Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

Oh, also, I've ust started learning about Enneagram and I think Holmes is a 5w6, and Watson probably a 6w5.

 

[highlander]

sorry - never read the books

 

[chihuahuasrluv]

Have you seen the new Sherlock series ? I've only seen " A Study In Pink" so I don't want to type them but am still curious to see if the typical Holmes/Watson types are still the same.

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

Have you seen the new Sherlock series ? I've only seen " A Study In Pink" so I don't want to type them but am still curious to see if the typical Holmes/Watson types are still the same.

In the first episode Sherlock seemed more extraverted, thinking better with talking, rushing into things etc., so XNTP (I think Moffat is an ENTP and pushes a bit of himself on to some of his characters, like Moriarty at the end). In the next 2 episodes I am more confident he was INTP. Watson is still an ISFJ, and a very loveable one. I think the enneagram types are the same, but then again, I'm new to that, so I could be wrong.

 

[chihuahuasrluv]

What are your thoughts on DI Lestrade ?

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

What are your thoughts on DI Lestrade ?

I'm guessing you mean in the books? He seemed like an ESTJ from what I could gether. Te dominant. Focused on the task at hand, duty oriented, making quick but limited links based on physical evidence. In the 6 Napoleons, he failed to see the importance of linking the stolen busts with the murder, preffering to deal with them as seperate crimes rather than connecting them and searching for deeper meaning. He is fairly smart and a good officer, but he never looks deep enough, taking evidence for what it seems to be on the surface,like in a Study in Scarlet when he assumed the person died of natural causes (am I remembering this correctly?) rather than thinking to look for poison, as the body seemed unharmed.

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

Oh and in the show he was probably more of an ISTJ. What type do you think Holmes is, chihuahuasrluv?

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

Who chose ISFJ? XD

 

[Amethyst]

Who chose ISFJ? XD

Tehehehehe.

 

[entropie]

I'ld like to help you on your quest, but it's a shame, I've actually never really read a book about Sherlock Holmes or watched a movie or know any of the stories. Never really caught my intrest. I've read alot but all these books are really weird and noone really knows them. Like Hesse - Wolverine, which is a book about a guy that feels lonely in a bourgeois company, obviously is on some kind of drug and falls in love with a hooker, with which he enters his "magical theatre and the entry fee is your sanity". Or I've read Kafka - The Judgment or - Metamorphosis, the two best books he has ever written. Again about a guy who feels uncomfortable with his role society demands him to play and who writes about it in the most abstract way possible.

The only book that wasnt writtenin totally abstract inconcrete letters I ever read was Camus - L'Etranger. This a book from the time of existensialism and describes a guy to whoim nothing in life has any value and who is completly free of emotion. The story ends with the famous sentence that goes something like this: "After Mums funeral, we went to the beach. While being there I met the guy again, who robbed us the other day. So I chased him and stabbed him to death, so he may never rob someone again." That book's a burner .

But Sherlock Holmes, I have no clue about..

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

I read an existentialist book once. It was called "Wild Cat Falling." speaking of which, what type do you think these existentialist people are? I was thinking ISTP or INTP or something. Probably not strong Fi or Fe users and not motivated much by anything.

 

[entropie]

This a good question and I gave it already some thought too.

I had this one good friend in school, I'ld type INFP nowadays. He was a very nasty coeval, me and him in combination always had the ability to turn everything the teachers said into something sexual or funny. We were watched closely in every class and yeah girls made a huge circle around us. He read alot, much much more than I ever did and most of the books I read, I read because of him. I am a very adaptive and emapthic person, if you put me in company with a person long enough I'll become more and more like the other person and at some point will even have his opinion. I tho noticed for myself that with ongoing age the image we had created wasnt the one I wanted. I more liked to be seen as a gentleman of old school who has manners and a dash of grace and woman value for being a good friend and acting like a grown up. So they ways between me and the INFP parted at some point.

At age 19 we were having a backpacking trip thru France. We basically traveled by train for 3 weeks thru the whole country sleeping on camping sites. The infp was with us and he was reading Camus by that time. We were freshly out of school by that time and had to do our year of service, which is normal for males in Germany. While the infp went to the army, I worked in a retirement home and while he had become quite, how'ld I say, brutal thru the military, I had become very stoned cause I smoked alot. So I basically had a billion of things going on in my head, while he was looking for some structure in his life.

The intresting thing now was, while we both read Camus, we perceived it differently. I found it basically funny but unreal, I couldnt imagine to be as heartless like the guy in the book. My colleague tho rather took the guy as a rolemodel for copieing with his own feelings. Cause fueled by his stay with the military he had become totally supressive of all of his feelings, whats an impossible thing for an otherwise very temperamental and choleric guy that wears his feelings on his tongue every second. So since he searched for stability by repressing his feelings and I searched for clarity by diving into a chaos of perceptions on the world, our relationships clashed. Cause I induced new thoughts in him and chaos and he didnt want that. So we had a fist fight in the end and after that never seen each other again.

I personally think infp's are prone to existensialism. Then again I think infp's are really prone to all good frameworks of thoughts presented in books. A book gives em enough time to build an internal emotional connection to a thing and given this sufficient time then enables their Ne perception to identify with it. Therefore I'ld like to leave infp out of the equation.

With intp and istp its difficult to say. I think that Fe should normally have the demand on someone to feel accepted in some way in society for some things someone does. I doubt an intp could live in total solitude all his life and if he would I think he would at least write a book, cause at some point he'ld like to share his thoughts.

I dunno, all only wild assumptions, to answer your question: intp yay, istp probably embody existenzialism but I dont know if you could make them read a book

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

I personally think infp's are prone to existensialism. Then again I think infp's are really prone to all good frameworks of thoughts presented in books. A book gives em enough time to build an internal emotional connection to a thing and given this sufficient time then enables their Ne perception to identify with it. Therefore I'ld like to leave infp out of the equation.

With intp and istp its difficult to say. I think that Fe should normally have the demand on someone to feel accepted in some way in society for some things someone does. I doubt an intp could live in total solitude all his life and if he would I think he would at least write a book, cause at some point he'ld like to share his thoughts.

I dunno, all only wild assumptions, to answer your question: intp yay, istp probably embody existenzialism but I dont know if you could make them read a book

I initially assumed that INFPs would not be into that because they like to have important beliefs and everything, but I suppose they could have the value that all values are pointless. My thoughts for INTP and ISTP were mainly with the Ti. Like an INTP character I created once, who sees the way that people's personality and everything is simply made up from chemical reactions in the brain and how everything is just predetermined through physics, and is then unable to see the point in anything. That's the sort of way I imagined INTPs would be it. Just seeing things in logical perspective and not appealing to the emotional aspect, therefore losing all sense of meaning.

But this is getting a bit off topic, isn't it?

 

[entropie]

Yes, maybe stuff for another thread .

You're right with the claim of Ti seeing things as pointless cause it's just predetermined physics. I tend to forget about that train of thought, because I never accepted it for myself. As the concept of determinism firstly arose back then in school, it were really all people, I'ld type ixtp nowadays, who liked it. To me it somehow, despite its convincing logic, never hold any value. At first I just categorically ignored it, cause determinism sounded like a religion, like believing in a thing I could never proof and this time it just had a factual basis and later I was glad for quantum physics, who put the laws of cause and effect in question.

So we'll find out in the end, if quantum physics was the last uprising of mankind for their freedom of will or if we have to say in the end: you can imagine a lot, it doesnt change the facts . In that regards I like the discussion between the tolan and Cpt.Carter from Stargate:

The Tolan: "Are you intrested in physics ?"
Cpt. Carter: "Yes, you too ? What is your field ?"
The Tolan: "Quantum Physics would be probably what you call it."
Cpt. Carter: "That's nice, what field of it is your speciality, chromodynamics, electromagnetics ?"
The Tolan: "Actually I was a student of ancient physics or so to say 'where science was wrong'."
Cpt.Carter: "Owww"

 

[Mr. Sherlock Holmes]

Yes, maybe stuff for another thread .

You're right with the claim of Ti seeing things as pointless cause it's just predetermined physics. I tend to forget about that train of thought, because I never accepted it for myself. As the concept of determinism firstly arose back then in school, it were really all people, I'ld type ixtp nowadays, who liked it. To me it somehow, despite its convincing logic, never hold any value. At first I just categorically ignored it, cause determinism sounded like a religion, like believing in a thing I could never proof and this time it just had a factual basis and later I was glad for quantum physics, who put the laws of cause and effect in question.

So we'll find out in the end, if quantum physics was the last uprising of mankind for their freedom of will or if we have to say in the end: you can imagine a lot, it doesnt change the facts . In that regards I like the discussion between the tolan and Cpt.Carter from Stargate:

The Tolan: "Are you intrested in physics ?"
Cpt. Carter: "Yes, you too ? What is your field ?"
The Tolan: "Quantum Physics would be probably what you call it."
Cpt. Carter: "That's nice, what field of it is your speciality, chromodynamics, electromagnetics ?"
The Tolan: "Actually I was a student of ancient physics or so to say 'where science was wrong'."
Cpt.Carter: "Owww"

I think it's probably ACCURATE, but I don't let it bring me to thinking everything is pointless, because as far as I can percieve, without in depth scientific study, I can be happy, I can be sad, and to all testable extents, I DO have free will, and so I can make the choices I want to make me happy, which I find enjoyable, even if I'm not really choosing. It's like not liking video games because it's really just dots on a screen. What is there may actually have no meaning, but we can create meaning through our perception or it.

 

[entropie]

Yea that sounds like a plausible cause for existance. I was always too concerned to achieve new high scores in the video games than to bother with determinism. Cant tell you in 3 words how much I hated philosophy courses. I nearly failed high-school because of it. I can really listen to documentaries about space and such for hours and let all the details from w-bosons to strange quarks stand explained to me, but the moment it transfers to people I am really getting angry towards it. Determinism was the start back then, what came afterwards with all some meta-physics shit omg, I was always wondering if those philosophers had to compensate for something like a fear of not have taken a physics major earlier

 

[Vaughn_Doom]

This is an interesting thread, for an interesting character. I just started reading "A Study in Scarlet" so I don't have as much information on the character and may be "twisting facts to theories" but it seems to me, from Watson's point of view at least, that Sherlock is a T, probably an NT. What seems like a broad range of interests are really just one, solving crime. Almost every field he pursues (there are exceptions, like the violin thing) is related to solving crime, and I don't think he does it primarily for the ethical gratification. He also seems too "practical" to be a P, but I'm no expert. I'd say INTJ or maybe ENTP. As another user put it, it's hard accounting for the coke.

 

[SilkRoad]

This is an interesting thread, for an interesting character. I just started reading "A Study in Scarlet" so I don't have as much information on the character and may be "twisting facts to theories" but it seems to me, from Watson's point of view at least, that Sherlock is a T, probably an NT. What seems like a broad range of interests are really just one, solving crime. Almost every field he pursues (there are exceptions, like the violin thing) is related to solving crime, and I don't think he does it primarily for the ethical gratification. He also seems too "practical" to be a P, but I'm no expert. I'd say INTJ or maybe ENTP. As another user put it, it's hard accounting for the coke.

He does get bored, hence the coke - and he is definitely a T, so he may be a TP. I had originally thought like so many others that he was INTJ, but I'm starting to think that INTP, ISTP and ENTP are all highly likely as well. I'd say the great Jeremy Brett probably played him as an ENTP.

I need to think about this a bit more in terms of dominant functions though.

I think you do need to read more of the stories to get a really good idea. Study in Scarlet is awesome, but Doyle developed the character further after that, so some of it is not very representative.

 

[Thalassa]

There is no *real* type of Sherlock Holmes since he's a fictional character and not a real person. Also take into careful consideration that film or television manifestations of him aren't necessarily going to match up with the novel version.

The original Sherlock Holmes is surely an IxTJ. He's highly organized, relies heavily on facts, observes things that other people miss, and is totally fucking smug about it ("Elementary my dear Watson!") ...because of other creepy traits like his lack of friends/relationships and coke induced violin playing, I want to say he's probably definitively an INTJ.

 

[KDude]

INTPs and ENTPs whine about running into walls and shit, while Holmes can pick a wall down to the most mundane aspects and tell you it's life story.

OK, I'm probably being a jerk, but I want some consistency there. You can't have your cake and be a meticulous detective too. Screw you NTPs! And NTs in general.

BTW, I don't really mean that. I like you.