The Master List of Notable INTJs, Real and Imaginary

[Riva]

I would like to hear why you prefer INTJ to INFP for Kafka.

He sounds like a classic emo intj. The reason given by the op was quite nice. [MENTION=19916]Emotionalogic[/MENTION] are you a member of other mbti forums or is this your first? If typc is the first I must say you are quite insightful; in addition to being thorough.

 

[Zarathustra]

That's a pretty low standard for him right there. Yes, he's better than Hitler. That doesn't change the fact that he's an innatist dickhead who's outlandish ideas (which lack any empirical support whatsoever) have brought him a cult of public-intellectualism, which he has used to promote some truly uninspired political ideas.

Oh, now I really like you.

 

[Zarathustra]

Unhealthy 6 regressing to 3 is a possibility, but I don't think 6 fits him very well. He wasn't security oriented (he visited North Korea), nor was he reliable, stable, self-doubting, or stressful (he was very calm about his cancer). He was so immoderate that many mistake him for an ENTP 7w8. Furthermore, I don't think he was psychologically unhealthy. I see him more as a well developed 5 tending towards 8, which made him more outgoing. When unhealthy, he tended towards 7 (drinking, smoking, disorganization and the like). I also see 4 in his love of art, his iconoclasticism (his natural instinct was always to disagree, something I can definitely relate to), and his rather moody and brooding disposition. It is possible I'm projecting, but I do think 5w4 fits him best.

Zarathustra (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, not the one on this board. Although, you never know...) 5w4

Just fyi, I used to think I was a 5 (after originally thinking I was an 8 [when I knew essentially nothing about the enneagram]), integrating towards 8, just as you have described of Hitchens. I am now absolutely certain that I am a 6w5 sx/so, and was disintegrating towards 3 (and had been for essentially my whole life), and, while I don't have an opinion on Hitchens' instinctual variant, I am highly confident he is a 6w5. Your explanation for 5w4 makes perfect sense, and I had recognized its validity (not soundness) before you even wrote it, but I still don't believe it to be correct. Enneagram 6s have a different vibe from enneagram 5s, and Hitchens just has that vibe. I think what would be helpful to you is to study the different variants of 6s, because most of your reasoning as to why Hitchens is not a 6 have absolutely nothing to do with his particular variety (of which I am one as well: counterphobics). Everything you seem to think of as being 6ish: we are almost the exact opposite. It's why 6s are considered to be so contradictory. There are different ways we can respond to the underlying anxiety. Run from it, and seek protection? Or run at it, and seek to defeat it? Hitchens was of the latter variety. As am I. And it doesn't have solely to do with anxiety. It has to do with figuring out what's true and right and fair and just. The best place to learn about 6s, if you'd be interested, is this book: Armando Molina's 'Our Ways: Values and Character'. Naranjo's work is alright, too, and does go into the same subtypes of 6s (there are three of them), but Molina's work, as Naranjo states in 'Character and Neurosis', adds a highly enriching, illuminating, and valuable theoretical dimension to the traditional enneagram, and this extra dimension (the Hartman Value Inventory) really adds depth and insight into 6s that no other enneagram work achieves.