What Type is BBC's Sherlock?

[Wyote]

So we are also including mental issues into the mix?

My main point in bringing them up was to illustrate his personal difficulties, which weigh him down, making his natural way of operating somewhat clouded.
Not really anything to do with his specific use of functions, just environmental pressures which can cause people to behave unnaturally.

 

[wolly.green]

ISTP for sure. Anyone recall his hobbies? I believe one of them is analysing different kinds of tabaco ash? Remember he also kept a head in his fridge because he wanted to analyse the coagulation of saliva. That sounds like introverted thinking to me. Further, he notices a lot of concrete details that most people miss. Clearly extraverted sensing.

 

[charlatan]

TiSe is my vote too, Wyote.
Were I to subtype, as I said, I'd even say with an emphasis on the sensation (just as I call myself an N-subtype over a T one.)
He strikes me as intensely Se.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Drug use is an interesting topic. I remember that much younger I was involved with drugs. At first because I wanted to know how they changed a person's perception of the world and why people did them in the first place. I later realized I continued to do them along with being drunk most of the time in order to cope being around the people I was hanging out with at the time. I don't think I would have had any interest in hanging out unless I was under the influance of something.

 

[James]

Drug use is an interesting topic. I remember that much younger I was involved with drugs. At first because I wanted to know how they changed a person's perception of the world and why people did them in the first place. I later realized I continued to do them along with being drunk most of the time in order to cope being around the people I was hanging out with at the time. I don't think I would have had any interest in hanging out unless I was under the influance of something.

I've never taken drugs, but I think in the books the suggestion is Sherlock is just totally bored when not on a case, and then uses cocaine etc.

It might seem shocking, but it wasn't illegal at the time. I don't think it was written as though he'd become an addict, more that Dr Watson saw it as unhealthy and a waste of his talents. So steered him back to cases instead.

Even in selecting the cases, he finds most of them zero challenge, and only wants to pursue the really strange or puzzling ones. Which to him were rarities.

 

[MrSquared]

INTJ 100%

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

If your answer is INTJ, you understand INTJs as superficially as the stereotype they'd like you to believe. Te doesn't work like that.

 

[James]

If your answer is INTJ, you understand INTJs as superficially as the stereotype they'd like you to believe. Te doesn't work like that.

I checked the DVD box @ruji and it definitely says he's INTJ. I'm not saying that's proof (because I made it up) but that's clear evidence.

What type did you opt for ?

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

I checked the DVD box @ruji and it definitely says he's INTJ. I'm not saying that's proof (because I made it up) but that's clear evidence.

What type did you opt for ?

ISTP

Whatever he might be, Ti must be the dominant function, or auxiliary at the very least.

People have a misconception of what J means. In fact, many of you here are actually Ps.

 

[wolly.green]

ISTP

Whatever he might be, Ti must be the dominant function, or auxiliary at the very least.

People have a misconception of what J means. In fact, many of you here are actually Ps.

Yeah agreed. Further it makes no sense to analyse functions in isolation. INTJs are known to have tunnel vision. This happens because of Ni's tendency to synthesise a singular vision, and Te's tendency to use the facts of the matter to formulate a way of achieving that vision. Sherlock is not intensley focused on achieving a singular vision. He focuses instead on problems when they arise. He meets those problems spontaneously as they happen. Just like an SP

 

[Ren]

@ruji You're sounding uncharacteristically peremptory in your assertions. Please elaborate. I'm completely open to the idea he's ISTP.

Edit: I may very well misunderstand Te. I just don't see much Fe (even inferior) in Sherlock. Agreed that he is a fictional character.

 

[Ren]

Being an enneagram 1, being wrong is one of the most embarrassing situations I can be in. I don't know if you can relate, but much of my identity depends on being right, esp. about the things I care about. Furthermore, knowing you could be wrong while being treated like a champignon, is the most hurtful state of existence.

Ginny I hope you're saying this half in jest. Otherwise - take a chill pill! XD nobody tried to hurt you!

 

[Wyote]

Sherlock is not intensley focused on achieving a singular vision. He focuses instead on problems when they arise. He meets those problems spontaneously as they happen. Just like an SP

Perhaps my mis-reading of him comes from exactly this. While watching, I always feel like he definitely has a singular vision (some grand plan), but the audience just isn't told this. But if you examine his behavior, he doesn't exactly navigate as if he is working toward anything, just figuring it all out as it unfolds.

 

[wolly.green]

Perhaps my mis-reading of him comes from exactly this. While watching, I always feel like he definitely has a singular vision (some grand plan), but the audience just isn't told this. But if you examine his behavior, he doesn't exactly navigate as if he is working toward anything, just figuring it all out as it unfolds.

Well he is good at hatching plans. He is good at laying down a plan and outwitting his rivals, but this is hardly "visionary". Remember, INTJ's are thinking 10 to 20 years ahead. Their visions are long term. Does Sherlock have similar long term plans? Maybe he does, but personally I can't see it.

 

[charlatan]

@Wyote: if anything, the fact that it's all connected in some grand way that Sherlock is vaguely aware of might be a lower-order Ni rather than a dominant one.

Sure, subliminally maybe it's all tied to his relation to Eurus/going towards his encounter with her. And sure, maybe he's on some level aware of it.

But basically, I see this as a TiSe type that, like wolly says, meets things spontaneously (in fact, Sherlock literally tells Mycroft when London is on terror-alert in the episode where he reveals he's not dead to John.. that the answer will be in some random detail that he's just got to keep his eyes open for), figures them out as he goes, vaguely aware of a sense in which it's all interconnected and heading in some direction.

I also see this as (in a parallel way) a 7 with an inner 5 conflict lying behind. His standard personality is stimulation-seeking, constantly bored, and so on. However, all this is driven by a sense of scarcity/lacking that began perhaps when he wasn't up to the competence to save his childhood friend from the well. The integration point is often presented as a sort of deeper inner self, a reaction to which produces the neurotic needs of the core type.

Frequently enneagram/the Jungian functions (while not identical systems or trivially translatable into one another) interplay in such a "natural" way.

 

[Free]

I also chose ISTP for reasons already stated. It's easy to mistype a fictional character almost as easily as it is to misunderstand the J and P functions.

ISTP type leads with dominant introverted thinking (a judging function), but shows the world an auxiliary perceiving function of extraverted sensing. Because their dominant function is a judging function, even though it’s internalized, they will seem more like J types.

- https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/20...standing-what-the-jp-preference-really-means/

 

[Eventhorizon]

I checked the DVD box @ruji and it definitely says he's INTJ. I'm not saying that's proof (because I made it up) but that's clear evidence.

What type did you opt for ?

Ooooohhhhhhh burn. @ruji getting burned and schooled. Badly. The roo has just been handed his proverbial butt.

J/k. I dont care.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Speaking of the BBCs Sherlock I wonder if anyone picked up what was happening when he was speaking about Watson as his best man during his wedding. People were laughing at what he was saying but the whole time he was being completely serious.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Unfortuantly in order to have a watchable tv show, bbcs Sherlock talks a lot. Far more than a real INTJ ever would. Here, another example as to how a fictional character simply can't be defined in reality.

 

[Ren]

Well he is good at hatching plans. He is good at laying down a plan and outwitting his rivals, but this is hardly "visionary". Remember, INTJ's are thinking 10 to 20 years ahead. Their visions are long term. Does Sherlock have similar long term plans? Maybe he does, but personally I can't see it.

That's a pretty essential point, actually. The NJ (and particularly NTJ) tunnel vision is not something that should be applied to one's approach to work only, but to life in general. In fact, it is never really applied, it is part of what that life is. And in the case of Sherlock's life, I don't see much of it either. Of course we could say that he purposely doesn't speak about it, or isn't fully conscious of it. But that would be stretching it

(@Wyote You said essentially the same thing above, should have read that first!)

If anything, the fact that it's all connected in some grand way that Sherlock is vaguely aware of might be a lower-order Ni rather than a dominant one.

I'd almost forgot that ISTPs have Ni as their tertiary. This also makes a difference. I think that I hadn't thought through the ISTP type, to be honest. Also I can't say I'm that intimately familiar with the Sherlock series, I watched the first three seasons many years ago and that's about it.