My Opinion

Let me say up front that I am always thrilled to get correspondence appreciating my websites.  There's something amazing about working on something all by myself, and creating things in cyberspace, and then these emails just show up and say positive, encouraging things about my efforts.  It's wonderful!

Now to evaluating this gentleman's feedback.  First, I naturally make the assumption that he would like some feedback on his feedback.  Perhaps this is a mistaken assumption, but it is the premise I am starting with.

It is important to include the caveat that this is written by an INFJ (me) evaluating another person's type.  I am not an impersonal, objective, omniscient being.  I am me.  And I express myself in my feedback!  I am becoming clear that when something bugs me, that is additional information about my subject's type preferences!  I'm not saying he's bad or wrong -- I'm saying we're different around certain key points.  And because we're different, I can analyze that tension to hypothesize what's going on between our types.  We don't all mesh together perfectly!  So please let go of "right and wrong" in the following feedback.  It's my perspective versus his perspective and how we react to each other's perspective -- neither of us is "right."

I very much subscribe to the Anais Nin quote, "We do not see things as they are -- we see things as we are."  So please let any pretensions about neutrality fly out the window.  If something rubs me the wrong way, it merely reveals places where he's probably different from me, which can then be explored to uncover the precise type difference!  Got it?

The other caveat I am obliged to say is that I do not believe in typing anyone from email.  That's fraught with more danger than I can tell you.  At best one can make some observations and give sophisticated feedback based on the interpretation of what one reads.  I think it is important that choices about best-fit type result from real-life experience rather than reliance on email exchanges.  It has been my observation that people do not accurately describe their personality via email, and the email medium "skews" the way we interact. These drawbacks combined will readily produce misidentification.  Moreover, we're never quite the way we think we are!  So it is impossible for me to sort out whether someone prefers introversion or extraversion from email alone, much less go to a whole interaction style pattern or even four-letter type code -- and I would regard anyone with suspicion who claims they can.

So here are some observations about his remarks (and realize I am feeling my own way) --

He seems to really enjoy being on the fence about choosing his type, and is gathering information (or skewing information) in a manner that allows him to stay on the fence.  He seems quite invested in the INFX possibility, and clearly does not crave resolution on the final letter.  He does not want to choose! In spite of his investment (and I apologize for raining on his parade), I feel that this particular position clearly displays a perceiving preference.

It is further my sense that he is actively using his perceiving function in the external world.  It seems he is "feeling his way along" as he writes this email, rather than making a decision about what he specifically wants to say and then writing the message to support that premise (decision).  His communication is rather long and meandering, and covers a great deal of territory -- especially given how he is corresponding with a complete stranger.  It's as if he is "thinking out loud" (better known here as using Perceiving in the outer world).

There may be merit in his assertion that he is facile at using most of the processes.  Despite not revealing much about his life experience, just knowing that he is 54 years of age tells us that he is probably experiencing mid-life and there is a good chance he has had ample opportunity to develop in a lot of ways.  His maturity alone can easily cloud the typing process.  It can also mean that he is relaxed and comfortable with himself the way he is, and more likely to reveal his real self instead of offering me an acceptable "persona" that he hopes I will approve of.

If I might dispense advice to him, it would first be to suggest that if this topic is important to him, then he should schedule a professional MBTI session.  Take the assessment -- the real assessment, not the online imitations -- and have someone who is MBTI qualified do a real-live feedback session.  (I say this not because I think this is the only way to get at best-fit type or because I think the MBTI is omniscient, but because I suspect he will always feel like he didn't get the "whole experience" if he doesn't.  He will always feel like he was gypped and missed out on the most valuable datapoints.  But I would not give this same advice to everyone.)

It sounds to me as though this guy is wasting an awful lot of time on the internet ("wasting" being my judgment of his efforts) trying to figure it all out and sort through the boatloads of information and misinformation floating around.  This is a common attribute of people who prefer the Behind-the-Scenes interaction style, and it is conflated by the popular viewpoint that Psychological Types is a psychology "for the people," or for "Everyman."  You don't need a lot of education or multiple degrees to grasp it or to make salient observations about it.  So everyone's opinion has equal weight and validity, and this particular interaction style doesn't readily make distinctions about whether someone is actually qualified to speak knowledgeably on the topic anyway.  So the Behind-the-Scenes  style strives to "integrate" all these various viewpoints and possibilities, and struggles to make it all hang together as one grandiose idea.  (This gets particularly nightmarish when so many type opinions contradict each other.  Trying to reconcile the contradictory notions of the Socionics perspective with the Dichotomies perspective with the eight-fold model perspective with Keirsey's Temperament with Jung's function-attitudes with Isabel's model becomes an impossible task!  And *then* people want it to jibe with astrology, enneagram, Humours, DiSC, family systems theory, and every other theory that's ever been put forth!  Yikes!)  In a nutshell, this interaction style is always open to new viewpoints, and is constantly revising their grasp of the topic as new information arrives -- no wonder it struggles to settle on a best-fit type.

This author claims he has spent time on various INFJ lists trying to figure it out -- and my reaction is to wonder what gives him the idea most people on an INFJ internet list are actually INFJ?  That's a mistaken assumption in itself!  Overall, his approach to choosing best-fit type feels to me personally like being drowned as I'm sucked into swampy bogs.  He's so open-minded that we can never reach a conclusion.  (In other words, I suspect he is provoking my one-dimensional opposing personality -- which happens to be the archetype my personality structure maps to extraverted iNtuition!  This is an archetype that longs to slap the wrist of others and demand they "stop doing that!"  It is a most self-righteous archetype indeed.)

To summarize, this author can't seem to make up his mind regarding many of the dimensions I have described throughout my website.  Again, he seems invested in not deciding.  To me, this sounds very like a "P" who wants to keep his options open, and is loath to make a decision.  There seems to be a philosophy about not shutting off any possibilities!  

He contributes some new perspectives about APD and INTJs.  He doesn't seem in any hurry to eliminate data, but attempts to increase the data pool.  This again feels like someone making the most of extraverted iNtuition to me.  I wonder what archetype is being expressed via his extraverted iNtuition.  Does it resonate as the "Good Parent"?  Is it possible he's helping me (parenting me?) by making me aware of datapoints that are missing from my site?  (This is the Beebe model I haven't said much about on this website yet.  See the previous topic in the site sequence.)

I notice he doesn't refer to Interaction Style patterns, which implies he didn't evaluate the model and choose one of the descriptions as the better fit.  (Though I wager he would feel that both descriptions describe him equally well!)  Again my take is that he sounds as though he is employing the Behind-the-Scenes style in that he is using a consultative approach to this topic of personality type -- deriving information from a lot of different sources and trying to reconcile all the data.  It appears he has been at this effort for quite some time now, and has boundless energy for chasing possibility and adding options.  As he wrote his feedback to me, I could imagine him checking off points on his clipboard as he reconciled each one with previous perspectives.  No wonder he's slower at processing than others he has interacted with on email lists!  (Thus spake me, the queen of snap judgments!) 

I'm a tiny bit irritated by his evaluation of my "time machine" exercise.  It sounds like he didn't do it right, and that bugs me.  You're supposed to do the exercise and then read the result.  It sounds like he read the result first, and then generalized that to saying he could do it either way.  He even wrote: "I can visualize it either way."  Big deal!  Anybody can visualize it either way, that's not the point!  The point is to ask which way do you do it without knowing more about it!  (This is the kind of "reverse engineering" that makes me uncomfortable sometimes with INFPs.  I'm not saying I'm right!  I'm just saying this is true for me.)  I realize that INFPs want to have all the information before they make a choice (or don't make a choice), but it frankly defeats the purpose of this exercise.  Sigh!

"Connecting with others" seems to be an important theme for him -- and this is something I've found true with most INFPs.  They seem to have a craving to connect as intimately as possible with other souls -- I get this visual image of a heart radiating in a torso with all these red pulsating "threads" linking them every direction, probably to other people, and maybe some animals.  (I could draw it for you!)  It's really vital for INFPs to be connected.  (INFJs less so -- we like to step out of situations and "disconnect" in order to process -- that's our interaction style pattern.  In fact, I start to feel smothered if I am too connected.  I need a little breathing room.) I would even go so far as to say that the point of his sending me feedback was to "connect" with me.  There is a gentleness in his tone that's warm and inviting.  I might even call it "sweet."  It seems to want to connect us heart-to-heart rather than head-to-head.  (I wonder if it is a "heroic" archetype for him?)

He shares a few value decisions he seems to have made about the nature of type (introverted Feeling?), and even makes an effort to value me around my pages that discourage readers from disparaging or devaluing other types.  He also speaks about battles with self-esteem, which could further indicate something about introverted Feeling values.

Next let's look at an area where there's a huge disparity between my subject and me.  He claims to spend a lot of time crafting his emails and suggests it is not a trait of most INFJs!  And I think to myself, so is his message to me the exception to that rule?  Because I spend hours crafting emails -- getting just the right word, checking my spelling, trying not to belabor the point but keeping it short and even "pithy."  How can he possibly claim to spend a great deal of time on his messages -- does he see all his typos, did he check the word count!  Is he nuts?  But if I sit with that idea for a while, which is completely contrary to my opinion, maybe I can discover what's "right" in his perspective.  (I will now breathe into a paper bag as I contemplate this possibility.) 

For me, spending a lot of time on messages is about Ti and Se and Fe (the perfect words and a succinct tone and no typos and aligning with contemporary language customs).  Perhaps he is operating from different function philosophies?  Could it be? Let's unpack that idea.  For instance, he emphasizes the term "*feel* right."  So maybe there's some kind of "feeling tone" he strives to achieve in his remarks, some kind of "harmony"? So perhaps he is trying to please his introverted Feeling?  He also complains about having to "swim through many 'Me Too' responses to get to something meaty" and disliking "joke posts."  Hmmm -- is that a gripe about 'unnecessary' extraverted Feeling?  Does that function bring out his one-dimensional opposing personality?  Is he trying to say, "stop it!"?  He also gripes about the rapid pace of INFJ posts, which leads me to wonder whether he experiences INFJ emails as "snap judgments" and maybe even somewhat judgmental (as most INFPs will regard my opinion here I predict)? 

Some notes about where INFJ seems unlikely: 

I don't see any evidence of introverted iNtuiting in his post, in spite of his claims to use it well.  (I just invoked some Ni above when I described the pulsating heart image.  That quality seems absent from his message.  Certainly I don't see any symbols present.)

He claims to be at ease with self-disclosure, but I question that.  While he's quite willing to share his opinions and some vague tales about his experiences, these all seem rather abstract and nebulous to me.  In spite of the long message, I have no clue what this person does for a living, what part of the country he hails from, whether he has children, pets -- or anything else concrete about himself.  I have no context to place this person in -- I experience him as a "disembodied voice."  I do not define "self-disclosure" in this way, and my impulse is to suggest he is not self-disclosing to the degree he believes he is.  What could be interpreted as self-disclosure is how he is using extraverted iNtuition to share possibilities for the purpose of discovering whether we have similar values (introverted Feeling operating silently). But self-disclosure is not about bridging with opinions or internal values -- it's about bridging with personal revelations that I think of as more "concrete" (i.e., "oh look! We both drive a Honda Accord!" or "my mother died last year too.").  

Further on the point of extraverted Feeling being subordinate to introverted Feeling, I find it intriguing that he can "tune out" others' emotions.  My INTJ husband (who prefers Fi to Fe) said that he relates to this description, and says that Fi can block out other emotions, but his observation of my Fe is that it (I!) can't.  (It's true that I struggle not to "match" people's emotions.)  It also seems that our subject's comparative remarks about his wife indicate his own preference for introverted Feeling.  He says,  "My wife tells me that she intentionally goes around acting happy and chipper, even when she is depressed out of consideration for people around her, and she gets impatient with me when I don't."  Boy do I relate to her extraverted Feeling!  Just watch me fake happy!

My husband claims to witness extraverted Thinking in this gentleman's writing, but I won't tell you about it because we're still arguing and haven't agreed on an interpretation yet.

I noted introverted Sensing in his post -- his recollections of the past and representations of them have a real "past" feel to them.  He claims to have a future orientation, but it doesn't show up in his message anywhere that I noticed.  It's much more focused on the past or the present than the future.  In contrast, note how one of the first pieces of advice I offer is that he should go get an MBTI done professionally.  I went right to the "future" in the advice I gave him.  (And tacked an extraverted Feeling "should" onto my message just for good measure.  Let's hear it for Directing! Yay!)

It's possible that the many comparatives he uses in his message (him vs. his wife; him vs. Alice; him vs. other list subscribers) could be a manifestation of introverted Sensing as well.  I might go even further and wonder whether his "diagnosis" of APD is a manifestation of tertiary introverted Sensing.  Dr. John Beebe believes that the tertiary function is either inflated or deflated, and the way this sometimes manifests in INFPs is a tenuous relationship with their bodies and their health.  I wish I had a nickel for every INFP who was suffering from something weird -- and if I had a penny for every one diagnosed with some variation on ADD, I could retire wealthy!  What I especially notice about this is his awareness of what's going on with himself physically.  He's hyper-aware of how he experiences things in his body and can talk about it in great detail.  Me -- I could be 4 months pregnant before I realized something strange was going on in my body.  I simply do not have that kind of body awareness (as one might expect from someone who has Si as their 8th process).  In fact, I had a hard time reading that portion and "staying present" to what he was saying, because that much Si detail made me uncomfortable.

I believe our subject is mistaken about INFJs being "sequential."  All I can think is that he's talking about how INFJs often remember things through "the mind's eye"-- kind of like taking a "photographic movie" of what happened, so of course we remember things in the precise sequence they happened.  But of course the memory is forgotten quickly, compared to Si memory, where there is a kind of affect (a visceral, physical sensation) about the memory.   I have a great "mind's eye" memory, but it is definitely short-term and unreliable (as one would expect a good inferior function to be!).  I personally experience NFPs as being more sequential through their use of introverted Sensing.  Their past informs their future, so they often share step-by-step recollections that imply what the future will then look like.  I confess, Introverted Sensing makes me feel like I have entered a musty mausoleum.  (By now it goes without saying that NFPs are different in this regard.  That musty mauseoleum is for them an engaging tea room, with appealing cakes and finger sandwiches!)

I don't find much extraverted Sensing evidence.  He says he doesn't relate well to most definitions of Fi, but no feedback as to whether he relates to my definitions of Fi, which would acknowledge the here-and-now.  (Is he informing me that he doesn't relate to my definitions?  I can't tell.)  Generally speaking, there aren't many concrete details in his message that cause me to touch, taste, hear, smell, or experience in a visceral fashion.

Neither do I detect introverted Thinking -- he doesn't seem to be utilizing any universal principles in his type quest, which of course makes me uncomfortable.  In fact, he seems to think there aren't any universal principles, or that he defies them all with his claims of using all the preferences equally well.  (Or else -- horrors! -- he's making up his own rules.)  This contrasts with me, where I've chosen the experts I put faith in, identified the underlying principles behind the models so I can always come from the "basics," and you can guess I'm enjoying myself immensely picking apart his post and analyzing it -- then evaluating it for evidence of type preferences by comparing it to my frameworks and models.  Remember, lots of people enjoy some form of analyzing -- but introverted Thinking is a judging function, so it strives to reach a conclusion!  (This means that using the extraverted iNtuition process is not the same as analyzing in the Ti sense -- many people have them confused.)

It appears that our subject is more interested in process than outcome -- his comparison with his wife seems to indicate she is interested in results while he likes to be engaged in the process and hates to be robbed of that experience.  This of course indicates the Perceiving preference.  (I also sense that he really wants to pull me down there in the soup with him and do process together!  And I'd rather stay up here in my ivory tower, thankyouverymuch.)

I notice how in the latter part of his message he implies (even outright indicates) that his preferences lean toward INFP rather than INFJ, so I am puzzled about exactly what he is asking me for.  I am left with the impression he is informing me about something, but I'm uncertain about what it is.  So perhaps this is a good example overall of informing communication.

more may come...