What type is House?

[Riva]

I've now watched all eight seasons, straight through.

My final verdict:
House the character is INTJ.
The actor playing him is ENTP.
The writer(s) of the show are very INFJ.

He is not an extrovert. Most of his time is spent thinking, alone.

His intuition is Ni, not Ne. He doesn't brainstorm himself. His team brainstorms for him, and Ni picks the idea(s) that look most productive to him. When he diagnoses solo, he sees a single clue (Se), and synthesizes that clue into an overall explanation of everything (Ni). (A lot of his synthesis has an INFJ feel to it, positing personality traits of the patient, etc., due to the writers' INFJ bent.) He tends to jump to conclusions and insist that he be allowed to follow through on the diagnosis, which annoys his fellow (usually NTP-ish) doctors to no end.

The extroversion I do see is of the Te variety. Writing symptoms on a whiteboard and staring at them and crossing them out is a very Te activity. The brainstorming from his team is also dealt with in a Te way: an idea is quickly determined to be good or bad, and once the ideas are all out there, a decision is quickly made. Ti would tend to hem and haw a lot more. His team hems and haws, but House makes decisions quickly and decisively. The team is worried about getting the diagnosis correct, frets about possibilities; House stays quiet, then makes his diagnosis/prescription, and doesn't let the arguments last beyond that point. If he makes a mistake, that because a new datapoint and he reevaluates via Ni. Often, he deliberately makes a choice that he knows might be wrong, because HOW the choice ends up being wrong will provide additional data for the diagnosis. This is a Te approach in that making mistakes is deliberately used to figure things out in an iterative way; Ti prefers to avoid mistakes.

When I see him relate closely to individuals (the girl in the 3rd season with whom he spent a lot of time in a single episode, the woman he met in the asylum in season 5, Cuddy in season 6/7), the emotion is almost entirely on an Fi level.

And his stress modes exude Se, whether juggling, playing action-oriented video games, drinking, popping Vicodin, riding a motorcycle, whoring, or driving a car into a house.

None of this is 100% consistent, of course, due to the influence of the writers and the actor, but overall, what House does and how he does it says INTJ. The writers' INFJ-ness add to the overall INTJ feel by giving House very Ni psychological experiences, especially w/r to talking to imaginary people, and I suspect the inferior Se implied by the writers' being INFJ reveals itself in House's stress reactions. I also see an INFJ influence in the psychological nature of House's various pranks, and baiting of his team to pick on their current psychological insecurities.

In spite of the inconsistencies, what remains consistent is how his psychological breaks happen. They're very Ni-ish, with Se stress relief, and there is an overall ESFP vibe to how he becomes completely reckless.

Thank you. I had to wait 10 months for your reply but it was worth it.

I agree with you (intj for House - Te,Se,Fi and Ni) and you have written it quite convincingly.

 

[napo_leon]

I still think ENTP suits him well. But he is a fictional character and I think he is a mix of all NT types, with ENTP as the top option.

 

[Salomé]

I've now watched all eight seasons, straight through.

My final verdict:
House the character is INTJ.
The actor playing him is ENTP.
The writer(s) of the show are very INFJ.

He is not an extrovert. Most of his time is spent thinking, alone.

His intuition is Ni, not Ne. He doesn't brainstorm himself. His team brainstorms for him, and Ni picks the idea(s) that look most productive to him. When he diagnoses solo, he sees a single clue (Se), and synthesizes that clue into an overall explanation of everything (Ni). (A lot of his synthesis has an INFJ feel to it, positing personality traits of the patient, etc., due to the writers' INFJ bent.) He tends to jump to conclusions and insist that he be allowed to follow through on the diagnosis, which annoys his fellow (usually NTP-ish) doctors to no end.

The extroversion I do see is of the Te variety. Writing symptoms on a whiteboard and staring at them and crossing them out is a very Te activity. The brainstorming from his team is also dealt with in a Te way: an idea is quickly determined to be good or bad, and once the ideas are all out there, a decision is quickly made. Ti would tend to hem and haw a lot more. His team hems and haws, but House makes decisions quickly and decisively. The team is worried about getting the diagnosis correct, frets about possibilities; House stays quiet, then makes his diagnosis/prescription, and doesn't let the arguments last beyond that point. If he makes a mistake, that becomes a new datapoint and he reevaluates via Ni. Often, he deliberately makes a choice that he knows might be wrong, because HOW the choice ends up being wrong will provide additional data for the diagnosis. This is a Te approach in that making mistakes is deliberately used to figure things out in an iterative way; Ti prefers to avoid mistakes.

When I see him relate closely to individuals (the girl in the 3rd season with whom he spent a lot of time in a single episode, the woman he met in the asylum in season 5, Cuddy in season 6/7), the emotion is almost entirely on an Fi level.

And his stress modes exude Se, whether juggling, playing action-oriented video games, drinking, popping Vicodin, riding a motorcycle, whoring, or driving a car into a house.

None of this is 100% consistent, of course, due to the influence of the writers and the actor, but overall, what House does and how he does it says INTJ. The writers' INFJ-ness add to the overall INTJ feel by giving House very Ni psychological experiences, especially w/r to talking to imaginary people, and I suspect the inferior Se implied by the writers' being INFJ reveals itself in House's stress reactions. I also see an INFJ influence in the psychological nature of House's various pranks, and baiting of his team to pick on their current psychological insecurities.

In spite of the inconsistencies, what remains consistent is how his psychological breaks happen. They're very Ni-ish, with Se stress relief, and there is an overall ESFP vibe to how he becomes completely reckless.

All quite plausible. Then again, you overlook the main appeal of the show: he's fucking funny. (=ENTP)

 

[Riva]

All quite plausible. Then again, you overlook the main appeal of the show: he's fucking funny. (=ENTP)

Assuming this is not a joke; you probably fail to notice the humour varieties in entps and intjs. Entps have a let-the-world-blow-up-around-me or let-you-curse-me-in-utter-filth but I will still keep a smile on my face and remind you why you should actually be happy or pissed at yourself kind of vibe to their humour. They will make a random connection of you and the outcome (Ne) and patch the loopholes with (Ti) by leveraging supportive points over the others and would never let you actually hate them even if you feel like killing them. The best example I can give for a pure entp humour is king schultz in django unchained. He is an entp it hurts and his humour is entp at its best. Also entp humour wouldn't be funny without their personality of an observant, calm, humourist vibe. House's humour is completely different. He is more sarcastic (entps are seldom rudely sarcastic, allow their sarcasm to belittle others and are actually seldom sarcastic to begin with), rude, has a superiority quality to his humour and - hmm.. What else? - has a take it or leave it edge to his jokes. (Entps wouldn't feel right to leave a joke to be taken as an insult.) I recommend watching django unchained (king schultz) or star trek ds9 (elim garak) to get the vibe of entp humour.

 

[Salomé]

Pfft. Like I need a lecture from you on NTP humour. Please.

Although this:

Assuming this is not a joke; you probably fail to notice the humour

was pretty funny.
Sometimes INTJS are funny. When they're not trying.

 

[Riva]

Pfft. Like I need a lecture from you on NTP humour. Please.Although this: was pretty funny. Sometimes INTJS are funny. When they're not trying.

Ouch. However since I am not an intj I guess I shouldn't feel too much pain? Anyway may I know your thoughts on what type of humour house use?

 

[Salomé]

Ouch. However since I am not an intj I guess I shouldn't feel too much pain? Anyway may I know your thoughts on what type of humour house use?

You were last week. /shrug

House is a snarky bastard. So am I. Guess what we have in common? (Apart from a British accent.)

 

[Riva]

You were last week. /shrugHouse is a snarky bastard. So am I. Guess what we have in common? (Apart from a British accent.)

Your good naturedness and your love for humanity?

 

[Salomé]

Bingo! Plus last 3 letters, minimum.

 

[uumlau]

Yeah, INTJs are never snarky.

Nor do we go for irony.

But above all, we are never, ever sarcastic.

 

[Nicodemus]

I, for one, am not a bastard, though.

 

[Salomé]

Yeah, INTJs are never snarky.

Nor do we go for irony.

But above all, we are never, ever sarcastic.

Yet somehow you manage to be neither funny nor charming... So...
House must have something else going for him.

I, for one, am not a bastard, though.

Debatable.

 

[uumlau]

Yet somehow you manage to be neither funny nor charming... So...
House must have something else going for him.

If only I had a British ENTP comedian playing me on TV.

 

[Emotionalogic]

Any type can be funny. House is an INTJ because he is ni-te-fi-se. Inferior se is obvious in his inability to deal with his leg injury and his tendency to abuse the function when he's stressed or depressed (which is, you know, all the time). Hence the motorcycle, the inability to clean his house or take care of his appearance, driving a car through a wall, etc. Sensing is actually his weakest function, not feeling. He has a fairly strong moral code, it's just private and out of touch with everyone else's. He's not great at dealing with his emotions though. Tertiary fi fits perfectly. Fi types are often typed as less feeling than they are, because, being introverted, the feeling is less obvious to the outside observer. House is a clear te user. He has a directive style and he deals with the outer world logically rather than emotionally. He is a leader who tells his team what to do and where to go. He thinks aloud and uses a whiteboard to organize his thinking process. In the diagnostic process, one of his main roles is to judge the ideas that his team brainstorms and decide what to do. He is a judgemental person who often criticizes other people with externalized logic. He could almost be an ENTJ except that his ni is even stronger. When House comes up with a potential diagnosis himself, he is pretty stubborn about it until he's been proven wrong (at which point he'll move on, like any good INTJ). He doesn't brainstorm or entertain multiple potential diagnoses, he gets an idea and analyzes the hell out of it, and he generates the grand idea by synthesizing symptoms and the lesser ideas of his team. He does the ni-te thing outside of work too, synthesizing knowledge to form grand notions like "everybody lies", which usually take the form of an external judgement. Really, he's one of the clearest INTJs on TV. Perhaps he looks superficially entpish because he's funny, lively, and superficially disorganized due to inferior se. INTJs actually have more in common with ENTPs than INTPs because of the shared N-dom T-aux. Many INTJs (including myself) can adopt an ENTP "mask", particularly at work, where we're often more comfortable socially (and therefore more e-like and fe-like). House is based on Sherlock Holmes, a classic INTJ, so its unsurprising he's one too. Compare him to the BBC's Sherlock, for instance - they're practically the same character.

 

[Emotionalogic]

INTJ works on a Keirseyan level as well. He's obviously NT. He's also an introvert. He does enjoy messing with people and cracking jokes, and he requires a team to exercise te, but social interaction ultimately wears him out rather than invigorating him and he's often seen retreating to his office or his home to recharge. He's a genuine misanthrope, rather than a mere cynic like Dr. Cox from Scrubs (who shows what an ENTP would look like in a House-esque role). He is messy and unkempt, but that's because he's an intuitive who doesn't focus on his physical circumstances (inferior se). He's obviously a J. He's stubborn, judgmental, controlling, arrogant, directive, driven, single-minded and determined. Like Holmes, he will not rest until the case is solved. He needs closure. He's also pretty routinized when you think about it. He's had the same job forever and has no real desire to shake up his life. I get the impression he dislikes change. Look at how he reacted when Cuddy wanted to change the carpet in his office because it had a stain on it. A perciever wouldn't have cared. House went crazy (er) and waged war against Cuddy until she let him keep the carpet. He looks like a p superficially because he's lazy about clinic duty and other nonsense, but INTJs are often lazy about things they don't care about, particularly when they're being forced to do them, and doubly so if its stupid and inefficient (like putting a brilliant diagnostician like House on clinic duty is). He's not lazy at all when it comes to the work he actually cares about. He lives for his work as a diagnostician. People too often assign all xxxJs tendencies of the SJ temperament, like conscientiousness, attention to detail, and deference to authority. House displays none of these, but that doesn't make him an xxxP.
Edit: He's also 5w4. Obviously.

 

[Salomé]

No wonder the world is such a fucking mess. Almost 1000 posts devoted to debating the purely hypothetical type of a purely FICTIONAL character...

There is no correct answer to be had. Unless you get a statement from the show's creator which says "I understand MBTI and wrote House as an INTJ" it doesn't matter what you think. Nor does it matter that most people disagree with you. I'm pretty sure Sir Arthur Conon Doyle didn't write Sherlock as an INTJ either. And not just because both characters have near superhuman powers of deduction, and as we all know, INTJs suck ass at deductive logic.

What this debate does highlight though, is just how absurd the machinations of typology are. "Sure maybe he looks like an ENTP, but that just his inferior Se acting out." Lol.
Reasoning thusly, any type can look like any other type. In short, it's a bunch of bollocks.

Someone who spent 7? seasons in thrall to his inferior function would likely not be able to hold down a day job. House is a drug addict, routinely gets drunk, into fights, and hooks up with prostitutes. All without noticeably impeding his performance at work. He is a stimulation junkie. He is a prankster. He is a maverick. And a narcissist. (Despite this last, he is not an INTJ.) He cares about solving problems only to the point of achieving a diagnosis. He doesn't generally care whether his patients live or die - i.e he is not "results-oriented" at all. He doesn't care about his department's performance, as long as he has stimulating work to do. He will work a case even after the patient is dead. He is captivated by (apparently) unsolvable puzzles - that's a Ti thing. His whiteboard sessions are not evidence of Te - he doesn't proceed methodically. He doesn't plan what he is going to do. They are Ne brainstorming sessions. He often solves a problem via analogy - pure Ne. He proceeds by trial and error. He does nothing by the book. He improvises constantly. He is the opposite of conscientious. And he is never dull.
It is always amusing to watch INTJs jumping through hoops to try to associate their type with someone charismatic though...

 

[RaptorWizard]

If everyone thinks he's either INTJ or ENTP, and he's too driven to put visionary outlines into action without amazing logic for INTP, then the most reasonable choice might be the middle ground of ENTJ.

 

[Emotionalogic]

No wonder the world is such a fucking mess. Almost 1000 posts devoted to debating the purely hypothetical type of a purely FICTIONAL character...

There is no correct answer to be had. Unless you get a statement from the show's creator which says "I understand MBTI and wrote House as an INTJ" it doesn't matter what you think. Nor does it matter that most people disagree with you. I'm pretty sure Sir Arthur Conon Doyle didn't write Sherlock as an INTJ either. And not just because both characters have near superhuman powers of deduction, and as we all know, INTJs suck ass at deductive logic.

What this debate does highlight though, is just how absurd the machinations of typology are. "Sure maybe he looks like an ENTP, but that just his inferior Se acting out." Lol.
Reasoning thusly, any type can look like any other type. In short, it's a bunch of bollocks.

Someone who spent 7? seasons in thrall to his inferior function would likely not be able to hold down a day job. House is a drug addict, routinely gets drunk, into fights, and hooks up with prostitutes. All without noticeably impeding his performance at work. He is a stimulation junkie. He is a prankster. He is a maverick. And a narcissist. (Despite this last, he is not an INTJ.) He cares about solving problems only to the point of achieving a diagnosis. He doesn't generally care whether his patients live or die - i.e he is not "results-oriented" at all. He doesn't care about his department's performance, as long as he has stimulating work to do. He will work a case even after the patient is dead. He is captivated by (apparently) unsolvable puzzles - that's a Ti thing. His whiteboard sessions are not evidence of Te - he doesn't proceed methodically. He doesn't plan what he is going to do. They are Ne brainstorming sessions. He often solves a problem via analogy - pure Ne. He proceeds by trial and error. He does nothing by the book. He improvises constantly. He is the opposite of conscientious. And he is never dull.
It is always amusing to watch INTJs jumping through hoops to try to associate their type with someone charismatic though...

First you pontificate on why this thread and MBTI applied to fiction is useless, then you strain vainly to show he's ENTP (using exactly the same arguments as the last 100 pages of people who think he's ENTP). INTJs dont "suck ass" at deductive logic. John Nash and Isaac Newton were INTJs. I'm pretty sure they were better at deductive logic than you. MBTI measures preference, not ability. House (and every other diagnostitian in history) uses inductive logic, the INTJ's preference. He doesn't start from premises and deduce the inevitable conclusion. He looks at evidence (symptoms) and connects the dots, synthesizing information and theories to produce a diagnosis, usually in a "Eureka!" moment. That's ni at work right there. And House would[ never be able to hold down a day job in real life, precisely because he's a messed up addict in thrall to inferior se. That's why it's a TV Show. Being a stimulation junkie is a se thing, not a ne thing. Drug addiction, getting drunk, getting into fights, whoring; do you really think those are signs of Ne and not Se? . It's all signs of the infamous inferior se binges INTJs are known for. Read up on the types: http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html . Being a prankster, a maverick, and a narcissist could apply to INTJ or ENTP. "He cares about solving problems only to the point of achieving a diagnosis"; you do realized that's a meaningless tautology, right? Yeah, he only cares about solving problems to the point where the problem is solved. And he will not give up until the problem is solved. He's a j who needs closure. And he clearly does care about whether his patients live or die, he just says he doesn't and acts like he doesn't because he's an introverted misanthrope. "Dull, conscientious, by the book"; again you're assigning SJ temperament characteristics to NJs without seeing the difference. Obviously there's no correct answer, but INTJ fits him better than ENTP. If he's an ENTP, why all the Se binges? Why does he show zero fe and extrovert thinking instead (bossing his team around, bullying Cuddy, etc.). Why does he always pick and choose from his team's initial ideas rather than brainstorming himself? Why is he single minded and unwilling to consider the possibility of another diagnosis when he thinks he's right? Why does he obsess over having complete control over the details of his environment, like his carpet? Why does he need time alone to recharge and regard all social interaction (except with his close friend or when he wants something specific, like to play a joke) as a chore? Why does he display absolutely no p flexibility? Why does he clearly enjoy being the boss? Why does he nihilistically ponder the universe in such a ni, Schopenhauer/Nietzsche style? Why does he clearly show fi instead of fe, having his own idea of right and wrong that ignores social norms and the needs of others? To put it clearly, why does he look exactly like an INTJ whose too depressed to engage in much long term planning?

Edit: Oh wait, you're the genius who decided House just had to be ENTP because "he's fucking funny". I didn't take that into consideration. Since all funny people are ENTPs, and House is funny, he must be ENTP. How silly of me to ignore such an obvious dividing line. I suppose you must be an ENTP too, since you're obviously such a riot. And so must H.L. Mencken, Jane Austen, and Christopher Hitchens. All those people who typed them INTJ based on function analysis must be off because they overlooked the humor factor, which was so clearly outlined by Jung, Myers, and Briggs.

 

[Emotionalogic]

Seriously, House's humor is te, rather than ne. He's all about cutting people down without any regard to their feelings, and totally ignoring social norms like political correctness. ENTPs extrovert feeling, not thinking, remember? Their humor is more gentle, with more goofy ne associations. Compare Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Groucho Marx to Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, and House.

 

[Nicodemus]

Are you Kamishi's second attempt at glory?