I agree with assertive, but not with forceful and aggressive.
As an INFP, the vibe I always get from ENTPs in social conversation is "competition" and "one-upsmanship."
I can see where you're driving at here, and I've been accused of that too, but from my POV it isn't like that at all... sometimes I do it in a blatant way, meaning it tongue-in-cheek, sending myself up really, but some people just don't get the humour and think I'm serious and egotistic and everything... can't please 'em all though... *shrug*
To me, that sounds like pure ego on your part. You're saying, "Look at me and all the brilliant ideas I'm generating! Feed me some raw material, and I'll process it and generate a dozen or more theories from it! Watch and admire!"
I sorta knew someone'd say that... again I've had people say that to me before... but again, it's not how I see it at all. I mean, I don't see the ideas as 'mine' at all, or the fact that I'm pointing them out as any reason why I should be thought of as clever or whatever. To me the ideas are like wonderful mists and jewels hanging in the air, like elusive little mythical beasts, and when I see one I get so excited that i want to chase it and want others to chase it with me. I don't take any credit myself for how good the idea is - it's not mine, like I say - it was there all along and all I've done is to happen to be looking in the right direction when it came along.
If someone else points out an idea to me, it's like I 'look' where they're pointing and tend to assume they want to chase it like I do, and what you're seeing as the one-upmanship thing is actually me trying to help clear away the undergrowth and stuff so we can see the clean, shiny idea unobstructed.
It just baffles me when this is attributed to ego, when in fact it's when I feel at my most humble, almost on my knees in love with the awesomeness of the idea.
The ENTP is onstage declaiming brilliantly (at least in their own mind), and I'm expected to be the admiring audience. If I try to climb onstage during a break in their lines and express some lines of my own, they grab my lines away from me and tell me to go back to the audience and sit down. My lines belong to them now. They feel that they can express my lines far better than I can. So eventually I get irritated and quit feeding them lines if only to get them to shut up.
I think you may be overgeneralising a whole type because of your experience with one or two bad examples of it... cos I can honestly say I don't do that...
If you want to try an exercise with your INFJ friend, then try to give to your friend the very admiration that you want from her.
Dude, I do not want her admiration. I already have it and it irritates me, I've spent years trying to get her to STOP admiring me and expecting me to know everything.
Try to facilitate *her* ideas to the point that *she* becomes an incarnate idea. When she says something, don't seize her idea and run with it to show her how you can generate additional variations. Instead, ask questions to draw out more of *her* idea. And when there's no more to be drawn out, then let the idea rest. Don't build on it and improve it. Just admire it. Respect her ownership of her idea.
I would totally do that, if she ever would actually come out with anything, but all she does is sit there like a doe-eyed thing, waiting for me to entertain her. Which I don't want to do.
Wow, it's amazing how deeply two people can misunderstand each other...
I think that's the stifling thing about ENTPs: They think of themselves as a hub for ideas which in practice means that they hijack everyone else's ideas and juggle them for entertainment. But people get tired of having their ideas and their thunder stolen. So why not practice letting your friend be the hub. Try to learn to be the audience instead of the person onstage.
Again I think this is part of the problem - I personally find the concept of 'ownership of ideas' quite alien, because I don't think of ideas as things people can own, either mine or anyone else's, I see them as wonderful things to be shared, and all anyone does is to point them out. If I point them out for other people, I don't expect or think that they'll think I'm wonderful or amazing for doing so - all I want recognition for is the idea, not myself. I don't want people to say "Wow, he's amazing!" I want them to say "Hey, this idea might have something to it - let's build on it!" I want them to forget I exist and just like... I dunno... haha, I guess I envisage sometimes everyone in a worshipping circle around a bunch of floating ideas, passing them between each other for reverent examination, telling each other the parts of them that we see that the others might not, so we can all get the most possible out of them.
Also remember the emotions. When you're talking with NFs, they often have invested an emotional stake in a given idea, and hence have a great interest in directing and molding the development of the idea. Don't merely wrest the idea from them and show them all the tricks you can do with it. By doing that you trivialize and clown with something that might in fact be very important to them.
Again, this is actually helpful in that you're reminding me of that concept that I find quite alien - people feeling entitled to 'own' ideas. But it's a mistake to think that in 'taking' and running with them, I'm trivializing them. Quite the opposite.
Quite the opposite. If I thought it was trivial or simplistic, I'd ignore it.
To be perfectly frank, I would never speak to an ENTP of anything personal or emotionally important. They would just play with it until it's empty of content. It's like trying to play ball with a puppy. You throw the ball to the puppy, and the puppy tears up the ball and shreds it before bringing it back.
Ouch... all I can say is you must've met some ENTP's that are nothing like me... in fact I'm the one most of the people I know always come to with personal stuff, and I've had some people say I should be a counsellor because I listen without prejudice or judgement and accept people as I find them. If I was so terrible with this, then why would they do that? I actually make GREAT EFFORTS and go out of my way to listen to people and keep quiet while they're talking, and it's a fundamental part of me to respect a person's individuality and autonomy as a person, and to respect them and hear them out before I reply.
I enjoy talking with ENTPs occasionally. We have some laughs and take some cheap shots at each other, and I remember that it's all just hot air. But for that very reason, it feels like wasted time. I can't trust them with anything important to me, because they'll hijack it and trash it. So in the end, there's really nothing gained from a conversation with an ENTP but just a lot of puppy drool and torn-up balls.
FL
Ouch again!! Maybe you might want to take a look at the idea that you may be just a teeny bit oversensitive? This might've been the case with me, say, ten years ago or something, but in the last 10 years I've worked damn hard on myself to learn to listen, respect, restrain myself, etc... I don't think it's fair to have such a great prejudice against a whole type like this... as I say, it'd be like me making a blanket judgement that all INFx's are bunny boilers just because some I've met have been.
Ego-monsters come in all shapes and sizes and like Toonia says about not judging all people who're just NUTS as INFJ or vice versa, maybe you should think about not typing all egotistical, insensitive maniacs as ENTP's and vice versa??
I mean, in a way, one could say that the ENTP's you're talking about are the ones showing true humility before the ideas, while you're the one showing the big ego, wanting to grasp onto it and own it as yours and yours alone and claiming the credit for its awesomeness, wanting to be seen as the only one who's ever thought of it and so jealous and guarding of it that you don't care whether it never reaches its full potential?