INFP Personality Type Interview (with Dana Jacobson) | Podcast 0426

17 comments

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  • Justine G
  • March 28, 2022 at 3:19 pm

  Thanks for your response.

  It is interesting that Jung himself appears to imply that Si-types often castastrophize. I often have done as well, but am an Enneagram sp-6. I haven’t really ruled out being Si-dominant, I just don’t think this or any trait in itself proves anything about type, otherwise you just end up with a load of theory-based rules that can easily cancel you out from being any type.

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  • Antonia Dodge
  • March 27, 2022 at 2:49 pm

  Congratulations on furthering your exploration of your best-fit type. :)

  It’s not uncommon for INFPs to get the message that their top two functions are ‘unacceptable’, and it’s easy to have them be bullied into hiding. This usually results in depression and dysthymia, since accessing one’s dominant function is necessary for good mental health. If your best-fit type is INFP, then giving yourself permission to be in both Introverted Feeling and Extraverted Intuition is the absolute best thing you can do. It’s not just accessing your own feelings about things, but also understanding your intentions, motivations and core values and protecting them. When Introverted Feeling users give themselves permission to this, they absolutely blossom.

  I’m going to take some exception to the statement that the way we describe Introverted Sensing is radically different than Jung’s. We do everything we can to make the cognitive functions accessible to the layman (i.e. giving them nicknames, etc.) but we do believe we keep the core understanding of the functions as Jung described, albeit with less pathologizing (which Jung had a tendency to do with all the functions, and some more than others [like Introverted Thinking]).

  Jung’s description of Introverted Sensing is more focused on the psychology of the function rather than specific traits. It can be inferred this is due to its highly malleable nature. That is, the subjective sense impressions come from a lifetime of experiences which are entirely personal and therefore difficult to pin down in terms of traits. There are some predictable traits that come from the function (in his descriptions Jung discusses the ‘sitting duck’ trait of the type if it is too one-sided), but its peculiarities will be highly subjective and individualistic.

  At the end of the day, however, for all users of Introverted Sensing (which I’ll call Si from here on) there is going to be quick access to the storehouse of sense impressions that could be called memories of one’s childhood and impressions of cultural norms. (This is why we nicknamed the function Memory – not for its ability to hold all information, but its referential nature to what it has experienced and absorbed based on its own particular interests that become a natural guide for life).

  Jung said the function "is apparently quite unpredictable and arbitrary. What will make an impression and what will not can never be seen in advance, and from outside.”

  We’ve described Si many times as referential to one’s subjective experience as well as in-tuned with social expectations. It’s highly individualistic (since no two humans have exactly the same experience) and attached to “totems” of the past that help guide recall of those moments that left imprints. It it the most flexible of the functions over time, though it requires time to acclimate to new experiences, particularly if the polarity opposite (Extraverted Intuition) has yet to be integrated. (In Jung’s words, “the unconscious is distinguished chiefly by the repression of intuition, which consequently acquires an extraverted and archaic character. Whereas true extraverted intuition is possessed of a singular resourcefulness, a ‘good nose’ for objectively real possibilities, this intuition has an amazing flair for all the ambiguous, shadowy, sordid, dangerous possibilities lurking in the background.”) Novelty becomes sinister when Si is too one-sided, a quirk we’ve mentioned on the podcast many times.

  I’m always worried that making the functions accessible to people just learning will somehow disrupt the accuracy of description, and to some extent that is true. But we’ve worked really hard to ensure that the nucleus of the function is maintained regardless: in this case introverted, subjective, perceiving, past experience oriented with a capacity to pattern recognize in review but not in the moment, adherence to its sense impressions as a guide (including received information of how others do things/modeling) and quirky.

  A

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  • Justine G
  • March 27, 2022 at 1:10 pm

  Thanks Dana, Joel & Antonia,

  I recently decided I am more than likely INFP and not ISTJ. The final clincher was probably that I don’t think my memories tend to be detailed or vivid enough to likely be leading with Si. Because when it comes down to it, it’s about what that function actually means in this system as it has been defined here (not the original Jung as the definitions there are different – particularly introverted sensing!). The cliches or ‘probables’ around ISTJ (or INFP) are not actually the point.

  There is some trouble with saying I lead with Fi as well though, in that I am in some respects very emotionally disassociated so I don’t identify with some aspects of it. This is due to some trauma I had in childhood that has made me highly ambivalent about feelings and by extension Fi. The Fi finds a way through but probably not in terms of micro-analysis of feelings. I’m often calibrating and reflecting on identity though! I think if I was an ITJ such emotional repression would probably if anything make it easier to ‘look like’ those types!

  Some arguments for me being a thinking or sensing type:

  a) I had a very thinker-ish passion for years – software engineering, and have a masters in it. When it came to doing it for a living though – a very different ball-game. I was only really interested in the high-level logics and not the more ‘technical’ stuff.

  b) I have a hawk-eye for detecting errors and inconsistencies in documents. Others have recognised this about me. They’d probably type me as ISTJ if they knew Myers-Briggs.

  I think the causes of these ‘traits’ are multi-faceted but are also tied in with my distrust of aspects of Fi and Ne. I think ISTJ became a sort of ‘wrapper’ type for me, but saying it was imposed by society is a bit simplistic in my case – it goes deeper (and darker) than that.

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  • Elizabeth
  • March 25, 2022 at 8:40 pm

  Oh my gosh… I’m going to reply to this comment because this podcast hit me as strongly as it did you. I self-typed as an INTJ in my college years, moved to a wrenching realization that I was at very least an INFJ (with the same sense of “judgment that Dana mentions— “Oh no— I’m not a Feeler!”) following the female change of life in my late 50s, and now, at age 67, truly believe I’m an INFP. I thought I was an odd ball, but this podcast and the comments have been like a breath of fresh air to me. I’m still listening to it as I write this— “organizing my life for freedom” and unconventionality have been a line throughout my life too, Also forgiving myself for the self-bertrayal, and grieving what feels like “lost years,” understanding that it was the way I kept myself alive in a very unfriendly (to an INFP) environment. I’m interested in something Dana said about being a change agent (?)— I think as outliers in the current hyperactive feelings-averse societal culture, we are brave. We need to be proud of ourselves— our skills, our adaptability, and how we’re able to speak many “flavors” of human because of our INF abilities… our ability to see inside of others’ experiences. But we need to make ourselves the top priority! And that it’s NOT selfish… for myself, still working on that one. :¬) Oh.. p.s. Have loved the INFx Empowered program…. Truly empowering!

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  • Jen
  • March 24, 2022 at 11:54 am

  Loving this series of podcasts! Listening this morning got me think about what I (INFJ) might say to my 15 year old self – and it’s so hard! I don’t know how the interviewees come up with this answer so easily because as a 15 year old I don’t think I’d have the ability to take in the advice I’d give to an INFJ, as I was so far away from being my authentic self. So I came up with one thing that I don’t think would interfere in my growth path, and that I might actually be able to absorb – read literature. At 15 I was devouring Danielle Steele novels and Catherine Cookson because that was what I had exposure to, and I was patterning human relationships so I was also interested in the core of these novels. However literature would have exposed me to a much more broad and sophisticated perspective on relationships and helped me to feed my driver in a healthier way. Thanks for all the thoughts and insights into INFPs – I have a couple in my life and this podcast really echoed a lot of what they share with me!