A Crazy Way to Choose Your Type
This is a radical perspective, and may kick up a lot of dust because it challenges some people's deeply-held beliefs. I admit it's controversial. But we'll try it anyway.
The Keirsey Temperament model claims that, "it takes a certain talent to go crazy a certain way" -- and this model says that each of the types has a particular style of becoming crazy, literally crazy -- mental hospital kind of crazy. We're talking psycho ward insanity.
As we let that conjure up visions of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," let me explain a little more about it.
Eve Delunas did the research for David Keirsey, providing the data that forms the basis for much of this theory. And she wrote about a "mild" version of symptomology in her book, "Survival Games Personalities Play." Eventually, we're hoping Dr. Keirsey will finish his own book on this rich topic, and everyone will hear about the connection between insanity and personality patterns.
What's interesting is how, even in day-to-day behaviors, it's possible to notice the tendency for each of the Temperaments to lapse into some form of "game-playing" when they are experiencing stress (not getting their needs met).
In her insightful book, Eve restricts her analysis to the four major Temperament groupings -- so of course the INFJs and INFPs are lumped together. Both these types play inauthenticity "games," which Eve labels "Masquerade." And I confess that as a coach I find it fascinating how both my INFP and INFJ clients readily cop to challenges with authenticity -- it's a real struggle. (If you would like to take a low-tech, unscientific authenticity assessment, it's on my INFJ.com website here.)
Just as Type may be divided into 16 types, so Temperament may also be broken into 16 types. (It fascinates me how people don't know this.) And then, with these 16 unique Temperament patterns, each of them displays a tendency toward a particular version of insanity. All Catalysts struggle with authenticity and play the game known as "Masquerade." It is a form of dissociation (and, truthfully, everyone suffers from dissociation to one extent or another -- there's more fascinating information about this phenomenon posted here). Dissociation is a fairly normal coping strategy in the face of overwhelming stress. If you don't think you dissociate, then let me ask you whether you ever experience "Highway Hypnosis" -- you know, those periods of driving where you don't know how you got from Point A to Point B, but you did....? Surprise! That's a mild form of dissociation. So it's possible to experience dissociation without even being aware that's what it is, and it's much more common than we might think.
Both INFJs and INFPs play this survival game Eve Delunas calls "Masquerade," and yet it manifests as entirely different expressions for each of these two type patterns.
Catatonia
INFJs have a tendency to dissociate toward catatonia, becoming catatonic. When I first heard about this a decade ago, I shrugged it off and didn't think much about it. After all, the image that comes to mind is "Cuckoo's Nest"-like. It brings to mind immobile people in hospital gowns drooling out the side of their mouths while calloused doctors prod them with needles or lit matches, and the person doesn't even flinch. It's a surreal, Dali-esque image based on some macabre Hollywood portrayal of insanity. (At least that's what I conjure up.)
But then I was talking on the phone with Dr. Berens last week and she mentioned it during our conversation. And all of a sudden, I made the connection. The light turned on in my brain, and finally I got it.
Swiftly came to mind all the times in my life I have been "catatonic" -- meaning, been in a catatonic state that I could not be shaken out of.
Oh my god! There it was! It had been staring me in the face all along.
My tendency, when I am feeling stress, is to crawl into my bed and STAY THERE. That's how I express depression, that's how I react to disappointment, that's where I go when I feel overwhelmed or things feel out of control.
I had taken notice when Dr. John Beebe lectured about the danger of introverted iNtuition "falling into the archetype." I believe I have "fallen into the archetype" once or twice. But that's a bit abstract and difficult to pin down. It's easier for me to notice how I have on occasion "dissociated to catatonia."
I remember a decade ago some boyfriend dumped me. I was soooo depressed that I crawled in bed and stayed there. Despite friendly phone calls from my sister and invitations to visit for Christmas, I remained in bed and slept through the holidays, literally. I remember wondering whether I might possibly die in my bed, a slow form of suicide. I lost weight and became gaunt since I didn't have the energy to get up and feed myself, much less shop for groceries. It was a frightening, lonely, and isolated time for me. I daresay a mental health specialist might have diagnosed me as "dissociated to catatonia."
So yeah, my catatonia does not match the "Cuckoo's-Nest" version of immobility that's so extreme I don't feel needles or lit matches against my skin. Nevertheless, I think my tendency toward catatonia is real. And I get the impression it's an accurate portrayal of INFJ stress symptoms, since I frequently hear about INFJs needing to "sleep a lot."
I confess: when I feel hurt, I go to bed. When I feel afraid, I go to bed. At the first sign of overwhelm, I head for bed. My bed is my safe, private haven -- my own desert island. Not that bed is bad! I do a lot of creative thinking in bed; I get some of my best ideas in bed; and there's nothing like a romantic afternoon in bed. Bed is grand! -- to a point. When I fall over that dangerous edge, bed becomes a prison of my own making and I am immobilized. That's when symptoms of catatonia have overtaken me.
In other forms, I may go lifeless, limp. I confess that in the face of unwelcome sexual advances, I have sometimes gone "catatonic" and pretended it wasn't happening to me, or that it wasn't my body being violated. Elvis left the building, and perhaps if you stuck me with a needle or burning match at those times, I wouldn't have reacted to them either. I become a lifeless puppet, a marionette, a catatonic form of non-being.
Multiple Personality Disorder
INFPs go crazy in a different way. It's still a version of "Masquerade," but it takes a different form. This form is called "multiple personality disorder," sometimes known by its current name, "dissociative identity disorder" (D.I.D.).
I decided to bring up the question with a dear INFP friend, because I wanted to see whether he had similar recognition in himself of milder forms of the symptoms. And he did! He could relate. He told me that when he was in high school, they watched the movie "Sybil," and it creeped him out how readily he could identify with Sally Field's character. It hit a little too close to home.
Now, my friend is a performance artist -- and he says he expresses his various identities through his performance art. He was abused as a child, and that neglected child now gets to express itself whenever he performs his art. Performance art has become a way he has of honoring each "voice" inside himself.
My friend also mentioned that it causes him troubles in his relationships sometimes, because he'll present one "identity" to one person, and another "identity" to another person, and these identities are markedly different! Then he feels challenged about reconciling these "identities" and integrating them into a whole. It's as if each personality is "compartmentalized" in some fashion. A dynamic rather like "Three Faces of Eve," or even "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" occurs, and it's an ongoing challenge not to "splinter" and present "parts" of himself to people, especially when his people-pleasing tendencies get him in their grip. One recent text I read called this a "disease of hiddenness."
Naturally, this creates challenges in romantic relationships, because he wants his partner to always think of him in a loving way, which results in his trying to "hide" parts of himself that aren't so attractive. And of course those unattractive parts exist, and demand to be acknowledged! So it becomes a struggle to show up authentically in the relationship and be accepted at every level of being -- which of courses he longs for.
So, rather than taking to their beds like INFJs do, it seems INFPs struggle with a tendency to "splinter" and display only certain sides of themselves to people, and thus constantly battle with integrating all the varied parts of themselves into a cohesive whole. I think "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a humorous representation of this dynamic.
Ironically, my first-ever coaching client came to me claiming INTP preferences. It didn't take long for me to suspect he had INFP preferences instead, which he had been wondering about. Our coaching was often erratic, and even got a little weird at one point when he wanted to embrace his "inner saboteur" rather than gain some distance from it. In a short period of time, he left a relationship, moved to a new town, changed his job, ran into some challenges -- and suddenly, next thing I knew, he moved to an adjacent country, left his career, and eloped. Yikes! Eventually I heard he found a new therapist and she diagnosed him with (you guessed it) D.I.D.
Since I don't have INFP preferences myself, I can't say a lot more about this tendency than what I have here. Suffice it to say that seeds of the symptomology seem to be present in mild forms, and only become full-blown when one reaches "Cuckoo's Nest"-like insanity, which is what "Sybil" and "Faces of Eve" are meant to portray.
As with so many aspects of personality, I can find myself in either one of these dysfunctional patterns. I, too, have "aspects" of myself that show up on different occasions. However, I notice that's not the one that gives me trouble. The one that gives me trouble is the retreat into bed. It's the troublesome behavior my husband has witnessed, and it has been exhibited since childhood. I'm much more aware of the downside of that tendency, and I've been ribbed and shamed about it for years by those who know that side of me.
And likewise, no doubt, my INFP friend retreats to his bed and over-sleeps from time to time. I've no doubt of that. But when I asked him about multiple personality disorder, he became quite activated and talkative, and the experience of watching "Sybil" in high school was fresh and even raw to him. So, by the same token, I notice his hyper awareness of his struggles in this area.
Both of us experienced a form of recognition.
The upshot is, this may seem like a crazy way to figure out your type -- BUT it still might help you figure out your type. And if you've come this far, why not?!
When you dissociate, are you more likely to become catatonic, or to splinter into multiple personalities? Which one is more troublesome, more symptomatic? Which one do you struggle with on a frequent basis? Which one do people give you a hard time about?
