. Do I mean the same thing by it as others do? Well for me it describes a partnership between my (dominant) way of processing information, introverted intuition, and one of my judging functions, introverted thinking. This is nice and cosy, because as an introvert it means I can go a long, long way in exploring an idea or a perception without involving anyone else. I'm pretty good at Ti after majoring in maths and working in IS/IT. The trouble is, this process isn't grounded - I can go on indefinitely without getting any serious challenges to my thinking. There are probably as many different ways of this going wrong as there are INFJs. For me, there can be two major risks: I may form an unholy alliance between these two functions, with Ti accepting what Ni "insights" over and over again by rationalising it but not putting it firmly to the test. Ni builds a nice big castle on these shaky foundations using lots of energy and I fall in love with it, but then suddenly the bubble is deflated when I am knocked over by a fact or a thought that punctures it and all that effort is wasted - and I start to doubt my ability to process any ideas at all properly and go into grip. The second of my personal risks is that Ti simply sits there and criticises everything that Ni brings up, and tries to stage a takeover bid. Of course in our society, clear thinking is surely much better than woolly intuition isn't it. So I devalue my dominant function and try to act as a dominant Ti; Ni goes underground and carries out a guerrilla war by giving me a constant feeling that something isn't right- and I end up not processing things very well, getting confused, thoroughly pissed off, full of self doubt and emotionally drained - and again into grip. Got plenty of scars from both of these.

Ren, I think you are avoiding this type of risk in your open monism blog by making your ideas public. The act of writing them down and publishing them forces an extraverted perspective that brings rigour, and feedback from readers can to some extent help avoid your idea threads from running into nothing (I expect with exploratory deep philosophy there is no 100% guarantee that can't happen any more than original science can fully avoid dead ends as the price of progress).

 

[charlatan]

@hauteur -- yeah the elitism on forums always bothered me too. Sad, given I'm rather fond of typology. That's why I try to debunk some things/strive for a framework where, instead of saying 'oh you just don't understand' like some religion, we actually try to make the motivation for things plain.

 

[wolly.green]

Since studying Objective Personality, I've come to believe I am
MF - Ne/Ti CS/P(B)
And I'm pretty sure of my type!

 

[Lurk]

NeTiFeSi is probably the right order, but I'm introverted (But, but,with a dom Ne??? Teh rules!)

I'm confident in it.

 

[hauteur]

For me, there can be two major risks: I may form an unholy alliance between these two functions, with Ti accepting what Ni "insights" over and over again by rationalising it but not putting it firmly to the test. Ni builds a nice big castle on these shaky foundations using lots of energy and I fall in love with it, but then suddenly the bubble is deflated when I am knocked over by a fact or a thought that punctures it and all that effort is wasted - and I start to doubt my ability to process any ideas at all properly and go into grip. The second of my personal risks is that Ti simply sits there and criticises everything that Ni brings up, and tries to stage a takeover bid. Of course in our society, clear thinking is surely much better than woolly intuition isn't it. So I devalue my dominant function and try to act as a dominant Ti; Ni goes underground and carries out a guerrilla war by giving me a constant feeling that something isn't right- and I end up not processing things very well, getting confused, thoroughly pissed off, full of self doubt and emotionally drained - and again into grip. Got plenty of scars from both of these.

Wow, @John K, that's incredibly self-aware, and it hits closer to home than I would like. I mean, er, um, for someone I know. Yeah. A friend...

Actually, I had a huge occurrence of the second one a few years back. It was actually rooted in a personal conflict, but the idea of it is eerily accurate. It was a pretty messed up ordeal that went on for a very long time. I'll have to think on that some more.

 

[Reverist]

Just a thought - what the three of us have described seems to include quite a bit of Ni / Ti looping during our searches for clarity. That would perhaps add support to the idea of type INFJ for you Reverist.

Yeah, I think I experience Ni/Ti looping at times. It's a hard thing to explain, and for me it's one of those things where I don't know I'm in it until I am out and looking back on the situation. What makes me feel confident in being INFJ though, is that overall I just want to connect with and understand people, just for the sake of it. Even though I can tend to feel overwhelmed or even let down by interacting with people, it doesn't deter me in the long run from wanting to learn more about someone, in the hopes of creating or having successful interactions with them in the present and future.

INFJs can seem quite extroverted at times because you guys love to communicate with people you connect with. Like, really. No, seriously. More direct, focused and personal communication than many extroverts, I would wager.

Agree!! I could even say I like to connect with the people I am communicating with. If I am choosing to communicate and tell you about myself or my day, I want there to be a deeper meaning. I want to form a connection, even if it's only transitory. I don't want to just say words to fill the air. I want to feel like I'm on the same wavelength as the other person, or if we disagree, I want to learn about that new perspective. If I'm interested enough to want to connect, I'll ask a lot of followup questions. This sometimes throws people off who have come to see me as quiet and reserved, then all of the sudden there's a flood of words and major conversation happening, haha. It doesn't happen all the time with people, but when I am intrigued by a person or an idea, I am all in.

My theory is that INFJs have all these ideas they want to share, but very few people they want to share them with. So those very few people get to be the lucky recipients of all that communication!

^^ Yep.

For me, it's really just my husband. Sometimes I wonder if it's less that I don't want to share my ideas with other people, and more that most people don't seem as interested in diving as deeply into exploring ideas and topics, or are even put off by the depths to which I can or want to take the conversation. Thus most of my conversations with others, even regarding things I enjoy or know a lot about tend to be quite superficial. There's only a select few with whom I can enjoy that deeper conversation.

 

[charlatan]

NeTiFeSi is probably the right order, but I'm introverted (But, but,with a dom Ne??? Teh rules!)

That's because there are different notions of extravert/introvert out there that are loosely related! Just noting it because we're the exact same here (both e6, Big 5 introverts, and NeTi).

The thing the Big 5 tests for is pretty different -- it's a lot more correlated to boldness, assertiveness, and sociability. Versus e/i in the sense of Ne/Ti is more about the general subject-object divide abstractly (note that one doesn't have to adopt a metaphysical position that regards such a divide as fundamental to acknowledge the psychological vividness with which it plays out).

 

[Ren]

Versus e/i in the sense of Ne/Ti is more about the general subject-object divide abstractly (note that one doesn't have to adopt a metaphysical position that regards such a divide as fundamental to acknowledge the psychological vividness with which it plays out).

Very thoughtful of you, charlie

Where can I take a Big 5 test? Is it worth trying it out?

 

[charlatan]

Where can I take a Big 5 test? Is it worth trying it out?

I'd say if you already have taken MBTI tests, it's more or less a close variation with Neuroticism added as an additional scale (that is, I think the MBTI test is actually quite a bit closer to the Big 5 than it is to functions theory)...although I guess things like T vs F and Agreeableness are only correlated reasonably well, nowhere close to identical.

One thing is there are some very detailed inventories that measure a lot more specific facets of each of the 5.

As the history goes, originally Jung kind of smashed together the type of introversion/extraversion found in the Big 5 and in his own stuff (which centered more on the general subject/object divide). However, when he practically typed people, frequently he'd forget about the sociability stuff and prioritize the latter. I think a great example is Darwin was one of his most posterchild Te-doms, but I think it quite likely that Darwin was an introvert in the 'traditional' sense.

Jung's scales frequently had to be split up, because he was a pioneer, so he often cast things somewhat simply at first. He originally had put all T types as introverts, and all F types as extraverts, and he vastly complicated that eventually.

It's quite clear to me that a further fine-tuning was needed....even with examples like Adler and Freud, which were arguably Jung's entire motivation behind thinking about types.... he strangely pegged Adler as an introvert, despite Adler clearly being the more sociable (his point, though, was that in a more subject-oriented vs object-oriented sense, one could argue Freud's theories were the latter). This suggests putting subject/object together with traditional introvert/extravert is probably squeezing reasonably different things together artificially....yes they're both sort of inner vs outer oriented things, but it seems psychologically in significantly different ways.

Here are a few links

https://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

This is pretty standard.

Here's a version of the NEO-PI-R (for online use, but I think pretty close to the real thing)....it's long and has a lot of facet/subscale-level info

http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/


And last, I think it's worth examining the HEXACO, the Big 5's close competitor, which adds an extra scale and also rearranges where certain contents of the Big 5 scales actually fall (for instance, its version of neuroticism is more centered on fear than anger, and its version of Agreeableness is more centered on actual anger than merely lack of prosocial tendencies -- that is, stronger affective manifestation of the opposite of agreeable.)

http://hexaco.org/

The Big 5 is more directly mapped onto the MBTI, though.

 

[Wyote]

Is it worth trying it out

Yeah

 

[Ren]

I'd say if you already have taken MBTI tests, it's more or less a close variation with Neuroticism added as an additional scale (that is, I think the MBTI test is actually quite a bit closer to the Big 5 than it is to functions theory)...although I guess things like T vs F and Agreeableness are only correlated reasonably well, nowhere close to identical.

One thing is there are some very detailed inventories that measure a lot more specific facets of each of the 5.

As the history goes, originally Jung kind of smashed together the type of introversion/extraversion found in the Big 5 and in his own stuff (which centered more on the general subject/object divide). However, when he practically typed people, frequently he'd forget about the sociability stuff and prioritize the latter. I think a great example is Darwin was one of his most posterchild Te-doms, but I think it quite likely that Darwin was an introvert in the 'traditional' sense.

Jung's scales frequently had to be split up, because he was a pioneer, so he often cast things somewhat simply at first. He originally had put all T types as introverts, and all F types as extraverts, and he vastly complicated that eventually.

It's quite clear to me that a further fine-tuning was needed....even with examples like Adler and Freud, which were arguably Jung's entire motivation behind thinking about types.... he strangely pegged Adler as an introvert, despite Adler clearly being the more sociable (his point, though, was that in a more subject-oriented vs object-oriented sense, one could argue Freud's theories were the latter). This suggests putting subject/object together with traditional introvert/extravert is probably squeezing reasonably different things together artificially....yes they're both sort of inner vs outer oriented things, but it seems psychologically in significantly different ways.

Here are a few links

https://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

This is pretty standard.

Here's a version of the NEO-PI-R (for online use, but I think pretty close to the real thing)....it's long and has a lot of facet/subscale-level info

http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/


And last, I think it's worth examining the HEXACO, the Big 5's close competitor, which adds an extra scale and also rearranges where certain contents of the Big 5 scales actually fall (for instance, its version of neuroticism is more centered on fear than anger, and its version of Agreeableness is more centered on actual anger than merely lack of prosocial tendencies -- that is, stronger affective manifestation of the opposite of agreeable.)

http://hexaco.org/

The Big 5 is more directly mapped onto the MBTI, though.

Thanks for the links and context I'll take the test at some point over the next few days, and share my results.

 

[bonfire]

uzzled: INFJs are prone to questioning their types? Interesting. I wonder why.

I agree with OP that most sites' description of INFJ is kinda off, and not to mention vague. However, I generally base my self analysis on Cognitive Functions and so far they have described my mental work really well. Cognitive Functions tests help determining functions tendency in some extent too. I also got RCOAI in Big 5 which correlates with INFJ. There were several checks for confirmation bias too, so I think I got it right, but who knows.

 

[Pin]

My Cognitive Functions:

Your most pronounced cognitive function is:
Extroverted Thinking

Your mental life revolves around efficiency, organization, and hard-nosed factual analysis with a focus on the bottom line. You are at your best when given managerial and executive responsibilities where you are free to reorganize and reform the matters around you according to analytical and impersonal standards that can be objectively demonstrated to ensure greater efficiency as well as a greater outcome for everyone involved. While your drive for achieving results and organizing everything within view may sometimes be thought bossy by the people around you, the irony is that you actually welcome disagreement and debate as long as the other party is willing to drill down and present a solution that is as cogent as your own. As a person you are likely to be strong in reasoning power, decisive, and great at organization. However, you are also likely to handle your social life and emotions in a somewhat incidental manner. Your most likely Jungian type is ENTJ or ESTJ.

 

[hauteur]

@Pin, I actually really like that site's description of introverted intuition. That feels pretty dang spot on to me.

Seems kind of odd that my rankings are Ni-Fe-Si-Te, though.


Cognitive Function Test
Your most pronounced cognitive function is:
Introverted Intuition

You have a deep and persistent intellect that tends to receive its impetus from hunches at the very edge of consciousness. More often than not, you tend to be brooding over some problem or possibility, attempting to encompass all possible and impossible views on it at the same time and to weave them all into something greater. Hence you have it in you to be seminally creative by developing completely new perspectives on big questions that were commonly thought settled. As a person, you are likely to be thought highly original, unusual, and insightful. However, you tend to lack the joy of living in the present, your mind always being somewhere in the future. Your most likely Jungian type is INTJ or INFJ.

 

[Puzzlenuzzle]

Hello MBTI Gods,
This is great! At times I kind of doubt my type even though the descriptions fit me and I feel like I live through them heh.. probably because I don't really understand the functions and how they stack.
But, I took this one the other day: http://www.keys2cognition.com/explore.htm. I don't know how accurate some of you will think it is but alas..hope I'm not blabbering and wasting your time

However, I did 'read'(not really) about Se: "You prefer to live in the present moment, rather than dwelling on the past or day dreaming about the future" Which is very inaccurate for myself . But!! I do think that my 'se' measures higher than my tertiary when I am avoiding brain-wandering and trying to focus on the 'present' more. Like, a coping mechanism I guess? Does this make any sense?

Anyway, I don't know how valid you might think this test is.
This is what I got:bouncy:, whatever that means:

 

[Infjente]

I never get infj when I do tests. Usually it's enfp, intp or infp. If I lie and say that I'm organized, I always get infj.

I still believe I'm infj though

 

[Puzzlenuzzle]

I never get infj when I do tests. Usually it's enfp, intp or infp. If I lie and say that I'm organized, I always get infj.

I still believe I'm infj though

Yeah, literally the same! It's so confusing though. Sometimes I wonder if my ADHD or PTSD get in my way as I get these energy spurs and can really 'live in the present' & ignore my Ni. if I would take a test during that time then I'm likely to measure as something I'm definitely not. People tell me I'm very organised but.. I don't see it, maybe it's an insecurity of some sorts. Sorry, I'm just mentioning ADHD as I got the impression that you either had it or you understood it from the previous thread . However,I wonder if the function stacks can play out temporarily differently depending on other factors. I mean, instinctively I am INFJ to the dot but, at times it's like I chameleon myself into something totally different. Maybe I'm just a bit retarded

edit: the test said "if these cognitive processes don't fit well then consider these types: ENFJ, or ISFP" heheh...

 

[Infjente]

Yeah, literally the same! It's so confusing though. Sometimes I wonder if my ADHD or PTSD get in my way as I get these energy spurs and can really 'live in the present' & ignore my Ni. if I would take a test during that time then I'm likely to measure as something I'm definitely not. People tell me I'm very organised but.. I don't see it, maybe it's an insecurity of some sorts. Sorry, I'm just mentioning ADHD as I got the impression that you either had it or you understood it from the previous thread . However,I wonder if the function stacks can play out temporarily differently depending on other factors. I mean, instinctively I am INFJ to the dot but, at times it's like I chameleon myself into something totally different. Maybe I'm just a bit retarded

edit: the test said "if these cognitive processes don't fit well then consider these types: ENFJ, or ISFP" heheh...

I think you're right I feel that I'm stable at the core of my personality and the basic foundation is there to stay. But my outer layer: the way I act, level of intensity, which tools I prefer to use, sense of taste etc. are changing in accordance with new understandings/discoveries of "truth". I can't even figure out my enneagrams, non of them really stand out or is definitely not me.

Yes, I've got the diagnosis ADHD (inattentive type/ADD). I have crazy stamina and intensity if it's something I love to do. If not, I'm just standing there paralyzed watching everything move in high speed around me, with a dumb look on my face, probably drooling a little.

I heard that ADHD drugs have the opposite effect of antipsychotic drugs. Doesn't that make us more sane than most people? "Here, take this pill and act insane like normal people!"