SolitaryWalker
Tenured roisterer
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 3,504
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
To be clear, I wasn't at all trying to generalize to all ENFPs. My ENFP best friend is incredibly empathetic, and is probably the "best" person I know. Most healthy ENFPs are amazing people.
I was just trying to make clear that not all members of a type are the same. This girl happens to have NPD...I think she likes me as much as she can like a person; she's not angry at me at all, she just sees me as a tool in her grandiose plans instead of a person of equal value. Honestly, it barely even upsets me at this point -- I think of her more as a force of nature -- I can't really change her.
My thoughts on her are far from invalid, though. It's not that I can't understand her. I can actually understand her incredibly well. For this reason, she trusts me more than almost anyone else -- I know how to speak her language in her terms, and can have a more useful conversation with her than almost anyone else (she mostly just blows off everyone).
Anyway, just an example of an NF who literally doesn't care about other people.
Oh, and regarding Fi -- there is nothing about Fi that would directly care at all about other people. Most Fi users happen to have values that include the well-being of others, but the whole point of INTROVERTED feeling is that it's validated internally. Extroverted Feeling on the other hand is validated by the environment, so it's more direct in relation to others.
I'm not saying people that USE Fi are necessarily less empathetic than people that USE Fe (everyone uses a bit of both anyway). There's much more to empathy than Feeling. I'm just saying the function itself has nothing directly to do with other people.
Feeling cannot be validated internally.
To validate internally means to do this; say to yourself "what other people think does not matter, I know what I think and thats period. So I shall assess myself only by own my standard'.
Introverted Feeling cannot do this. In order to hold such an attitude one must be an autonomous thinker, this requires logical reasoning capabilities which Introverted Feeling does not provide.
Inevitably introverted feeling requires emotional support in order to feel validated, this necessarily derives from the outside.
Introverted Feeling however, is stimulated most easily by the internal world, (though paradoxically the content of the inner world derives from the external world almost indiscriminantly) but because it lacks autonomy of thought it cannot be validated by the internal world. It therefore, just like Extroverted Feeling, requires external stimulation.
Because both Feeling types are unable to be autonomous, they rely on others for support. This leads them both to make attachments to people, which forces them to care about others.
In conclusion, your thesis that Fe prompts one to care about people and Fi does not is untenable.