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[Jungian Cognitive Functions] IXFPs are surprisingly capable of tremendous acts of evil

Thalassa

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It's really hard for someone to get to that point with me. I have a feeling it's an air I may give off more than a mentality that is closed. And at that point, it's more protection of emotional feeling than about keeping integrity.



Yes, this is emotional protection also. As Jung notes - Fi is like a sensitive plant shrinking back from the object.

But I'm also referring to resisting the affect of external valuations, often communicated with emotional affect; it's to keep from being swayed from popular ideas that may not represent what is truly significant to the human experience. For feeling to grow in depth, to create & refine an inner guage of value concepts, you have to strip away the external contexts to funnel down into the fundamental concepts of what is important for humans - outside of culture, time, and very specific experiences.

When swayed, it is with Ne - what shows a connection to some ideal, even if it's just potential, so that you se such a myriad of ways for a value-concept to manifest the flexibility is kept intact. This is where the INFP NOT "door-slamming" in any permanent way is more common than not. It is very hard to kill all potential. it really takes a lot to drain something once full of it. The kind of depression that can plunge you into is rough. So sometimes you have to just let go of potential before you reach that point. It's more of an emotional protection again. And I think this paragraph reiterates what you said - basically, there is not always the win-win or the potential.



I believe this is the shocker, and so much so people believe they cannot recover from it, so they believe themselves "out" forever. But I believe the person is not often "out" so much as they've communicated (perhaps unwittingly) that they are unwilling to accommodate an uncompromising "value" of yours. There has been a violation & it cansnot be forgiven silently. They must make the adjustment now. But of course, they may not know any of this!

The problem, IMO, is many do not know how much accommodating & adjusting you have been doing. IFPs tend to do this silently, not with the martyr show like many FJs. And they don't know the resentment that has built up in their violations & in your sacrifices - and it goes beyond the personal relationship, but just in LIFE, how you have compromised ideals. And now a violation is a BIG deal, unacceptable, and their behavior indicates they will not change. From the Fi perspective, it almost feels like YOU have been outed.

For me, the big thing has been communicating better what is important to me, how it needs to be respected/met, what my boundaries are - instead of leaving it all hidden like land mines for people to discover. And I'm not sure why I avoid this communication other than it's extremely difficult to put things into words & not find yourself invalidated.

And no offense to ISFPs, but I notice this verbal communication is harder for them... and many INFPs only do it well in writing, but at least there is an outlet.

I think this is why Fi-dom are said to have such a special love for art, poetry, religion - the most difficult things can be said so clearly in these forms that direct communication just cannot allow. It's amazing to me how words themselves can even transform when paired with a melody, a color, an image... the nuances are just really important with difficult to grasp feelings.

I like these lyrics by the Jesus & Mary Chain (surely a Fi-dom lyricist). They're very simple, but communicate the situation of having to end something once deemed full of life, having to recognize it's dead, and trying to detach yourself and find some way to communicate any of it:

The Hardest Walk:



The lyrics of that song do resemble Fi and also, speaking of JTG, are how I knew he was ISTJ and not ISFJ.

The difference between Fi and Fe are very clear and this song is Fi at its most injured and shut down.
 

baccheion

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Unhealthy Fi dominants get jealous easily, and everything tugs at their sense of worth. This causes them to lash out in political and bitchy-high-school-drama-queen ways. Everything makes them want revenge, and makes them want to stick it to someone. If that means jumping someone, or shitting in their food, or spreading lies and BS, or whatever else, then that's what they'll do.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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NTPs are casually and indiscriminately evil. That's why I hate them.

Evil should be more specific.

How can someone be evil without self-righteousness? I don't think most of the problems in the world are caused because people aren't passionate enough. Although I can also see how a world without passion can be responsible for a dearth of good things, which is the other side of the coin.

Passion is only as good as the compass it's attached to. And a lot of people don't have a compass that works as well as they think it does.
 

highlander

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I believe this is the shocker, and so much so people believe they cannot recover from it, so they believe themselves "out" forever. But I believe the person is not often "out" so much as they've communicated (perhaps unwittingly) that they are unwilling to accommodate an uncompromising "value" of yours. There has been a violation & it cansnot be forgiven silently. They must make the adjustment now. But of course, they may not know any of this!

The problem, IMO, is many do not know how much accommodating & adjusting you have been doing. IFPs tend to do this silently, not with the martyr show like many FJs. And they don't know the resentment that has built up in their violations & in your sacrifices - and it goes beyond the personal relationship, but just in LIFE, how you have compromised ideals. And now a violation is a BIG deal, unacceptable, and their behavior indicates they will not change. From the Fi perspective, it almost feels like YOU have been outed.

For me, the big thing has been communicating better what is important to me, how it needs to be respected/met, what my boundaries are - instead of leaving it all hidden like land mines for people to discover. And I'm not sure why I avoid this communication other than it's extremely difficult to put things into words & not find yourself invalidated.

And no offense to ISFPs, but I notice this verbal communication is harder for them... and many INFPs only do it well in writing, but at least there is an outlet.

I guess what you're saying then is that others need to be a mind reader with respect to these values that have been overstepped or violated.
 

chickpea

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I have a scary evil side that can come our but I have to be pushed pretty far. I'm normally very self-controlled (emotionally, at least) but there have been a few times in my life where I was insanely angry towards somebody and all I can think of is revenge. In retrospect none of these things were even that serious, but I think something big could cause that part of me to manifest in an extreme way.

And like what others said, I'm very capable of seeing people's weak spots, which is something I'm very cautious of in arguments. I may say hurtful things but there is always a line I'm not willing to cross.
 

PeaceBaby

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I guess what you're saying then is that others need to be a mind reader with respect to these values that have been overstepped or violated.

You sound like a Te dom I know. ;)

Your question is to OA but I'm going to interpret it though my lens too. Hope that's ok.

We mistakenly assume that you can/will do for us what we do for you. What I'm saying is that I feel like I do this (mind-read preferences) for others on a daily basis, so I kind of figure that once in a while I will be accommodated in kind. I don't expect it because I am aware that part of the way I am is due to my wiring, and I know the majority of the population isn't wired like me. So I'm ok that no one tracks what I do like I track what they do. BUT - once in a while - SOMETHING will strike me as hurtful and I have to speak up.

So, said another way, this is how I feel - I believe I make accommodation in my life for many idiosyncrasies, preferences and peccadilloes. I also figure that the recipient has some awareness of this (somehow at least on some level). So, when no one does this for me, I can occasionally (like idk, once or twice a year?) be very irritated about a person's inability to read a situation. And when I voice my thoughts on the matter, my heavens, the world is shocked. And I'm always shocked that the world is shocked - like, I can't always be smooth and peacemakery! And why should I be? I'm human too!

An interesting thing to me is that the more flexible and accommodating a person is, the more the world seems to expect them to always be so. Grumpy people are accepted as the grumps they are and being nice once in a while, well, the world is all full of praise and laud their act of kindness like they're Mother Theresa or something. The nice person, one day of grumpy out of 100, and the 99 nice days evaporate like water on hot concrete! Ah, it's so not fair! ;)

Flexy people can be very taken advantage of. In Fi world, it's this 'being taken advantage of' part that's usually more the Big Deal, the part that violates an internal value.

A hypothetical scenario:

You have a friend who is late getting together with you a bunch of times and they always have this big reason or excuse as to why they are late. And you always smile and say, "Oh that's ok" and you let it go. But it keeps happening, and the excuses keep flowing, and your inner irritation mounts but your outer expression stays the same, albeit with more pouty faces and the occasional pointed comment about "Well, maybe you should be on time (lolol to soften the assertiveness)". And then one day the friend's lateness makes you late for something important and you get Angry, out loud. The friend is all like, "What's your problem!!!!!" and you're like. "You are so inconsiderate, don't you know I've been nice to you to forgive you being late, but I don't like it when you're late?" and the friend is all like, "YOU EXPECT ME TO BE A MIND-READER?" and you say , "YES I DO" Why? Because being late all the time is consistently disrespectful. There's not a single person I know that would accommodate that all the time. And then the 'friend' is all pissed at you for not being 'nice'. And you're mad that they're mad at you when in your mind they are in the wrong! There's this sudden impasse. What happens next? Because it's not about being late ...

So, the flexy-person has to learn to speak up, set boundaries! The take-advantage-person needs to see that the world doesn't revolve around them.

Does that help? It's not out of nowhere ..... it's usually a pent-up frustration, a lack of feeling known, of no one taking the time to consider that the Fi person is just as much an individual person too. If an Fe person sees such things as group currency, I suppose you could say to an Fi person it's a sort of individual currency. If I listen to you, I would like you to listen to me (when it's my turn) and I would like a turn, once in a while thanks. Unlike an Fe person, who asks the other person and expects to get asked in return, we listen to you share and expect the same to be offered back.

When an Fi person gives voice to it, it's all messy Te, badly articulated at times, lacking logic, strewn with emotion. It's hard to get that stuff out of the feeling realm and into the realm of provable, objective Te. It gets easier with age, but still, it's a challenge.
 

OrangeAppled

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I guess what you're saying then is that others need to be a mind reader with respect to these values that have been overstepped or violated.

Not at all.... If you read it thoroughly, you'll see I note that the Fi-dom (although I was referring to myself) needs to communicate more clearly. I put the responsibility for such a misunderstanding on the Fi-dom...

But when they don't, other people may not realize that the Fi-dom may not be experiencing it as cutting someone off. They're experiencing it as someone giving THEM an ultimatum - keep your integrity OR stay in the relationship with me. It's a miscommunication.... But knowing this, and this negative tendency of the Fi-dom, you can navigate it by knowing you may be able to reach out to the person & patch things up. Of course, there are times when compromise cannot be reached, and sometimes the person has already come to that conclusion.
 

OrangeAppled

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We mistakenly assume that you can/will do for us what we do for you. What I'm saying is that I feel like do this (mind-read your preferences) for others on a daily basis, so I kind of figure that once in a while I will be accommodated in kind.

YES. I entirely agree. I think our ways of doing this may vary, perhaps due to enneagram or instinctual stacks, but it's the same thing going on at core.

I highly suspect this "mind reading" is empathic. And I don't 100% trust it (not like some, er, ENFPs might :harhar: ). But where it's really exercise is when someone SAYS or indicates something and I not only note it, but I RESPECT it, even if I would never feel that way & don't fully grasp it.

So from there on out, I am actively respecting someone else's feelings, which can involve accommodating, compromise, and sacrifice on my part.

But they don't return this!

I have learned I have to inform people of what is important to me, what I need & expect, if I want them to respect it. So I do, and they don't really get it. They may invalidate me or be puzzled... but they just don't get it. So I just try to get them to RESPECT it even if they can't fully grasp it.

Let's say I ask someone NOT to do something because of what it means to me.
Then they do it. I let it go. People are just human - I don't like to nitpick.
Then they do it again, and again, and again. So I remind them, "Please don't do that. I've asked you not to."
Then they do it again anyway....then again, then again.
Then I get MAD. And what do they do?
They invalidate again.
"No one else cares about that" or "You're being too sensitive". They refuse they accommodate me as I do them because they cannot see the value of what I value. They do not grasp that others may not see the value of what they value either, but still have respected it.

This is how they are not doing for me as I have for them, and why I'll feel resentment.

I also figure that the recipient has some awareness of this (somehow at least on some level). So, when no one does this for me, I can occasionally (like idk, once or twice a year?) be very irritated about a person's inability to read a situation. And when I voice my thoughts on the matter, my heavens, the world is shocked. And I'm always shocked that the world is shocked - like, I can't always be smooth and peacemakery! And why should I be? I'm human too!

An interesting thing to me is that the more flexible and accommodating a person is, the more the world seems to expect them to always be so. Grumpy people are accepted as the grumps they are and being nice once in a while, well, the world is all full of praise and laud their act of kindness like they're Mother Theresa or something. The nice person, one day of grumpy out of 100, and the 99 nice days evaporate like water on hot concrete! Ah, it's so not fair! ;)


This gets me too.... I don't know why others can demand & complain & always be accommodated, and yet the more patient, flexible person makes one request and people act like you're asking them to move heaven & earth for you. It's as if because you've chosen not to be a demanding, nitpicky person you've lost all rights to any needs of your own.

I get that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but you can't get mad at your tire if your tire blows out cuz you've ignored it, even though it made no noise. There likely were subtle signs it was going bald, and it is your responsibility to do some maintenance. In any relationship, there is some level of awareness each needs to have to adjust for the other person to keep things good. Obliviousness as an excuse is not a good one at a certain point.

I am not a "peacemaker" really (and can have a surly demeanor at times), but being e4 it's more like "therapist" or "healer" role. It's more like allowing others to be flawed, giving them room to be who they are, empathizing with their feelings & problems, etc. Sometimes this is just in the listening and understanding I will extend. This all involves some accommodating, sacrifice, & compromise on my part. Because sometimes "who they are" and "who I am" butt heads. So after 50 times of me giving them the right of way or listening to their emo whinefest, I just ask ONCE to have my preferences met, and they act like it's "too much".

When I was a child, my family would be discussing where to eat and my loud ESFP sister would pipe up with what she wanted and my mom would just say "ok". And I would get annoyed because no one would even wait to hear my preference. So sometimes I'd speak up & say I didn't want to go where she wanted. And who was the one pegged as being difficult? ME! Even though 9 times out of 10 I'd just stay quiet & go along with my sister's preference. Really, she was the one making her demands EVERY time, not me. I only made a request once in awhile, but I was the "difficult" one. That's a silly example of the kind of thing a Fi-dom can face in daily life. Just take that & apply it to much, much bigger things & you can see how the sense of unfairness can build resentment.

For me, I enjoy my alone time because I can do whatever I want. This conflict is no longer an issue.
 

citizen cane

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Has anyone pointed out the grammar fail in the thread title yet?




Anyhow, if something violates our Fi, there's often not a lot we're unwilling to do to either eliminate it or get it to conform to our standards. If we can't, we'll adopt an antagonistic or bitter, jaded, and withdrawn approach, or some combination thereof. I tend to be very withdrawn on the surface, but if you get me to vent in private, you'll probably need to give your ears a good shower.
 

PeaceBaby

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[MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION]: I relate to your examples here. Very much so. Te and Fe can be experienced as invalidating because they need to both understand and accept the why of something. Te needs to understand the logic behind why you feel as you do and accept it as a valid construct, agree with it. Fe needs to be able to see that the social contract won't be violated by you expressing an emoted preference and agree with it too. It's the agree part that's the sticky bit. I don't have to agree with someone to let them be their own person, I can give space, I can accept a vast array of differences, I do not need to mold them to me. This kind of human accommodating is not often reciprocated, eh? I experience it too.

At any rate, this is an interesting side topic that is great to explore. And to contrast our differences being 9 vs 4, but still we share that core. Will share more later, must head to bed.
 

Galena

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When an Fi person gives voice to it, it's all messy Te, badly articulated at times, lacking logic, strewn with emotion. It's hard to get that stuff out of the feeling realm and into the realm of provable, objective Te. It gets easier with age, but still, it's a challenge.
This is a pain. I want to speak up, but know from experience that when I do, there WILL be an important logical or objective Thing I have missed. Or didn't care about. Or already understand and actually agree with, but just can't address articulately.

If anyone has similar experiences, how do you hold your ground and stay credible to others (and maybe even yourself if you're low on confidence) when the person you're talking to has found the Thing?
 

Luv Deluxe

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My Feeling is rather low compared to the other preferences, but I'm still not buying this Sensor business. I'm in my head way too much. :wizfreak:

I am of the opinion that you are definitely INFP, whether you prefer to look at the cognitive functions or the plain ol' dichotomies - either way, it works.
 

highlander

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Has anyone pointed out the grammar fail in the thread title yet?

Not that I noticed. Thanks.

Anyhow, if something violates our Fi, there's often not a lot we're unwilling to do to either eliminate it or get it to conform to our standards. If we can't, we'll adopt an antagonistic or bitter, jaded, and withdrawn approach, or some combination thereof.

You know it's not always correct. But yes, not much point arguing with it.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I know I can be a vicious, vindictive bastard if pushed enough. The problem is my conscience always comes back to bite me in the ass later.
 

SpankyMcFly

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:rofl1:

I'm sorry, I was just thinking it was hilarious to imagine that IxFP disorganisation and bad follow-through are the central impediments to their potential villainy - "you know, if I could only get my shit together I could be truly evil". :laugh:

O M G :rotfl:

As to the OP. A scene from the movie Apocalypse now comes to mind, called The Horror. In the end, lots of types can suspend their morality-humanity and even their reason, to achieve their own agenda.
 

Elise

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Psychological evil, yes, or we could even say psychic evil. But let's be sure not to confuse capability with tendency. You might as well call XFP psychic, and anything you're capable of doing with that power is possible.
 

Sunny Ghost

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While I've never been actively malicious, I have from a pretty early age carried a sense of containing the full range of human potentialities inside, but also believe it's a universal thing. It's every individual's power and responsibility. In that way, hearing that I'm capable of evil is no newsflash, but so are you.

I really agree with this. Somehow, I find it easy to empathize with others because I feel as though everyone has the potential to do great harm or good.

It's like Dumbledore said. "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

So suck it if I do have dark twisted thoughts.
 
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