Probably
the most fun part of typology, and often the end goal behind studying typology,
is figuring out other people's types. This is also one of the more frustrating
parts of typology. In many cases another person's type can be extraordinarily
elusive, like trying to catch smoke: the more you look at the person the less
certain you become. Little details keep popping up that you are not sure how to
account for with typology. From one perspective you feel certain they are one
type, but from another angle that doesn't seem so certain. What's more is when
a friend whom you were sure was one type comes and tells you excitedly that
they are really a completely opposite type. Even worse is when you are trying
to confirm your type for yourself but never feel satisfied.
In
Part I of this little series I would like to explain my theories behind why
typing can be so frustrating, as well as two basic tips I've learned on how to
better go about recognizing these real life examples of Jungian preferences.
The
first thing I think I've noticed is that many people use primarily intuitive
functions when typing people. When intuition is used to determine type it
becomes a bit like an internet quiz to determine which characters from Game of
Thrones each of your friends are. It becomes a game of association. As I've mentioned before, I think intuition is like a
blurred lens, which obscures details of an object, but makes it easier to
imagine what other objects it now looks like. So, when using an intuitive
function to type someone, the satisfaction comes from figuring out which type
matches the blurred image of a person best. This is why typing can be very
frustrating, especially for dominant intuitive types. Intuition often comes
with a strong sense of certainty that is very satisfying, but once one starts
focusing the image and no longer relying on intuition, both the certainty and
satisfaction dissipate. The realm of sensation is a realm fraught with
uncertainty. A good deal of research and work is required to obtain certainty, which can be exhausting for
those not predisposed to it.
However,
the seemingly certain realm of intuition, as far as typing is concerned, has a
few problems with it. First, there's the obvious problem that it blurs the
facts. Intuition is good at pointing one in the right direction, but I believe
it is almost disrespectful to assume that someone's personality preferences can
be determined with no more than a casual glance and a hunch. People are extraordinarily
complex, and because Jungian typology is not directly concerned with behavior
but with cognition, which is something we have to dig deeper for, there is no
way we can trust intuitive hunches only. An individual, in my opinion, deserves
a good lot of work and trouble before we feel certain that we have covered all
their angles, and we must always remain open to new discoveries that may change
our theory.
Second,
intuitively typing people relies on having blurred stereotypes of the sixteen
types and the eight functions in order to better relate certain people to them.
Intuition looks for general patterns and overarching blurs that are easier for
it to work with than detailed descriptions with lots of little parts. But as I
mention at the beginning of every video, I think many of the stereotypes used
up to this point are rather misleading and necessarily shallow.
This
leads into the third point, which is that the creation of such stereotypes is
often based in an individual's preexisting intuitive prejudices. In other
words, feeling that typology helps to explain the existence of
"them", of "those kind of people over there who I've always had
to put up with. Now I understand what groups them all together". This
feeling often can't tell the difference between the actual functions Jung
talked about objectively, and the subjective prejudices the typist is now
investing into the theory. For instance, suppose someone types as INTP, and then
sees the feeling function as an explanation for all the annoying people they've
seen who judge things by their emotions, when in fact the feeling function has nothing to do with emotion. It has to do with
questions of value, of better or best, and can be just as ruthless in its
thinking as the thinking function, which in turn can elicit just as much
frustration or even fear as the feeling function is thought to do. If someone
judges something to be of inferior value they might heartlessly dispose of it
and be on their way. If someone judges something to make no sense they might
get exceptionally frustrated over it. But this view does not explain what our INTP
wants it to explain, and thus does not validate our INTP's way of thinking as a
superior way of thinking.
In
short, one of the most important tips I can give a typist is not to value your
own preferences over others. There are many things that people grow up
believing are evil, or wrong, or less valuable points of view, which are in
reality just as valid viewpoints as one's own, and have nothing to do with true
questions of value. For instance, an INFJ may grow up, and as their preferences
blossom and manifest themselves, the INFJ will probably naturally believe that
goodness is a standard separate from the individual that they should harmonize
with or align with, and to say "to thine own self be true" is to
endorse stagnation, selfishness and nihilistic moral relativity. Meanwhile an
INFP would think just the opposite: evil comes from people giving into the crowd's
demands, and giving up on what one knows is true, while good is emphasizing and
solidifying the goodness naturally present in each of us. Thus, each type may
feel that in order to validate their own point of view, the opposing viewpoint
and associated types must be fundamentally flawed.
This
begs the question as to whether typology is proposing an amoral system. I
adamantly disagree. What I think typology does is help clear up what is
definitively not related to morality, so that we can focus on what really is so
related. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay Self-Reliance, "The eye was placed where one ray should fall,
that it might testify of that particular ray."
The
point is, in order to be truly unbiased when typing, one must be willing to admit
that their way of looking at the world is fundamentally incomplete, and only
one perspective out of many. It does not follow that morality is relative,
because Jungian typology is not behaviorist, but cognitive. Murder can be
motivated by any one of the functions. Whether or not the murder was right or
wrong is another matter. With that clear, there is no moral concern in
admitting that one's perspective is limited and biased, but it can be difficult
because it ultimately means that sometimes
your way of thinking is wrong, and many things you cherished and counted
for truth were nothing of the sort. Until one admits this, it can be difficult
to type people without bias.
So,
to summarize, the two main tips I would give a typist are 1. give people the time,
effort, energy, and exhaustively thorough research that they deserve, and 2. be
willing to regard your own preferences as fundamentally incomplete. To put it
even simpler, Research and Humility.
How to Type Someone: Part II: The Function
Axes
Script can be found at: CelebrityTypes.com -- article
How to Type Someone: Part III: How to Type
Yourself
One question that has concerned a number of
Jungian community members is not necessarily how to type other people, but a more personal and immediately important
question: how do I type myself? Some
people are very confident in their type assessment from when they first receive
it onwards. Others however, are not, and feel that their Jungian identity is
always elusive, and they can never seem to rest assured in one of the types.
In this video I am going to present primarily
the function axes in a much more detailed way. This, I hope, will help make the
types more recognizable, so that people can feel much more assured in their
identity. I will also go over how to determine which functions are likely more
dominant in your personality.
I have only one word of advice before I
begin: I think the best way to become confident in your type is simply to act
like it. In other words, to pick the type you think works best and stick to it. Embrace one of the types. Pick
a side, as it were, and don't waver in this conviction until the evidence has
become truly undeniable. Maybe you will choose the "wrong" type at
first, but I think choosing one type over another is the first step and can
help accelerate that process.
Now, I will begin by describing the judgment
axes, Fe/Ti and Te/Fi, because I think these are the more recognizable axes.
If you have an Fe/Ti axis, then you probably
relate more to the idea of being lost in a foreign land, and trying to learn
the language and customs of the people around you so that you can regain the
blessings of human interaction. If you are Ti dominant, your focus is on
learning the language and customs, in other words, getting control of, or
getting your mind wrapped around, the concepts and underlying theories behind
how the things work. If you are Fe dominant, your focus is on actually speaking
the language and practicing the customs, so as to obtain desired effects from
others; in other words, to truly communicate, and usually to communicate in
such a way that promotes harmony, goodness, and comfort in others. If you don't
repress either Ti or Fe, but have them smashed between two perceiving
functions, then you can probably relate to both
of those ideas very well.
If you have an Fe/Ti axis, odds are you
greatly resonate with the idea of a group of people overcoming their
differences and working together as a team. The barriers are broken down
between them; they are not reserving anything from the others. In a work
environment, whether or not you actually like group work, you cannot abide
discord among people. You want work to be a well-oiled machine that makes sense
and isn't interrupted by people's personal interests or feelings getting in the
way. Fe/Ti doesn't understand it when people do things only to express
themselves, or champion some passion within themselves, especially when these actions
seem to promote discord, or when they are done without due consideration or
attention to others' interests or the common good. This is considered highly
petty and self-centered. Fe/Ti is, even with Ti dominants, to some degree
attuned to the value atmosphere of an environment. At the very least, you are
naturally attentive to and consider it a priority to accommodate this
atmosphere in order to get things done; even if you don't agree with the values
in this environment, it presents a real barrier to you that you have to
navigate. In other words, if you want to get something done in Rome, then you
have to go through the proper channels and work with things on their level. If
you want to work with certain people, then you must adapt your presentation to
cater appropriately to them so that you can both help them and accomplish your
own agenda. What this ultimately means is that you feel that morality, duty, or
right and wrong, is something outside of you that you subject yourself to. You
think in terms of rules which you must align with or accommodate into your
life. You don't find anything valuable or desirable within yourself already:
your value comes from the degree to which you align yourself with truth,
causing the light to more brightly resonate within you. But the light does not
come from you. It is for this reason that Fe/Ti has no compunction against
accommodating others, changing themselves and their presentation for others.
This isn't seen as insincere, as there is nothing within yourself to be sincere
to, but there are things outside of yourself that you can be sincere to, and
that includes helping others to feel comfortable. What this all comes down to
is that you feel value, warmth, light, goodness, and desirability, is
objective. It's something that can be measured and obtained, understood by all
and accessible to all through the proper methods, which anyone can understand.
It's something that resides in objects, which you must comprehend and harmonize
with, and not something within you already.
On the other hand, if you have a Te/Fi axis,
then you probably relate more to the idea of being lost in frozen tundra,
trying to carve out a living for yourself and keep yourself warm. If you are Fi
dominant, then your focus is on building the fire, and keeping it going,
blowing on the coals to gain more heat. If you are Te dominant, then you are
more concerned with building shelter, with carving out an area for yourself,
with fighting off dangers and exploring, and otherwise getting control of the
environment. Though, you may relate to both of those ideas simultaneously,
which may mean you don't repress either and they reside in the middle of your
stack.
You may have noticed that one of the biggest
differences between this axis and the previous axis is that the Te/Fi axis sees
objects only for their properties, possessing no warmth or desirability in
themselves, but only properties that can be combined scientifically to get
certain results. If they are to have desirability, it is because an individual
granted them this desirability. But then they only are desirable to that
person, and not necessarily to you. So we see that things are nicely reversed:
the Te/Fi axis wants nothing less
than to be assimilated into some whole as the Fe/Ti axis seems to want, because
for Te/Fi this means freezing to death. The world is cold and lifeless. Warmth
comes from within. The individual endows the world with value and meaning, and not the other way around. As such,
you feel a strong need to individuate yourself, that is, to affirm and express
those things you find valuable, a.k.a. building a fire and keeping it going. If
you're going to do something, or going to like something, you have to decide
yourself that you like it. Morality and truth must grow up inside of you first,
become a part of your own fire. You can't just adopt a new regimen, you have to
nourish it first. The world comes to you,
you don't come to the world. What's more, with this mentality the world is
naturally malleable, and logic to you is the practical, straightforward method
of building, destroying, and otherwise changing things, demolition and molten creation,
getting real things done; all of which might seem barbaric to the Fi dominant,
but that is still the way that they
think. Te/Fi is much rougher with things, not because they themselves are
rough, but because that's just how the world seems to them. If you want to
build something out of clay, then you have to be forceful with it. You can't be
afraid of damaging the clay, or damaging yourself. You have to overcome your
inhibitions about that and dig your hands in, and this difference can pit the
Te/Fi and Fe/Ti axes against each other.
So, as a quick comparison, Fe/Ti is
harmonizing, comes to the world, tries to align with the world and navigate the
world, sees value as something already present in objects, while properties are
abstract and understood relatively by the individual. They are attuned to the
feeling atmosphere of a situation, seek to promote cooperation, accommodation
and harmony in a situation, and like water, prefer to adapt their own form to
better slide through a situation. Te/Fi however, is individuating, requiring
the world to come to them, because they see value as something endowed on
objects by the individual, while properties are purely objective and already
present in objects, making them malleable like clay. They seek to express and
live according to their own values, and accomplish goals by shaping and
changing the outside world to fit their needs rather than adapting to it.
I hope that I have not let any personal
biases taint these descriptions. I will now move onto the perceiving axes.
In part II of the series, I related the Se/Ni
axis to a sort of overhead projector that takes the object itself and blows up
its image onto a large screen. Se is focused on the object itself, while Ni is
focused on the enlarged, blurry image. In reverse of this, I described the
Ne/Si axis as a telescope. Ne looks out into the distance at the blurry
mountain range, or perhaps the distant moon, while Si is the narrowed,
sharpened image found in the telescope eyepiece.
Now, if you have an Se/Ni axis, this means
that you view the attributes of objects, that is, your perception and
experience of objects, as inherent in the objects. You believe that the
attributes, the color, sound, texture, history, position, relationships,
whatever: you believe that the attributes of an object are purely objective
matters, i.e., anybody can clearly see that this thing is red and smooth. If someone
is seeing something different, then that means one of us has something messed
up with our vision. Objects are the way they are, and the Se/Ni axis naturally
assumes that anybody with working senses and wits can see that. The attributes
of objects, what the object is, is not a matter open for discussion or
subjective interpretation, it is not a personal matter, but a simple, objective
one. The ball is red and smooth, the blood tastes like salt with some iron, the
president went to this country and did these things and that caused these
things. Each of these objects is taken by Se on its own, without any subjective
baggage, or memories, or personal experiences whatsoever invested into it: it
is objective. On the other end
however, Ni sees the possibilities and associations of objects (what objects
could or may be) as very much a matter
of discussion and subjective relativity. Certainly the ball is red and smooth,
anybody can see that, but what the ball could be, or what it might be said to represent,
or what it is a manifestation of, is subject to an infinite number of
interpretations depending on your relative position to it, because it depends
on what subjective experiences you are investing into it. You don't see the
ball's possibilities on their own, but in relation to other things you've seen
before, other little ideas and observations that you relate it to. You can be infinitely imaginative about it. Intuitions,
possibilities, imaginations about things, are
all invested into objects by the subject. None are inherent in the object
itself. The only thing inherent in objects is their actual attributes.
For this reason Se/Ni is naturally intense,
direct, visceral, committed, dogmatic, all because it views objects directly,
and from one object you can come up with an infinite number of ideas and
possibilities and associations. So, if you have an Se/Ni axis, you probably try
to find the perspective on a topic that provides the most yield of ideas and
understanding right now, or else the
most yield of visceralness and vividness right now; and then you may have
trouble or reservations when shifting entirely over to a new point of view,
because you feel like you're leaving a bunch of unexplored possibilities
behind. Se/Ni has the intensity of milking the topic dry, of hitting the nail directly
on the head, of getting an idea out of yourself in as pure and genuine a form
as possible. Ni has a way of stirring or ruminating possibilities in its head
for a while until it starts to become something new or starts to make sense. Se
sees one thing, and Ni stirs it around for a while, and then there is the need
to get the ethereal ideas out. Whether Se or Ni is more dominant, it is the
same process: there is intensity, a sense of longing even, associated with
perception, a sense of really getting into something, of trying to express
something beautiful, of experiencing something real. You get into things, you
get into them directly. You appreciate people being direct and plain and trying
to express a pure idea right in front of you.
Now, the reverse of this is the Ne/Si axis.
Ne views possibilities and associations as NOT a matter of discussion or
subjective interpretation. The possibilities, associations, imaginative
connections of an object are inherent in the object, and if you can't see it,
it's because your mind is slow or you just aren't looking right. Ne navigates
the world of possibilities as nimbly and fluidly as Se navigates the
here-and-now. You just can pick up on things, on patterns and associations,
much faster than anyone else seems to
including Ni, which can at times be frustrating, like everyone else it holding
you down. Si, however, is not nimble like Se. Si views the attributes of
objects and what they actually are and look like as a matter of discussion and subjective
interpretation. If you have an Ne/Si axis, you likely view the colors, sounds,
or general experience of an object as something personal to you, something
you've assimilated into yourself and have interpreted yourself. The best way
for an Se/Ni axis to understand this, I think, is to imagine the workings of
their own Ni, the way it ruminates ideas, stirs them around, tries to figure
them out by relating them to other ideas and combining and recombining, except
instead of fascinating ideas and associations, replace these with sights,
sounds, events, and actual experiences of objects, but still floating around in
the mind in a similar fashion; i.e., the ball isn't just red and smooth: it's
red like the eyes of my pet rabbit, and it's smooth like the playground I'd go
to as a child: I don't just see the ball, I see the playground and the rabbit
too, and probably a dozen more complex things, not just sights and sounds but
events, experiences, sensations, just as Ni, when it sees the red ball, might
think: its red and smooth, and the way it sits there reminds me of this idea I
had when watching black and white television, that what if the film was black
and white except for this one red object, wouldn't that be neat.
You will probably notice that while the Ne
and Se functions are nimble and quick on their feet, as it were, because they
are dealing with what to them is objectively obvious, the Si and Ni functions
need time to process what they see, to assimilate it into themselves, precisely
because what they see is NOT objective, but is a matter of subjective
interpretation, and they need time to do this, to relate what they see to other
things they've seen and thus figure out what it means to the subject, rather
than as an object in itself.
So, if you have an Ne/Si axis, you are
generally indirect. That is to say, you don't have such an intense and invested
relationship with the world, at least not as Se/Ni does. The relationship you have is not longing like Se/Ni tends
to be. You don't feel that longing to get things out of you, or that same sense
of deliciousness of ideas, or of getting ideas out in their purest form, or of
really getting your hands into the subject -- that doesn't really ring any
bells for you. Rather, you approach topics in a broad, multifaceted manner: you
don't dive right in; you may not think that's possible or advisable or even
makes sense. You prefer a more elegant method, if you will, of cautiously and
meticulously feeling your way around the subject, getting at all its angles
equally, building a full, 3-D rendering of it. You get at things with
well-built and well-placed metaphors and redirections, through sublimating
methods. You're a bit like an archeologist in this way, and a skilled one at
that. You know how to efficiently and effectively uncover the bones or
artifacts completely without damaging them, while Se/Ni may at times seem to
leap into the excavation site and start tearing the ground up in their
excitement, ruining the whole thing. But with Ne/Si there is a sense of
indirectness, cleverness, of going around and under, a sort of elegance and
well-placedness, of cleverness and charm, which is in stark contrast to Ni/Se
which is direct and visceral and not modest in this way.
I hope these descriptions so far have been
useful, and I hope I've accurately portrayed things. With the hope that you
feel more confident in your association with a judgment and perceiving axis, let's
look at how you might figure out their position and order.
If you have chosen two axes, this will place
you in one of four categories, with four types each.
Se/Ni with Fe/Ti, which includes INFJ, ENFJ,
ISTP, and ESTP.
Se/Ni with Te/Fi, which includes INTJ, ENTJ,
ISFP, and ESFP.
Ne/Si with Fe/Ti, which includes INTP, ENTP,
ISFJ, and ESFJ.
Ne/Si with Te/Fi, which includes INFP, ENFP,
ISTJ, and ESTJ.
So, finding yourself in one of these
categories, one way to further narrow down your choices is to determine if you
are more preferentially a judger or a perceiver. That is, are you a judger,
meaning are you more interested in organizing your understanding of the
environment, of figuring out how to determine the sensibleness, or the
rightness and wrongness, of what's around you, of having a more immediately active
mentality towards the world; or, before this, are you a perceiver, meaning you
are more interested in observing the world first, in seeing things, in
experiencing things fully before seeking to organize them on any scale of right
or wrong, sensible or non-sensible, taking a more passive, receptive mentality
towards the world, learning, pondering, or experiencing?
Let's then say for instance that you feel you
are more preferentially a judger. Then all we have left to do is determine if
you are more preferentially thinking or feeling, keeping in mind however, that
we are dealing with specific attitudes of thinking and feeling. What I would
suspect should happen here is one function should seem more definitely pleasing
than the other.
Finally, if you feel confident in this, then
you've got your type. If, for instance, you relate more to Fi in this
situation, you would be an INFP.
I hope this has been useful, and remember, I
think it's best to just settle down in a type for now, if anything else. But
you don't have to, I'm just a hobbyist. If you have any questions or concerns,
just comment below, or message me directly. Thanks for watching!