My Myers-Briggs personality type is INTP. This means someone who prefers Introversion over Extraversion, iNtuition over Sensing, Thinking over Feeling, and Perceiving over Judging. The preference for Perceiving over Judging means that the INTP's preferred function for extraverting is a perceiving function, in this case intuition. This is a bit misleading, because the INTP's dominant function is not intuition, which it relies on to face the external world with, but thinking, which is a judging function. In this sense, the INTP is a closet J. The Russian system of Socionics identifies the same 16 types as the Myers-Briggs system, but it uses the letters j and p, in this case lowercase, differently. It uses them to identify whether the dominant function is judging (j) or perceiving (p). What Myers-Briggs calls an INTP, Socionics calls an INTj. Both labels identify the personality type originally identified by Carl Jung as a dominant introverted thinking type with extraverted intuition as an auxiliary. Although INTPs may be uncommon in regular life, they have long been one of the best represented types on the web. Here are some descriptions of the INTP from other websites:
Originally published in Wholeness Lies Within
Copyright © 1986-2002, Terence Duniho; © 2002-2010, Fergus Duniho
The following description was written by my father and may reflect some of his personal experience with me, but he also spent plenty of time gaining firsthand knowledge of all the types through type conferences and workshops, and I was by no means the only member of my type known to him.
Unlike the INTJ, who rarely stays in one place intellectually very long, the INTP has a built-in belief that Truth can be found, and having been found, we can then rest forever in that one place. The INTP wants to know with his/her mind what is true, what is right, what is good. But these concerns often go on behind the scenes. The person others see may seem quite indecisive, questioning, witty, ironic, or even silly. Probably the court jester was often an INTP. INTPs usually appear quite flexible, spontaneous, and adaptable until you get a bit closer. Then you discover they have great need of personal routine, absolute control over their personal environment, and very real limits which are unreasoningly placed on their interactions with others. They typically use feelings in three ways: great openness and an endearing child-like quality, terse eruptive anger, or rejection of feeling (theirs and yours). They do not suffer "fools" gladly. Their interest in others is usually strictly conditioned by whether they are needed in relation to a personal project. They are almost always very sensitive to their interface with the natural world, needing much control over what they wear, what they eat, the air they breathe, and even the ground they walk on. Usually brilliant in whatever they study, they are most consistently seen by others to be above average in intellect and most careful in using the verbal or written word. They can gather facts, data, observations, etc. obsessively when this gathering is connected to an important project of theirs. They're often very good in the areas of linguistics, philosophy, the theoretics of psychology, and political diplomacy (subtle, yet highly structured interactions with others, where every word and action has a symbolic value). They are often drawn to the arts: music (composition, improvisation, informed appreciation), the visual arts, and architecture being three areas I have personally observed. "God" is often jettisoned by the time they reach adulthood. "Truth" is at first their only god. Gradually they realize that truth is much more subtle than at first suspected. Then they become strongly interested in knowing as much as possible, understanding as much as possible, so that Truth will be clearly identified. In this context, they can become more willing to gather and seriously consider facts, the "what is" of life. True spiritual transformation occurs when they see that Love is the only "truth." That it is when we love (both self and others) that it becomes possible to deal truthfully -- with life and with people. As Albert Einstein (an INTP) discovered: nothing in science [i.e. with the intellect] should ever be done except in service to humankind.
During the mid 20th century, Carl Jung identified eight personality types and divided them into sixteen subtypes. My type is Introverted Thinker [Ti], and my subtype relies on Extraverted Intuition [Ne] as an auxiliary function. The MBTI calls this type INTP, while Socionics calls it INTj. These are mere semantic differences between two theories derived from the same original work. My father's work on MBTI theory and Socionics are in agreement that this type favors introverted sensing [Si] as its tertiary function and extraverted feeling [Fe] as its fourth function. From my knowledge of both MBTI theory and Socionics, it is abundantly evident to me that TiNe, as I will call an introverted thinker with extraverted intuition, is my Jungian personality type. Since your knowledge of these theories may vary, and since you don't have the privileged perspective on myself that I have, I will explain in some detail here why this is my personality type. One reason for this is to establish that I know what I'm talking about when I say I am what I am. Another is to provide guidance to people who may be wondering if they are the same type as I am.
Rather than beginning with proof positive that this is my type, I will work up to it. Let's start with introversion vs. extraversion. Introverts tend to be self-oriented while extraverts tend to be other-oriented. I tend to spend most of my time in solitary activity. When I'm with people, I prefer to be with one person at a time or in a small group. I do not enjoy parties or large group activities. MBTI theory maintains that introverts get energy from solitary activity while extraverts get energy from being around other people. I don't think that is entirely accurate, since I get my energy mainly from food and oxygen, and I believe most animals get their energy in the same way. I have heard of the phenomenon of psychic vampires, people who can draw energy from other people, but I don't know how much creedence to give this, and I don't think MBTI theory is maintaining that extraverts are psychic vampires while introverts are not. Rather, I think what is meant is that certain types of activity come more naturally and are more restful to some types of people than to others. For me, group activity can tax my energy more than solitary activity does, and when I don't have a lot of energy to spare, it helps me to ignore other people and just focus on some solitary activity that absorbs my interest.
The psychologist Hans Eyesenck gave a physiological model for understanding introversion vs. extraversion. He maintained that introverts are more easily aroused and extraverts are less easily aroused. Having too much going on would overstimulate an introvert, and not having enough stimuli would leave an extravert bored and unaroused. Consequently, introverts would avoid overstimulation, and extraverts would seek out stimulation. On this understanding of introversion vs. extraversion, I am still an introvert. It doesn't take a lot to stimulate me, and I don't deal too well with overstimulation. So I prefer to focus on one thing at a time rather than to have a lot going on around me.
In terms of Jungian types, an introvert is someone whose dominant function is introverted. More on that later.
Jung distinguishes between two ways of making decisions, either by using feeling or thinking. We all make decisions with both, and I'm no exception, but the majority of my decision-making relies on thinking, and I am more comfortable with it than I am with basing decisions on feeling. For example, I take very easily to playing Chess and various Chess Variants, which strictly rely on the ability to use thinking in decision-making. Logical thinking is easy for me, and I am very good at Symbolic Logic. One of my favorite pasttimes is computer programming, which requires a great deal of logical and analytical thinking. When I wish to persuade people of what I believe, I normally rely on a presentation of the facts and logical argument. This article and my Ph.D. dissertation are both examples of this. I shun using emotional appeals to persuade people, and I probably wouldn't be very good at it anyway. My demeanor is normally calm and unemotional. I have noticed that feeling types sometimes mistake this for hostility, which it is not.
Jung distinguishes between two ways of perceiving the world, either by sensing or by intuition. This is a difference in perspective. Sensing focuses on the trees while intuition focuses on the forest. Sensing focuses on the details while intuition focuses on patterns, meaning, and the big picture. The most boring class I ever took in high school was an accounting class. I could not bear the mind-numbingly boring attention to detail required by this class, and all I got out of it was the intention to never become an accountant. My mother is a sensing type, and her favorite thing to watch on TV is the news. I never watched the news much at all until I started to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. As a child at my grandmother's house, I had to endure the mindless monotony of car racing shows that my uncles liked to watch. I could never understand the appeal of cars moving around in circles. I just had to ignore it while I focused on playing with Legos. Rather than watch the news or auto racing, I prefer to watch superhero, science fiction, and fantasy shows. I believe this is indicative of a preference for intuition. One show I like that is especially indicative of my preference for intuition is The Twilight Zone. The point behind this show is not in the particular details of the stories but in the meaning behind them.
I have known people who can memorize literature and recite it back from memory. I can't do this for anything more than very short lines like "To be or not to be." When I read, I remember the meaning of what I'm reading rather than the particular words and sentences I have read. Likewise for song lyrics. I can hardly remember the lyrics to any song unless I have spent time reading the lyrics while singing it. I am terrible at the game Songburst, which requires players to recall song lyrics. It may be my least favorite game ever. My tendency is to focus on patterns and relationships between things rather than on particular details. I enjoy instrumental music just as much as vocal music, because I don't need to hear words to perceive meaning in music. This is in contrast to my maternal grandmother, a sensing type who once told me she prefers country music, because she can understand the lyrics in it. As long as I'm on the topic of music, I will mention that my musical tastes are wide and varied. I have many gigabytes of music in multiple genres, and I keep collecting more, because I enjoy variety and regularly want to hear something new. Sensing has a much greater tolerance for sameness than intuition has. My mother often lets the same record repeat over and over, whereas I usually switch to listening to music in another genre when I finish listening to an album. This strong preference for variety and novelty goes hand-in-hand with a preference for intuition.
So far, this leads up to me being either an INTP or an INTJ, to use the Myers-Briggs terms. An INTJ is the Introverted Intuitive Jungian type with extraverted thinking as the auxiliary function. There are a few different things that may settle whether I am an INTP or an INTJ. One is to determine whether thinking or intuition is more dominant for me. Another is to compare how I behave in introverted activities verses how I behave in extraverted activities. This second approach is the one I consider more decisive. My solitary freetime tends to center around Game Courier, a play-by-mail system for Chess variants that I programmed on my own. In creating Game Courier, I programmed various ways of representing different types of boards, I created a programming language for automating moves and enforcing game rules, and I programmed the rules of several games in this language. All of this took many hours devoted to solitary logical and analytic thinking. Using it to play games also makes use of solitary logical and analytic thinking, and at present I have played over 100 games on it, winning most of them. In comparing how I play Chess variants by correspondence vs. how I play them across the board, I have noticed that correspondence play is easier for me, for it allows me the freedom to focus my introverted thinking on the game, whereas when I'm playing face-to-face with someone, I feel a pull between the need to focus on the game with my thinking and the natural impulse to rely on intuition in a more extraverted context. As a consequence, I play more deliberately by correspondence and more intuitively when face-to-face with someone.
My intuition becomes most active in extraverted contexts. In a group of people, such as a discussion group or a classroom setting, my personality shifts from cool and logical to witty and dramatic. At these times, my extraverted intuition has taken control of my personality. My intuition is much less active in solitary activity. I can be creative on my own, but it takes more work. I sometimes get new ideas through meditation, which may tap into a deeper vein of introverted intuition, but in general my intuition does not flow as freely when I'm by myself. When I do get ideas, such as ideas for new games, I end up spending more time fleshing them out with logical thinking than I do on getting the idea in the first place. Also, many of my game ideas come from making connections with external sources. For example, Clockwork Orange Chess came from the idea of applying what happened in A Clockwork Orange to the rules of Chess.
When intuition is auxiliary, sensing is tertiary. When the auxiliary is extraverted, the tetiary function is introverted. Thus, given that my auxiliary is extraverted intuition, my tertiary should be introverted sensing. Extraverted sensing uses sensing primarily to learn details about the external world. Think of a dog sniffing fecal matter in order to determine what left it. Introverted sensing focuses on how sensations relate to the sensor. For example, are sensations pleasant or painful? For me, listening to music has great appeal for my introverted sensing. I find music to be a very sensually pleasurable experience, and I will avoid music that I find unpleasant, such as twangy country music or screeching heavy metal. My brother, who is an extraverted sensing type, is a good contrast with me on the preference of introverted sensing vs. extraverted sensing. He used to work as a massage therapist, which is an occupation I would absolutely loath unless every customer was a beautiful young woman who had a great body and smelled nice. My brother's favorite pastimes are physical activities that require keen sensory awareness, such as bicycling, skiing, and snowboarding. I sometimes bicycle, but I would never compete in a bicycle race, whereas my brother has been in several. Despite being a dominant sensing type, my brother is not anywhere near the audiophile that I am. This comes mainly from favoring introverted sensing.
I have read that people who favor introverted sensing sometimes see things that aren't really there, not from hallucinating but from looking beyond the mere physical details. When I look at bathroom tile patterns, for example, I often catch myself noticing various strange images that look like people but in their grotesqueness more like faeries. Similar observations by others who introvert sensing may account for the manner in which faeries have been portrayed. I recently spotted the word Book on the bathroom floor, but it vanished when I looked away. I think this attribute of introverted sensing helps explain the appeal of Jackson Pollack. I don't think his artwork demonstrates talent, but at least it can appeal to those of us who can see patterns in random splatterings of paint.
According to Socionics, every type has a Hidden Agenda, and it is related to the tertiary function, for the same hidden agenda is listed for types with the same tertiary function. The hidden agenda for my type, Socionics INTj, is to be healthy. Being healthy has long been very important to me, and I normally go to greater lengths to be healthy than most people do. I avoid germs, and I don't drink or smoke. Ever since high school or college, I have been running and dancing on a mini trampoline. These days I also use a balance ball, a treadmill, a stationary exercycle, various free weights and resistance bands, and an exercise machine with latbar, ankle, and handle attachments. I routinely do both aerobic and anaerobic workouts to stay in shape. To more evenly exercise different muscles, I normally alternate aerobic workout routines between the trampoline, treadmill and exercycle, sometimes also using the balance ball for aerobic bouncing. I recently bought a watch with an EKG heartrate monitor, and it has helped me get better aerobic workouts on all the equipment I use. I avoid eating mammals, though I do eat eggs, fish, and poultry. I eat mainly healthy foods and shun sugary foods and foods with sugar substitutes. I eat lots of fiber and drink cleansing beverages that include aloe vera juice and lemon juice to help keep my bowels clean. I keep house plants to have plenty of oxygen without opening windows, which is especially helpful in the winter. I avoid taking drugs as much as I can help it, and I don't take any prescription drugs. I'll sometimes take aspirin, acetaminophen, or cold medicine if pain or a cold is keeping me from falling asleep, but I normally try to fight off disease through natural means.
Feeling is the most neglected of my functions. Since thinking objectively takes center stage for me, feeling gets neglected. This is not to say that I don't sometimes make feeling-based decisions. Sometimes my feelings take over quite strongly, particularly when the feeling is anger. My father writes in his description of INTP, "They typically use feelings in three ways: great openness and an endearing child-like quality, terse eruptive anger, or rejection of feeling (theirs and yours)." This is generally true for me. It's not that I don't have other feelings, but I do not always have ready access to them.
In the Enneagram system of personality typing, I am type Five. I suspect Richard Riso is correct in identifying this type with Jung's Introverted Thinking type, for what distinguishes the Five is a sense that emotions can be dangerously overwhelming, which leads the Five to become unaware of his feelings as a defense against them. While some people use alcohol to escape from their feelings, I use intellectual activity. When I can immerse myself in the analytic thought required by debugging or computer programming, for example, I can put aside my feelings and not be bothered by them.
Since my feeling is both extraverted and inferior, I am vulnerable to having my feelings manipulated by feeling types who extravert feeling and use it as a tool of persuasion. While this is sometimes pleasurable if the feelings of the other person are positive, I generally don't like it, because I prefer for my feelings to be under my control. As a consequence, I sometimes put up a strong defense against this, which can result in the rejection of feeling my father mentioned. At other times I use this vulnerablity to my advantage. Music has a similar effect on my emotions, and by choosing music that evokes the kind of feelings I want to experience, I can use music to direct my emotions. While it could be tempting to just listen to upbeat music to always be upbeat, that's just another way to hide from emotion. It is better to use music to help me safely find and experience the depths of my emotions. When I have the time, I use music to explore and work through emotions I don't normally give myself time to experience. One of my goals in collecting music has been to have music available for whatever emotions I might feel. At the moment, I am listening to a string quartet tribute to Coldplay. The music is hauntingly sad. Earlier today I was nearly brought to tears while listening to Vienna Teng sing "My Medea." I don't know what all the lyrics mean, but the title and some of the lyrics provide it with the context of the story of Medea from Greek mythology. I am getting goosebumps as I write about this. Medea is the saddest story ever. I'm listening to a string quartet version of Clocks by Coldplay. I have tears thinking about Medea. She was Jason's wife. She helped him steal the golden fleece. When he left her to marry another woman, she killed their children to exact her revenge on Jason. Vienna Teng's song evokes some of the sorrow Medea must have felt in killing her own children. It is very sad, but in a safe environment, it is good to feel these emotions.
According to my father's Life Pattern theory, each type is a structure that hierarchically arranges all eight functions. But I have now concluded that his theory is false. It's not that there isn't a rationale behind his theory. There is. It is that each type prefers to use each function one way, which creates resistance to learning to use it the other way, and this resistance will vary depending upon how much the function is developed. So, for an INTP, extraverted thinking would be the hardest to develop, introverted intuition the second, extraverted sensing the third, and introverted feeling the least hard of the four. The problem with this theory is that it fails to consider the effect of another factor, and this second factor balances the effect of the factor I just mentioned. Developing each of the four functions also meets resistance because the opposite function is already preferred to it in the same domain. For example, an INTP favors extraverted feeling to extraverted thinking. Again, it makes sense that stronger functions would create more resistance. Considering this factor alone, the hardest for an INTP to develop would be introverted feeling, then extraverted sensing, then introverted intuition, then least of all extraverted thinking. This is the reverse order of the previous factor. When the combined effect of these two factors is considered, they effectively balance each other out, and there is no basis for presuming that members of the same type will all develop the remaining four in the same order. To some degree, I am able to use the four remaining functions. I think meditation has helped me develop introverted feeling and introverted intuition to some degree. I use extraverted sensing to be aware of the world, and I use extraverted thinking to organize things and enforce rules. But overall, I have mainly developed my functions in the directions an INTP would be expected to.