[MBTI General] On Being A Personality Tweener

[Mal12345]

"Which type am I?" is a question that brings many people to join this forum seeking an answer. I have seen them asking if they are INFP or INFJ, ISFP or INFP. Decisions, decisions...

The truth is, you can be a tweener, and there's nothing wrong with it. There is already a letter to designate the state of being in between. We use the letter X.

Some people use the X as a placeholder, pending an answer to the question of which letter the X stands for, whether it's T vs F, or S vs N. Sometimes the discussion revolves around a JCF interpretation in which function language is used to make the final call. At this point in time, the thread tends to go through so many gyrations that everything gets all mixed up with tertiaries and inferiors. And since everybody confuses a tertiary with a dominant function in terms of how it manifests itself in a personality, the discussion flies south for the winter and never returns. And without knowing what a tertiary does for a personality, there's really no point in going into it.

I don't want to discuss my theory of tertiaries versus dominants because there's no point, nobody listens anyway. My point is that being a tweener is a thing, that X is a valid letter, not a place-holder, and as such any type with an X is a type in itself with specific personality traits accompanying it. An IXTP is not just someone who is an ISTP sometimes and an INTP other times. I do think there's something to that, but it's not the entire story. The combination of two disparate types means that the individual has to find a compromise between them. The result of this compromise is the formation of a personality that is neither INTP nor ISTP, but is IXTP in its own right with a unique set of personality traits.

 

[Star Atlas]

Do you consider each category as being connected on a spectrum then?

 

[Mal12345]

Do you consider each category as being connected on a spectrum then?

I don't see how it's possible for there to be a spectrum when, as I said, it's sometimes necessary to compromise between opposites.

 

[Star Atlas]

using your example of ISTP vs INTP, the x type would fit in the purple center.

 

[Mal12345]

I want to know from personality tweeners what it means to them to be caught in the middle of two functions or two letters. I personally, as an IXTP, like to use plain language to interpret complex ideas. Or at least, I try to do this. I enjoy concrete analogies and examples, but only when they are connected to abstract ideas.

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using your example of ISTP vs INTP, the x type would fit in the purple center.

Purple is a color, and IXTP is a type.

 

[Star Atlas]

I want to know from personality tweeners what it means to them to be caught in the middle of two functions or two letters. I personally, as an IXTP, like to use plain language to interpret complex ideas. Or at least, I try to do this. I enjoy concrete analogies and examples, but only when they are connected to abstract ideas.

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Purple is a color, and IXTP is a type.

and fish is a flavor and sky is a shell.

I am not considering us to be at cross purposes here. Your thread seemed to have an interesting premise and it reminded me of some concepts I have thought of on how much of a cut off there is between each type and letter. I suspect it isn't as neatly hard and fast as one would prefer.

If you are considering that IXTP is to be its own type, it isn't in a vacuum. Therefore the image I posted is what I imagine when I read what you write about.

 

[Norrsken]

I thought this thread was going to be about actual tweeners (9-12 year olds) who are sneaking into this website.

 

[Mal12345]

and fish is a flavor and sky is a shell.

I am not considering us to be at cross purposes here. Your thread seemed to have an interesting premise and it reminded me of some concepts I have thought of on how much of a cut off there is between each type and letter. I suspect it isn't as neatly hard and fast as one would prefer.

If you are considering that IXTP is to be its own type, it isn't in a vacuum. Therefore the image I posted is what I imagine when I read what you write about.

You can see it as a spectrum or as a dichotomy. A rainbow has 7 colors, but when inspected more closely it has infinite colors.

 

[Mayflower]

Hmm. Everybody is a mix of the opposite ends. In terms of actual "typing", you are what you focus on the most. Say for the IxTP, one is forced to choose Se or Ne. One may lean toward Se, so that automatically eliminates the presence of any Ne? People are fluid, type is not, which is what is concerning to me about Jungian "purists".