Originally Posted by
redbaron
yes, this is absolutely the case.
Then I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty that my "EII trying to be an ESI" theory is probably true. I've been studying subtypes and personas for a while now, and according to
Kamenev and Prokofiev, the traits I predicted there tend to occur in people who have adopted their Kindred type as their Persona.
Here's what I think:
It's likely she was raised by heavily Se-valuing parents (probably Gammas, but I wouldn't rule out one of them being Beta), who impressed upon her the importance of maintaining an image of strength, power, and beauty, and responded quite negatively whenever she would try to behave naturally in an Ne fashion, causing her to suppress that part of herself and focus on trying to improve her Vulnerable Se and become more like an ESI.
She's a perfectionist because her weak Se was never "good enough" to match up to her parents' standards, so she had to try extra hard to make sure everything was just right. In her mind, the way to please her parents was to never step out of line, never do anything "wrong", never make mistakes which might draw her parents' criticism. As she grew up, this became her habitual style of behaviour, leading to perfectionism and micro-managing to compensate for her insecurity and make sure everything is done "right".
Her Vulnerable Se makes her uncertain in matters related to physical appearance, so like other INxJ types she dresses conservatively in order to avoid making an error that might draw criticism. She's found a hairstyle that seems to work, and is reluctant to risk changing it for the same reason: fear of criticism. Her desire to appear proficient in Se matters is what drives her to almost obsessively clean up the house when company comes, but her Se is too weak to overcome her husband's Irrational disregard for order, not to mention the chaos of family life. This causes her a great deal of anxiety, because it feels like a PoLR hit waiting to happen (a messy house might lead to criticism). She tries to use her Se to force family members into cleaning up, but as a 1-dimensional function it is largely ineffective.
Cooking, baking, and especially gardening would be her refuge from this frustrating situation. I'm guessing the garden is almost exclusively her domain? And it's primarily a flower garden rather than a vegetable garden? The joy of the garden would then be twofold: firstly, it would allow her a setting where she could actually be successful at using her weak Se to create something visually impressive. Secondly, the physical act of gardening involves a lot of Si, which would be soothing to her Super-Id.
She hates change because deep down she knows that she's not strong enough in Se matters to "wing it" and handle things on the fly, and any little unexpected change might cause her to make a mistake which could crack or even completely shatter this ESI image that she's struggled so hard to create, allowing people to see her for what she feels she truly is: weak and undesirable. It would feel like the world was falling apart. So she clamps down, controls as much as she can, and worries about what might happen.
So yeah. Is that close to accurate?
P. S. It's likely she got "ISFJ" on the MBTI quiz because a lot of the MBTI questions focus on external behaviour rather than internal information processing. This would be especially true if the test she took was Kiersey's, which focuses
exclusively on external behaviour. Obviously, a lot of her external behaviour resembles ISFJ, because she's been trying her whole life to modify her behaviour to become more like an ESI.