Ingmar Bergman

[Spartacuss]

Informed guesses on his type?

In his work, he projects: intuitive, introspective, visionary, cerebral, hypersensitive, sexual, sensual, warped, existential, mystical, morbid, complex, religious/spiritual, moody.

Professional detail - gen. wrote his own scripts. His films are definitely intellectual and grapple with heavy philosophical questions, but, at the same time, it is not a bloodless intellectualism. There's much of the sensual and spiritual there. THey don't allow you to rationalize everything and keep it at arms length; they go for the gut - probably where a lot (most?) of their effect comes from. For me, he could have a scene that I understood in ways I probably could not put down to words (no small feat )
He also is reputed to have been a bit stubborn about carrying out his particular vision of his work, but got better at letting go later.

From his personal life - Don't know much other than he married five times (not an SJ? - LOL), and dated actresses with whom he worked. Minister's son.

So far, I think he is an NfJ of sorts.

 

[colmena]

I'd say INTP with ridiculously high emotional strength and understanding.

I was going to say that you could persuade me towards any N type. But no, I'll stick with INTP.

Last time I checked, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, and Winter Light were all on veoh.

 

[violaine]

I'll go with INFJ. He was an Idealist not a Rational. I have seen him typed elsewhere as INFJ fwiw. His films deal with primal emotions, they're deeply personal, introspective and full of symbolism. He expresses himself in figurative language. He spoke about manipulating truth to serve his own ends, which I don't imagine would be the INTP M.O.

Some relevant quotes:

Cinema is a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restricted control of the intellect.

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

I want very much to tell, to talk about, the wholeness inside every human being. It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

"...the manifestation of sex is very important, and particularly to me, for above all, I don't want to make merely intellectual films. I want audiences to feel, to sense my films. This to me is much more important than their understanding them."

"I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and [illegible] liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded."

"Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to pour emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames in a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness. At the editing table, when I run the trip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood: in the darkness of the wardrobe, I slowly wind one frame after another, see almost imperceptible changes, wind faster - a movement."

People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

 

[colmena]

I feel like saying 'Fuck no' to INFJ, but that wouldn't be a very good argument.

I've really never felt want or need to type him. It seems silly to attempt to do so.

 

[Salomé]

INFJ

 

[violaine]

I feel like saying 'Fuck no' to INFJ, but that wouldn't be a very good argument.

I've really never felt want or need to type him. It seems silly to attempt to do so.

lol. But you did type him... Do you disagree with INFJ but don't want to go into it further?

 

[colmena]

lol. But you did type him...

But I didn't want or need to.

Do you disagree with INFJ but don't want to go into it further?

Yes. That's right.

 

[INA]

^What a partypooper this beehive fellow is. pfft.
(though I agree that it takes some audacity to dare to type Bergman)

To start out, I'd say INxJ - he seems to have a healthy reverence for the sense and feeling aspects from the few films of his that I've seen, but it's all so cerebral in quality - as opposed to "intelligent" or "intellectual". Plus, people misunderestimate the power of subterranean T emotions. There is a certain cool control about the way he manipulates the elements of his films in addressing the dark themes.
I could see both INtJ and INfJ, but I would lean more T.

 

[pure_mercury]

I'd go with INxJ, also.

 

[violaine]

hmm, but 5 marriages for an INTJ or INxJ? (plus a few other serious relationships.) He had intense, stormy relationships... I don't think INTJ or INxJ(?) would be up for that at all. If INxJ, why not INFJ? I'm curious.

Also, in the I/Vs I watched he seems very INFJ to me. In the first i/v he says the aim of his film-making is a desire to touch other human beings, to touch the emotions of other people and it's always been the case. At the end of the first i/v he pretty much says he hates anyone coming along after and imitating.

In the second he mentions that being a good director requires an attraction to the inner regions of a human being, a passion for it, for probing human beings and experiencing their lives - observing and feeling a deep contact with human life. And I noticed when asked about his strengths and weaknesses he goes straight for explaining his weakness... I think typing him through his art is only part of the picture.

[YOUTUBE="PniEkwgL8ms"]Bergman I/V[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE="R43doYbp6hA"]Bergman I/V, in Swedish[/YOUTUBE]

Not trying to be a dog with a bone but I'm just wondering why not INFJ... he seems nothing but to me? I wonder if I'm missing something?

 

[MacGuffin]

In the second he mentions that being a good director requires an attraction to the inner regions of a human being, a passion for it, for probing human beings and experiencing their lives - observing and feeling a deep contact with human life. And I noticed when asked about his strengths and weaknesses he goes straight for explaining his weakness... I think typing him through his art is only part of the picture.

I wonder how much of what we see is his rebellion against his father. We see plenty of that in Bergman's atheism (as his father was a conservative minister), but an emotionally remote father can spark a yearning for human connection no matter his MBTI type.

I mean, not that I know anything about emotionally distant Swedes...

 

[violaine]

^Interesting point... yeah, he had a strict religious upbringing, I read somewhere that one of his strongest feelings as a child was deep humiliation, feeling 'knocked about' and he objected to Christianity because he felt it was infused with humiliation for adherents (paraphrasing). He apparently retained a deep fear of humiliation.

 

[Sture]

I don't know much about bergman, but here in sweden it's general knowledge that he pretty much slept with every woman he ever worked with. First I wanted to say INFJ, but considering the above that doesn't seem so plausible anymore. INFJs are only promiscuous when they are punishing themselves and/or others and that's not bergman.

I'd say INTP with ridiculously high emotional strength and understanding.

This is sounding better and better in my ears.

 

[Stansmith]

I don't know much about bergman, but here in sweden it's general knowledge that he pretty much slept with every woman he ever worked with. First I wanted to say INFJ, but considering the above that doesn't seem so plausible anymore. INFJs are only promiscuous when they are punishing themselves and/or others and that's not bergman.



This is sounding better and better in my ears.

I could see casual sex being a way to satisfy Fe for some INFJs, despite their low Se. Late, but it's an interesting thought.