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[MBTI General] The Mistyping of John Lennon

Ashtart

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Either ISFP or ENFP. I highly doubt he was an INFP.
 

redrocker

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I've always had difficulty typing John Lennon. But I can definitely see him as ENFP. He reminds me a little of other ones I've known.

All I know for sure is that he is *N** something. And I am leaning towards *NF*.
 

ObeUploadMe

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John Lennon was an INTJ. It is so unmistakable that it boggles the mind how this is so often mistaken.
 

redrocker

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John Lennon was an INTJ. It is so unmistakable that it boggles the mind how this is so often mistaken.

A poet singer who went to art school is an INTJ? Really?

I was thinking ENFP the other day. But I'm leaning towards INFP. I think his outward personality had more to do with his performing and ambition as an artist. The most successful artists may seem to be extraverted but that can be due to their maturity and ambition. I think Paul McCartney had that same quality.
 

ObeUploadMe

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  1. A poet/singer who went to art school is an INTJ?

    Absolutely.

    Many well known poets/lyricists/artists/singers/songwriters/music producers, pioneers in music, groundbreaking authors, etc., are/were INTJ's. Hell, one of my closest male friends is an INTJ and he's been an artist since he was a kid and we enjoy writing music together. He's a great guitarist and producer. I should state too that John didn't really want to go to art school; it was more or less forced upon him, and he didn't take it very seriously, was drunk for much of it, and got expelled. But he clearly had a natural talent for the visual arts as well as auditory (obviously).

    Listen to the majority of Lennon songs with The Beatles and throughout his solo career through the lens of an INTJ (if you can imagine) and it will become clear that he was an existentialist: very often questioning reality and himself as a part of this human existence. INFP's are not existentialists. You guys just aren't. It's not fun (well, sometimes it can be) and it's not something you can ever turn off. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

    John was dominant introverted intuition. He knew what the masses (women & girls in particular) wanted and knew how to achieve it through sound and presence. I mean, he did start the whole Beatles thing. No biggie.

    Intuiting what people wanted and delivering on that accounts for the "feeling" vibe you get through his music (after all, INTJ's are masters at tuning into YOU, whether it be at the micro or macro level). He also employed his tertiary Fi when necessary, and a bit more than usual through the first years with Yoko (think Plastic Ono Band), but not much at all if you look at the whole of his life. And his inferior extroverted sensing? I mean, isn't that one kind of completely obvious? If not, I could write a whole post on John and his inferior Se. Maybe another time.

    His auxiliary function was Te, not Ne. Watch/listen to any personal interview (not group interviews or press conferences), or the Imagine doc, anything where you get to really listen to him: he talks about himself and what he thinks, not what he feels or intuits. He already has an intuition about something, then he expresses it through logic. He may talk about experiencing certain emotions, like annoyance, anger, rage, resentment, all the things he did feel as a Beatle, as a human, but he does so via intellectualism: through expressing his thoughts ABOUT feelings. That's a disconnect. Big difference there to take note of. Even when speaking of his positive emotions, like his relationship with Yoko, he talks about her impact on him, again, using feeling words, but expressing them as logical thoughts. Many people miss that. So with that, you can see how easy it was for him to use words and music that elicited emotion in the listener without necessarily "feeling" them himself.

    INFP's are pretty nice people. I'm certain you're nicer than me :) John COULD be nice, but most of the time he wasn't. He was a pissy, hot-tempered, unapologetic angry m.f...toward damn near everyone, even to "precious" Sean. He acknowledged that. He acknowledged his violent history against both men and women. If he wasn't a Beatle, he would have likely spent life in prison for nearly killing that DJ on Paul's 21st birthday. He said he gave up violence during his anti-war movement days, but he still couldn't bring himself to let go of his anger and resentment at the system. His peace movement was really a war against the establishment. He was an entitled, reckless, indulgent, depressed, egocentric, sarcastic, resentful existentialist. He was a very unhealthy INTJ. He really did try hard to better himself and he did curb the physical violence for the most part in his last years, but he was still a pretty screwed up guy until the end. But look at his life! There is no wondering why.

    John was brilliant, and he has earned his rightful place in the world as a legend. He enjoyed effecting the world on a massive scale and did so amazingly via music, writing, acting, activism, etc. So none of the negatives about John are to take away from all the good he did and all of the joy he brought to millions and continues to do so to this very day. He is still very much alive in spirit.
 
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Jaguar

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Yoko Ono on John Lennon said:
John was an extrovert, you know, and I was an introvert. So that was a good combo, I think. And John being an extrovert, he was always very up, very excited, and interested. John was very positive. I would just get depressed or something sometimes, not really a sick depressed. Just once in a while, I'd get tired. And John would be like, "let's go!"

Yep, a real INTJ there. Where are his pom poms?
 

ObeUploadMe

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Historical revisionist. I heard his pom poms were traded in for a lifetime supply of amphetamines & coke.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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John was Alpha ILE. George was LII, Ringo SEI, and Paul ESE
 

Starry

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John Lennon was an INTJ. It is so unmistakable that it boggles the mind how this is so often mistaken.

Whoa.

This thread haha I totally remember it now...


It’s funny to me in a way that you would type Lennon INTJ. Because if there was one message my poor INTJ father was desperately trying to instill in me day in and day out..all throughout my childhood and further into adulthood than I will admit to it was: Love is NOT all you need Starry
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Since on the topic of INTJ songwriters/lyricists, Roger Waters is a pretty good example, and a good comparison point if people are wondering. I was going to use John Cale but he is probably INTP or INFJ.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I don't really see much, if any, evidence for the sort of sustained vision characteristic of INTJs in Lennon's career. Almost the opposite, actually. I think a lot of people assume all of the peace and love, hippie dippie, let's dress up in costumes part of the later Beatles was John's influence. While he certainly played a part in that, it was more Paul running things by '67, '68. John was already growing pretty disinterested in the band by this point--Paul was really their vision guy (George may have been except for the fact that Paul and John effectively kept his artistic contributions and influence to a minimum). I also saw no evidence of John viewing his career as part of some grand narrative or vision. Whereas, listen to an INTJ like Waters talk about Pink Floyd and you'd assume every move in their career was part of a carefully constructed vision, part of a grand plan. That's how it seems when Waters talks about his time in the Pink Floyd. If you look at Lennon interviews given after the Beatles, you'd think their success was a happy accident by the way he describes their career.
 

ObeUploadMe

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You just validated my Lennon type conclusion. Thanks, Starry!
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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I'm trying to come up with hot takes on the Beatles and I can't come up with any that I actually agree with.
 
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ObeUploadMe

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Waters was more overt. Lennon was not. He was no doubt just as calculating nonetheless. What you speak of about the The Beatles is the historical narrative most everyone agrees upon, and I question it. I also do not think their success was a happy accident. Never underestimate a calculating INTJ. I'll address Paul another time, because there's a lot to be said.
 

Starry

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You just validated my Lennon type conclusion. Thanks, Starry!

Glad to be of service but you have to share your reasoning please if you would (since it was a personal example and a huge one for me at that).

One of my best friends is a male INTJ and while he’s nothing like Lennon at all he does have a Pe feel to him and something that seems a little positive outlooky which can happen with 6w5s. He is married to an ENFP...but when I look back all of this was already in him so I truly don’t think he is influenced by her in that way. My point is I know that ENFPish INTJs exist.

One big difference though is...did you see that post of Lennon quotes that I created above? I swear my friend would likely die before publically signing his name to any of those. Actually I don’t know an INTJ that wouldn’t.

How do you put those words into an INTJs mouth?
 
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Doctor Cringelord

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some quora user said:
One weekday morning, I found my way to the breakfast buffet in a hotel in the suburbs of Richmond, VA. Alone, I grabbed myself some eggs and sat down when an older gentleman rushed in apologizing for not being their to provide me service and offered to grab me a drink. I said no thank you but some company would be nice. I had been reading about Bill Russel and the Celtics dominance in the 1960's and this gentleman was clearly of the right age to remember such things so I asked him about basketball. He said, "O I never really got into sports. I moved to England and was a musician there throughout the 60's and 70's. In fact you can see a youtube of me playing with Pete Townsend." He proudly showed me this video of a younger him with a full afro and Pete Townsend jamming out to some funky beats sometime in the early 70's. He then told me about how he hung out with these illustrious musicians at house parties and bars, aka social settings that I'm familiar with. My parents had instilled this romantic image of the music scene of their childhood and how advanced the music was for the time. This guy actually hung out with these people. Jackpot I thought.

Being a huge Beatles fan, and (maybe even bigger) John Lennon fan, I asked him if he had ever hung out with the Beatles. He said oh sure and told me that Ringo was a blast, he didn't see much of George, and that Paul was the ultimate ladies man. But I really wanted to know more about John. He said he was so weird. He emphasized to me that all of these musicians were just people "like you and me"; they drink, they smoke, they get in fights and talk about what's going on. But he would also emphasize that John was impossible to talk to because he would quickly take you somewhere that you just couldn't follow in conversation. When everyone was looking to chill out and have a good time with some friends, John was trying to contemplate our existence from a perspective of a bird (not really but that's the idea I got). Apparently, there just wasn't normal conversation with him. He also said that at the time, John had a huge drinking problem (so did everybody ya) drinking Brandy Alexanders and getting very belligerent by the end of the night to the point he had to be carried out by his mates.

I see this as a view point of what John was like in the mid-60's when he was on top of the world in the social scenes that really haven't changed much over the years. This is John as a raw person that people don't really take the time to talk about because we would rather here about how he moved mountains and changed our lives. Biographical documentaries portray John like "yeah he did a lot of drugs but that led to the creation of Lucy in the sky with Diamonds!" As if we need reasoning. But at the end of the day, John is a person just like any of us that has positive traits along with unexpected quirks. Only his positive traits created some of the best songs of all time.

What was John Lennon like to meet? - Quora
 

redrocker

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I can see John as an IN*J. I don't know how or why, but the song "Dear Prudence" has a quality about it that really differentiates it from most pop songs. And John had that same quality in most of his Beatles writing.

By the way, INFP's aren't always so nice. We can be opinionated at times. Some people don't like opinions or criticism. I hate that about myself. I had a close friend tell me once that everyone thought I was nice (those who didn't know me well) but he knew better, or something to that effect.
 

redrocker

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What if Lennon is actually on the cusp of TJ and FP? I mean, he does have some qualities of TJ but he is not nearly as hard as someone like Roger Waters. Roger Waters is so much more serious, like someone's dad.

Look how playful he was in his home videos. He was always doing dorky things in the early Beatles days like making faces at the camera. He was a typical art school kid. And the way that he and Paul were both influenced by Buddy Holly, and by the gentle vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers. His acoustic fingerpicking style that he used on the White Album was taught to him by folk singer Donovan.

The main difference with the Beatles is that they were artsy kids who actually came from a more working class background. But most revolutionary and innovative musicians were like that.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Waters was more overt. Lennon was not. He was no doubt just as calculating nonetheless. What you speak of about the The Beatles is the historical narrative most everyone agrees upon, and I question it. I also do not think their success was a happy accident. Never underestimate a calculating INTJ. I'll address Paul another time, because there's a lot to be said.

I just wonder how many of the highly calculated moves during Lennon's career were those made by others. During the Beatle years, Brian Epstein was highly instrumental in calculating the band's career trajectory up to his death in 1967. After that, a lot of the vanity projects like Magical Mystery Tour were largely Paul's ideas. The decision to record The Beatles (White Album) like a collection of solo productions (with each member usually showing up to work in the studios on their own, with minor input from the other members) was less a calculated move than it was the result of the band members not getting along too well at that point, but of course it was publicized in such a way that the process of each member recording independently appeared planned and deliberate, because what a brilliant piece of PR, far better than a press release stating something like 'the boys aren't really getting along too well and since we can barely get them all into the studio at the same time, this was the next best way to proceed on a new album'. Later, Yoko played a very large role in Lennon's major life and career plans. (Yoko, btw, may be the INTJ here)

In fact, nearly every calculated move by The Beatles can be attributed to someone other than John.


I'm just going by what I know of John from past bios, interviews, documentaries, etc.
 
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