Personalities and shadows

[discofunkfreak]

So let's say we have an ENTP. We know that "under extreme stress, illness, or fatigue, the ENTP becomes its shadow - a negative form of an ISFJ." So that means that ENTPs can become ISFJs.
But what about actual shadow functions? Is it possible that an ENTP could turn into an ESFP?

 

[Eric B]

It probably depends on the level of stress, and particularly, the archetypes that are being constellated. ISFJ would be when the ENTP is feeling inferior, or in a childish mode. ESFP would be from the shadows of those, where he is feeling totally bound, and/or his entire ego is at stake. There's also INTJ, from when he is feeling opposed or negated.

 

[discofunkfreak]

Eric, was there ever a time when you turned into an ESFJ, ENTJ, or ISFP?

 

[Eric B]

You don't actually "turn into" another type; you're just manifesting the functions of those types, but in a way totally different from the way they normally use them. Team Technology is the one who put it as "a negative form of" the opposite type, and it said that it simply "appears" (as the "shadow"); not that you actually "become" the type.

 

[Chiharu]

It probably depends on the level of stress, and particularly, the archetypes that are being constellated. ISFJ would be when the ENTP is feeling inferior, or in a childish mode. ESFP would be from the shadows of those, where he is feeling totally bound, and/or his entire ego is at stake. There's also INTJ, from when he is feeling opposed or negated.

So, if I'm ENFP, I display a negative form of ISTJ when feeling inferior, a negative form of ESTP when my ego's at stake, and INFJ when I'm feeling opposed/negated?

 

[Thalassa]

So, if I'm ENFP, I display a negative form of ISTJ when feeling inferior, a negative form of ESTP when my ego's at stake, and INFJ when I'm feeling opposed/negated?

This makes sense for me as an ENFP.

Though I would equate the INFJ "negated" mode as feeling more sad or upset about something emotionally.

 

[Stanton Moore]

I don't buy the whole shadow idea; that you magically switch to the opposite letters under stress. Plenty of people just become assholes, or bluthering idjiots. My sister becomes even more of a drill sargent than she is when she's 'happy' (she's never really happy).
I like Carlito Jung, read a lot when I was a youngster, but he had some things wrong. How would his theories change given the advent of fMRI and neurology? Radically, I would say, since typology doesn't reflect any real structure in the brain.

 

[Eric B]

Again, it's not really "becoming" or even "displaying" a "form" of another type. You're just perceiving/judging things in a negative way, using the same perspectives those other types normally use more positively. So you actually don't even look anything like them at all.

 

[KDude]

I don't buy the whole shadow idea; that you magically switch to the opposite letters under stress. Plenty of people just become assholes, or bluthering idjiots. My sister becomes even more of a drill sargent than she is when she's 'happy' (she's never really happy).
I like Carlito Jung, read a lot when I was a youngster, but he had some things wrong. How would his theories change given the advent of fMRI and neurology? Radically, I would say, since typology doesn't reflect any real structure in the brain.

He could be wrong, or he could be somewhat wrong.. but if only somewhat wrong, then what do you subscribe to? Shadow is pretty essential to Jung ime.

As for structure in the brain, I'd lean on Beebe/Thomson here myself. They would acknowledge that functions are just to be taken in the abstract and don't dictate behavior, but there's something to be said about some correlation with Pi/Je as left brained, and Pe/Ji as right.

Decent Q&A article here: http://www.personalitypathways.com/thomson/type2.html