List of INFjs

[CuriousSoul]

Edited for sillyness.

[Creepy-Chosen]

Hi,

I'm an INFJ. I visit ocassionally...and I finally picked a screen name. lol

I haven't had time to post much. But what would you like to know about the theory? And do you want a list of intuitive or/and ethical subtypes?

I know that Elton John is INFJ. I'll list more later...

[discourse]

But yet, reading your posts, you sound a lot like dynamic type. Static and dynamic functions are real, type two persons, one static and one dynamic and you'll see the difference.

[Dmitri Lytov]

No idea what you mean under INFJ, the socionic type, or the MBTI type, here is my list of celebrities of the type ethical-intuitive introvert (Humanist). The page and pictures are titled in Russian, but pictures of non-Russian celebrities have also captions in Roman characters. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE until you see counters!

http://socioniko.narod.ru/ru/celebr/ri-cel.html

[metaiwan]

Most of the regulars around here, when they use the four letter acroynm, are talking about the socionic type. IE INFJ = introverted feeling, extraverted intuition.

[Dmitri Lytov]

I understand. But definitions of the functions are also somewhat different in MBTI. That thing sometimes confuses people.

[drake]

You said that he was a mathematical genius. Do you know what mathematics is? It's the oldest science in the world. People who do theoretical math, IMHO, must have STRONG analytical abilities to analyse their own visualizations/ideas and to describe them logicaly. That means that the first or second function of his personality type, acording to socionics, should be THINKING. So, I would conclude that John Nash must have had a *NT* type.
If he would have had an ENTJ personality, he wouldn't do math so much - there's no money to be made with it. If he would have had an ENTP personality type, he would have lots of ideas and those ideas would give him a hard time sitting at a library waiting months and months to be proved.
If he would have had an INTP personality, I guess that he would criticise society more than dealt with useless radical ideas and imaginary sistems.
Now, this leaves us with INTJ personality type and he had that type because dealing with theoretical mathematics means having your own ideas and to analyze them completely to the last part. And that's something that you need a lot of patience, strong will and solitude.

[Dmitri Lytov]

If you have an INFJ type in MBTI, that would probably (but not certainly) mean that you have INFP type in Socionics

Not really. Socionic and MBTI scales are displaced in regard to each other, but not in the way Isabel Myers wrote about.

Just open this link and look at the BOTTOM of the page:
http://www.psihologia.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=438

[CuriousSoul]

Why is John Nash an INFJ? It seems to me that INxJs both like detached analysis but of different things so it's not hard for me to believe an INFJ could come up with a valid theory that explains rational behavior but other than that why do you type him as an INFJ?

Sorry Pedro, I should have answered ages ago, but I based my typing almost exclusively on the movie which, as often is the case, appears to take quite a lot of artistic liberties and then I read about the real John Nash and got into thinking whether I could actually be mistaken. I am neither really sure about the type of his wife Alicia, she kind of reminded me of one quite well-rounded female ENTP I know but she may actually well have been ESTJ - or G-d knows what. Nevertheless the reasons I felt reasonably confident that the movie character John Nash (I hope you have all watched the movie, if not: go get it.) was INFJ and not INTJ, in my opinion the only other obvious alternative choise, were:

-The nature of the problem he managed to solve was of mainly Fi nature:

I found the "When you look past the acronym" article extremely interesting. But I'm a little confused on the meaning of Spontaneous Realisation. What would this mean in the case of an INTJ whose spontaneous realisation is extroverted intuition? Or an ESTP whose spontaneous realisation is introverted thinking?

Let's make it simple, if you present an INTJ with a brick and explain what it is used for, he or she would come back to you with many possible ways of how the bricks can be arranged together to build a wall. Then they will call you in the middle of the night (not really) to inform you that they found yet another new way of arranging the bricks. And each new way of arranging the bricks would undoubtedly be better then the previous.

ESTPs have the ability to come up with unexpected logical solutions or arrangements when presented with a problem. The problem of course should be of Se nature in order for Se -> Ti tandem to work. But quite often (powered by the hidden agenda) ESTPs use their Spontaneous Realisation to skilfully chat people up, especially those of the opposite sex by often making stuff up.
http://www.socionics.com/advan/qa080603.htm

Now I know this is not intuitively obvious when we are talking about a theoretical economist, but let us look in detail at the nature of the problem:

Nash won his Nobel Prize for work in game theory, the mathematical study of interactions among rational individuals, where each person is trying to do the best for him or herself, and the fate of each depends on the conduct of others. Nash focused on what are called "noncooperative games": interactions among individuals who cannot make enforceable agreements. He introduced a concept—now known as "Nash equilibrium"—to predict what happens when rational individuals play such games; and he showed that, in a very wide class of non-cooperative games, there exists a Nash equilibrium, in which no one has any incentive to change strategy.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.2/stone.html

What gave me my sense of confidence was the sense of instant recognition when watching the dreamlike scene where Nash observes the dancing ladies and starts wondering how the behavior of one suitor will influence the others:

The Noncooperative Game in A Beautiful Mind
The movie suggests that a motivating example for the discovery of Nash equilibria might have been the strategies of five suitors most attracted to the same woman in a group of five. As suggested by the movie's visuals, positive outcomes occur only when each woman is approached by one suitor. In the two-person version of this game, each of two suitors, say John and Martin, decides with what probability, say x and y respectively, he will approach the more attractive of two women
http://www.haverford.edu/math/lbutler/review.html

- INFjs are interested in the reasons behind people's acts. They carefully analyse everything that concerns them or their surroundings. Often the results of this are not so satisfying, leaving INFjs feeling depressed and pessimistic, especially if this envelops unethical behaviour in others. Their sense of compassion is often stronger than their sense of justice.
http://www.socionics.com/advan/prof/infj.htm

From my personal perspective this natural urge to analyze the reasons behind people's acts often leads to an inclination to develop all kinds of obscure theories. For INFJs the program function that defines the area where they feel an instinctive need to develop expertise is Fi, and the Corresponding Block is Te. Thus INFJS wants to understand ethics of relations but in order to understand why people act the way they do it is necessary to observe the reasons motivating them, the logic of the objective world Te.

Corresponding Blocks
There are 4 further groupings of blocks besides the ego, superego, superid, and id groupings. These are the corresponding blocks of psyche; you will find supplimenting functions in these blocks.

active will - the first and fifth functions
authority - the second and sixth functions
neurosis - the third and seventh functions
phobia - the fourth and eighth functions

The connection to economics comes from the basic consepts of the Dismal Science (I finally mastered embedding the links the theory of Homo Economicus:

Specifically, social scientists believe that human behavior is often complex, imperfect, limited, self-contradictory and unpredictable. Homo economicus, however, is a greatly simplified model which assumes that individuals possess the following traits:

Perfect self-interest
Perfect rationality
Perfect information
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-homoeconomicus.htm

This is of course just a necessary simplification in order to make mathematical modelling of economic behavior realistically possible. Yet these models easily become self-perpetuating stereotypes. And at the time John Nash wrote his thesis there was not much empirical research on whether human behavior actually corresponds to the theories of economics. The INTJ way of thinking would usually, in my experience, be to treat economics as just abstract theory detached from reality and INTJs appear to be rarely given to instinctively wondering why people behave the way they do in any random situation - correct me if i am wrong in as great detail as possible. If an INTJ or an ENTP is presented with a problem conserning human behavior the tendency is to the reduce it to its abstract parameters. I remember, for example, one discussion when I questioned my philosophy teacher, probably an ENTP, on what I thought were flaws in his oversimplistic modelling of people's behavior in different circumstances: why he did not take into account people's unexpected reactions; and the answer came, as a flash of insight after a moments hesitation, that my stragegy of chancing my behavior would not work because then he would be able to quickly take that into account and change his own behavior. - No you coud not because I would randomly vary my behavior and make it impossible for you to predict what I am going to do, I thought to myself, but stayed quiet since I did not want draw too much attention to myself.

In a way intuitively obvious if you constantly and quite obsessively observe people's behavior and try to figure them out - only to come to realize that often there does not appear to be any regular pattern or even any logical reason that people themselves would be aware of. Just ask a few drunken party-hardy types why they are about to engage in their latest pointlessly risky stunt and they will find you very strange.


-INTJs have ethics of emotions as their dual-seeking function INTJs would prefer a happy, cheerful and exciting surrounding. In the movie John Nash, on the contrary, quickly tires of the party circuit and leads a very withdrawn lifestyle - only his roommate Charles to keep him company, and even he is eventually revealed to be just a figment of his imagination. INTJs need to be provided with positive emotional charging, INFJs - though in need of friends as much as any other type - do not particularly need Fe or clearly visible emotional excitement. One of the reasons I came to think I must be INFJ was that lot of things would make a lot more sense presuming my dual-seeking function is extroverted thinking. For example even in parties I try to seek to find someone who would like to engage in a somewhat intellectual discussion with me but find it very difficult to chat people up or keep a conversation going if people do not appear to be genuinely interested in my thoughts or discusssing any topics I can offer. Thus INFJs, the Sensitive Oldham's type, can be even more withdrawn than INTJs, although there is an awful lot of variation. I shall discuss this more later.


-John Nash withdraws from the lectures:
He says to his new roommate, "I cannot waste time with these classes and these books, memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals. I need to look through to the governing dynamics. Find a truly original idea. That's the only way I'll ever distinguish myself. It's the only way that I'll ever..." "Matter?" finishes his roommate, Charles. To which John replies, "Yes."
http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/0206/020613godawa.php

-In a sense the role function can be quite strong by objective standards but it remains a function of neurosis and it can be painful to take criticism on it. Thus INFJs can be inclined to come up with justifications for their need to avoid exposing their weaker functions to constant outside evaluation.

This would also seem to fit with the, perhaps oversimplified, Delta Quadra values:
Earth, winter.
Respect and hierarchy, everyone should do what they can do best and want to do.
Cordiality of home, unity with nature.
Motto: "Here but not now" ("Here and forever")


-His imaginary roommate Charles appears to be an ESTP character. In a sense your conflicting type can be your worst nightmare and when you are a hallucinating schizofrenic it stands to reason you would be visited by your worst nightmares. INFJs lead function is Fi or more specifically:

Positive(short range):
Good relations — love, friendship, sympathy, an attraction, heat of attitudes, the sociability, a close psychological distance, kindly, pity;
From my personal point of view it would seem to mean that I naturally tend to presume that people are good, and if only they could understand what I really mean we could get on very well. On the other hand it feels very depressing when I feel I have been misundestod and, in my subjective opinion, unfairly treated and can be very burdensome to try to cope in a negative emotional atmosphere, the natural inclination is always to withdraw and avoid negative emotions. Thus ISFJs may at times seem like scaremongering moralizers - yet they seem to be much better able to resist evil and survive in even hostile enviroments.
Thus an INFJ could, even as a as a schizofrenic, well be inclined to hallucinate his persecutor turning to his best friend.

-John Nash claims that he cured himself with reason. Due to the difficult and controversial nature of schizophrenia this may not be strongly related to the sociotype, but in the movie he comes to accept the repeated assurances of his wife and doctors that the people who had seemed entirely real and personally close to him were in fact not real. INFJs have extroverted logic, logic of the objective world, as their Suggestive (dual-seeking) function

Suggestive Function
weak
accepting

Your suggestive function has difficulty working on it's own. You take criticism well in this function, as it is seen as concern. This function causes your dependency and childishness, as you need help with it but do nothing to ask for it. If you do not recieve help, you feel like an abandoned child (why is nobody helping me?)

I am inclined to believe that even in a difficult mental disorder the basic structure of the information metabolism remains - though heavily distorted - largely intact, and thus INFJs would be much more likely to believe in the logical arguments of others - whereas with introverted feeling as lead function they would, perhaps in a way paradoxically, claim that they are able to take care of their emotions on their own:

Model A - the informational exchange model
The EGO Block (1 + 2):
These two functions represent a short formula of the type. They are the strongest functions of the type Their activity is always inconclusive, open to more changes: «I know myself what I need better than others, and if I need improvements – I will make them myself, without anybody else's help».

1. The Program Function: active observation, "lifestyle".

2. The Creative Function: it requires efforts, for some time "sits in an ambush" and manifests in many small activities.
http://socioniko.narod.ru/en/1.1.types/index-type.html

Are you convinced by now? In my opinion practical experience tells me that you will find people of almost every type in most walks of life and one should never assume that people have a certain type just because of the talents they seem to exhibit. On the other hand I am the first to admit that I do not have the definitive proof and it is well within the realm of possibility that John Nash, at least the man, if not the movie character, is an INTJ, or maybe some other type. Just try to outwit my arguments.

[Labyrinth]

Due to the difficulty involved, I usually don't get into trying to typify folks from the past, but I'd like to bring up an important point. One of my best friends who had an INFp (tested) type also happened to have a genius level IQ. Despite that I was an INTp type (Te in the aux position), and he was an INFp type, (Te in the inferior position), he possessed considerably stronger thinking abilities than myself and took much much higher maths in school.

He still demonstrated classic INFp behavior however, and it was my observation that despite his fantastic mathematical/thinking abilities he didn't have much interest in it and would only perform impressive thinking tasks if he felt he "had to". It is my hypothesis that geniuses aren't necessarily so bad at their tertiary or inferior functions (especially in the case of thinking functions) as much as they usually aren't as interested in using them.

In Nash's case, we know he had impressive mathematical abilities, but he originally attended Carnegie for electrical engineering, later switched to chemistry, and then later to mathematics (autobiography see below). So, in my opinion I would say that John Nash *could* have been an INFj type, but of course there is plenty of data to support him being other types as well. Like I said I think typifying people from the past can be very difficult.

Anyhow, here are a couple of handy websites:

http://ru.laser.ru/socion/references/filatova/infj/ (INFj faces, row 2 #1??)

http://nobelprize.org/economics/laur...h-autobio.html
(handy dandy autobiography by Mr. Nash himself, and photograph)

http://www.stat.psu.edu/~babu/nash/ (more pictures of nash, click on the first picture if you need to see the atoms on his face)


-Labyrinth

[discourse]

I know INFP Gene technologist. She has a Te as PoLR. But she also has Ti developed strongly. This makes her good at maths. She hates Te stuff, but her Hidden Agenda is strong so she likes to show off her abilieties in chemistry and maths.

[CuriousSoul]

Since we are agreed that the way via which the situation (whether nash was in fact INFJ ot Ti dominant) was via Ti then why go to lengths to show that a person with weak Ti was responsible for the theory? Wouldn't a much simpler explanation be that he was in fact Ti dominant? Since INxJs have such similar behavior they can be mistaken for one another thus the apparent similarity. Also since he was obviously introverted and intuitive we can conclude he was INTJ. I have MANY other reason for this but for the sake of simplicity and brevity i'll keep it short..

Well the more reasons you can come up with, the better. The reason I am posting here is to learn something I do not know. It feels kind of frustrating when I often seem to be the only to present more detailed arguments on how to type people.

Finally, thanks for responding sometimes I can't tell if I'm being ignored intentionally or circumstantially.

I know I have left a few posts hanging in the air, sometimes it just feels like rehashing the old arguments when I do not really have anything original to say, but I shall try to get back to them, later as always At other times again the issues you raise have appeared too difficult to answer, there are so many good questions and all too few good answers in socionics.


John Nash
Then about the type of John Nash, just try to always figure out the order of the functions and think in terms of the Corresponding Blocks: They go together like a horse and carriage. You cannot have one without the other: When you have a dominant conscious Ti - you will have a corresponding strong subconsious Fe, and if you observe people carefully for longer periods this will inevitably manifest itself in various ways, but use your extroverted intuition and always observe other people, you cannot judge yourself objectively. For example, compare Eminem's music videos to John Nash confessing his love. Generally when truly in love and released from social expectations INTJs will show more emotional excitement: dualization helps develop the needy SUPERID-Block - whereas INFJs love naturally manifests as rather more like serious dedication. INTJs need to get and learn to do Fe - INFJs want someone to accept the program of their lead function Fi. The difference may be subtle but it is noticeable.

The same logic goes for all the other functions - it follows logically from the illusionary nature of free will: all human decisions are fundamentally based on poorly understood instinctive subconscious reactions. For example this article I quote earlier http://www.pcipr.com/RSNA/news/thinking.asp It is intuitively obvious when casual everyday decisions can be painfully difficult to make.

Computers are fully logical, and they do only exactly what they are programmed to do, every human decision has an emotional component: just follow the Socratic method to the end and ask yourself what is the reason why you do every little thing you do: You want to think and act logically and behave responsibly but why should you be a decent human being? Or why should you be offended when someone insults you? Or just do I like pasta or pizza for lunch? Keep on asking till you eventually stumble into the problem of subjective values. You can make logical decisions only within certain rather narrowly predefined parameters and casual decision making is possible only if the parameters are largely set outside conscious awareness - otherwise the wealth of options will be overwhelming and the skill to choose the most logical alternative beyond anybody's abilities.


Or witness the Socratic method in action - and the inevitable backflash:


If European nations, which unlike the US are not in general "nations of [recent] immigrants", wish to define nationality "by blood", have they, in your opinion, the right to do so?
Posted by: Delmore Macnamara | February 25, 2005 09:00 AM




What meaning does "right" have when dealing with nations, which are not subject to the dictates of any superior power? Are you asking if they have the *freedom* to do so (which they clearly do), or if they *ought* to do so, and if the latter, are you asking a moral question or a pragmatic one?
Posted by: Abiola Lapite | February 25, 2005 09:10 AM




'What meaning does "right" have when dealing with nations, which are not subject to the dictates of any superior power?'

I disagree that nations are not subject to the dictates of any superior power, & even if they were not, would believe that moral considerations apply to them, as to all other entities.

'Are you asking if they have the *freedom* to do so (which they clearly do), or if they *ought* to do so'

I am asking whether they *ought* to have the *freedom* to do so.
Posted by: Delmore Macnmara | February 25, 2005 09:19 AM




"I am asking whether they *ought* to have the *freedom* to do so."

Well, the fact of the matter is that they clearly have such freedom, though as a moral matter I would rather that they did not exercise it, and as a pragmatic matter, I think they are unwise for so doing. How it benefits an aging Europe to have talented immigrants choose America over it is beyond me.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite | February 25, 2005 09:26 AM




"as a moral matter I would rather that they did not exercise it"

Do you consider morality to consist essentialy in expressions of personal preference, or am I reading too much into your words?
Posted by: Delmore Macnamara | February 25, 2005 09:31 AM




"Do you consider morality to consist essentialy in expressions of personal preference, or am I reading too much into your words?"

Frankly, I don't know what the heck you're on about. I've stated my position as clearly as I can, and I have no interest in getting drawn into an abstruse definitional debate. Would you care to stick to actually discussing the subject matter at hand, rather than acting as if I were on trial and you were my interrogator?
Posted by: Abiola Lapite | February 25, 2005 09:34 AM?



Abiola, sorry, I wasn't trying to interrogate you, 'tho I quite see that's how it came across & understand that you might have better things to do than explain your ideas to me. In any case I won't bother you further on this point.
Posted by: Delmore Macnamara | February 25, 2005 09:47 AM

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com....html#comments



Quantum physics provides another poignant analogy:
Traditionally, the gravitational force between any two bodies is directly proportional to the mass of the bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. However, this approach stumbles at great distances because it does not accommodate time. For example, if we move something on earth, we don’t instantly impact the pull on Alpha Centauri. Something was amiss.

To help resolve the issue of our limited gravity model, Mr. Gates presented a thought experiment to describe his thesis. Historically, we have cut things apart to their smallest element of matter. We started with the atom, which was found to consist of protons and neutrons and then yielded quarks and leptons. Each time, the smallest unit was considered to be a point particle visualized as a tiny ball. The last premise of the tiny ball provided the long sought after flaw; that is: it simply may not be true that the smallest unit is a tiny ball. The most fundamental unit according to the string conjecture is a really like a piece of spaghetti, hence Mr. Gates’ title of his talk involving Einstein and his love for spaghetti. That’s the end of the story. A string! It’s also the beginning of the story.
http://www.philsoc.org/1998Fall/2093minutes.html



Types and Smarts
The correlation between intelligence and sociotypes is not that strong. If you do not recognize SF-types with IQs firmly in the Mensa range, your typing skills leave ample room for improvement - or you are a hermit living in a cave. Having a dominant Ti is about leading your life based on your own subjective logical arguments. For an INTJ it may seem like everybody behaves in this way - or at least would if they had the brains - but for other types it can "feel" very different and I guess this causes a lot of misunderstanding between the types:

Psychological Types

C. G. Jung (1921)

It is a fact of experience that all the basic psychological functions seldom or never have the same strength or grade of development in one and the same individual. As a rule, one or other function predominates, in both strength and development. When supremacy among the psychological functions is given to thinking, i.e. when the life of an individual is mainly ruled by reflective thinking so that every important action proceeds from intellectually considered motives, or when there is at least a tendency to conform to such motives, we may fairly call this a thinking type. Such a type can be either introverted or extraverted. We will first discuss the extraverted thinking type.

When describing extraverted thinking, I gave a brief characterization of introverted thinking, to which at this stage I must make further reference. Introverted thinking is primarily orientated by the subjective factor. At the least, this subjective factor is represented by a subjective feeling of direction, which, in the last resort, determines judgment. Occasionally, it is a more or less finished image, which to some extent, serves as a standard. This thinking may be conceived either with concrete or with abstract factors, but always at the decisive points it is orientated by subjective data. Hence, it does not lead from concrete experience back again into objective things, but always to the subjective content, External facts are not the aim and origin of this thinking, although the introvert would often like to make it so appear. It begins in the subject, and returns to the subject, although it may [p. 481] undertake the widest flights into the territory of the real and the actual.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm


The biological bases of human intelligence is a highly controversial topic, but for practical purposes my own very simplified definition: intelligence is the capasity and speed of short term memory + a number of other more specific factors.

General cognitive ability, underlying IQ, is limited by the channel capacity of short-term memory. Mental power, that means the capacity C of short-term memory (measured in bits of information) is the product of the individual mental speed Ck of information processing (in bit/s), see below the external link to the paper by Lehrl and Fischer (1990), and the duration time D (in s) of information in short term working memory, that means the duration of memory span. Hence:

C(bit) = Ck(bit / s)xD(s)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_term_memory


Or a more detailed article:

A basic information psychological parameter (BIP) for the

reconstruction of concepts of intelligence

Siegfried Lehrl[1] and Bernd Fischer


Abstract

Adherents of the Galton paradigm favour the concept that the single parameter ‘speed of information processing’ has a physiological basis and determines complex achievements assessed in intelligence tests as well as social success. These assumptions are supported by inter-individual correlations. Further supporting evidence comes from total measurements where not only the information content of the stimuli is measured but also the time to process them. This reveals an individual constant period during which 1 bit of information is processed. It is called the ‘basic period of information processing’ (BIP), which lasts 1/15 s (= 67 ms) in average adults (IQ 100) and is constant over the ranges from which target stimuli can be drawn and over varying modes of the signs (letters, numbers, musical notes, etc.). In representative samples of adults duration of BIP correlates with global IQ (r = -0.60): We conclude that the BIP of an adult with an IQ of 122 is 50 ms and with an IQ of 78 twice as long (100 ms). We consider BIP to be a physiological and general determinant of intelligence, being measurable at a ratio or even on absolute scale level. Thus, it appears to be suitable as a building unit for reconstructing the rather fuzzy traditional concept of general intelligence.
http://www.v-weiss.de/lehrl-full.html

Your sociotype determines a part of the basic structure of your psyche and the fundamental way you perveive the world: what kind of rewards will motivate you - and what not, as well as the things you might find easier and the ones that will demand a lot of effort - but what your intelligence and other abilities are is another question entirely - and what you shall do with your life is, of course, up to you.
Also sprache Zarahustra.