[NF] infj vs infp art

[Costrin]

no talking in the movie theatre! i'm trying to watch the movie!

What? I am the movie!

 

[BlackCat]

psst... He was referring to someone else.

This guy knows what he's talking about. I wasn't talking about you. I would have said it were you if I meant you.

 

[mysterio]

We're pretty rare and it seems pretty hard to understand (although not on this board), and some of us have a dramatic streak. Some of us rarer types are probably going to identify much more strongly with our types, then you are with yours, simply because it is an explanation for some of our troubles out there.
I agree with you that some take it too far....and when I posted my intial protest I was getting a bit annoyed that day, admittly because I get quite sick of being told I couldn't possibly think logically and I'm a scientist for god sake's.

Believe it or not I actually began my life on this board as an INFP, then decided to change my type after reading enough posts by certain INF specimens on here (and because I thought it would be cool to an ESTP). People say you can’t change your type, but you can. All you do is go to edit details, delete it, and type in a new one. Presto, easy as cherry pie.

Kidding aside, the point is that I’m no stranger to being an NF drama queen, to oversensitivity and overidentifying with emotions. There is some degree of choice involved, even though you’ll always be prone to it. You can at least try to draw the line at letting something like a post on a message board about your type ruin your day.

you're being hyperbolic and dramatic. what i said was a rather meaningless generalization that should be brushed aside, bc it was a poorly conceived thought. get over it.

You telling someone else to “get over it” is fascinating, Hoss.

 

[speculative]

I wish I could remember where I read this, I think it was in one of the Enneagram books perhaps, or a book on writing. There was an idea about how art is simultaneously about the artist wanting to reveal themselves to the world while simultaneously hiding behind the art. (Hopefully I'll run across this again.) How would this play into the INFP vs. INFJ art issues?

 

[TheEmeraldCanopy]

INFj=
Intentional, serious, unyielding, and unapologetic tone of work; they want you to see the Truth, and they as artists want to be taken seriously. However, I think with the INFj the work is meant to be less about THEM and more about the subject matter. They keep to the point. In their art (and IRL), they want you to see them for who they are, but it's alright if you don't because not everyone can stomach the truth. Their personal feelings come secondary to the reality in their work (Ni), but (Fe) they could still be apparent. Their work is captured life but does still speak of the INFj. The message is just more important than they are.


INFp=
Sporadic, saturated, colorful, and more escapist tone of work; they want you to feel their emotions with them, and they want to be understood and accepted through their work. They don't want to be obvious in their artwork/feelings; they want to be figured out and explored (and feel worthy of said exploring), much like the kind of uncharted fantasy world that they themselves often traverse alone. They want you to somehow recognize their feelings through their work (Fi). It's alright if some of reality is lost in the process because above all, it's about the emotion and their emotions being accepted, valued, and understood. Their work is more an extension of themselves.


That's my take on it. Sorry if I'm just repeating things that have already been mentioned.

 

[ReadingRainbows]

it's interesting- i just had this like sudden realization due to mbti typing that was very disillusioning. i realized that as an infj i will never have the IMMEDIACY and deal 100% in EMOTIONAL CURRENCY like an infp. my first instinct is to be paralyzingly jealous. i find that ability to be so valuable. i will never write something that affects me with the immediacy and directness and conviction of Fi.

infj does not have the depth of internal feeling that infp has
infj sees the connection between things, perceives the big picture with more penetrating depth, clarity, and complexity, but it does not have the inner sanctum of feeling where humans TRANSFORM life into art (emotional value, emotional currency, etc)
infj is far more DISTANT emotionally, it PERFORMS less but attempts to reveal more in the way of insight (which i feel so unexcited about comparatively i can't even bring myself to capitalize it)

this is why i always describe my favorite artists as “perceptive” and why i need an intellectual backbone to support the emotional currency and allow me to react with total abandon, i can't just have faith i have to have insight too, the highest insight is what gets me off strongest and most allows me to openly experience feeling with the greatest depth i am capable of. (i cannot table my insight/understanding and just openly and un-self-consciously FEEL with total FAITH and conviction, it is such an antagonistic process for me to ever let go of Ni to just FEEL)

concluding, for me to make anything of special value, my art has to be based on INSIGHT rather than IMMEDIACY.

i want to know if other infjs feel similarly, or if they feel more comfortable than i describe being CLOSE to the work and letting the pages breathe with the immediacy of their own personality, presence, nearness, transparency, etc. looking at the (guessed) lists of writers and musicians typings, it does not seem to go along with infj predispositions.

My J isn't super strong and I border on a P, I'm an excellent writer.

 

[the state i am in]

INFj=
Intentional, serious, unyielding, and unapologetic tone of work; they want you to see the Truth, and they as artists want to be taken seriously. However, I think with the INFj the work is meant to be less about THEM and more about the subject matter. They keep to the point. In their art (and IRL), they want you to see them for who they are, but it's alright if you don't because not everyone can stomach the truth. Their personal feelings come secondary to the reality in their work (Ni), but (Fe) they could still be apparent. Their work is captured life but does still speak of the INFj. The message is just more important than they are.


INFp=
Sporadic, saturated, colorful, and more escapist tone of work; they want you to feel their emotions with them, and they want to be understood and accepted through their work. They don't want to be obvious in their artwork/feelings; they want to be figured out and explored (and feel worthy of said exploring), much like the kind of uncharted fantasy world that they themselves often traverse alone. They want you to somehow recognize their feelings through their work (Fi). It's alright if some of reality is lost in the process because above all, it's about the emotion and their emotions being accepted, valued, and understood. Their work is more an extension of themselves.

this is pretty much my conclusion too. Fe needs to always connect to other things, while Fi is concentrated and kept (accumulates, deepens) internally. it keeps growing, but Fe just keep connecting to whatever feelings surround it. it is more in between itself and others (objects), whereas Fi is more like an "inner child." Fe needs to focus on an abstraction like Truth more than Fi bc it gets lost otherwise, without an internal compass and buzzing with whatever comes into its area.

the sense of recognition is different bc Fi wants you to recognize it underneath the exterior shell of social acceptability, whereas Fe just wants to connect and merge with whatever it desires. there is nothing underneath to free but the intuitive imagination and the connections between everything that inspire and energize and MEAN (symbolically) so much to us. (door)ways of grasping and connecting to something larger.

 

[the state i am in]

I wish I could remember where I read this, I think it was in one of the Enneagram books perhaps, or a book on writing. There was an idea about how art is simultaneously about the artist wanting to reveal themselves to the world while simultaneously hiding behind the art. (Hopefully I'll run across this again.) How would this play into the INFP vs. INFJ art issues?

i feel as if infj utitlizes abstraction to articulate and uncover the connections between things. it creates meaning. it discovers symbolic means to arrange the pieces of the world into something inspiring and profoundly (broadly) human. it aims for Big Picture. it gets into things and becomes them then goes elsewhere.

infp concentrates emotional experience so deeply and so complexly, it perceives and categorizes an incredibly dense array of hues, shades, and feeling-tones. it uses this to articulate internal feelings in a way that the rest of us can vaguely perceive and are impacted by, but can't quite say. they free us to connect with each other on a deeper emotional level thru language, music, ritual, art, etc. creating redundancy and understanding between us, our own internal states. it is so intensely personal, when it publishes its secrets it becomes true in a way that we cannot discard, and we commune in the space it opens for us.

 

[Seraphim]

it's interesting- i just had this like sudden realization due to mbti typing that was very disillusioning. i realized that as an infj i will never have the IMMEDIACY and deal 100% in EMOTIONAL CURRENCY like an infp. my first instinct is to be paralyzingly jealous. i find that ability to be so valuable. i will never write something that affects me with the immediacy and directness and conviction of Fi.

infj does not have the depth of internal feeling that infp has
infj sees the connection between things, perceives the big picture with more penetrating depth, clarity, and complexity, but it does not have the inner sanctum of feeling where humans TRANSFORM life into art (emotional value, emotional currency, etc)
infj is far more DISTANT emotionally, it PERFORMS less but attempts to reveal more in the way of insight (which i feel so unexcited about comparatively i can't even bring myself to capitalize it)

this is why i always describe my favorite artists as �perceptive� and why i need an intellectual backbone to support the emotional currency and allow me to react with total abandon, i can't just have faith i have to have insight too, the highest insight is what gets me off strongest and most allows me to openly experience feeling with the greatest depth i am capable of. (i cannot table my insight/understanding and just openly and un-self-consciously FEEL with total FAITH and conviction, it is such an antagonistic process for me to ever let go of Ni to just FEEL)

concluding, for me to make anything of special value, my art has to be based on INSIGHT rather than IMMEDIACY.

i want to know if other infjs feel similarly, or if they feel more comfortable than i describe being CLOSE to the work and letting the pages breathe with the immediacy of their own personality, presence, nearness, transparency, etc. looking at the (guessed) lists of writers and musicians typings, it does not seem to go along with infj predispositions.

This is an old thread, but I felt the need to say YES, YES, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FEEL, because almost all of the responses to this thread were so disheartening and off the mark. Unfortunately, these reactions are consistent with what I have experienced many times before when I shared my subjective INFJ experiences on an MBTI forum.

The problem is INFJs sometimes simply resent that things are the way they are, and find their feelings on the matter perfectly acceptable, and need to vent about it without being accused of needlessly whining and/or over-analyzing. After all, as dominant Ni users, we perceive truths and then react to them. Other types just don't get why we would "dwell" on something we don't like, or why we can't just shift our perspective and "look on the bright side." We can't do that because our perspective aims to be all-encompassing, multi-faceted. Our first business is to reflect reality, not to filter it.

Another thing that drives me crazy, which also happened a lot in this thread, is that when you use MBTI to explain your processes, people say "You're letting MBTI define you too much! The problem is you're limiting yourself! Stop blaming all your problems on being an INFJ and take responsibility for yourself!" This is SO counter productive and discussion impeding, I don't even know where to begin. If you truly believe everyone has equal potential for using every function effectively without tremendous time/effort/stress, then what are you doing on an MBTI forum? Why do you even identify with a type? People are only so malleable. MBTI is meant to help you realistically assess your strengths, weaknesses, and potential for development. It can also be used to describe your experiences or express your grievances, and using it in such a way is not equivalent to putting yourself in a box.

But you already know all this. It's the other people in this thread, and in so many others, that frustrate me. True, I can theoretically develop my Fi because the human mind is beautifully adaptable. But in order to experience the primacy of Fi that INFPs experience, I'd have to unlearn my stronger functions. Ni will always be in the lead; everything else necessarily serves the Ni vision. Lately, I too have felt intense jealousy towards INFPs, because so much of my ego has been constructed around the idea that I'm emotionally deep and complex and creative and colorful. As a child, I resembled an INFP in many ways, but over the years I have become so much more analytical and existential and unable to achieve that pureness of feeling. This is something that was so integral to me when I was young, that I can't get over the loss. It's what fills me with passion and meaning, and yet I can't take it at face value. No matter how good and right and transcendent something feels, Ni won't let me trust it 100%.

I still resent the idea that INFPs feel more strongly or deeply than INFJs. I don't think that's the case. I think what they do have that we don't is the ability to easily trust those feelings without asking where they come from or deconstructing them and revealing them to be a mere mechanism of human existence. They have so much faith. They don't feel the need to meta-understand every little thing, the way unfettered Ni does. They don't have this relentless "big picture, universal principle" mentality getting in the way of their immediate desires and needs. They don't have to justify these feelings within an ever-changing, exhaustive framework.

The crux of being an INFJ is that we only feel fulfilled when, like an INFP, we can commit to something that feels transcendant and meaningful; yet we have to have reasonable proof before we can commit. No matter how strongly we believe or want to believe something we can't ignore our view of reality that may or may not jive with our ideals. And we have very high ideals. It's because I feel things so deeply that I'm terrified I'm deluding myself, and they're not really as true as I feel they are. In dealing with xNFPs, I sometimes run into this impenetrable barricade that won't allow them to question a core belief. They don't even understand why someone would want to do that. For me it has nothing to do with wanting. I don't understand how you can rationally ignore something just because it makes you feel threatened. And even just saying "why would you want to doubt that" is, to my mind, admitting on some subconscious level that your beliefs are based on your wants and therefore quite possibly mere coping mechanisms. (I'm guessing this is what you actually meant when you said INFJs were better intellectually. Not that we're necessarily more intelligent, but we're more willing to go there. To be subversive in our ideology. To seriously consider any idea, no matter how torturous it is to our deeply felt ideals).

This can be paralyzing. The immediacy of feeling, as you put it, eludes us because new insights are constantly revealing themselves and requiring us to go back and reevaluate everything and then attend to our feelings. This can be a huge block when it comes to the creative process. Not to mention inferior Se that makes it difficult to act, crippling Ni perfectionism, and the feeling of "okay, I'm deeply in tune with my feelings, but what do I do with them now? How do I translate all the nuances of these emotions into something tangible?" I wish I could create spontaneously like Fi-Ne, but that eludes me.

And that is another misunderstanding that ran rampant throughout this thread. The envy you expressed was not only an envy of the results INFPs produce, but of their ability to experience such a sublime emotional state. No amount of pseudo-encouraging "you can create work as good as any INFP, don't limit your abilities" comments can change that. I can (and do) outperform many INFPs artistically, but I can't directly experience their creative state. It's not all about the result. It's also about the journey.

It's not all bad though, I must add as a disclaimer. As much as I currently envy INFPs, there are perks to being an INFJ. I think it's so cool that we have the emotional resonance of NF types with a generous helping of NT analytical prowess. In my opinion, INFJs are the most thinker-like NFs. The ability to have such strong ideals and feelings while simultaneously having a drive for logical deconstruction is so rare. And it has endeared more than one NT to me, because they say I have the appealing warmth of other NFs while being willing to follow an existential discussion to any depth. To the abyss itself, if necessary.

I could also get into the pitfalls of INFPs and the potential for Fi to be callous and self-serving under the guise of a noble cause, but given how touchy this crowd is, I'll abstain for now.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

People are only so malleable. MBTI is meant to help you realistically assess your strengths, weaknesses, and potential for development. It can also be used to describe your experiences or express your grievances, and using it in such a way is not equivalent to putting yourself in a box.

exactly. a person's MBTI can't be changed. the way I've come to understand typology is that MBTI, Socionics, and Temperament Theory are great for pinpointing and defining our core essence. For malleability and growth, I think the enneagram is more useful. Once someone has found their MBTI type and are 100 % certain of it, they can use that information to help in their personal growth but it can never be altered. Enneagram is a bit more nuanced in that it is less concerned with a type set in stone than it is with a transformation model.

I think it's so cool that we have the emotional resonance of NF types with a generous helping of NT analytical prowess. In my opinion, INFJs are the most thinker-like NFs. The ability to have such strong ideals and feelings while simultaneously having a drive for logical deconstruction is so rare. And it has endeared more than one NT to me, because they say I have the appealing warmth of other NFs while being willing to follow an existential discussion to any depth. To the abyss itself, if necessary.

Fascinating. I think this is why I've noticed so many INFJs and INTPs identifying with one another and perhaps mistyping. That tertiary Ti, although less dominant in an INFJ, is crucial to Fe. The INFJ cannot have a healthy Fe without a healthy Ti, as they essentially feed one another. Similarly, INTJs might find themselves identifying with INFPs as they mature and develop their inferior Fi in adulthood.

 

[Seraphim]

Fascinating. I think this is why I've noticed so many INFJs and INTPs identifying with one another and perhaps mistyping. That tertiary Ti, although less dominant in an INFJ, is crucial to Fe. The INFJ cannot have a healthy Fe without a healthy Ti, as they essentially feed one another. Similarly, INTJs might find themselves identifying with INFPs as they mature and develop their inferior Fi in adulthood.

I relate to a lot of INTP characters. It's odd, but in some ways I have a more harmonious relationship with Ti than I do with Fe. I'm not quite as adept at using Ti, but I don't begrudge it in any way. I have a love-hate relationship with Fe. Fe makes me feel guilty even when my actions are justified, it compels me to do things that go against my nature in the name of "keeping the peace," it makes it difficult for me to assert my needs in a group, etc. There's not much to complain about with Ti. It works unobtrusively in the background, helping me choose the right words to convey a precise meaning when I'm writing, or provide a logical backbone to my Ni visions.

I recoil from many descriptions of Fe, which seem to conflict with my emphasis on individuality and social critique. ExFJs are often very off-putting to me because I feel like they're trying to force me to conform to something that feels inauthentic to me. You'd think with auxiliary Fe, I'd at least relate strongly to ENFJs. But it's so much easier for me to find common ground with xNTPs.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Looking back, a lot of the people I got along with well in school were probably INTPs and the occasional INTJ.

 

[OrangeAppled]

Lately, I too have felt intense jealousy towards INFPs, because so much of my ego has been constructed around the idea that I'm emotionally deep and complex and creative and colorful. As a child, I resembled an INFP in many ways, but over the years I have become so much more analytical and existential and unable to achieve that pureness of feeling. This is something that was so integral to me when I was young, that I can't get over the loss. It's what fills me with passion and meaning, and yet I can't take it at face value. No matter how good and right and transcendent something feels, Ni won't let me trust it 100%.

But as an INFP, you can be almost opposite this. As a child, I was more detached as feeling was turned inward & not attached to outward emotional displays, albeit I was rather creative & colorful. I was called "cold" as a child, and heavily criticized for not expressing feelings much at all.

I'm rather convinced sentimentally in INFPs is tertiary Si. Feeling is experienced as rational by an INFP. This does not mean we do not have emotions, but we experience a clear line between them and the evaluative reasoning that goes into forming a "feeling" (I call them "value-concepts" to get away from the erroneous idea they are emotional reactions). As a child, I felt stifled to express myself in any direct way because the appropriate emotional signals never suited my feelings. Indirect methods like art & writing allowed a lot more freedom in form. Because I was more intent on expressing what I saw as significant or meaningful to the human experience (more so MY experience at that age), I didn't really revel in emotions, but rather felt them a hindrance.

Sometime in my teens, I started to purposely stir up reactions in myself, either via fantasy or through some art/media, and I suspect this internalizing of an experience that informs you on the inner reality of all humans is Fi-Si. It was around then I became less "cool" and allowed myself to be more susceptible to emotion. But it was HARDER to harness the Fi concepts, because I'd be more bogged in sorting through emotions and their nuances. I had to reconcile emotions with some greater meaning; they had to be "made sense of". Because there is a rhyme and reason to these responses; just as hunger is a signal we need to eat, the emotions inform what is necessary and missing or being met in our lives.

I still resent the idea that INFPs feel more strongly or deeply than INFJs. I don't think that's the case. I think what they do have that we don't is the ability to easily trust those feelings without asking where they come from or deconstructing them and revealing them to be a mere mechanism of human existence. They have so much faith. They don't feel the need to meta-understand every little thing, the way unfettered Ni does. They don't have this relentless "big picture, universal principle" mentality getting in the way of their immediate desires and needs. They don't have to justify these feelings within an ever-changing, exhaustive framework.

No, not really. I think this is a misunderstanding that Fi is in itself emotion. I suppose if you're not F-dom (and the further you are from it), the more feeling will be experienced as emotional or the less able it is to be separated from the emotional experience. For INFP, heart vs head is Fi vs emotions. It's what I feel rationally to be RIGHT or IMPORTANT vs what emotional experience I am having. And with introverted judging, there is such a strong need for internal consistency, agreement in all the parts, and sound premises. This means a constant weighing and reweighing and shifting and sorting. I think daydreaming is so common to INFPs because this is very tiring, and daydreaming can become almost like writing stories that illustrate a meaning better than a direct "telling".

I suppose it looks like trust in a whole feeling, but the whole feeling has a book of reasoning to back it up, one which will never be published for the public eye. What we actually do, as confirmed by many other INFPs, is start with a feeling (and certainly there is information from emotions used), and then reason on why it is, how it is, what it means in relation to everything, else. And until it is "made sense" of, well, there's just an uneasiness. I guess that's what all the stuff in profiles is about INFPs seeking "inner peace" although I personally wouldn't describe inner peace as a goal of mine - I think harmony between feelings, the self, and reality is more of the idea.

The crux of being an INFJ is that we only feel fulfilled when, like an INFP, we can commit to something that feels transcendant and meaningful; yet we have to have reasonable proof before we can commit. No matter how strongly we believe or want to believe something we can't ignore our view of reality that may or may not jive with our ideals. And we have very high ideals. It's because I feel things so deeply that I'm terrified I'm deluding myself, and they're not really as true as I feel they are.

I relate to the latter fear you express. But I suppose we have the gift of Ne to not be too concerned with how reality IS, because instead reality is something dynamic that is ever revealing new possibilities as it shifts, and we only need to spot them and harness them a bit to transform reality into something resembling our ideals. It's when we lose sight of this that we get really depressed though - it's the nasty "Fi-Si" loop. Then it seems reality is static & doomed to repeat (poor Si).

In dealing with xNFPs, I sometimes run into this impenetrable barricade that won't allow them to question a core belief. They don't even understand why someone would want to do that. For me it has nothing to do with wanting. I don't understand how you can rationally ignore something just because it makes you feel threatened. And even just saying "why would you want to doubt that" is, to my mind, admitting on some subconscious level that your beliefs are based on your wants and therefore quite possibly mere coping mechanisms. (I'm guessing this is what you actually meant when you said INFJs were better intellectually. Not that we're necessarily more intelligent, but we're more willing to go there. To be subversive in our ideology. To seriously consider any idea, no matter how torturous it is to our deeply felt ideals).

I'll be honest…. this is another misunderstanding of what is actually going on within the INFP. What people do not realize is that feelings are not adopted without question, but that things are scrutinized and reasoned out extensively, at a depth I don't think anyone but a Ji-dom will ever grasp, so that the belief is deeply rooted in a very solid foundation. When people present their arguments and "facts" against it, there is not an ignoring of anything. It's just that I already considered their argument 15 years ago and put it through some gauntlet and it failed to stand up. There's a book by Dario Nardi where he does some experiment in reading people's brain patterns & connecting them to MBTI types… IxFPs were shown have a tendency to listen the most intently all types, with their whole brain, not thinking up a response but absorbing what someone else is saying deeply; but then shortly thereafter, they will quickly make their judgment, often being unswayed by the argument they just considered deeply. Why? Not stubbornness, not ignoring realities, but not being moved by an argument they find fault with which fails to compare to the argument they've worked on for a decade within their mind, one which is also weighted by related feelings that were also thoroughly sussed out.
What the person is saying is not a new idea to them. In short, it's like trying to uproot a thousand year old tree with a plastic shovel.
Will we tell you what our reasoning is? Probably not. With some things, I'd have to take someone back to my birth in a time machine to unravel the origins of a feeling, because it's all interconnected and it's hard to begin anywhere but the beginning.

This is likely contrary to the idea that we want to be understood. I only want to be understood, or given the careful consideration I offer others, when I venture to express. I don't particularly care what conclusions people draw if I haven't bothered to express anything about it or have given a simplistic answer just to get someone to go away. I've actually pushed myself to care more as an adult as I misunderstandings over my demeanor or whatever have caused me problems.

When it comes to anything I create (and what I hesitate to call "art"), I like for the feelings/ideas to resonate with others as true to the human experience, not to be understood personally. I don't do things from my own perspective. I like to create characters almost (not literally, but as if I were someone in a different experience than my own) and write from different perspectives, so I can explore stuff I haven't personally experienced. Of course, I am still revealing my own feelings - my own concepts of what is significant, important, terrible, tragic, whatever. If someone were to think they knew me personally from this, they'd be very much mistaken, especially if they took any scenarios literally (I had written of heartbreak long before I ever experienced it personally).

This can be paralyzing. The immediacy of feeling, as you put it, eludes us because new insights are constantly revealing themselves and requiring us to go back and reevaluate everything and then attend to our feelings. This can be a huge block when it comes to the creative process. Not to mention inferior Se that makes it difficult to act, crippling Ni perfectionism, and the feeling of "okay, I'm deeply in tune with my feelings, but what do I do with them now? How do I translate all the nuances of these emotions into something tangible?" I wish I could create spontaneously like Fi-Ne, but that eludes me.

This is because we're not trying to capture reality, but instead fundamental truths about what is truly of value to the human experience, truths that are outside the bounds of culture, time, location, but inherent to human nature & we NEED beyond physical survival. And as I said, Ne experiencing reality as dynamic and changing all the time means you MUST be spontaneous. We won't even go into depth on the idea-flooding that happens with Ne. It's like money raining from the sky - you're going to stop what you're doing, grab some container, and try and get as much as you can because it may never rain money from the sky again. Spontaneous is a compulsion because the moment cannot be replicated; once gone, it's gone forever. This is also why planning is unappealing to me, but the distaste for that hampers taking on larger projects that need to be broken into parts. That's our weakness.

I could also get into the pitfalls of INFPs and the potential for Fi to be callous and self-serving under the guise of a noble cause, but given how touchy this crowd is, I'll abstain for now.

Funny, because that's EXACTLY my impression of INFJs . I've given harsher criticism of them though, so we'll leave it there.

 

[Seraphim]

But as an INFP, you can be almost opposite this. As a child, I was more detached as feeling was turned inward & not attached to outward emotional displays, albeit I was rather creative & colorful. I was called "cold" as a child, and heavily criticized for not expressing feelings much at all.

I'm rather convinced sentimentally in INFPs is tertiary Si. Feeling is experienced as rational by an INFP. This does not mean we do not have emotions, but we experience a clear line between them and the evaluative reasoning that goes into forming a "feeling" (I call them "value-concepts" to get away from the erroneous idea they are emotional reactions). As a child, I felt stifled to express myself in any direct way because the appropriate emotional signals never suited my feelings. Indirect methods like art & writing allowed a lot more freedom in form. Because I was more intent on expressing what I saw as significant or meaningful to the human experience (more so MY experience at that age), I didn't really revel in emotions, but rather felt them a hindrance.

Sometime in my teens, I started to purposely stir up reactions in myself, either via fantasy or through some art/media, and I suspect this internalizing of an experience that informs you on the inner reality of all humans is Fi-Si. It was around then I became less "cool" and allowed myself to be more susceptible to emotion. But it was HARDER to harness the Fi concepts, because I'd be more bogged in sorting through emotions and their nuances. I had to reconcile emotions with some greater meaning; they had to be "made sense of". Because there is a rhyme and reason to these responses; just as hunger is a signal we need to eat, the emotions inform what is necessary and missing or being met in our lives.

That's interesting, because descriptions of Fi always sound like the type of feeling I experienced in my childhood. It was, like you say, not given to outward expression and I often came across as detached. But internally, I had this deep well of values and feelings that held unquestionable authority in my mind. Descriptions of Fe never account for that type of feeling or value filtering, but Fi descriptions seem to hit close to the mark.

No, not really. I think this is a misunderstanding that Fi is in itself emotion. I suppose if you're not F-dom (and the further you are from it), the more feeling will be experienced as emotional or the less able it is to be separated from the emotional experience. For INFP, heart vs head is Fi vs emotions. It's what I feel rationally to be RIGHT or IMPORTANT vs what emotional experience I am having. And with introverted judging, there is such a strong need for internal consistency, agreement in all the parts, and sound premises. This means a constant weighing and reweighing and shifting and sorting. I think daydreaming is so common to INFPs because this is very tiring, and daydreaming can become almost like writing stories that illustrate a meaning better than a direct "telling".

I suppose it looks like trust in a whole feeling, but the whole feeling has a book of reasoning to back it up, one which will never be published for the public eye. What we actually do, as confirmed by many other INFPs, is start with a feeling (and certainly there is information from emotions used), and then reason on why it is, how it is, what it means in relation to everything, else. And until it is "made sense" of, well, there's just an uneasiness. I guess that's what all the stuff in profiles is about INFPs seeking "inner peace" although I personally wouldn't describe inner peace as a goal of mine - I think harmony between feelings, the self, and reality is more of the idea.

No, I agree with you that Fi is value based and not the same thing as an emotional reaction (though I do think the feeling functions also relate to how we handle our emotions, that's not what they're all about). I just didn't explain what I meant very well. What I meant to highlight was the fact that INFPs are so certain of what is "RIGHT" and "IMPORTANT," as you put it. While INFJs can hold strong values, Ni has a nasty way of shifting to a perspective that seems to trivialize our moral position, filling us with doubt. And no matter how much Fe stresses a deeply held value/conviction, Ni can't be ignored because it's the dominant function.

It's like, judging functions are more willing to take context for granted so they can focus on an objective. But perceiving functions are more concerned with the context itself, and in the case of Ni, it's all about finding a perspective that is all-encompassing. If we were all rats in a maze, Ni-doms would be the ones obsessed with visualizing the maze from a bird's-eye perspective, if that makes sense. The compulsion to view things in such a detached, meta-contextual way draws you to be agnostic about everything, even your own F values. INFPs (at least the ones I've known) don't seem to struggle with this as much. They put a lot of work into refining and supporting their Fi values with the other functions, there's no doubt about that. But they aren't as prone to doubting that process, in itself, is worthwhile in the grand scheme of things. Usually, they just continue to refine and build upon that foundation without questioning the validity of the foundation itself. At least, that's my current understanding.

I relate to the latter fear you express. But I suppose we have the gift of Ne to not be too concerned with how reality IS, because instead reality is something dynamic that is ever revealing new possibilities as it shifts, and we only need to spot them and harness them a bit to transform reality into something resembling our ideals. It's when we lose sight of this that we get really depressed though - it's the nasty "Fi-Si" loop. Then it seems reality is static & doomed to repeat (poor Si).

I envy that so much. To the Ni-Se way of thinking, there is one reality, and anything other than that is just a self-contained perspective. An interpretation of that reality. It's hard to commit to any view because to do so feels like being short-sighted. Like you're letting yourself be duped. So Ni can be sort of defeatist, while Ne is more opportunistic.

I'll be honest…. this is another misunderstanding of what is actually going on within the INFP. What people do not realize is that feelings are not adopted without question, but that things are scrutinized and reasoned out extensively, at a depth I don't think anyone but a Ji-dom will ever grasp, so that the belief is deeply rooted in a very solid foundation. When people present their arguments and "facts" against it, there is not an ignoring of anything. It's just that I already considered their argument 15 years ago and put it through some gauntlet and it failed to stand up. There's a book by Dario Nardi where he does some experiment in reading people's brain patterns & connecting them to MBTI types… IxFPs were shown have a tendency to listen the most intently all types, with their whole brain, not thinking up a response but absorbing what someone else is saying deeply; but then shortly thereafter, they will quickly make their judgment, often being unswayed by the argument they just considered deeply. Why? Not stubbornness, not ignoring realities, but not being moved by an argument they find fault with which fails to compare to the argument they've worked on for a decade within their mind, one which is also weighted by related feelings that were also thoroughly sussed out.
What the person is saying is not a new idea to them. In short, it's like trying to uproot a thousand year old tree with a plastic shovel.
Will we tell you what our reasoning is? Probably not. With some things, I'd have to take someone back to my birth in a time machine to unravel the origins of a feeling, because it's all interconnected and it's hard to begin anywhere but the beginning.

Now this is fascinating—this is EXACTLY how I experience Ni. This is why Ne-doms get frustrated with me, because they think I'm "shooting down" their ideas and stubbornly sticking to a preconception. When the truth is, I've already considered every possibility/alternate perspective that they throw at me, and found some fault in it. So of course I reject it when it's presented to me again. If they were to give me a NEW idea to work with, I'd carefully consider it, and if it turned out to be viable I would alter my view accordingly. But it's impossible to explain all this, because my current Ni view has been in the making my whole life and I don't even know where to begin explaining it to someone else. So all they see is me stubbornly refusing to consider possibilities.

Maybe this because Ni and Fi are both introverted and abstract?

Anyway... I think what I was getting at with the "impenetrable barricade" I see in INFPs is that though their logic is internally consistent, their values carefully weighed and balanced... Fi could have a very well reasoned idea of, for example, morality, but then Ni would ask "What is morality?" and other such questions that could eventually render morality itself, as a concept, obsolete (think Nietzsche). INFPs aren't usually willing to go that far in their ideation. Most types aren't, for that matter. Sure, anyone could consider philosophical questions like that as hypotheticals, but Ni asks you to seriously consider it and be willing to concede that it's true, if it comes to that. This is so disconcerting that most NF types mentally shut down rather than follow such nihilistic ideas to their conclusions.

When it comes to anything I create (and what I hesitate to call "art"), I like for the feelings/ideas to resonate with others as true to the human experience, not to be understood personally. I don't do things from my own perspective. I like to create characters almost (not literally, but as if I were someone in a different experience than my own) and write from different perspectives, so I can explore stuff I haven't personally experienced. Of course, I am still revealing my own feelings - my own concepts of what is significant, important, terrible, tragic, whatever. If someone were to think they knew me personally from this, they'd be very much mistaken, especially if they took any scenarios literally (I had written of heartbreak long before I ever experienced it personally).

I do the same, but attribute it to Ni (shifting perspectives) + Fe (empathy, being able to imagine how I'd feel in different circumstances).

This is because we're not trying to capture reality, but instead fundamental truths about what is truly of value to the human experience, truths that are outside the bounds of culture, time, location, but inherent to human nature & we NEED beyond physical survival. And as I said, Ne experiencing reality as dynamic and changing all the time means you MUST be spontaneous. We won't even go into depth on the idea-flooding that happens with Ne. It's like money raining from the sky - you're going to stop what you're doing, grab some container, and try and get as much as you can because it may never rain money from the sky again. Spontaneous is a compulsion because the moment cannot be replicated; once gone, it's gone forever. This is also why planning is unappealing to me, but the distaste for that hampers taking on larger projects that need to be broken into parts. That's our weakness.

This part stands out to me: "truths that are outside the bounds of culture, time, location"

That's what Ni is concerned with too. I think introverted functions, in general, are concerned with finding a perspective that transcends external bounds.

Where it differs from how you describe Fi, is that Ni by itself wants to get outside of human experience. It seeks omniscience. Luckily INFJs can direct Ni at Fe concerns instead, so we end up with a similar desire to make sense of the human experience.

Your "raining money" illustration makes a lot of sense. I'll try to be more understanding of my ENTP boyfriend's inability to make plans.

Funny, because that's EXACTLY my impression of INFJs . I've given harsher criticism of them though, so we'll leave it there.

Oh yeah, INFJs can totally do it too. But we do it in a different way. I think extreme Ni idealism comes across as elitist, while extreme Fi comes across as impervious to others' experiences that differ from their own. An INFJ would trivialize someone by saying they're shallow, while an INFP would invalidate that person by saying "you're wrong" and refusing to consider their experiences as relevant. Both reactions are self-righteous and annoying.

Thank you for giving such a thoughtful response, BTW. A lot of my ideas on INFPs are based on the ones I know personally, some of whom aren't the most developed, so I probably don't have a very good idea of what a mature INFP is like. Your explanations have given me a lot to think about.

 

[the state i am in]

This is an old thread, but I felt the need to say YES, YES, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FEEL, because almost all of the responses to this thread were so disheartening and off the mark. Unfortunately, these reactions are consistent with what I have experienced many times before when I shared my subjective INFJ experiences on an MBTI forum.

The problem is INFJs sometimes simply resent that things are the way they are, and find their feelings on the matter perfectly acceptable, and need to vent about it without being accused of needlessly whining and/or over-analyzing. After all, as dominant Ni users, we perceive truths and then react to them. Other types just don't get why we would "dwell" on something we don't like, or why we can't just shift our perspective and "look on the bright side." We can't do that because our perspective aims to be all-encompassing, multi-faceted. Our first business is to reflect reality, not to filter it.

Another thing that drives me crazy, which also happened a lot in this thread, is that when you use MBTI to explain your processes, people say "You're letting MBTI define you too much! The problem is you're limiting yourself! Stop blaming all your problems on being an INFJ and take responsibility for yourself!" This is SO counter productive and discussion impeding, I don't even know where to begin. If you truly believe everyone has equal potential for using every function effectively without tremendous time/effort/stress, then what are you doing on an MBTI forum? Why do you even identify with a type? People are only so malleable. MBTI is meant to help you realistically assess your strengths, weaknesses, and potential for development. It can also be used to describe your experiences or express your grievances, and using it in such a way is not equivalent to putting yourself in a box.

But you already know all this. It's the other people in this thread, and in so many others, that frustrate me. True, I can theoretically develop my Fi because the human mind is beautifully adaptable. But in order to experience the primacy of Fi that INFPs experience, I'd have to unlearn my stronger functions. Ni will always be in the lead; everything else necessarily serves the Ni vision. Lately, I too have felt intense jealousy towards INFPs, because so much of my ego has been constructed around the idea that I'm emotionally deep and complex and creative and colorful. As a child, I resembled an INFP in many ways, but over the years I have become so much more analytical and existential and unable to achieve that pureness of feeling. This is something that was so integral to me when I was young, that I can't get over the loss. It's what fills me with passion and meaning, and yet I can't take it at face value. No matter how good and right and transcendent something feels, Ni won't let me trust it 100%.

I still resent the idea that INFPs feel more strongly or deeply than INFJs. I don't think that's the case. I think what they do have that we don't is the ability to easily trust those feelings without asking where they come from or deconstructing them and revealing them to be a mere mechanism of human existence. They have so much faith. They don't feel the need to meta-understand every little thing, the way unfettered Ni does. They don't have this relentless "big picture, universal principle" mentality getting in the way of their immediate desires and needs. They don't have to justify these feelings within an ever-changing, exhaustive framework.

The crux of being an INFJ is that we only feel fulfilled when, like an INFP, we can commit to something that feels transcendant and meaningful; yet we have to have reasonable proof before we can commit. No matter how strongly we believe or want to believe something we can't ignore our view of reality that may or may not jive with our ideals. And we have very high ideals. It's because I feel things so deeply that I'm terrified I'm deluding myself, and they're not really as true as I feel they are. In dealing with xNFPs, I sometimes run into this impenetrable barricade that won't allow them to question a core belief. They don't even understand why someone would want to do that. For me it has nothing to do with wanting. I don't understand how you can rationally ignore something just because it makes you feel threatened. And even just saying "why would you want to doubt that" is, to my mind, admitting on some subconscious level that your beliefs are based on your wants and therefore quite possibly mere coping mechanisms. (I'm guessing this is what you actually meant when you said INFJs were better intellectually. Not that we're necessarily more intelligent, but we're more willing to go there. To be subversive in our ideology. To seriously consider any idea, no matter how torturous it is to our deeply felt ideals).

This can be paralyzing. The immediacy of feeling, as you put it, eludes us because new insights are constantly revealing themselves and requiring us to go back and reevaluate everything and then attend to our feelings. This can be a huge block when it comes to the creative process. Not to mention inferior Se that makes it difficult to act, crippling Ni perfectionism, and the feeling of "okay, I'm deeply in tune with my feelings, but what do I do with them now? How do I translate all the nuances of these emotions into something tangible?" I wish I could create spontaneously like Fi-Ne, but that eludes me.

And that is another misunderstanding that ran rampant throughout this thread. The envy you expressed was not only an envy of the results INFPs produce, but of their ability to experience such a sublime emotional state. No amount of pseudo-encouraging "you can create work as good as any INFP, don't limit your abilities" comments can change that. I can (and do) outperform many INFPs artistically, but I can't directly experience their creative state. It's not all about the result. It's also about the journey.

It's not all bad though, I must add as a disclaimer. As much as I currently envy INFPs, there are perks to being an INFJ. I think it's so cool that we have the emotional resonance of NF types with a generous helping of NT analytical prowess. In my opinion, INFJs are the most thinker-like NFs. The ability to have such strong ideals and feelings while simultaneously having a drive for logical deconstruction is so rare. And it has endeared more than one NT to me, because they say I have the appealing warmth of other NFs while being willing to follow an existential discussion to any depth. To the abyss itself, if necessary.

I could also get into the pitfalls of INFPs and the potential for Fi to be callous and self-serving under the guise of a noble cause, but given how touchy this crowd is, I'll abstain for now.

looking back to how i felt at the time, the first thing i would tell myself is that it is important to be fair to yourself. i would like to offer this reminder to you as well. typology is incredibly useful, but don't let the stories and symbols in your mind distract you from truly observing yourself and what you are experiencing most fully, especially your heart when it is more pure and the rest of you has been allowed to become still and silent so you can listen to the ripples both fast and slow most deeply. it took typology to lead me to the realization to keep my typological mind in its proper place. sure, a way to celebrate myself and my Ni and the ability to reverse engineer the core seeds of ideas in truest, clearest context. but an appreciation and acceptance of the movement of time that gives birth and death to the essence they represent in a way that is always new and can never be known before the fact. experience, self-observation, awareness, the other half of life is constituted in the forward marching time through which we begin to recognize the path that we and everything around us is on.

i mean, many infps are also going thru some of the same things you are discussing, despite other differences. a w5 secondary ego detaches you. it's gift is non-attachment, which opens up breadth for comprehensive, deep understanding. even in much of the great art that you and i both probably like, made by infps, that vision is part of what makes it so compelling, so timeless, so self-aware. so historically, creatively needed. look at my avatar for but one example. don't talk yourself out of a big part of yourself because you are afraid of not being everything you want to be. sometimes that just means you don't know how to be yourself as well as you will learn to in the future.

as for differences, fp offers deep awareness of the underlying needs that initiate and habituate emotional responses. we, as fj, understand with great, precocious self-consciousness intention and the process of integrating intentions. needs and intentions, moreover, are different layers of feeling. both are part of the creation of emotional reality. that there is a different musicality to fp, a kind of prosody or melody that doesn't spring out of us and our experience and the movement of our various whims, doesn't mean that the deep harmonic rhythms, cycling progressions, and disclosure of mood-space from the outside in that we feel doesn't equally constitute musical space. sometimes we just need to find ourselves and our line, to identify with where we are based on how our sensory experience enables us to be a more embodied, more bounded instrument rather than being a kind of ghostly, angelic chorus. but relax. we're okay. they like and find value in watching wender's wings of desire just as we do. start a literary tone poem band like the silver jews, and find your jangly malkmus muse to push you down the hill and let the music start happening. work together.

finally, my own apologetics showed a kind of deep fear that i would be unable to become what i wanted to be at that time. i'm a 5w4. i've learned that to and for others i'm as much geek as a i am hipster. i've learned that none of the social categories that i wanted to explore led me to anywhere but rooms inside myself. my process led me to a deeper consciousness of how i communicate with others, which in turn has helped me develop new kinds of awareness. some of these things would have likely happened in any number of potential ways, because they're so overcoded and built into my fundamental identity in a way deeper than how i choose to talk about myself to myself. they're built into not just my features but the way those features influence and are selected for expression by my path and the aspects of it that are not mine to claim ownership of. those infps have to deal with the way they and the world change just as we do, and the conflicts that arise when the fault lines grate into each other. they, like all of us, struggle to find something, some form of guidance, they can truly live by (especially our fellow e4s, burdened by the question of the value of existence). nevertheless, we feel fulfilled, and they feel fulfilled, and we all feel fulfilled, when we build positive relationships with others, that in turn help us build positive relationships with ourselves. that underlying unity of experience, of deep human identity, is important to keep in mind and heart when we want to truly relate to each other so that we can teach other how to better do these things.

 

[Azure Flame]

INFJ

INFP

 

[Azure Flame]

Could be a crucial enneagram difference here, though.

INFJ

INFP

 

[Azure Flame]

I also find many INFJs have a hidden taste for hip hop and a more urban settings, whereas INFPs seem to be more on the classic rock "good ole days" side of things.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I also find many INFJs have a hidden taste for hip hop and a more urban settings, whereas INFPs seem to be more on the classic rock "good ole days" side of things.

What about the ones who have a taste for both? I love me some Mos Def and Kool Keith but I gotta have my Pink Floyd too, man.

But in all honesty, fuck the good old days. There was good music in the seventies, but the majority was still shite. Let us not forget Gloria Gaynor and Glen Campbell.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

LOL about the Sigur Ros, btw.

My sister (ENFP) used to listen to the shit out of them