~Slight derailment dear boy but we should indulge (I like the side quests
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Type - This is a representation of your cognitive wiring (to use my father's analogy). It represents how your brain is wired up. I always saw this as each brain having the same wiring but there being less resistance and voltage drop over certain wires from birth and hence some favoured kinds of thinking appear. Of course the other wires can be upgraded or you can grin and bear the strain of using them every once in a while but that's never the route of least resistance.
Personality itself is too complex to be expressed in such simple terms as sixteen types with any accuracy at all and that's not really what the MBTI is about, though it often masquerades as such. Basically with the MBTI you observe the personality and, with the type, can decipher some of the more inobvious parts of that persons psyche.
For example what is the personality of an INTP?
I certainly don't have it and neither do you. What is this personality? We can certainly say what some of the features should be but only in terms of how thinks are processed and not what is included within that process nor can we say with any certainty what result the process will produce.
For example take intuitives. They link what they are thinking about to a resource of previous experiences and seemingly matching patterns. Well there's nothing about what they are linking to in specific and no note made about what result you would get (for one any attempt would produce a library of possibilities), as such how can it describe the personality of that person?
To put it in your words, is a leaf a tree? No a leaf is part of a tree but the tree is much, much more than it's leaves.
The ESTJ has always seemed like an entire tree to me.
Especially the bad ESTJ you describe so well.
The ESTJ (I am talking about the baddie) has a key role in the company. Always and inevitably. No one has given him/her the key role. She has assumed it.
This chap I worked with was an ESTJ engineer. A quiet chap. He had assumed the key roll.
I did not have a lodging in the town when I started working in the company. I had to live in a hotel, or otherwise I had to travel more than a hundred miles every day to get home.
I said I need an apartment or something. He said no problem. That was about all he ever said.
The same day he gave the keys. I moved in.
The problem was he had the other key. When he (uninvited) came he did not ring the doorbell. He used the key. He walked around the apartment. He inspected every closet. He opened every drawer. He opened the fridge (what did he think I could possibly have in there?). He never said a word.
He came every day. He never forgot to open the fridge. He never spoke.
He came in also when I was not at home.
Why did he come? We were not friends. We worked in the same project but our work was so different we did not need to engage socially because of it.
Sometimes we were obliged to take a long trip together. Hundreds of miles he drove and never said a word. A quiet chap.
The keyman.
What representation of cognitive wiring is that? It is called the Passive-Aggressive Personality Type.
Aggressive.
attacking
assaulting
assailing
invading
offensive
pushing
self assertive
Aggression
hostile encroachement
provocation
offense
Passive
quiet (!)
quiescent
stoical
enduring
apathetic
When he was in my company he was particularly apathetic. I cannot find a better word to describe the keyman.
I once read a personality type description of the apathetic person. It curiously reminded me of everything I had read or what I knew about the ESTJ type.
Of course some of them are simply too much openly aggressive and too energetic to be labelled the apathetic type. And some of them a phlegmatic.
But there is a continuum here. It is said the apathetic type and the phlegmatic type is the best soldier. The ESTJs make the best soldiers.
Some of the INTPs may seem phlegmatic or even apathetic. Drowsy fellows, eh?
I think the phlegmacy of the INTP is deceptive. They are too curious to be truly phlegmatic or apathetic.
They have that kind of drowsy, apathetic air about them as if they were half asleep. But that is only because they are always thinking.
Appearances are deceptive.
Personality has two facets. The cognitive wiring and temperament. But the facets are all the way interconnected. Where does one facet end and the other begin?
In a no man's land.
Some trees do not have leaves at all. But they are still trees.