Leonard Cohen

[Llewellyn]

So, the question.

I once saw him typed as INFJ. I think it could make sense. From what I hear he is not that much of an introvert and that could fit with the social INFJ.

Any ideas?

 

[Llewellyn]

New idea by myself (agreeing with someone who said that his lyrics are S):

ISFJ

 

[the state i am in]

i think he's an infj. his language is too ready-at-hand for him to be an infp. plus the songs more infj angles than infp angles. they aren't about HIS feelings they're about the situations themselves, the relationships between parts within the whole, etc. weird infj wisdom, i think. he's like the healthy less crazy more wise mature funny frenchified (as if that existed!) version of morrissey. he's british, no? and those infj brits are shure somethin'

 

[avolkiteshvara]

I heard an interview with him not too long ago. He talked about being raging alchie and chain smoker. But now he just got done spending 10 years in some buddhist ashram.

Ironically he seemed to kind of hate his own music.


ISTP

 

[heart]

He's NFP

By The River' Dark makes me think that the most.

 

[the state i am in]

YouTube - Leonard Cohen, interview 1997, Part 1 of 2

either infj or possibly intp. could you be more dustin hoffman in this interview? infjs and intjs are the needers of zen more than any other type. damn you overactive left-brained detail-oriented j j j j j! Ti for intps can be quite the collector as well, but Ne isn't as greedy for internal REPRESENTATIONAL organization bc it does it organizes automatically w/ causal Ti connections.

 

[heart]

I could be sold on the ISTP guess. But here's some interesting aspects of his life:

This article says he is

He is a lifelong manic depressive. Asked about drugs, he has said: "The recreational, the obsessional and the pharmaceutical - I've tried them all. I would be enthusiastically promoting any one of them if they worked."

His writing is subsconscious, so likely all of us trying to type him based on his music are on the wrong track:

Asking him where the songs come from is fruitless. "If I knew, I'd go there more often."

Singing it in concert decades later, he sometimes found the emotions hard to unearth. "I was never so good that I could make a song sound real or authentic without it being that, and if it isn't, people know. I find that quite a lot of red wine will do it."

About his time as buddhist monk, it was just exploring:

"Cohen in Roshi's company was like a fish in water, or a non-fish in non-water, or like neither," wrote Leon Wieseltier, somewhat enigmatically. Cohen was clearer: "I'm not looking for a new religion. I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism."

An INFJ would have come to this in their youth, how many Ni doms ever "buy the latest version of reality?"...but a tertiary Ni would make this statement as they got older:

In 1988, Cohen told Musician magazine: "As you get older, you get less willing to buy the latest version of reality."

There's a lot of sniffing around other men's wives alluded to in this article. If true, what would say about his personality? What makes a person most interested in others who are already taken?

...

 

[demimondaine]

i can't seem to pin any type on him. love him, though. he's got a place down the street from me.

 

[Wiley45]

Leonard Cohen ...

 

[the state i am in]

he does not seem like inferior Fe to me. he's so charming when he wants to be, it's a big part of his shtick. the troubled troubadour. soooo painfully self-aware. i think much of his conflict has to do with wanting to travel, to find newness, to be the moving poet, and his inability to slow down, appreciate, let go of possibilities. i think probably even more so is the feeling of exposing yourself, of what a poem does, of trying to be so perfectly intensely personal that it transcends yourself and stands in for the whole. but how much it feels like being crucified. and the difficulty of not only honesty but of getting to all the corners of the earth, every seedy aspect of the self, every dark alleyway, the kind of symbol of what hte poet is and does. (why he makes the comment in the buddhist interview about poetry not needing to come from suffering, his attempt at reversal, which i think is a question he has dwelt within very very very much).

i could see enfj too, actually.

there's an interview from like '66 with a very intelligent and sensitive woman talking about his poetry. he is a brilliant man. very powerful analysis and ability to see the connections between things, take them apart, etc.

 

[soleil]

INXP

 

[substitute]

I can't really see him as an introvert, really... always been too comfortable with attention and his thoughts are quite strongly focused on the external world. But not strongly extraverted all the same, so an ambivert on that score. I'd probably put him as xNxP, no kind of J I don't think, always too laid back. And if you hear the tale of his dalliance with Janis Joplin, y'know, that's going with the flow par excellence!

 

[sleuthiness]

I saw the guy in concert. The place was packed with infjs hollerin' like baboons and Cohen was flanked left and right by infj singers and musicians.

 

[the state i am in]

joe, i'm leaning 40% infj and 60% enfj. your thoughts?

 

[sleuthiness]

infj, intuitive subtype.

No thoughts I can shape into words at the moment, or explain my train using exclusively mbti/socionics theory.

 

[Spartacuss]

I saw the guy in concert. The place was packed with infjs hollerin' like baboons and Cohen was flanked left and right by infj singers and musicians.

I need to harness your clairvoyance somehow.

 

[sleuthiness]

I need to harness your clairvoyance somehow.

or just go to one of his shows before he dies. That's a joke!

 

[Lurker]

INFP ffs

/thread

 

[the state i am in]

infj 5w4 so/sx
vs
enfj 4w3 sx/so (or sx/sp)??????