Quote:
Originally Posted by edcoaching
All the "good" type descriptions assume people had a chance to develop normally--that parents and teachers honored the preferences of they child and they got to actually use their dominant and, later, auxiliary as they moved through adolescence.
So this thread is right on--ADD, difficulties in childhood, can either block development OR can push development of the other preferences in ways that make it difficult to know what is preferred. Can be a blessing or can really screw you up.
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I was just thinking about this recently. I just discovered Enneagram recently and one of the things I really like about it is how each of the types are described at healthy, average and unhealthy levels. MBTI seems to mostly just describe the healthy version of each type. There is an optimism that seems to feel that differences between people are just a matter of understanding type. It is not always that simple because sometimes you are dealing with with people who have minor or major mental issues.
For example, what if the person you are trying to get along with is verbally abusive, sadistic, manipulative, selfish or narcisistic? Can MBTI shed any clues there that would help us. I am not talking about normal "insenstivity" often attributed to Ts. A healthy T might "insult" you by giving an honest opinion when you ask what he thinks about something, but it is not the same thing as being verbally abusive or intentionally cruel. I think some of these people may be messed up Ss, but it is hard to tell. I am guessing S, because sometimes I try to defend myself verbally with logic and the logic doesn't seem to register at all.
Sometimes I run into people who are both irrational (which would seem to be a low T) and emotionally cruel to other people (which would seem to be a low F). So are they messed up Ts or messed up Fs? Can you even type people like this who are apparently missing one of their top two fuctions.
Ilah