Mal12345
Permabanned
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2011
- Messages
- 14,532
- MBTI Type
- IxTP
- Enneagram
- 5w4
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
Excerpted from: Was that really me?: how everyday stress brings out our hidden personality By Naomi L. Quenk
PP 137-38 recounts the story of an INTP mother who is having difficulty with her teenaged son who had a recent stay in a mental institution. After he was released from the hospital, she began to realize he was falling back on his pre-institution badness (staying out overnight, etc.).
His INTP mother tried logic and reasoning on him for a few days, but he only gave her rebellious responses in return. Finally, she just broke down and sobbed to him,
"Jim, I can't tell you how awful this is for me. At work, I can't concentrate. I'm distracted all the time. When I know it's almost time for you to get out of school, I start getting sick to my stomach. I can't eat lunch; I become ill. I'm so worried about what might be happening to you, that you might be hurt or in trouble and I wouldn't even know."
Seeing how he was hurting his mother this way, Jim relented and actually began looking for ways to work on his problems that she never would have thought up.
Her explanation for her success: "What I now see is that my long, careful appeals to his reason - his inferior function - had not worked. They hadn't ever worked... In despair and helplessness, I fell into the grip of my inferior function and expressed spontaneous Feeling, something he had rarely, if ever, seen me do. This spoke to his Dominant function and brought out his truest judgment - that he loved me and wanted me to be happy. Every other consideration fell by the wayside; all he wanted to do was relieve the genuine anguish he sensed in me."
PP 137-38 recounts the story of an INTP mother who is having difficulty with her teenaged son who had a recent stay in a mental institution. After he was released from the hospital, she began to realize he was falling back on his pre-institution badness (staying out overnight, etc.).
His INTP mother tried logic and reasoning on him for a few days, but he only gave her rebellious responses in return. Finally, she just broke down and sobbed to him,
"Jim, I can't tell you how awful this is for me. At work, I can't concentrate. I'm distracted all the time. When I know it's almost time for you to get out of school, I start getting sick to my stomach. I can't eat lunch; I become ill. I'm so worried about what might be happening to you, that you might be hurt or in trouble and I wouldn't even know."
Seeing how he was hurting his mother this way, Jim relented and actually began looking for ways to work on his problems that she never would have thought up.
Her explanation for her success: "What I now see is that my long, careful appeals to his reason - his inferior function - had not worked. They hadn't ever worked... In despair and helplessness, I fell into the grip of my inferior function and expressed spontaneous Feeling, something he had rarely, if ever, seen me do. This spoke to his Dominant function and brought out his truest judgment - that he loved me and wanted me to be happy. Every other consideration fell by the wayside; all he wanted to do was relieve the genuine anguish he sensed in me."