Myers Briggs INTP Personality Type: INTP Profiles & Famous INTPs
And an account by someone named Willem Renzema:
Isaac Asimov INTP
Recently, after hearing much praise from an ENFP friend, I picked up some books by Isaac Asimov. I've never actually read any of his stuff before, so I figured it was time to take a look at his work. I purchased The Early Asimov, books One and Two.
Both these books contain the first stories that he had ever written. Or at least the first published stories. They are all short stories, as they were intended for magazine publication. In addition to the stories, there were commentaries, by Asimov, about the what lead up to their publication.
After only the first chapter of him writing about his early career, I discovered something intriguing: Isaac Asimov was INTP.
Now, the MBTI personality typing system had not yet been developed in his time, but it didn't need to be. How he described himself screamed INTP louder than any test could ever do. There were several characteristics that tipped me off, and distinctly reminded me of myself.
First, was how he got started in the selling of his stories. After first visiting the publisher one month to inquire (complain) about his missing issue (they changed the production schedule so it was delivered on a different day and week of the month than before) he built up the nerve the next month to actually walk in ask to speak to the editor and to show him one of his stories.
After convincing himself he would get thrown out for having the nerve to ask to speak to the editor, he was instead surprised to find that the editor would not only see him, but took Asimov's manuscript and promised an immediate opinion on it. The over-thinking something to the point of panic is certainly something I tend to do.
Another big tip off was his alternating between dismissive humility, and over-weening pride and arrogance. On one page he makes claims to being vain, but not vain enough to have kept his first attempt at writing a story for publication. The story was never published, so he didn't pay much attention to it, and it got lost much like one loses a sock in the dryer from time to time. He was apologizing to those historians who were dismayed that he never kept this first story.
On the following page though, he distinctly plays down the quality of his first published work, The Callistan Menace. Granted, the story was far from the best I'd ever read, but its the flip flopping between arrogance and humility that I so recognized. He even does it again in a later chapter, this time separated by only a couple of sentences.
I do the same sometimes. I love that I am the same type as Einstein. The absent-minded professor type. Yet usually quickly follow that up with the fact that I find myself more absent-minded than professor-like.
The third big indication to me was Asimov being a sucker for praise. I know I sure am. Many of my friends compliment me on my writing skills in my blog, and boy I tell you, I just lap it up. I can't quite find the example I was looking for in the book (it's difficult to dig for one little piece of information somewhere hidden in the first 100 pages), Asimov also stated he was a sucker for praise.
None of these by themselves really made him an INTP, but together, along with other indications showed me pretty clearly that he was. Tangents, (you know, stuff written in parenthesis to explain certain things without distracting from the main discussion) and his love of explaining technical scientific concepts are two other traits.
Personally, I'm thrilled to discover another famous person that is of my personality type. Reading his work even briefly made me consider becoming a writer myself. After all, everyone seems to love my writing in this blog.