Hi there!
So, what is this crazy motherfucker’s type?
His name is Russell Brand and I don’t really know that much about him, but, someone sent me this video asking me what I thought his type was and I thought it to be a good example of a tertiary function run wild.
So, what is the tertiary function of this man? What is his full-scale type? And how could we come to this conclusion?
For instance, I came to this conclusion after about a minute of watching the video above and it is the only thing I have ever seen about this guy.
It is pretty obvious to me, but, I thought it would be an instructive example of how to type someone that you have a brief exposure to rather quickly.
This guy is a good example of how to type using the tertiary function when it has gone hyperbolic. It is very characteristic in manifestation, and in this guy, particularly so.
Annoyingly so, as tertiary functions often go.
When a person harps on their tertiary function it often has the visible effect of annoying other people.
So, which of the 8 cognitive functions am I alluding to, and from there, what is his full-scale type? There will only be two options once you have made the decision on the former.
And why?
Justify your damn self!
See you in the comments.
Okay, after much activity in the comment’s section of this article, I now reveal this dude’s Myers Briggs type. Thanks for playing 🙂
Featured Photo Credit: Brian Solis (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
Oh my God. I am probably totally wrong about this. Then, after I am wrong with my guess, I will tell the internet about my feelings.
Is he doing Fe? So then ESTP or ENTP? I would guess ENTP, because that looks to me like he is taking these flash-intuitive, hyper-cross-linked insights his mind has produced (Ne?) and pumping them out into the world with this emotionally-charged language.
/wrong
Probably so, so wrong. I find functions on their own quite difficult to understand and recognize still.
The other reason I would guess ENTP is that I feel like when I watch Russell Brand it is sort of like watching myself if I were really high and instead of scanning other people to see how they responded to my opinions I felt this enormous urgency to get them out, to tell people THE TRUTH so they could be free. And I think INFJs and ENTPs have reversed versions of each other’s function stacks, yes? So that makes an intuitive sense to me, that if an INFJ is X and Russell Brand is X-while-really-high, he is an ENTP.
(There’s nothing like an intuitive sense of something for being really wrong, of course.)
@SeeTheElephant
I think you’re intuition is spot on. His Ne is apparent to me, like a continuously fed chain of bullets through an Fe-Gatling gun. He also has a strong hunger for finding objective truth (Ti) – I tend to see the auxiliary as a function that guides a person’s motivations in this naturally insatiable way. Also, how he speaks to the ‘beautiful serenity’ of yoga and how it counters his naturally adrenalinized state, this is how he taps into his inferior Si.
Oddly, as an INFJ, i feel a sense of calmness listening to ENTP ramblings. Its like food for my naturally overpowered Ni…
I think you’re intuition is spot on. His Ne is apparent to me, like a continuously fed chain of bullets through an Fe-Gatling gun. He also has a strong hunger for finding objective truth (Ti)
If there is one thing this guy does not have, it is the Ti hunger for finding the objective truth. It is more like a hunger for finding THE TRUTH, but, that belongs to a different function altogether.
Mike,
cool:
“Oddly, as an INFJ, i feel a sense of calmness listening to ENTP ramblings. Its like food for my naturally overpowered Ni…”
That’s a really good image – I totally see that, the belt-fed thoughts and emotions.
But now that I’ve read everyone else’s thoughts, I think my guess must be wrong. Buuuuuut I agree with everything you said, including that it’s quite calming. I like it. I like hearing him rattle off his insights – I hear a lot of what he’s saying as things I would spread out over multiple years of knowing someone and very slowly and awkwardly reveal. But he’s like “Bam! And another thing! The universe is the mind of God! I have a lot of important stuff to get across here, it’s urgent.”
Very soothing. I don’t know why. I see him as someone who has gone through the gates of some type of spiritual event, he has learned that which cannot be taught, only experienced, and now he is trying to tell others about it, and there’s an emotional urgency to it, because it has freed him and he knows it could free you, too. But of course, it can’t be taught, only experienced! The greatest catch of all.
Yes, i think I have to defer to the ENFP conclusion as well… The Fe I’m seeing must be in the Id, lacking the sense of any additional contributors to the conversation but with all the flow of information that comes with it in a strong position.
I totally agree about the spiritual event – i think he was a heavy drug user as one point as well. Can you imagine the level of psychic garbage that would build up from that combination of fame, strong Ne, and drugs? It seems like this crusade against all his perceived evils of the world is how he’s been able to cope with the weight of that stress.
The other reason I would guess ENTP is that I feel like when I watch Russell Brand it is sort of like watching myself if I were really high and instead of scanning other people to see how they responded to my opinions I felt this enormous urgency to get them out, to tell people THE TRUTH so they could be free.
Yes, he has an urgency around getting out THE TRUTH so they can be free. What is the function responsible for this? And particularly, in the tertiary position of annoying urgency because the types that have this dominant don’t do it like this. And especially the types that have it auxiliary, which is opposite the tertiary. The auxiliary has a very relaxed and cavalier feel about it.
@Blake:
In comments here you mention that most of us are wrong about about introversion/extroversion (I mean, you put it more kindly than that). I’d never before thought about “intense” being an I thing, but now that makes such sense. Okay… someone (I’m scrambling for a famous person) like, say, Will Smith, who seems very relaxed and externally present in an easy way when he’s being interviewed, would it be safe to assume that there’s extroversion happening? (Side question, I sometimes wonder, with famous people, how you can tell (when they’re being interviewed) how much of what you’re seeing is actually “Russell Brand” vs “The persona known as Russel Brand, played by the human being Russell Brand”?)
Yes, he has an urgency around getting out THE TRUTH so they can be free. What is the function responsible for this? And particularly, in the tertiary position of annoying urgency because the types that have this dominant don’t do it like this. And especially the types that have it auxiliary, which is opposite the tertiary. The auxiliary has a very relaxed and cavalier feel about it.
Okay, hmmm. So tertiary is the position where things might get preachy. I feel hesitant to offer my guess because I feel like the comments are going in another direction, but: is that Fi? The felt certainty, the importance of what you have evaluated to be true, the not-very-interested in how your certainty comes across to others socio-emotionally, but instead needing to get it out? The rock-solid certainty that you have identified a moral truth?
(Aside, everyone loves asides, right? I personally don’t really find this to be “preachy” in an annoying way – I see him as someone who is on fire with what he perceives to be the truth and he really wants to share it so others can have what he has. Ie, not the way some vegans or anti-abortion people preach against something, but someone who is saying – can’t you see it? The gate is open! Right there! Just walk through it and be free! So I guess I actually find this kind of sweet and moving, but I am pretty weird. I can see how others would find it preachy. I am a little surprised that some folks here find his monologing shallow, though. I hear this as someone who’s been on the hero’s journey and wants everyone to know what he found at the end. So now I’m questioning my read on what’s happening with him.)
I find him very articulate. He speaks very rapidly, so rapidly that his insights are packed so close together that it’s hard for the listener to give them the space they need to breathe. A lot of what he’s saying is very radical unless you’re a heavy Alan Watts reader, so these ideas are new and weird. I associate that with Ti, but I am so wrong about so many things!
I’m for some reason reminded of this video by a former CIA operative who is talking about her conclusions about human conflict. I am very struck by how calm and slow she is when conveying her ideas. Her insights are also quite radical or non-surface or whatever, a complete unified theory of human warfare. But she’s very slow, very restrained, almost like she’s intentionally being very casual in offering these ideas in small bites so you can digest the intensity of each one. I feel much more with her that she’s walking the viewer to a specific conclusion. With Brand it feels more that he’s got so much he wants to say and there’s no time! So he’s just throwing it all out there. So much urgency, vs the deliberateness of the CIA lady. (Which I think may mask an underlying urgency of her own.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WEd34oW9BI
Anyway, my new guess is that Brand is an ISTJ. Ahhh, the suspense of having to wait to find out how wrong I am is killing me.
SeeTheElephant– I could be wrong, but I think I_TJ’s grippy Fi is more likely to look like oblivious boring narrations of their day’s events, explanations of what their Te has been up to, and clumsy attempts to extrovert. It’s less that they want you to see things their way, and more that they want you to give them credit for the mental work they do and acknowledge the meaning it has accumulated for them. “There’s someone who figures things out,” they invite you to think.
@SeeTheElephant
I can see what you mean by Fi, but I remember somewhere buried amongst all these posts Blake had referred to the mystery function’s link to stream-of-consciousness…I see this as Ni.
I definitely know that ITJs can get preachy about veganism or altruism or whatever as someone has mentioned somewhere along these posts, but these sorts of things seem to relate to moral principles. I don’t think morality/purity is necessarily equivalent to “the truth.”
I just can’t imagine Russell Brand as an ISTJ by the overall feeling of it…Maybe I’m a little prejudiced against ISTJs but I can’t imagine a single one of them being a comedian, donning a Jesus-hair-thing to go along with some nice tats.
I did remember Blake hinted at an obsession with the senses – obsession not via overindulgence by rather the opposite: complete denial/rejection and passionately preaching about it to the world. That conveys to me, a bypassing of auxiliary Se in favor of tertiary Ni. But if Brand is an aux Se-user, I’m a little puzzled as to how he fell into addiction with drugs and shit in the past. I thought people with auxiliary Se are best able to cope with sensory-trips whilst avoiding overindulgence. *Confused*
And yeah, I think I was pretty harsh on Brand in my posts below. I guess I’m a little scornful of Brand’s ideas because I literally shit-out tertiary Ti everyday. I know it’s not good for me. But yeah, I was bathing in cynicism and skepticism today, and hearing what Brand had to say was like nails screeching on a chalkboard.
@Stuart:
I think I_TJ’s grippy Fi is more likely to look like oblivious boring narrations of their day’s events, explanations of what their Te has been up to, and clumsy attempts to extrovert. It’s less that they want you to see things their way, and more that they want you to give them credit for the mental work they do and acknowledge the meaning it has accumulated for them. “There’s someone who figures things out,” they invite you to think.
Ah, hmmm! That makes sense. The idea that there is an invitation to think something about a person is very intriguing. Is grippy Ni, then, perhaps an invitation to think “this is a person who has the Deep Truth on offer”?
@Schlopadoo had this to say, which is also v relevant:
I can see what you mean by Fi, but I remember somewhere buried amongst all these posts Blake had referred to the mystery function’s link to stream-of-consciousness…I see this as Ni.
I definitely know that ITJs can get preachy about veganism or altruism or whatever as someone has mentioned somewhere along these posts, but these sorts of things seem to relate to moral principles. I don’t think morality/purity is necessarily equivalent to “the truth.”
Okay, I’m seeing that I don’t actually at all understand Fi compared to Ni. So is Fi more “it’s wrong to mistreat animals” and Ni is more “but don’t you see, we’re all animals mistreating each other” or something like that? Your pinpointing of a possible purity aspect of Fi is very interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Sorry for the personal example, but- the person I am closest to who I think is a tertiary Fi user is extremely smart and sometimes very intellectually inflexible about morality, kind of uncharacteristically for someone who otherwise has a lot of mental flexibility. I’ve often thought that they are one of the few people I know who have an operational personal code of honor. It can veer toward the purity-cult-ish. I’m always surprised when it emerges because it is so uncharacteristic for how wide-ranging their thinking is, otherwise. But it makes sense to think of that as a grip-experience trait making itself known under stress.
Man, I’m amazed by how little I understand any of this.
Re: Grippy Fi . . . I think this is incorrect: “grippy Fi is more likely to look like oblivious boring narrations of their day’s events, explanations of what their Te has been up to, and clumsy attempts to extrovert.”
As a tertiary Fi having person myself, there is really never a time that Fi wants to extrovert. Fi (at least for me) that gets out of hand is very soap-boxy. “THIS IS WRONG AND FUCKED UP AND IT WILL NOT STAND! I WILL NOT STAND BY AND SAY NOTHING WHILE THOSE BASTARDS DO . . .” You get the picture. Tertiary Fi is deep indignation, intense inner sense of the injustice and corruption of things – not really the stuff of dinner table chats.
Keep in mind that tertiary functions also tend to be focused on the Subject (or inward facing, even if it’s an extraverted function), and they tend to be the content of ones sense of shame or inadequacy, or unworthiness. Tertiary Fi tends to revolve around “Nothing I do is of sufficient worth or quality, and by extension neither am I”. Tertiary Ne is “There’s something I’m going to miss or let slip between the cracks, and I’m going to be a terrible person if it happens, and IT WILL happen because I am in fact a terrible person”.
So an outward facing tertiary Fi might be better conceived of as auxiliary Te which is being fueled by that tertiary Fi. Or maybe tertiary Fi channeling itself through auxiliary Te. Whichever.
“Tertiary Fi is deep indignation, intense inner sense of the injustice and corruption of things – not really the stuff of dinner table chats.”
And yet, when you guys are in grip, they often *are* the stuff of dinner table chats. 😉
Hmm, maybe I’m projecting. I don’t doubt that from the inside, tertiary Fi centres on feeling inadequate. I definitely recognise the soapboxing you refer to. But you’re missing the action item: “Nothing I do is of sufficient worth or quality, and by extension neither am I; let me tell you alllllll about what I do and what I’ve been thinking about, so you’ll maybe tell me it’s ok. I assume you share my indignation, so let me show value by explaining how we could fix things.”
What is your sense of what grippy Ti is like?
heh heh, yes, i see what you’re saying re: dinner. Maybe “dinner rants” might be closer. But I get your point.
The “let me tell you alllllll about what I do and what I’ve been thinking about, so you’ll maybe tell me it’s ok” strikes me as day to day regular old tertiary Fi. The compensating for the sense of inferiority. There’s a whole other level of energy once we enter grip territory.
Grippy Ti is dogmatic opinion that has little to no grounding in reality, but the individual cannot be talked out of. It’s endless, circular, utterly pointless arguing that wears down the Other with it’s inanity and resistance to anything approaching reason or evidence. Grippy Ti is at the root of every sexist stereotype about the upset, “overly emotional” woman who simply has to be placated. Grippy Ti is the very real cause of every “Yes dear, whatever you say dear” interaction, ever.
Jung described it this way: “The unconscious of this type (Fe dom) contains first and foremost a peculiar kind of thinking, a thinking that is infantile, archaic, negative…. The stronger the conscious feeling is and the more ego-less it becomes, the stronger grows the unconscious opposition…. The unconscious thinking reaches the surface in the form of obsessive ideas which are invariably of a negative and deprecatory character.”
Valerie Quenk neatly summarizes inferior Ti as excessive criticism, convoluted logic, and an obsessive search for “the truth”. Being married to a Fe dom I can confirm this experientially. I finally learned one day that no matter how disrespectful it feels to me, it really is best to just stop engaging and walk away until she regains her head.
I have a friend who might be ISFP or INTJ or INTP. His Facebook channel is like a lament injustice channel and expose corruption channel. But it’s not like let me tell you how it is. It is more deeply sad. I wonder if it his Fi tertiary in the grip or something else.
He has been through great personal tragedy. That might be a factor in his being really hard to type. He is really loving Ina way and sweet. I am so confused.
Lol. A bit crazy 🙂 gonna think it over.
Tertiary fxn run amok: Te
Type: ENFP
I put forth a quote of you Blake, discussing ENFPs:
“…more like ENFP with very active Fe id. That basically amounts to his extreme talkativeness…mixed with manic and quick demeanor. No Ti at all though…Ne + Fe is very manic and over-the-top.” The loquaciousness!
Plus, I mean look at him, he’s got that whole style as substance presentation thing going on that you also discussed on the Hippy, Hipster, Hypocrite article.
I know the only thing I did was lean on you as a reference, Blake. But in all honesty, you’re the only reason I understand what at ENFP is like, and if I’ve understood you correctly, then Russell Brand is totally an ENFP.
I feel like I should provide MLA or APA- style references of your work, Blake. Haha.
Correction: the whole style and substance tidbit is from the “And The ENFP of the Dead-at-27 Club is…” article.
Just wanted to get my shit straight.
I lost my comment! Anyhow my guess is: EFP with tertiary Te, so most likely ENFP with tertiary Te. You can see the lecturing. He even counts on his fingers (kind of like bullet points). It has a hammering quality, like a lecture to an auditorium, like he is delivering the knowledge and you can take notes.
This is so cool, because I know a (pretty clever) ENFP who kind of does this and gesticulates but I hadn’t made the connection to Te at all.
I think you’re right about Brand being ENFP. I think what you are seeing is indirectly tertiary Te though.
Te shows up as a weakness towards real, concrete, self-directed rational action taking in the real world.
The preachiness and soap boxing is auxiliary Fi. The fact that all he does is TALK ENDLESSLY AND TIRELESSLY about what he would like, but refuses to actually do anything about, is tertiary Te. (If he was challenged directly enough and embarassed in public, THEN you see the Te, but that’s bad news for everybody involved.)
The single most obvious tell of an ENFP is talking a big game that just doesn’t match what they’re doing in reality. If you find someone who is utterly convincing and passionate when you talk to them, but a dispassionate examination of the facts of what they actually do makes them look like a hypocrite, you might be dealing with an ENFP.
I also think Katy Perry is pretty standard issue as far as female ISTJ’s go, and that fits with Brand’s ENFP.
@Mark yes, you are so right with that, and I think the tertiary Te thing can be even more obvious in ENFP’s. That’s the thing about Brand, he is just talk and nothing else.
Could Fe id could be responsible for the lack of awareness? I have an ESFP friend who thrives on being around people and entertaining and helping, but she always seems a bit oblivious of others’ reactions to her when she gets passionate or excited about something, and her eyes even get that intense look that Russell’s have.
@Olivia – re: “Could Fe id could be responsible for the lack of awareness? ”
Fe id is described by Don Beebe as The Critical Parent. So for an ENFP, Fe is directed at others and used to criticize and pick apart, delegitemize, point out all the ways the Other is doing or being wrong.
The wide eyed, intense, seemingly unaware phenomena you describe? I’m not sure. My gut response is that it’s extraverted perception you’re observing. Strong Se is scary when it takes the reigns. It is powerful, unthinking, unfeeling, pure action and participation in The Now.
Se is pure presence. It’s the absence of ego or awareness of Self. It simply IS with everything the individual has to put into it. It’s scary because most of the time we don’t realize the depths of a human soul/spirit, and we are (I think) left stunned when we catch a glimpse into pure human nature, how big and wide and deep and fast it is. I don’t know how to describe it in writing, but I could show you some video clips.
Mark, I see exactly what you mean, that describes my ESFP friend perfectly! It took me a while to realise the strength of that in her as well. Could Russell be an ESFP?
This is my first time doing this….so I’m just gonna throw it out there.
I did it backwards…
ENFP
Ne -Dominant
Feeling – Auxiliary – supports his dominant
Thinking – Tertiary -opposite to his auxiliary
This is new stuff to me – trying to type…or even trying to use the lingo. But, I’d like to learn.
Actually he could be ENTP too. Maybe it’s Fe not Te. It’s either Fe or Te I can’t tell which.
He really reminds me of an ENTP chatterbox I know. But he doesn’t seem very smooth in this footage.
Hmmmm. Entp is what I think after all. It’s almost like you can see Fe AND Te??? I didn’t know Fe could be so intense. Really intense. Whereas Te often is forceful.
Hmmmm. Entp is what I think after all. It’s almost like you can see Fe AND Te??? I didn’t know Fe could be so intense. Really intense. Whereas Te often is forceful.
Fe is not intense in and of itself, but there is something else that is, and in particular two functions when combined I would say create the quality of “intensity” par excellence. Hint: Both these functions are introverted. And “intensity” is an introverted quality. Notice the etymology of the word “intense”. In. Tense. Tending to the inner. Tense on the inside. Etc.
I think this guy’s intensity could easily be confused with extraversion, Fe, Te, Ne whatever, but, he has little true extraversion. If you notice the guy’s awareness of his interlocuters or his environment in general, it is subpar.
So what happened to his Ti??? Bye bye Ti?
I do not believe it is Fe you are witnessing. Fe moves to facilitate harmony, which includes… the people you are talking with.. ( or lecturing ).
Blake you have given hints!!!!!!
Okay…. Wow not true extroversion? I start to worry about this guy big time.
I would say Fi is the most intense of all functions almost “tight”. I mean even in tertiary it looks like a little inner flame. A close second for intense would be Ni. Put those two together and you’ve got the most tense.
Hmmm…..
Okay I will go then with ISFP but honestly if that is so me wants to run away okay putting it all together:
A) intense ….. Is he okay?
B) TI bye bye …. That is for sure!!!!!
C) listen to me I am delivering ultimate knowledge Ni?
D) take notes and watch my fingers as I try to explicate but clearly can’t do a good job. Te?
Is he ok? I have never met an ISFP that looks like this.
:):):)
Blake, the word intense doesn’t have anything to with being tense on the inside, it comes from the Latin intendere which means to stretch out. And I think the way it’s used in English can have different qualities depending on the context, intensity can be an introverted or extroverted quality.
It seems like you’re hinting that you think he’s an ISFP? I can see that, I think he has strong Se. I can definitely see him having Ni tertiary. He has a YouTube channel about politics and he famously changed his mind from being adamant that no one should vote at all, to advising them strongly to vote Labour right before the UK elections. This happened after he had a good interview with the Labour candidate Ed Milliband. I think this shows that either he accepted a bribe from them as many accused him of, or that he’s quite easily influenced, and relates strongly to many people, which is quite an Fi thing I think. This could also explain his addiction to drugs and sex and fame, Fi+Se?
I can also see him being an ExFP though.
Blake, the word intense doesn’t have anything to with being tense on the inside…
Yes, it does.
Check out this link to the etymology of the word “intense”. Specifically, check the Latin derivation from intensus. The dictionary gives the following words verbatim: “stretched, strained, high-strung, tight”.
I think it would be easy to see how “tense” is related to that stream of words and how the prefix “in” refers to the inner, within, etc.
If not convinced follow the etymological trail the dictionary provides. It directs to the word “intend” and then to “in” from there.
So, “intense” basically means “tense on the inside”.
🙂
Actually I think he’s either an ISFP or and ESFP, one of those two.
@Blake, yes strained, stretched, the past participle of intendere: literally to stretch >out<, strain. I don't think those words necessarily have to do with "being tense on the inside", and definitely not tending to the inner. Just like the English word intense can have both introverted and extroverted qualities. Sorry for being pedantic, I know this isn't the point of the article.
Um, all I’m saying is that I don’t think you can get away from the “inner” implications of the word “intense”, such that you could easily imbue a person that you call “intense” with the qualities of inner tenseness. Isn’t that what being “high-strung” means?
Yes, I’m aware that “intense” has other meanings as well, such as having a “great” amount of something. Like, that dude has an “intense” amount of energy. That’s the first meaning that the online etymology dictionary points out for the word “intense” – a “great” or “extreme” regarding situations or qualities.
Yes, also “intendere” as you pointed out as referring to literally “stretching out”. But, it also says next to “stretch out” the word “strain” for this past participle.
I don’t know, I mainly get the sense that “intense” means to focus, concentrate, amass, hold within a great amount of energy that comes out in a rather strained or “all at once” fashion, like something that has been stored up and building a charge for a long time. In other words, “intense” people may put out a lot of energy, but, the source of this energy is within themselves in a built-up fashion, which implies “introversion”, another Latin word, which has the same prefix (“in”) as the word “intense”.
re: “I do not believe it is Fe you are witnessing. Fe moves to facilitate harmony, which includes… the people you are talking with.. ( or lecturing ).”
Don’t you believe it. Fe likes to play like it’s all nice and kind and loving and cuddly, but it is a judging function and it is extraverted, meaning it wants to control the Object.
Some of the nastiest, most intense fights I’ve ever experienced have been with Fe types. Fe is cuddly until its will is denied, and then it is eye-gouging-hair-pulling-ear-biting-off nasty.
And I should add, after Fe gets done ripping its victim, er, beloved a new one, it then comes back around and tries to salve and heal all the wounds it caused.
The most recent episode of Game of Thrones from this past Sunday (I believe it was Season 6 Episode 8) has a scene wherein Arya Stark is talking with an actress from a theatrical group. This character (not Arya, the actress character) is a *classic* INFJ.
At one point Arya asks her how she knows how to treat her abdominal stab wounds. The actress recounts that she is a “jealous lover” and that she has, more than a few times, found boyfriends interested in other women, engaged in a fight, and stuck them in the stomach with a knife a few times . . . and then felt bad when she cooled off and patched them back up again.
Very Fe, that.
Münchhausen by Proxy Syndrome – also a very Fe-kind of behavior. “I’m going to hurt you but I’m also going to take care of you and make you all better . . . until I hurt you again, so that I can take care of you some more.” Fe needs to be needed, and when it perceives it is no longer needed by the object it reacts as if it is an existential threat.
ENFP
I agree with much of what he says. However, I think he has Fi in Auxiliary and damn, that has to be intense. The personality you show to the world embodying and spilling all your truths to people, and Ne there to blow it across the stage with quick verbal dexterity.
ENTP’s have Fe as tertiary. They try to soften themselves, not singe people though they often do, so Fe gone overboard would be far more supplicating, I would think.
Te or telling others what to do, via an auxiliary Fi would look like this.
“I know I am right, take heed, do this before it is too late!” This is all with great and beautiful intentions but yes, it can irritate folk.
I watched several other of his videos, to see if he calmed down or showed other sides. He speaks so fast and fluidly I decided on Ne for sure, and his clothes being rather hipster hinted at ENFP as well.
He is a comedian. Reminded me of Robin Williams when I looked at his comedy.
I think he is very smart and could be very relatable in person after his yoga session, lol. And yoga. Striving for and and a heavy interest in his fourth function, but not nearly as convincing or adept as someone who had Si farther up, methinks. A great desire to make it work. Se is my fourth. I am a bush crafting/survival enthusiast. I am not very convincing. Like not at all, but I value it greatly.
Ack, hope I was clear that it was Te in Tertiary and Si in fourth.
I will also go through it simply, like before I delved into functions.
Extrovert, just watching him communicate with people with confidence, boldness. Pretty much the opposite of me.
Intuitive, he goes where I go, he is a ponderer and a mental explorer.
Feeler. He is passionate, logical but his logic is not cool or controlling him, it is hot with feeling and he makes decisions based on his morals. He is nothing like detached.
Perceiver. He is not afraid to say it as he sees it, which I can’t separate from Fi really, but P’s are better able to defy societal behavior norms. They are courageous in a way I envy.
Extrovert, just watching him communicate with people with confidence, boldness.
It is a misnomer to think that communicating with confidence and boldness is an extraverted quality. Introverts, especially certain ones, are able to communicate with a very confident and bold demeanor – a quality of utter conviction, one might say in the case I’m thinking of 🙂
Yes, you are right about Brand appearing passionate and hot with feeling. True. So, not detached. I see no Ti in this guy except in a “faux” sense.
He is not afraid to say it as he sees it, which I can’t separate from Fi really, but P’s are better able to defy societal behavior norms.
The quality of not being afraid to say things as he sees it is not an Fi quality as a first choice. I would also disagree that P types are better able to defy societal norms. For example, the ENFJ type can flaunt societal norms like a motherfucker. It may be a Perceiving function quality that enables them to do this, but, you can’t just go by the J or P in the type code.
Hi TinyYellowTree, like your pic.
“He is passionate, logical but his logic is not cool or controlling him, it is hot with feeling and he makes decisions based on his morals.”
He is definitely is intense. I first thought ENFP at first glance. But then I thought… hmm…. does he feel values? I can’t tell with him. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he appears soul-less, but he appears like neither personal nor impersonal. That’s more likely with perceiving dominants in general! I’d say Colbert appears more personal and more values-feeling than this dude.
Hmmm….. neither personal nor terribly impersonal. But I’m leading slightly toward impersonal (like can I picture this guy getting gushy long before a breakdown…? no).
So how can one tell tertiary Fe from tertiary Te? I would think tertiary Te is more concerned with the ideas and checking the logic, and tertiary Fe is more concerned with keeping a constant attention (like a fear to not be listened to??). So the most noticeable thing right off the bad is WINDBAG. So maybe the constant attention is necessary to him.
So all in all I’d say ENTP, who feels neither personal nor impersonal, and who seems to need the constant attention for his thing to work.
He definitely is intense.
Yes, he is very intense. I think the word “intense” is very appropriate for how Brand comes off and as I said in an earlier comment to you, the quality of “intensity” is an in-going thing, and thus introverted in nature.
I kinda wanna say ENFP, but that seems too obvious, and if I’ve learned anything from the ISTP article, it’s to not grab at the obvious first-glance answer. Especially since I’m pretty new to the whole Myers-Briggs thing.
I’m gonna throw a less-obvious guess out there: ESFJ. Come to think of it, the ESFJs I know do often have this kind of rambly, “coming on too strong” quality to them when they’re on some kind of intellectual bend. It’s, like…focused? I mean, you clearly can’t shake this guy off his ranting about THE SENSES and he does it in a way that’s not hard to follow at all. It’s ranting, but it doesn’t come across to me as rambling, if that makes sense. It’s also not particularly substantial or plumbing the depths or whatever. ENFPs seem to like going on about this stuff too, but generally they seem to be more all over the place. More rambling.
Actually, that would be really cool if that’s his typing, because I don’t think I’ve seen an ESFJ article from you yet, Blake!
I kinda wanna say ENFP, but that seems too obvious, and if I’ve learned anything from the ISTP article, it’s to not grab at the obvious first-glance answer.
You’re learning!
I mean, you clearly can’t shake this guy off his ranting about THE SENSES and he does it in a way that’s not hard to follow at all. It’s ranting, but it doesn’t come across to me as rambling, if that makes sense. It’s also not particularly substantial or plumbing the depths or whatever.
THE SENSES. I think you’re on to something there 🙂
“THE SENSES? I think you’re on to something there :)”
Lol you’re cute. You have fun when we have fun 🙂
Ok, Blake, the TRUTH seekers are Ti dominat ISTPs in the grip. Ti isn’t the tertiary right?, isn’t it Ni? So he’s an ISTP rambling on using Ni in the tertiary to draw random connections and patterns to HIS subjective truth. Add a decade (or more) of expensive drugs to the picture and one could see how Ni in 3rd position could cause this incessant rambling. ISTPs that are unhealthy can be quite incessant in their verbal carnage (as long as they can retreat head-long the fuck out of the damage they’ve caused, to themselves, mostly). So, I can see that for sure.
However, I really think Ne is a super culprit here in his endless rambling, with Te as the oblivious tertiary child because of how he won’t shut the fuck up. Ever. For ISTPs and ESTPs Ne is way down the chain (and so is Te). They’re more likely to think a specific thing and find “facts” to prove it via tertiary Ni. ENFP rat on crack mode just works here.
I want to say ENFP or ESFJ.
ENFPs can get really rambly but try to make sense of it all in some Te fashion: coming to some conclusions (but do they all make sense?). But maybe ESFJ is more accurate as a Ne tertiary just spewing connections?
I’m not sure but..
This really seems like horribly developed Ni to me. “We live primarily in the realm of the senses.” This seems to be a rejection of auxiliary Se. He’s looking for a one-ness but he does not have the ability of an Ni dominant to find this or really analyze to the extent of going past “there is a binding force bringing us together.” To me it seems like he wants to be seen as this person who has some unique knowledge or tap into the world that others don’t and he’s very passionate about harnessing this force to live “the right way” so I’m going to go with Fi dominant. Deranged ISFP.
I agree.
But E.
Blake you can ignore my comment, since I don’t know how to ‘type’ in a rational manner.
So, ESFP.
The reason I chose S is because of his loquaciousness.
E is just so obvious–no blushing.
F–the intensity of his feelings and his reluctance to go there again as a husband.
P because he is all over the place, literally and metaphorically.
So, ESFP.
The reason I chose S is because of his loquaciousness.
S is not loquacious. Definitely not one of the qualities I would assign to the sensation function.
E is just so obvious–no blushing.
Faux-obvious. Yes, he does seem extraverted in the way that I think many people would characterize. But, part of the reason I chose this guy is because his true preferences aren’t extremely obvious.
F–the intensity of his feelings and his reluctance to go there again as a husband.
P because he is all over the place, literally and metaphorically.
Yep.
Deranged ISFP. Lol, I laughed at that as I did think that for a few seconds in the beginning of the video. But…. the extroverted energy…… too much of it!!!!
Deranged ISFP. Lol, I laughed at that as I did think that for a few seconds in the beginning of the video. But…. the extroverted energy…… too much of it!!!!
This guy does not have a lot of true extraverted energy. He has a lot of “intense” energy, but, as I said before the quality of “intensity” is an introverted thing. Introverts can have a lot of energy that explodes out, but Brand’s energy does not have a fluid easy feel to it. Rather, it is fitful, maladapted to the environment around him, ungracious, and ignoring of everyone but himself. It doesn’t blend well.
So, you can definitely forget about Fe.
Alejandro said:
To me it seems like he wants to be seen as this person who has some unique knowledge or tap into the world that others don’t and he’s very passionate about harnessing this force to live “the right way” so I’m going to go with Fi dominant. Deranged ISFP.
Alright, the first person who has thrown out an introverted type as a possible answer!
And only the second person to have thrown out one of the types with a preference for sensing over intuition in their type code (The first was Wendy with her answer of ESFJ).
Way to be an iconoclast!
ENFP. He’s so ripe with possibilities that are not contrived or thought out, indicative of dominant Ne (we could do this this this this this this this this this its all so clear do you see?!?!?!)
Fi in auxiliary; he clearly relates to an internal value system that is rather subjective–as in, it definitely strokes HIM right and not so interested in other’s particular opinions or ummmm, reality checks.
Te in tertiary–so clear with the somewhat undeveloped arguments about building systems that work into the future. Sustanable systems is actually want he specifically referenced, but not in a cohesive way. He knows this has to happen as a piece of his puzzle yet doesn’t elaborate on the plan. Clearly not a xTxJ Te extroverted thinking personality for this reason. But he is vigilant that it should be done. It needs to be done. But the endless possibilities of the human race and the future trip up his follow through. Te is tertiary.
Si in 4th position. He sees where we’ve come from (human apes). He uses the past “sustainable situation” to somehow lay out the next sustainable situation. He has a vague sense of purpose (I don’t know if purpose is the exactly correct word but go with me) from a place of society safety and possibilities (evolution) from the past.
His frenetic nature is the main lined possibilities (Dom Ne) looping into tertiary let’s get this done (Te). Auxiliary Fi brings it home for him and gives everyone else the sense that we’re kinda feeling his groove but my fucking stars…it’s definitely HIS groove.
Fi in auxiliary; he clearly relates to an internal value system that is rather subjective–as in, it definitely strokes HIM right and not so interested in other’s particular opinions or ummmm, reality checks.
Yes, I agree that he “clearly relates to an internal value system that is rather subjective” and that he doesn’t seem interested in other’s opinions or reality checks.
I would say he is driven by an internal value system that is rather subjective and that the reason he doesn’t seem interested in other’s opinions or reality checks is because of the particular nature of his bypassed auxiliary.
ESTP gone mad! He had been a sex addict and drug addict. He was quite the sensual being and now has delusions of godhood.
Whatever type he is, he is a bit histrionic. He has lots of streams of consciousness going on, but to pin him down to a category I am unsure. I do like him and know he is onto something very real for him, but he loses his audience and doesn’t make eye contact with his interviewers as he goes into the mind and delves into what he believes to be the soul of the all. What type is that? I don’t know despite the fact that I threw something out there.
ESTP gone mad! He had been a sex addict and drug addict. He was quite the sensual being and now has delusions of godhood.
A sensual being that now has delusions of godhood. Good interpretation. I am getting at something like this.
He has lots of streams of consciousness going on, but to pin him down to a category I am unsure.
Yes, and what function is responsible for streams of consciousness? What function position is responsible for having lots of x function going in a rather hyperbolic and over-the-top manner?
I do like him and know he is onto something very real for him, but he loses his audience and doesn’t make eye contact with his interviewers as he goes into the mind and delves into what he believes to be the soul of the all. What type is that?
AN INTROVERTED TYPE. Yes Rita, exactly. You nailed it. This guy is consistently NOT MAKING EYE CONTACT with his interviewers. It is like he is in his own world and oblivious to the people around him and how they are absorbing these tertiary-looped insights of his.
So, this is a big clue right here in typing someone. Dominant introverts tend not to make eye contact with their interlocuters, especially if they are in the tertiary loop phenomenon. The tertiary loop in the introverted form is very characteristic for a locking into introversion and one of the reasons it is annoying is because the person is not noticing the effect that their dominant/tertiary combination is having on the world around them. This is due to bypassed extraverted auxiliary. It is very characteristic in manifestation and thus easy to type someone when they are in the throes of it.
It lends a hyperbolic quality to the function in the tertiary and aids the dominant in being emphasized as well. In introverts this leads to a backing up of the functions in the dominant and tertiary position.
In the case of Brand, it has been noted by other commenters that he seems very “intense”.
Yes, he does. He has this pent-up and ultra-positive and enthusiastic quality via the quality of the functions in the dominant and tertiary, which are looped and intensified and locked into a mode of introverted cycling.
These two functions in the dominant and tertiary position that I posit that Brand has are particularly “intense” when combined.
Okay, I am guessing he is doing an Fi-Ni looping thing. Since you seem to be onto an introverted dominance and insist that it is bypassing the auxiliary and overuse of the tertiary that is at the root of his annoying quality.
This man has something disgustingly attractive about him, but he sucks the air out of the room rather than breathes life into it. After watching multiple videos of him through the years, I just see an inevitable train wreck in this person. Anyone else feel the need for a shower and fresh air after watching him? Maybe not from this video, but from others. There is a sticky quality about him that clings like a virus. I like something about him, but can’t tolerate more than a few minutes of him. I cannot see ENFP or ENTP in him at all. They are refreshing even when irritating. This is the opposite of that.
Yes, right on the money with the “sticky” quality. There is something scuzzy, unwashed, pastoral about Brand. And also this cloying and ungracious quality, like you aptly said “sucks the air out of the room rather than breathes life into it”.
And yes, an ENFP or ENTP would be much more expansive, gracious, pouring forth energy, and in short, just plain “refreshing”. Yes, that is the right word, “refreshing”, especially for the ENTP type.
If anything an ENTP will “over-oxygenate” you rather than suck the oxygen away.
ISFP then. He is stuck in an Fi-Ni loop? Since you emphasize his “intensity” and equate that with introversion, that is my guess. I wrote more about my response to him, but think I accidentally deleted it.
“I don’t really know much about him”. Oh Blake, how lucky you are lol. Russell Brand is inescapable over here. Inescapable in the way a hungry mosquito is inescapable.
My guess is we’re seeing Ne on overdrive, but I’m struggling to observe him through the MBTI lens as he’s bipolar and is drawn to giving interviews both during florid manic phases and when high. You’ve got me wondering whether the tertiary is generally amplified during mania….
My gut’s saying ENFP and my head’s saying ESFJ (based on the tertiary and on inferior Ti). An ENFPish ESFJ? I can see why others arrive at ENTP, but although Brand has something of the court jester about him and likes to parry, he has a huge ego, makes frequent faux pas, throws toddler tantrums when he’s not getting attention or not being seen as sufficiently outrageous for his own liking, and I don’t see either the political clumsiness or the self-absorption thing as ENTPish.
He’s bright, daring, trips politicians up with his quick mind and I do like some of his ideas, but there’s always this impression Brand’s more wedded to the desire to be seen as a rebel than to any genuine ideals. Whatever he’s currently a heavy user of it’s not Ni 🙂 To me he lacks integrity. His fans see him as pretty cool, but as you may just about have gathered, I’m not one of them.
I don’t know him well either, but it does seem he’s given someone ample material for an intense video compilation.
And I liked your comment, not only because it supports my case in places, lol, but I like the way your words work together and the mosquito analogy.
“I don’t really know much about him”. Oh Blake, how lucky you are lol. Russell Brand is inescapable over here. Inescapable in the way a hungry mosquito is inescapable.
I feel lucky. This guy is really unbearable.
TinyYellowTree, the more time I’ve spent reading everyone’s comments and watching RB videos over the past couple of days, the more I’ve felt I’m in some kind of mosquito swamp hell 🙂
As Rita says there’s something really grubby about the guy.
@ lunar
First, thanks, I love Aspens.
I don’t think I see the impersonal you are seeing, maybe a kind of ‘too many things to do distance’, but both ENTP’s and ENFP’s seem personal to me in that they want interaction, to be able to express themselves, their ideas.
The intensity is very evident in his eyes as well as his [life]force, but I see that with both ENTP’s and ENFP’s so there too it’s hard to differentiate.
Also, in the video offered, each was intense, like it was made to make him look rabid. If you look at more of him on youtube, you can see different things, like his hands shaking and touching each other, he seems bold above and nervous/bothered below. I’d say that is Si soothing to control his discomfort when pressed or pursued. I’ve seen this trembling in an INFP as well, not sure how that is relevant, haven’t had time to think on that.
His Fe, you could be right about Fe being concerned about being listened to, in fact I think you are. In this case though, I’d say that it would do this in 6th place. The infant place, kind of uncontrolled/primal as Blake has taught us.
Fe in third is concerned with harmony and it battles with being right. ENTP believes they are smart and understand, but they also know deep down that being accepted and loved is crucial to them.
Te in Tertiary is I think the focus on DOING. Te wants you to do and them to do and things to get done and does what they can.
So, Te in an ENTJ, Te in first will mow things down, a bulldozer in their effort to make things happen.
ISTJ, auxiliary Te workaholic. Or very good focus on a work they enjoy.
ENFP, Tertiary Te would show a good many accomplishments involving people, most probably.
INFP, Te in fourth values getting things done that need to be but has a harder time with getting it done. Does what they feel compelled to but procrastinates.
“So all in all I’d say ENTP, who feels neither personal nor impersonal, and who seems to need the constant attention for his thing to work.”
I don’t find ENTP’s to need constant attention. Nor do I find my Fe wanting constant attention, more the opposite. I don’t know. Fe is a sharing thing and we all need positive input…
But again, Fe in sixth would I think need/crave social affirmations to ‘Get his thing to work’. Especially as he is a comedian.
Tiny Tree, thank you for your reply. I don’t think needing attention is the most salient aspect of an entp, but I have noticed that in some entps, there is such a need. I have an entp friend who dominates the airwaves at parties. She seems anxious to be heard because how can she make her jokes and speeches without people listening. Hmmm it could be that my friend is not entp and that I am wrong about that. Hmmm. Anyhow I know entps who are not like this and they are more harmonious as you describe although I don’t think it their ultimate aim at all. It is real use of Fe, but to me it operates in service to getting all their lovely stuff out and listened to. I have an entp friend who is very harmonious and can be really soothing to be around. She has a few more brakes on her speech.
No sorry, I wasn’t meaning they are necessarily harmonious. I was meaning they strive to be. I’d say yeah, they go for entertaining but they are not unaware of the effect their words have, and if they find they’ve stepped on toes, they will move and apologize. But it oft comes after the damage is done. Foresight seems limited at times or there is excitement and they are on a roll and then they see your frowning face and hesitate and decide how much they are willing to concede, how much it will take, not too much hopefully and yet… maybe backing off is worth it this time.
Spontaneous type-cooking. First ingredients:
– 65% Acting as E (E to good to be true)
– 25% Fake connection with a supposed audience in a self-created world.
– Feelings (??) turned thoughts turned creamy sentimentality (sensing+mental+ity)
– Repressed Intuition. Or not intuition at all. Playing the flow.
– Unbearable after 30 seconds (and the music doesn’t help)
– Eyes are important. He is lost in “feeling-translation”. I see only his “disconnected” eyes.
So I+S+T+J
Tertiary: something around thinking
Hum…
Ne is the present function in most of these excerpts. Most may see this, then come to the conclusion of ENFP, who lead with Ne. However there should always be caution with labeling types based on interviews, an environment in which anyone would naturally like to control their perception.
Despite this, my guess for Russel Brand is ESFJ Fe>Si>Ne>Ti.
His natural inclination is to express his insights and concern for others, hence a Fe dominant. However, when you take a look at his spiritual suggestions, he comes off as someone who strives to obtain a Ne perspective. In the same way INFJs immerses in information and knowledge via Ti, ESFJs searches for open possibilities and new perspectives via Ne.
In spite of this, Brand seems to indulge in his Fe and Si. He has struck a balance between his subjective sensory experience (Si) and his spiritual potential (Ne), and to me he seems perfectly healthy and happy doing so. So yes, his tertiary does come off strong, however I don’t see how it is anything but his natural response to his outside world. What a happy weirdo.
This guy is so fucking annoying. (Sorry if I offended anyone)
I apologize in advance if everything below sounds really awkward and clipped but the tertiary Ti is strong in this one today.
Anyways.
I thought ENTP because of tertiary Fe-run amok with Ne => loquaciousness (annoyingly so). Going no where. Saying stuff without really going any deeper. Really cartoonish: there seems to be an inverse relationship between trying to appear serious and ACTUALLY BEING serious. The more he tries, the worse he becomes.
But after reading what others have written above, ENFP seems to make more sense to me, but not based on method Blake has advised us to use. The overall gut feeling, moreso. Them tattoos and in-your-face “I’m a hipster” thing stuff. Also, I can’t imagine ENTPs rambling about spirituality-mumbo-jumbo stuff. I find Ne+Fe dumps are a bit superficial and all-over-the-place, but they’ll still be somewhat sound and logical, sometimes even noteworthy/original…I don’t find that in Russell Brand at all…to be honest, he simply comes across to me as mental.
Now I’m wondering, if Brand really is an ENFP and is exhibiting hyperbolic tertiary Te, what exactly is Te (particularly in the tertiary position)? It puzzles me that ESFPs or ENFPs have tertiary Te, because I wouldn’t say these types are “logical people” at least from my experience. I saw some stuff above: style is the substance…preaching/lecturing…some clarification would be nice…
This guy is so fucking annoying.
Exactly. And the reason he is annoying is because he is harping on a particular function that is in the tertiary position. If someone comes off as annoying and over-the-top in a particular way (one of the 8 functions) it is a good clue to typing them.
Now I’m wondering, if Brand really is an ENFP and is exhibiting hyperbolic tertiary Te, what exactly is Te (particularly in the tertiary position)
He is exhibiting “hyperbolic” something, but, it is not Te.
Te in the tertiary (the looped form of the tertiary) is when a person gets very into organization, list-making, life plans, business plans for their own sake.
I saw some stuff above: style is the substance…preaching/lecturing…some clarification would be nice…
Yes, this guy is very preachy. And there is one function when it is the tertiary-looped position that is the most preachy par excellence. Because the tertiary-loop has a “preachy” quality to it and when this particular function that I am alluding to is there, it is “the annoying preacher” par excellence. “Gonna lay out how it is, yo.”
It is also characteristic for other people to ignore the person who is doing this because it is so damn annoying.
And some people of course will be drawn to it because this person seems to have answers to those grand questions.
“Gonna lay out has it is, yo.”
Hahaha, bursting out laughing. I’ve never met someone like this.
But now I think I get it. Fi+Se might explain his confidence.
Now if you start telling me he is an INFP… I …. die:)
It better be ISFP:)
I like ESFJ, for the reasons Karen gave. I feel annoyed and lectured-at in a tantrumy way that reminds me of tertiary Si from an IN_P, or tertiary Ni from an ISFP, more than it does a judging function misfire. Dominant Ne takes as a cool matter of course that things are more than they appear and could be otherwise; I think it has to be grip-Ne that would get clumsily excited about it, like someone’s cartoon of Richard Feynman.
At first I had the caveat that I saw Fi , not Fe, in how he fails to engage with his interviewers. But probably that’s what Fe ego looks like, and as a viewer I’m the target, not the Fe observer I’m used to being. I notice that the form of what he’s saying is Fe-Ti, it washes pleasingly over in nice sentences (mentally slow it down and consider it as text!); it’s his Si tone and grip-bound vision that annoy me.
@Stuart
what does “preachy” Si look like to you in INPs?
Hmm, interesting question. From my Ni perspective I think I encounter it as a yawning gulf where meaning ought to be. That’s overly dramatic. To me it’s a sneaky preachy, it has to be ferreted out a bit. It’s a bit like getting into a car, the INP is driving, we’re on the highway, having a pleasant conversation about all the different places we’ve gone for drives and how much we like driving, and suddenly I notice there’s no brake pedal, and the INP is like “What do you mean? Cars only have one pedal.” What.
Something I think I’ve noticed about the Ni id is that the INP seems particularly apt to get seized by one image, like they imprint on a single icon or fairy tale that tells their story and they can’t see it or do anything about it. They’re transparent model cases for analysis à la Jung or von Franz, at least if their id gets its way. And then that image channels through to their conscious life as “preachy” Si, where it just is and the world just works that way. (Whereas for the ISP, Si id is like a rhinoceros that dimly perceives a staggering threat posed by the existence of other minds, and channels its totalitarian response through preachy Ni broadcast. I think.)
The preachy Fi tertiary in INTJ is superficially a bit easier for me to make sense of, it’s sort of a simplistic X is good Y is bad, we need Z, that sidles in as a justification for effortless Te calculations that aren’t being applied to a concrete problem. “I said this, and she said this, and I said this, and we both laughed.” “Here’s an exhaustive explanation of how everything would be better if we used one of these kinds of proportional representation to finally chase those corrupt scoundrels out of government.”
@Stuart,
Loved your reply. I’m INFP and the seizing one image and getting stuck on it is so true lol:) Haha. Not sure why that happens. I don’t understand the id concept still. But it’s like not having robust perception. It can’t keep veering and be keen/sharp at the same time:) Like it’s not very prolific Ni:) Also I get totally into revisiting the image lol:) Cool I think you helped me understand something.
I’ve no practise in picking out a single function of a person either, I’m still stuck with time consuming sorting out all the impossible choices and then go from there.
Russel Brand strikes me as an extrovert with unconsciously controlled feeling, so ET it is. Also J, he has that frustrated energy which a P wouldn’t convey as strongly. He doesn’t strike me as an ENTJ, so ESTJ I’d say after checking with all the other types.
So now his rampant tertiary must be Ne, and wow how that fits. ESFJ wouldn’t have fit though, too much underlying T, his feeling function looks like it’s very much out of whack, not much control there. The stuff he spouts has too many holes in it for being a good Ne. So while he is in his Te-Ne Loop, the functions most visible on the surface are Ne and Fi (out of control behaviour is the loudest, and he falls into his tertiary and last conscious function), no wonder he looks like an ENFP or ENTP when going a bit deeper to look at the ever present function Te.
I know that my method is kinda shaky without looking from the beginning at the cognitive functions, but I’m just more confortable to go by feel. To me, each type has an energy, which is too subtle to pick up immediatly without mental concepts like the functions, but when looked at closely enough, it comes through, slowly though.
I’ve always wondered what type he is, simply because he’s a popular yet controversial figure. At the same time I was too bored with him to bother making an attempt at typing him, so thanks for the opportunity.
Another thing Blake: typing Brand made me realise why I wasn’t happy with your typing of Stephen Colbert. Colbert is liked by many, no doubt, but I know my ENFP’s and he’s just not got the ENFP eyes or enough of their kind of energy. I think he’s an ESFJ with a better reigned in Ne that still makes him look like a crazy N-dom though. He’s got E and F no doubt, but I sorely miss that laid back P quality and the thrill of Ne in control of the show. Also his eyes. ENFP’s have beside their mischievous playfullness a very serious side to them, are even mysterious and have a very attentive thing going on. All visible in the eyes and I haven’t found the same quality in Colbert’s eyes, he might behave like a silly child lots of times too but never seems to put as much discerning attention towards other people in the way ENFP’s can, he is more concerned with himself, which makes him an EJ. In my experience EJ’s belong to the cholerics in the four temperament system. They are said to be ego driven and must first learn to pay more attention to other people’s goals and needs. Which in turn makes them natural leaders, since they’re focused on their own actions more and will get stuff done.
Blake, I really hope you’ll think about Colbert again, deeply. I wouldn’t say that if Colbert wouldn’t finally have clicked in my mind as ESFJ, just as Brand has clicked as ESTJ and triggered my Colbert recognition. I hope I’m not wrong ;).
Leanne, that is very interesting. I definitely definitely considered ESFJ for Colbert when noone else seemed to. But…. I just can’t make sense of how to type people I am not intimate with. I get it wrong even with pretty good friends. It’s only in intimacy that the types make sense to me….. one day it will make sense after one minute…. like it does to Blake:)
Anyhow I definitely was able to see ESFJ for Colbert. In fact him seeming ESFJish points again towards ENFP over ENTP for him. ENFP will look more like ESFJs than ENTPs will look like ESFJs.
Basically I have a good friend who my husband and I peg as either ENFP or ESFJ and Colbert resembles him. So confused….
So maybe it’s true afterall that Colbert is ENFP.
*lol* Watched the video from the comment below of Brand and now I’m not so sure anymore he’s an ESTJ. Unhealthy ENFP cuts it better, he reminds me suddenly of Keira Knightley who I believe is an ENFP. Looks like I haven’t seen an unhealthy version of ENFP until now, how sad and how funny since I said I know my ENFP’s *hides*. So Te on the run it would be then, which was my third guess at the beginning, besides the other F and T functions. So yeah, going by the feel is tricky, but by functions is too. So Ne stifled by Te looks nasty and boring as. Also his F is pushed so much into the background that I was convinced he has a poor handle on it in general. Sigh.
Russel Brand ENFP but I’m still sticking with Cobert as ESFJ.
I’ve actually even considered introversion for Brand, which makes sense now that I think he’s an unhealthy ENFP looking like an ESTJ, but it’s actually ISTJ, just like unhealthy INFJ’s look like ESTP’s.
@lunar: I’ve got the opposite, when I know somebody too well, it’s difficult for me to type them at first because I’m too close, I need some distance to type and assess, not that it becomes much easier either, it’s a subtle business and for me it takes time and lots of wrong turns before the picture clarifies into a few possibilities. And sometimes I’m lucky to have an epiphany like with Colbert, especially because I was puzzled about him since Blake introduced me to him. Like my brain has been working in the background and suddenly found that ESFJ fits nicely.
I have forgotten to mention that ESFJ’s in my experience have a very direct stare and open their eyes a tad too much sometimes, which makes them look very creepy at times. Another example would be Ciarán Hinds (actor) I think. Maybe Sandra Bullock, but I haven’t double-checked on her, so be careful, Lunar, when you compare her to your friend.
As for ENFP’s besides Robin Williams I’ve got the youngish actor Dylan O’brien or Rhett (from youtube Rhett and Link) and Dr. Mike from NFgeeks. I’m pretty sure about their types. And as I said Keira Knightley strikes me as one too, but I haven’t checked up on her yet.
Since Colbert looks not exactly like Brand, I’d say one or the other can’t be an ENFP and I’d still say Colbert has ESFJ traits. For sure not ENTP or he has a very twisted F/T function too plus Ne, for which he doesn’t seem to be too capable with to be ENFP.
Watching Brand on Stage is interesting too. So much goofing around made me actually think that Helena Bonham Carter could be an ISFP too. Just as Keira Knightley, whom I lazily put into the ENFP category just to have her somewhere. She just does so many facial expressions and also has speech patterns just like Brand!
I love these guess-the-celebrity’s-type articles! I’m going to go with tertiary Te, since this guy seems to me like a really obvious example of an ENFP: charismatic, hyper-active, and highly stylized. He definitely seems Ne-dominant in his mental quickness and his fluidity of speech. Also, I know we’re supposed to be looking for the tertiary function, but these clips seem like a good example of the “voluble Fe id” and the ‘propulsive’ speaking style of ENFPs that Blake has mentioned. Though, I have seen interviews with this celebrity in which he’s much more mellow and self-effacing, such as this one on the Jonathan Ross show in the early 2000s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8vZ2euhX8g. (Also much more humorous and self-deprecating.) Judging at least by the interviews I’ve seen, he seems to have gotten more over-the-top and hyper in recent years.
However, overall, R.B. seems like a quintessential example of ENFPs as characterized by Blake., especially in his ‘Hippy, Hipster, Hypocrite’ article. Style, pep, romanticism, feel-good spirituality, loquacity, glibness, great propensity for mimicry and satire (that infamous MSNBC clip), etc.
Oddly, I’m struggling to see the tertiary Te- I still don’t really understand what it looks like. If the dominant Te types are ESTJ and ENTJ, then would “hyperbolic” Te look EXTJ-ish? And if I have followed the site’s logic of astrological attributions correctly, the ‘tertiary’ (implied Mercury) Te of ENFP would be Te Libra, which is the ‘dominant’ Te of ESTJ. So perhaps an ENFP overdoing the tert. Te would look like something of an ESTJ-ish ENFP?- e.g., bossy, preachy, moralizing, and directive, but about NF topics? His delivery does seem a bit preachy and bombastic at times- lots of forceful “shoulds” coming through in his words and his body language.
Also, some of the word choice, even in his discussion of soft subjects like his brand (haha- pun!) of spirituality, is sharp and cold, even a bit ferociously so: “it’s good to have access to the infinite consciousness that is available to all people, but through the five sense it’s *delineated*” / “we think reality is *apportioned*” / we don’t have the correct “instruments” to receive spiritual “data” / we allow reality to be “proscribed’ by our senses. Is that those active, efficient word choices that point to tertiary Te? It didn’t immediately jump out at me as over-the-top, nor did it annoy me particularly (the preachy bombast is more annoying, and one of the interviewers featured seems to agree) but it’s definitely prominently noticeable. You’ve got to hand it to him, though- the guy’s got one hell of a vocabulary. I suppose his language use could be indicative of Ti (not sure, can’t quite tell the difference), which would mean by implication overblown tertiary Fe. I guess you could make a case for that, too- melodramatic delivery; hyper-awareness of and communion with the audiences; a bit of whacky, hypnotic eye contact going on around 1:35… but perhaps that could be due to Fe id. I’m almost certain that R.B.’s an ENFP, not an ENTP. Ergo, going with tertiary Te. BTW, his sun sign is Gemini (1st half I think, so corresponding to Blake’s designation of implied Ti aux). So ENFP + Gemini.
I’m going to revert to my gut and say ISFP, actually. Fi ego, no Fe, and I’m responding with dislike to his Si id pouring through obtuse tertiary Ni.
The ISFP I’ve encountered this from is more introverted, less excitedly manic, less verbally fluid, so I second-guessed, but thinking about it the underlying gut feeling it provokes is identical. So, ISFP is my final answer.
Funny, that’s what my gut said at the very beginning.
Same here:) My very very first few seconds of the video I though Ni nutso, but he looks like no ISFP I know…. this is very fascinating. I had no idea ISFPs can get so forceful like that.
I know from experience an ISFP can get forceful (Si id, remember), and needy, but I hadn’t personally encountered it in such a socially confident package. I hope this isn’t what I eventually have to look forward to from the ISFP I know. :-/
I guess, with a more typical lack of social outlet, looping IS_P is the prototypical conspiracy theorist.
Am I correct in recalling that Blake regards ISFP as the INFJ id personality?
It’s ages ago that I’ve read about the Id or the Id of INFJ’s but yeah, it makes sense to me. The Id of INFJ’s is Fi I think and combined with Ni you get that only in ISFP to a satisfactory amount, plus Blake said INFJ’s can have similarities with ISFP’s and ENTP’s. The former not healthy, the latter healthy (not sure if I’ve phrased that correctly). I’ve seen those similarities before I came on here, so there’s something there.
Anyway, with Blakes hints I’ll be surprised it Brand isn’t an ISFP. I can easily imagine an ISFP flipping his demeanor from soft to forceful, it’s like the yin in the yang and vice versa. I also have a suspicion that I had an annyoing ISFP colleague once, who was not as much but enough oppinionated to drive me up the walls too. So yeah, Fi_Ni combo is no fun. Doesn’t help that the ISFP Id is Si which is my weakest function of the eight. And the undercurrent of Fi in people seems to confuse me more often than not. I really thought Brand could have dominant T. And yet the undercurrent of feeling was there. But that is just that damned I__P “hiding” thing going on and I didn’t see it clearly. More like limited expression, but it bugs me.
Time to learn the functions by heart properly I guess, I tried to go without them long enough I guess, thanks Blake :).
@Stuart
what do you mean dislike of his Si id pouring through Ni? I know ISFP has Si id the way Blake calls it, but can the id come through the tertiary?? How does Si id manifest?
I’m not sure I have a theory to explain what I mean there. In long conversations with the ISFP in my life, I can get an oppressive creeping feeling that the talk is drenched in id, that nothing being discussed is actually what’s at issue, but rather there’s a two-year-old child playing Grand Inquisitor and saying This Is How It Is. It’s terrifying and hellish, it bypasses your conscious mind and crawls up inside you. It’s like the Fi reels you in by putting things in reasonable judging terms that can be respected and worked with, the tertiary Ni creates a sense of possibility and openness, but while you’re talking underneath it is just that zealot insisting with all the brute intransigence of the unconscious on what is pure and impure.
@Stuart
“I’m not sure I have a theory to explain what I mean there. In long conversations with the ISFP in my life, I can get an oppressive creeping feeling that the talk is drenched in id, that nothing being discussed is actually what’s at issue, but rather there’s a two-year-old child playing Grand Inquisitor and saying This Is How It Is. It’s terrifying and hellish, it bypasses your conscious mind and crawls up inside you. It’s like the Fi reels you in by putting things in reasonable judging terms that can be respected and worked with, the tertiary Ni creates a sense of possibility and openness, but while you’re talking underneath it is just that zealot insisting with all the brute intransigence of the unconscious on what is pure and impure.”
Oh my thank you for this. Delicious pleasure reading this. I experience the “id” sometimes as seeping in as well. Well whatever I think the id is… am still wrapping my head around the concept. But sometimes the Fi id of infj “seeps” into me. I feel aware of these raw feelings they have that they repress and not let leak out onto others and kind of don’t want to work through at times. Well they aren’t sharing them with me so how am I noticing them. Some kind of bypass like you say!!!!!
With isfjs I have a harder time seeing Fi id, because they don’t tend to try to neutralize their feelings and tend to express them more as far as I know. If the id is underground, then I’m not sure how that works for isfjs.
What?! So was my first instinct right all along?
What I felt was hyperbolic Ni from the first 30 seconds of the video. Spirituality-mumbo-jumbo stuff. And I’m not saying that spirituality is useless or idiotic or anything like that, but that the way HE DESCRIBES his ideas of spirituality come off as off-base, annoying, preachy, and over-the-top yet lacking anything substantive. Hence why I say spirituality-mumbo-jumbo stuff. I stopped listening to him after 1 minute because I smelled bullshit all over the place.
So I thought, okay ISFP or ISTP, but it must be ISFP, come on, if he had Ti he wouldn’t be talking shit like this…but then he seemed so extraverted and manic, so I changed my mind to ENxP.
Wow, OK. So I have to rethink this whole extraversion/introversion thing.
My final answer is ISFP. It has to be. Fi-Ni loop sounds dangerous and annoying. I can imagine Ni/Ti or Ti/Ni culminating in nonproductive overthink-y stuff….Fi/Ni or Ni/Fi would certainly lead to derangement methinks – muddled “truths”/insights. Ni/Fi leads to over-suspicion, maybe even over-sensitivity, distrusting X person or X group or whatever despite lack of objective evidence to assert such opinions. Fi/Ni would lead to (as Rita mentioned above) derangement of godhood. “I-know-the-answer-I-know-the-truth-let-me-tell-you-everything” must be a manifestation of hyperbolic tertiary Ni. And the fact that this is fed by a subjective interpretation of values (Fi) makes everything sound like bullshit.
Yo, Schlopadoo,
I never finished viewing the first video either. Once I’d sussed that Brand was abusing my precioussss Ni in such a hideously overblown display of utter drek, it became physically painful to continue watching!
What made it even worse was the appalling notion that maybe I sound like Brand when I get swept up in an outpouring of Ni grandiosity – Brrrr!
Even if my Ni monologues bear only a passing resemblance to his weirdness, it is still enough to give me nightmares. I have occasionally noticed the strange looks I receive from more grounded types when my Ni stream-of-consciousness transits into the Twilight Zone……
Best not to overdwell on this, methinks. I’m far too old and eccentric to change my ways, and anyway it would be sooo booring to even try to pretend to be “normal”
All what Brand needs to do is to use that lovely auxiliary Se and come back to mother earth!
Please.
“Yes, this guy is very preachy. And there is one function when it is the tertiary-looped position that is the most preachy par excellence. Because the tertiary-loop has a “preachy” quality to it and when this particular function that I am alluding to is there, it is “the annoying preacher” par excellence. ”
That is really interesting. I have seen how Fi can be the preachy version in ITJs… like people should be vegetarian kind of thing.
Have you ever seen an ISTP with preachy Ni? I can hardly picture it.
Maybe a poser “tough guy” who bangs on about gold and survivalism and libertarian economics? Specific theories and fetishes, rather than the hippie “they’re holding back our human oneness” generalities?
Take a safari jeep over to Zero Hedge to see some of them.
@stuart thanks!!!! 🙂
Funny:)
I am fascinated by his being an introvert. It is true that I have seen both istps and isfps rise to the occasion but this is like way out there. I am surprised he can be so loud in so many interviews. I guess the ISPs can use that Se to rise to the occasion.
What type was Charles Manson?
“If you notice the guy’s awareness of his interlocuters or his environment in general, it is subpar.”
This is so true. I just realized that when typing it is so easy to blow up one aspect of the person and ignore another in an attempt to find a fitting pattern. It’s actually quite hard to pay attention to the most ding dong vibe present. He really does show a certain staring past people (basically ignoring them),
“What type was Charles Manson?” My thought exactly! Same wild manic insanity emanating from behind those orbs.
@Rita
“What type was Charles Manson?” My thought exactly!
Yey synchronicity!
Brand is spewing forth extreme Ni from the very beginning. Utterly obsessed with One Grand Idea: that we are all prisoners of the five senses and must open our minds to Infinite Consciousness and Infinite Connection and Infinite Power (etc etc ad nauseum).
There is nothing more Ni than the idea of transcending mundane reality in order to perceive The Truth in all its infinite glory. God knows, I’ve heard myself spout off like this in my more preachy moments, but I would never do so on National TV!
Brand is displaying other visible signs of manic Ni : the mad staring eyes that look through you instead of at you, the sheer intensity of his rambling monologue, the constant self-referencing and Messianic zeal, and the total and absolute disconnect with his audience. He’s channelling one of those scary Evangelical preachers pumped up with the righteousness of their message:
“I have seen the One True Light and now everyone must join me or face Eternal Damnation in your ignorance!”
And the final clue is in the language he uses: sweeping generalisations, universal concepts, condemnations of anything that is sensory-based, all served up with a great deal of abstract New Age mumbo-jumbo. There is no concrete detail whatsoever; no attempt to ground his vision in reality or explain how to apply his ideas in any remotely pragmatic fashion. Everything he says gets chunked up to the highest possible level of abstraction – this is what pure, unadulterated Ni looks like, when it has lost contact with the other type functions or any other moderating influences . It’s both hilarious and terrifying at the same time!
In his less manic moments, Brand shows signs of dominant Fi, so my guess for his type is ISFP.
Good points, Stewart. The most telling thing, by my way of thinking anyway, is his rejection of sensory things. That is the piece that said to me SP more than anything. Also, my knowledge that he had been very very into sensual things before this epiphany he has had about all reality that he has to spout from a podium to all who will listen for the last few years on end. Yes, I agree it is Ni chasing, but it did not necessarily follow for me that it was an ISFP thing or even a tertiary thing. I was more of the mind that it was an aspirational position thing (Berens and Nardi). That position always struck me as the correct one for chasing and coveting. It is fun when it is relaxed and used casually, but kind of disastrous when it is embraced and held onto. So, I thought he may be an ESTP who entered the gateway into his more inferior functions. The ESTP who had all those videos on type and then disappeared after a bunch of psycho rants would be an example of this I think. I thought I saw him chasing Ni. He talked a lot about and to INFJs too. His name was A.J. or E.J. something or other. People kept saying how intuitive he seemed for a sensor also. It does not much matter to me. I see an SP in a manic and ungrounded state and for me that is approximate enough. The main thing is the man is wholly unwell and lives in that place on a regular basis. It is tough to watch.
@Rita That’s the thing though Russell doesn’t live in that place, he just embodies it and he is really just an attention-lover. Look at interviews with him or his own youtube channel. This video Blake posted is him getting really into his spiritual stuff but its not the same as EJ Arendee at all.
Russell’s manic in the sense that he loves talking loquaciously and loves capturing people’s attention. Look at him gesturing to the audience, he’s always on show, he’s enjoying the showiness and intensity of it. But he’s not struggling with those thoughts and urgency. Not to say that he doesn’t believe in it. he does, and he does care about it.
So Olivia,
Lovely name by the way. What type do you think he is then? Or what type did you think before Blake indicated ISFP?
I do know he is an entertainer and can embody a persona, but this spiritual video is consistent with his tone and the points he makes when doing social and political commentary videos he has done for the last few years.
He is highly irritatingly entertaining, yes. I do believe he is not mentally healthy based on my observations through the years. Additionally, he has acknowledged the following about himself: he was a lonely child, was overweight as a kid and had an addiction to chocolate, was bulimic, a cutter, an alcoholic, heroine addicted, cocaine addicted, and has had sex with thousands of women. Oh, and at least one televised homosexual experience in a men’s room. He makes inappropriate sexual references to his interviewers, and like Robin Williams references his penis. He is ungrounded and because he is firing so fast and furiously so regularly and for years on end without taking a breath, I feel that this cannot be sustained without disaster. That said, I do think he is well intentioned, a comic genius, and strives to go up brain rather than lizard brain. You are right about E..J. being different than Brand but I noted some similarity I can’t quite put my finger on.
I understand he is taking a break from the public eye, so when and if he reemerges we will hopefully see something slightly more grounded from him. From another angle, the mirror neurons that all people have to varying degrees seem to be turned off. ” Trauma can do that or early development insecure attachment. There is some truth in persona (or so I believe) when that cloak is worn as long and as consistently as he has done. Kurt Vonnegut’s words come to mind: “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
Like I said I like him. I think he is going to burn out in a bad way if he does not get centered in some way. Just my take. I have to admit, I am looking at things through a dark lens due to deaths and major illnesses in my immediate circle. I may be projecting disaster where none exists. I actually hope so.
Thanks Rita 🙂 Actually, after reading all these comments I think I’ve been convinced that he’s actually an ISFP…. I thought he could be an ESFP for a while. I don’t think I realised how diverse the ISFP type can be, actually any SP types for that matter. I know two ISFPs and they both look like ISTJs and quite different from Russell.
Oh yeah he’s had quite a wild life and some dark periods like you mentioned, and I think he’s also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But he doesn’t ever seem to burn out, he always bounces back with the same energy. I’ve always found him kind of fascinating so Im happy we got to analyse him here :)) And I really like that Vonnegut quote.
Although just to be clear I wasn’t trying to say that this is all his persona and that he’s a different person underneath. I was trying to point out that he’s not actually as invested in all this spirituality stuff as it comes across in this video. hes actually said a few times that he wishes people would remember that hes primarily a comedian and that hes not trying to become a politician or spiritual leader or something. I dunno I just feel like if it was actually a tertiary Ni thing then it would be more deeply important to him. That might be wrong though
I don’t think you’re wrong at all, Olivia. That rational makes a lot of sense, to me at least.
@Rita
Interesting mention of EJ Arendee. He had much more obvious Ti, but all your points about an SP chasing Ni then withdrawing are great.
Hmmm. I am often deeply moved by the inferior intuition of ESTPs. It is so awesomely ?ghosty? how to describe…. it is so incredibly human:)
Anyone find they are deeply moved by some types’ inferior function. I am curious!!!
Hmm I thought I checked this site yesterday, and I’m surprised I didn’t see this new post until now so I’m a bit late.
Anyway, I’ve known of Russell brand for a couple years, and my initial knee-jerk reaction was that he was an unhealthy druggie ENFP with a messiah complex.(he actually had a comedy tour with a similar name around the time I first heard of him.) He definitely has Fi.
I never even considered him an introvert because he seemed way too extroverted to me, but that obviously doesn’t mean he isn’t one.(duh :P) Pretty much every introvert I know is quiter and more contained than he is, at least the ones that I know of. ISFP with a Ni-Fi loop? I’m not sure what that would look like, but I’ve known an unhealthy ISFP before and that person did share some qualities with RB, minus all the New Age fluff ranting. He was also a bit quiter, and somewhat a bully. The best description I could give was that he was a quiet bully, and a bit jelous as well. Toxic. Didn’t really see much Ni from him either, so that probably isn’t the Ni Fi loop you’re talking about.
So I’d say my first choice would be that he’s a crazy manic ENFP on some kind of mission, or my new guess based on what I’ve read here is that he’s a serious Ni-Fi loop ISFP. Definitely an FP though 🙂
P.s, I don’t think drugs are really an ENFP thing, but ISFPs are much more likely to use drugs the way RB did, I think. That may be a hint.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. “ISFPs are much more likely to use drugs the way RB did.” Yes, it does seem to be true. Any type can use drugs and they do, but there is an extremity in some ISFPs use that goes beyond what most others would do. He also shifts away from his “internal vision” a lot and very randomly. Examples are: telling Katy Perry he wanted to divorce her over text. Agreeing to have a documentary done about him, agreeing with the producer/director that she maintains control of the content, and then promising this same director to appear at Austin’s SXSW premiere. At every turn he sought to control the content and he backed out of speaking at the premiere to promote the film as he had agreed at the very last minute. The man is a train wreck and it is a persistent pervasive pattern and not a one time kind of thing. I found him somewhat sickenly fascinating at one point. Now, I just feel the need for a shower after watching him. I don’t think he is likely to get better based on his need for experience and freedom. He is trapped in that desire. Really sad, because he does have a brilliance about him.
Oh my goodness!, this is getting so interesting!! If Russell Brand isn’t ENFP (as I guessed in my previous comment), then that completely undermines my entire understanding of the ENFP as characterized in the “ENFP: Hippy, etc.” article. He seems so quintessentially ENFP to me. Very melancholic-sanguine. But anyway, in making adjustments for Blake’s comments:
So, not Te tertiary, and introverted, and intense. Ni seems to be the ‘intense’ function, and a function concerned with “The Truth.” But Ni tertiary = ISTP and ISFP. I can’t imagine an ISFP ever being so wildly amped up, or so verbally dextrous and showy. (Maybe if they were triple-Gemini? Or triple-Aries, or something?) And certainly not an ISTP. And Russell Brand seems so savvy and playfully self-promoting (which I don’t mean as a judgment!, just an observation). He also seems (at least by reputation, which doesn’t necessarily mean that much) more anti-establishment than establishment-indifferent, and the latter seems more ISFP to me.
But I guess of those two, I’d go with ISFP, with the Se aux (awareness of immediate reality) being shut off, and with Se aux + Si id accounting for his interest in yoga, and along with the Ni / Si (tert/id) tension, being the source of his impassioned interest in the limitations of the senses and the limitless truth that lies beyond them (Ni being concerned with what lies beyond the visible). I guess maybe an ISFP could simultaneously be soft, stylish, charismatic, and militant enough to demand a revolution based on elevated spiritual consciousness. Well, actually, lots of types could. But I guess it could work, -ish. And some of the arguments for ISFP in the comments seem convincing, re: impassioned Fi-Ni loop.
What other introverted functions are left for introverted tertiary, not including Ti? Fi…? Fi seems more like ‘My Truth’ than ‘The Truth.’ But anyway, if the tertiary is Fi, then INTJ or ISTJ. The notion of him as ISTJ is hilarious. 🙂 INTJ? That seems absurd. I cannot for the life of me imagine an INTJ displaying so much spasmodic energy, although I suppose they can be lacking awareness of their interlocutors, and Te in aux could account for the cold and precise terminology he uses to explain his ideas on truth, not to mention the seething coldness with which I’ve seen him attack hecklers during stand-up routines. Eh, I can’t even. INTJ makes no sense to me. I would sooner say INFJ (which seems plausible, actually- if Fe were turned off, especially), if Blake hadn’t previously suggested that Ti is out of the question.
Si tertiary? Doesn’t seem to me that it’s a function that’s super concerned with The Truth in tertiary position, or in any position, for that matter. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to make a case for him as an INTP or INFP.
So if we’re looking for an introverted type, then I guess I’d also settle for ISFP? An extraordinarily outgoing and loquacious one?
If Blake hadn’t given us the hints that he’s given, I would have said ENFP with little reservation. I’m glad he actually made me remember a few things that I wouldn’t have noticed or paid much attention to otherwise, such as that EXFPs often have a noticeable Fe id, and that seems to be very lacking in Russell Brand if he actually is an EXFP. That could just be his mental “unhealthy-Ness” showing though, not sure. That makes IXFP quite possible. I did find him entertaining to listen to in a few of his rants and interviews, and others not so much.
Am I the only person who doesn’t find him obnoxious and preachy? I see him as more passionate than preachy, he’s not telling anyone what to do or passing judgments on anyone, and I don’t think he’s putting himself on a pedestal, hes trying to make it clear that all humans are equal and capable of many things, and at one point he even recognises his own materialistic tendencies. He doesn’t get angry or defensive at all.
This video is a compilation called Russell Brand Awakened Man so the clips have been chosen specifically. Also in all of these clips he is in an interview situation, in one of them it’s even a panel dedicated to him (Brand in Politics), so of course he’s going to speaking a lot, and the clips are so short and have been chosen to focus on Russell so we don’t even get to see how he interacts with others fully or how he is in a proper conversation.
As for the eye-contact, I see him making a pretty equal amount of eye contact to the audience, the camera, and his interviewer respectively. Most of the time in these clips he’s either talking to a large audience or the camera is focused solely on his face so how can we even tell how much eye-contact he’s making? And having watched other interviews he’s very good at making equal eye-contact to everyone around him.
I just think a lot of the conclusions being made here are based on superficial things seen in this edited video, well he’s ranting on and on about spiritual stuff so he must be in the grip of tertiary Ni, Fi-Ni loop? He rants in the same way about politics and social issues less related to spirituality and is generally quite passionate and often exuberant in the way he speaks most of the time.
Is Ayn Ran “Fi-preachy”?
Is Ayn Rand “Fi-preachy”?
@blake
About his subpar observance of the people he is seen speaking with… So true. You can tell in large part by how the interviewers look like they were silenced by being lectured. You can see some literally close their mouths. It is a one way rant. It isn’t that the interviewers are put off but that the intensity kind of blasts them.
My gut reaction after watching the first minute of the video was – over the top Ni.. These are things i think in my head but never say out loud before i temper them with Fe and Ti.. So if we’re looking at Ni in the tertiary, he would be either ISFP or ISTP.. Definitely not ISTP.. Too nervous and he lacks the logical coolness of Ti.. So must be ISFP.. Those were my thoughts during the first minute or so..
Then confusion set in.. I felt like he was too verbally expressive to be an ISFP.. They’re way more inclined to doing and showing rather than using language.. Brand, on the other hand, has quite a way with words, which to me was kinda annoying.. That’s probably because i wish i had half the verbal dexterity he displays.. I would feel a lot better about myself if i could put my thoughts out there without being held back by the yoke of shame.. The annoyance was jealousy (?), but of a supercilious kind, cause i did not feel like his words carried as much weight.. Although pointing at a universal energy, they seemed to come from a rather human source.. Anyway.. The style of delivery did not add up to ISFP..
So why not look at other possibilities.. What if it was Ne not Ni? Ne using types who have an affinity for monologues delivered at lightening speed? ENTP, ENFP and ESFJ..
He couldn’t be ENTP cause the same verboseness from an ENTP either makes me laugh (when they’re trying to be deliberately Fe) or get super annoyed (when they bypass Ti and Fe their Ne) or deeply admire them (when they use Fe to express their Ti).. And their aim while expressing themselves is quite different from what seems to be motivating Brand.. ENTPs just kinda want to be loved.. They love the attention but they don’t really preach.. It’s more like guiding with a non-existent leash (like Mr. Feynman) or extremely incisive exposition (like George Carlin or Stephen Fry).. And lets face it.. ENTPs just aren’t romantically spiritual.. Their spirituality is way more objective and natural.. They could say romantic things if they feel like it could benefit their argument but they wouldn’t really feel it deeply.. Brand surely feels what he is saying..
Could he be ENFP then? Maybe.. His bohemian appearance implies that (but we remember how Blake initially thought Jimi Hendrix was ENFP and then changed that to ISFP).. The fact that he claims to have an extremely restless mind that yoga helped calm down (Ne-Si).. His themes are ENFP.. Anti-establishment and new-age sprituality.. He kind of reminded me of Alan Watts, only as far as his spiritual ideas are concerned (i rather like Alan Watts though, who i think might be an ENFP).. But.. There was something un-smooth about him.. ENFPs are slick and charismatic.. Brand is not.. There is a forced-ness in his expression and an edginess in his look.. He lacks the stability and peace he claims his practices have given him..
ESFJ.. Doubtful.. A real lack of Fe.. Fe would make one conscious of how receptive the interviewer/audience is and would’ve added a modulated quality to his choice of words and tone.. But he uses pretty much the same language and tone in every sequence.. No Fe not only means not an ESFJ but also means not ENTP, ENFP (their Fe id makes them quite unhappily aware of things they wish they weren’t aware of, like how they are being judged or an imbalance in the emotional state of the group), or ISTP..
Fi in the top four with heavily romantic Ni-ish brand of philosphy? Back to ISFP then.. If the ISFP was rejecting their auxillary Se, is this what they would look like? Probably.. There were moments in the video when he was operating in Fi and these moments seemed the most genuine and reminded me of my ISFP friend.. In fact, there was a specific statement about happiness being momentary and fleeting.. My ISFP friend has spoken along similar lines before.. Also, isn’t experiencing love one of the priorities of an Fi dominant? But the difference between INFP and ISFP is that INFP has an idealistic, fantastical notion of love and are more likely to be in long term relationships (Ne aux), whereas, ISFP is a lot more wary of love and prefer to indulge in varied sensual expriences in the moment (Se aux).. Which could explain the sex and drug addiction..
But.. He’s sooo confidently expressive..
And that’s what my mind kept doing.. Going in circles..
Still going with ISFP though.. Maybe i should give some credit to Ni and gut reactions for a change..
The comments here give me hope that i might have finally typed someone (i don’t personally know) right based on instinct rather than over-analysis 😀
It’s neat to follow your train of thought on this. My explanation for his surprising verbal dexterity is that it’s a sign that he’s in character; and he’s well-rewarded with attention for being in character, so he does it a lot. The ISFP I know is a talented mimic and becomes much more animated and fluid if he’s “doing a bit” or playing a character. It’s amazing when it’s part of a musical performance, funny in conversation, tiresome when it’s compulsive Robin Williams-style nattering, and grievous when it’s the id-soaked Truth about this that or the other thing.
There’s probably a spectrum… I find Brand very funny when he’s acting (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, e.g.) but there’s no bright-line distinction between the character he plays there and the Truthseeker role he’s locked into in the video.
I guess the clear point illustrated is that tertiary functions suck as reality principles.
This raises the question of what in the world Ne minimums would look like. Daily furniture adjustments?
@Stuart: re: “This raises the question of what in the world Ne minimums would look like. Daily furniture adjustments?”
Yes. Not kidding. Well, maybe not DAILY, but the spirit of your comment is absolutely spot on.
I have a female ISFJ friend. Every few weeks I notice her FB status reads “Had a few hours to myself, so I cleaned and rearranged the house. LOL” She has otherwise lived and worked within the same rural 10 mile radius for her entire 34 years on this planet, as far as I can tell.
Sweet girl, I enjoy her company and friendship, but I could never live with her (which is why we’re friends and not dating).
“The ISFP I know is a talented mimic and becomes much more animated and fluid if he’s “doing a bit” or playing a character. It’s amazing when it’s part of a musical performance, funny in conversation, tiresome when it’s compulsive Robin Williams-style nattering, and grievous when it’s the id-soaked Truth about this that or the other thing.”
Now that you mention it.. Yes!
My ISFP friend loses all inhibitions when he’s holding a guitar.. And he is hilarious when he’s in a good mood.. He sucks at replying in group conversations.. But he shared a movie script he’d written once and that was wordy and quite amazing..
I’ve seen him deliver his “id-soaked Truth” about a very sensitive topic in a global peace sense and it was quite problematic and had me fuming on the inside.. I’m glad not more than three VERY UNDERSTANDING people heard this.. It’s quite scary and irritating how they’ll use their Ni to support a delusional Fi idea and hold on to it like leeches.. But i guess i annoy people with my Tertiary Ti just as much.. 😐
LOL @ “Daily furniture adjustments”..
The ISFJ i know is quite a sweetheart.. Very reserved and correct all the time.. Lives a simple traditional lifestyle.. She does have a wild streak though.. I’ve seen her go on crazy bike rides.. And she likes a lot of gore and action in her movies and TV shows.. Hmm that sounds more like weird Se now.. 😛
Blake, I must admit I get confused by MBTI functions (not their definitions but rather their placements). The reason is because of all the different brands (not the Russell variety;-)). You have the id function in the 6th placement, but here are emphasizing the tertiary. Your definitions regarding introversion and extroversion are different. Others also ascribe a variety of meaning to various placements in the functional stacks. It gets messy and I will admit ignorance to sort through these various takes on personality. However, the end result may be the same through different means. My question is: if we are correct in assuming you are onto ascribing ISFP to Russell Brand, does this jibe with the way you see an unhealthy ISFP?
“Unhealthy SFPs of the introverted or extroverted variety typically fall into two major groups (and for the record, GoT has a bunch of unhealthy SFPs, including Arya, Joffrey, Jamie, and Shae):
First group: those who over-indulge their sensual appetites, leaving a wake of broken relationships, bad feelings, and hurt people in their wake, along with a mounting pile of debt due to their reckless spending and pursuit of pleasures they cannot afford. These are the shopaholics or the bed-hoppers, always searching for their next physical buzz.
Second group: those who become so obsessed with their individuality that they are rebellious to any outside influences, care nothing about other people, and pursue their goals with single-minded ruthlessness, regardless of whom it hurts along the way.”
This material comes from Funkymbtifiction. It seems to square with what I know of Russell Brand and two other ISFPs. I know another healthier one who has well treated bi-polar and has multiple resources for dealing with it. I maintain she is healthy and not a train wreck despite a mental disorder. With all of them, despite their multiple gifts, I find I must keep distance. There is something sticky about each of them. Does that make sense for an INFJ? Am I getting the dynamics wrong in some way do you think? Or is this reasonable?
It’s reasonable.
For a more prosocial manifestation of a similar impulse, consider George Harrison’s song Pisces Fish (the whole Brainwashed album, if you’re ambitious). Can you imagine how obnoxious that material would be if he were lecturing on it instead of singing?
Exactifuckingmundo!
Because there is a similar dynamic between Brand and George Harrison (of Beatles fame).
Now Harrison was mostly pretty subdued in interviews and such, but, he absolutely does have this same dynamic that Brand has as writ through the tertiary that I’m alluding to. Very preachy.
And you’re right, it is much better for this type to express this through some form of artistic/physical expression than outright.
Imagine George Harrison preaching the lyrics of the song While My Guitar Gently Weeps rather than writing a really cool and moving song about such things contained therein.
Now amp those things he’s talking about up to Russell Brand levels and you got yourself a winner!
Incidentally this Russell Brand illustration makes sense of why Judy Davis is INTJ, not ISFP as I’d conjectured.
@blake – How do you account for Brand’s physiognomy? Every ISFP I can think of (to include my mother, so I feel I have a robust set of data points to draw on) is a stone wall of inexpressiveness. Brand has always come across as a bundle of hyperbole and tense energy threatening to blow him to smithereens at any moment.
Lana Del Rey, George Harrison, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gloria Steinem . . . all long and lithe like Brand but generally put together nicely and they tend to be understated in their expression of their inner states almost to a fault. Brand always looks like he barely managed to brush his teeth, much less dress himself, before bounding out the door to chase down whatever he’s chasing that day.
I will note, however, that my ENFP mother-in-law took an IMMEDIATE shine to my ISFP mother the very first weekend they met. More shockingly, my mother took a shine back, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her take a shine to anything that wasn’t a cat or a dog. So there’s some sort of collusion between those types.
ISFP locked in Fi – Ni loop. ‘Skipping’ his Se function as he might find it too shallow?
Watching it again and it really seems like he’s bashing on Se ‘the senses’, ‘the mundane’… As if he wants to skip it and wants to dive into (an underdevelopped?) Ni.
Does Brand still look like an ISFP in this video?
Olivia, thanx for taking the time to find and post this video which is pretty much the awesome antithesis of ISFP cognitive functions, in the tertiary throws of oblivion or otherwise anything in this universe or the next. This guy is an ISFP like Judy is an INTJ = totally never.
Blake, you’re totally on point about INFJs, but this ISFP misnomer misidentification mistyping is crazy. Ni in the tertiary looks for patterns that subjectively support a specific agenda. No other possibilities, no plight of the homeless, no plight to anyone by thyself. It’s an internal function that supports the internally focused Dom process Fi in ISFP. Which means the only problems the ISFP thinks about is their own, and how they’ve found a pattern that supports their opinion that their bad feelings are everyone’s fault but their own a la Judy. Seriously.
Olivia, thanx for taking the time to find and post this video which is pretty much the awesome antithesis of ISFP cognitive functions
How so? There is nothing in this video that Olivia posted that drastically changes the impression of him from the former video that I posted. This video to me shows Russell in a great insularity via the two functions of Fi and Ni. In short, it is very subjective what he is talking about. Not clear.
ENFPs are clear via Ne and Te, which is why they make great satirists. They have true remove. It’s also why they make great comedians in general. I don’t find Brand to be humorous. Rather, I find him to be angry and on a mission. He definitely has a missionary zeal to him. And he keeps on hammering away at his point in an very Ni manner. Ni equals burning ardor. It is rather serious.
Ni in the tertiary looks for patterns that subjectively support a specific agenda.
Exactly. I see that very much in this guy.
No other possibilities, no plight of the homeless, no plight to anyone by thyself.
Disagree. Just because these are introverted functions doesn’t mean that they only apply to one’s self. They can apply to other selves (subjects) and I think you’re suggesting that an ISFP would have no interest in the plight’s of various marginalized peoples. Very untrue. It’s just that they tend to approach it very subjectively. An ISFP can definitely be an advocate or enforcer for a marginalized and tyrannized class of peoples when they sense that external power structures (Te) have gone too far in some way. I have wrote about this dynamic of Fi in relation to Te in this article on introverted feeling. Fi can be VERY REVOLUTIONARY and non-compliant when it senses that external power structures have gone too far.
Now, I believe that ISFPs are mostly quiet as a matter-of-course. I think for the most part they will go along with the system (Te) if it doesn’t transgress too sharply the values that an Fi dominant type holds dear. But, once the pendulum shifts I do think an ISFP can be very oppositional (or contrarian) and be one of those people that says “Fuck the system!” or “Down with the system!”. The problem in this case is that they often lack the savvy and the balance to be moderate about societal change and will often be the ones that change from the gently and meekly compliant to a fucking crazy bug. Extremes. And these extremes are fired and fed via the Ni tertiary loop. Don’t you know that those madmen “crying in the wilderness” (to quote Jung on Ni types) are Ni types of one sort or another? That’s Ni, not Ne. It’s fiery, burning, insular, and possesses utter conviction. Jung also said there would have been no prophets in Israel if not for this function.
So, it is not true that the only problems as ISFP thinks about is their own. That is a misnomer.
Yes, I agree, Blake, with basically everything you said, especially due to the fact that all xxFP types use Fi as their dominant cognitive process, regardless of whether they have an I, E, S, or N filling in their first two type-letters. And Fi is a counterphobic motherfucker, par excellence, to anything or anyone that is being too pushy or otherwise shitting all over one’s Fi cognitive process sensibilities, respective to the person, of course.
I elaborated more in a different response I just posted 20 minutes ago that clarifies Fi’s subjective nature in its empathy in my personal observations. FPs are some of, if not THE most, empathetic people, if empathy is defined as singling out someone or a group of people who are being bullied and/or completely mistreated and/or completely getting shit on, with the Fi user. It’s Fi’s mission in life to say, “Am I getting pushed around right now? Is someone pushing against my values? Is someone pushing against your values along with me? There’s strength in numbers…let’s form a coalition and blast the Mfers right outta here!”
But of course, as you said, they don’t have the resource management or otherwise people oriented external organizational skills to be immediately successful, and I find they generally prefer to work behind the scenes to campaign anyway. And, I’ve found, that the less cognitively developed they are, as you contend about Brand’s lunacy, the less energy they have to take on any causes publicly, unless they have about 1067 allies who are validating and self-validating with them. Even their own very personal causes will be nothing but bitch fests with close friends, they don’t have the Te confidence to get up on a platform and be (gasp) questioned. They’d rather employ someone to do their dirty work. I find that’s usually an xxFJ Fe cognitive process type, in my observations.
Which is why I totally agree with you about Brand being an Fi on crack-laced steroids and probably hGh who knows and who cares. But I still contend he’s an ENFP. An ESFP would work as well. I actually sort of like that idea. ISFPs just don’t want to be bothered, unless it’s to stroke their hair and tell them it’ll be ok. Brand is LOOKING for negative feedback and not traveling in a pack of allied troops. Not an ISFP, but we can agree to disagree. I would be disappointed otherwise.
Yes! And I also wanted to show that he is primarily an entertainer, even when talking about serious topics. He’s taking the piss dressing up as a Messiah and his comedy tour being named “trew world order”. I think he’s smart and he actually does care about what he preaches but he will always be a goofy attention-seeking comedian before any of that.
The compilation vid Blake posted is just him at his most rambly and intense, and that intense quality is not an Fi-Ni loop outburst of inner truth, its someone who is really good with words and likes hearing their own voice and being in the limelight whilst talking about something he does care about to an extent.
If there’s no way Stephen Colbert can be an INFP then I don’t see how Russell Brand can be an ISFP…
” its someone who is really good with words and likes hearing their own voice and being in the limelight whilst talking about something he does care about to an extent.”
I totally agree, Olivia. And that person, whoever he/she is, is never an ISFP, even in the safest of companies, let alone in a highly stressful interview/stage environment. I’ve never known an ISFP or ISTP that could put it out there for debate with random people.
They dance with the devil they know, and her super quiet/shifty/guarded when questioned otherwise. Just the simple facts.
Ni in the underdeveloped tertiary doesn’t get more vocal, it gets quieter and more determined to prove a subjective, erroneous point, among trusted people. Dom Ni seeks a safe place and validation from Ni on ISFPs (and Dom Ti likewise for ISFPs).
They are not campaigning for social or societal change as individuals. It’s just not their deal.
Shlopadoo (sorry if I spelled that wrong) you are spot on about an INTJ not feeling appreciated and using tertiary Fi to determine that and getting out of it by using Te and getting back down to getting shit done.
The difference is that INTJs are concerned with what works in the outside world, and they feel shitty when they are surrounded by people with objective opinions that just don’t cut mustard in reality. They have an ability to cut the shit and find a solution, and when people mess with that its like, a rail against the tertiary Fi value system. It’s so clear to them, how to make everything work for everyone, but when people get stuck on themselves it F’s the Big Picture up for the INTJ, and cue the what-the-fuck-ever-stubbornness.
Incidentally, my very best good friend is an INFJ male (I’m an INTJ female) and I swear, he’s the INTJ, and I’m the INFJ when we’re sorting things out regarding any problem. He goes to the bitter point, and I see how other people feel. But in the end, I say what needs to be said to anyone who’s pissed us off. I’m done with it, and don’t care about feelings and I just want the solution. He seems to languish in the emotional ramifications of ripping into someone, even if it really needs to be done for sanity’s sake (and we agree on that based on his evaluation of the situation). It’s an interesting paradox, because 90% of the time he’s the “thinker” and I’m the “feeler” on very real, personal levels in our conversations. But I jump up and get shit done and say shit and rail people in front of everyone, regardless, especially to protect us both, and I don’t care who doesn’t like it. I’ll deal with them later.
Ni-Te vs. Ni-Fe. It’s really a pretty phenomenal thing. But ISFPs are not exactly in this orbit, regardless of their tertiary Ni. They’re kinda lost to us, honestly.
If there’s no way Stephen Colbert can be an INFP then I don’t see how Russell Brand can be an ISFP…
Stephen Colbert has true ironic detachment. Brand does not. He tries to come off like he does. I don’t feel it. I feel a burning missionary zealotry slightly covered up with a humorous nonchalance.
This might be a dumb idea but I was thinking maybe he is just an ENFPish ISFP. When at work, he acts like an ENFP. That’s plausible because when I think of comedians, I immediately think of ENTPs and ENFPs (also ESTPs and ESFPs).
When he puts down his comedian facade, he is an ISFP overusing Ni.
Not a single person thinks I am an INFJ. Everybody thinks I am a “T”-user-no-doubts-about-that; people might gag if I reveal that I am actually an NF. And that’s because I use the INTJ mask most of the time, and interestingly that seems to go along with what I see in my birth chart…Given the field I am working in right now, there isn’t much of a chance for me to put that INTJ mask down…
But maybe this idea is total bullshit, I don’t know!
Which means the only problems the ISFP thinks about is their own, and how they’ve found a pattern that supports their opinion that their bad feelings are everyone’s fault but their own a la Judy.
Interesting. I thought that this actually goes for INTJs and not ISFPs. Now I wouldn’t know myself because I am not actually an INTJ…but I know one good INTJ and few potential INTJs, and I think what you described above is an instance of overusing Fi. Us (Me) vs. Them thing: catastrophizing that they are the only precious thing in the world that believes in X or does X while the rest of the world does not agree with them…sometimes a thinking like, “how dare they not appreciate me, when I do this? I am the only selfless one here and everybody else is selfish. This group is fucking me over.” I’ve experienced this before and it pisses everybody off because when INTJs do this, it comes across so damn childish and stubborn. Sometimes even arrogant/self-entitled. This circle-jerky behavior stops once Te is employed…
IDK if the above instance actually is an instance of Ni-Fi looping in INTJs…correct me if I am wrong.
Hi Nicki,
” its someone who is really good with words and likes hearing their own voice and being in the limelight whilst talking about something he does care about to an extent.”
This is actually a very accurate description of my younger brother, who is definitely an ISFP type.
However, he was very much as you describe in his younger years – quiet, unassuming, modest and sensitive. We were very close as children, there is only about 19 months age difference between us. My mother has a rare blood type, and during my birth her immune system developed antibodies to my blood type. This is completely treatable now, but in the ’60’s when we were born, the antibodies would mount a full scale attack if the second child had a similar blood type to the firstborn. My brother only survived due to multiple blood transfusions, and my parents decided not to risk having any further children. Luckily, he did not suffer any permanent impairment from his traumatic birth, but it did slow down his physical development to a certain degree.
Both my parents have a preference for Feeling (INFP father, ESFP mother), so the fact that both their sons had preferences for introversion and feeling (I am an INFJ) was never an issue. Our innate temperaments were fully supported and encouraged, so our early childhood years were very happy.
However, it soon became apparent to Mum and Dad that my brother was actually quite different from their quiet, well-behaved and dreamy eldest son! His Se auxiliary function must have kicked in at a very early age, manifesting as boundless physical energy, restlessness, inquisitiveness and a keen nose for trouble! He was never malicious or deliberately naughty – like many young Fi-dominant kids, he was simply a bit naïve, extremely trusting and supremely optimistic in most things.
To cut a long story short, he did not do very well at school (our education system is poorly suited to the needs of young SP types). Having to follow in my footsteps can’t have helped his confidence either – I was only a year ahead of him and we attended all the same schools. Like many INFJ’s, I soon developed into a gifted student and was at the top of the class for most of my school years. I was also seen as a well-behaved and cooperative child (thanks to my Fe auxiliary’s ability to schmooze), and I unintentionally set up my brother to fail when the teachers tried to rein in his Se exuberance by using me as an example of model behavior.
In actual fact, I was far more mischievous and badly behaved at school (in small ways), than my honest and extremely moral kid brother. Healthy dominant Ni has many excellent virtues, but a moral compass is not one of them. Possibly the only time Ni ever suffers moral outrage is when it gets caught out. When Ni is intent on mischief, it usually relies on stealth, misdirection, trickery and illusion to slip beneath the radar and hide in plain sight. Under the shelter of my carefully constructed “perfect angel” image, my sneaky Ni was free to get away with blue murder!
As for my brother, he only really began to shine after he had left school. He took menial jobs to support himself whilst he attended night classes to complete his education. Don’t be misled by the hoary old cliché that correlates high IQ with the intuitive types: my unassuming ISFP brother is at least as “traditionally” intelligent as I am. He at least as capable as me when it comes to learning and understanding abstract theory, but his incredible Sensing-based ability to accurately store and recall all the tiny details is something I will never be as good at.
I would guess that he has developed his tertiary Ni to an unusual high degree for an ISFP type. He works as a highly regarded IT systems project manager for a large multinational corporation, and his salary package (commensurate with his position) is so far above anything I could even dream of as a (supposedly intelligent) forensic scientist that it is almost a joke.
There is of course a price to pay for extending oneself way beyond the traditional limits of our innate type: my brother works excessively long hours, and I suspect he habitually overuses his tertiary Ni, due to the cerebral nature of his job. Thanks to Blake’s latest funky little typing exercise, I can now see how he might have gradually slipped into an unhealthy Fi-Ni loop over the years. In many ways, he seems to have lost touch with his auxiliary Se – he is now seriously overweight (obese even) from lack of exercise – and his social circle is almost non-existent.
He does not appear remotely similar to the manic Russell Brand on a superficial level, but he now often slips into a certain single-minded obsessiveness ; for example he may drone on endlessly his fascination with the Arts and Crafts movement. This has become his main passion in life; his breadth and depth of knowledge in the area is extraordinary, but it sometimes borders on obsession. Maybe this is another version of overblown tertiary Ni? He certainly doesn’t seem to notice when his audience has stopped listening (my Ni brain can only tolerate a teeny-tiny portion of excruciatingly detailed Arts and Crafts minutiae before it switches over to autopilot mode to preserve my sanity!)
Stewart,
Thank you so much for sharing that glimpse into your childhood and things learned from your family and sibling relationships. First off, I’m sorry to hear of the conditions that welcomed your brother into the world and I’m glad that he is OK.
I took some time to reflect on it all and I have to say that I’m very glad I didn’t have an older brother INFJ now 🙂 I wasn’t too keen on school and the subjectivity of the supposed importance of the material and teacher’s arbitrary grading. Tertiary Fi coupled with dominant Ni makes one more snotty and obstinate in one’s own values than sneaky per se (although I would sneak if it worked better than using overt auxiliary Te to get the situation handled, but I’m not very good at it and that’s a whole different story lol).
I would say in my opinion that your brother is actually more in the grip of an overworked Te 4th function than overworked Ni tertiary. I’ve known, intimately, 3 ISFPs. One is a high school drop out who worked menial jobs her whole life and never thought it was fair to have to do that, although she didn’t think school was fair either and refused to further her education at all in order to get a “respectable” career (her words). She has seen a few people be “successful” (financially) with a high school education and figured she would be one of them, apparently without much effort on her part.
She connected the dots using tertiary Ni that education doesn’t necessarily equal financial success. What she will never understand is that educated people generally have the option of financial success, whether or not they CHOOSE to live a more simple life, whereas high school dropouts generally have a harder time finding financial success and keeping it—one must be very skilled to make money in this world. Now those skills may be inate and therefore transcend traditional education, but one must have a skill none the less to expect other people to pay them money in order for them to achieve “success”.
Her dominant Fi feels as though she deserves everything that “everyone else has” and her auxiliary Se is very wet in the world of material things without her tertiary Ni able to see that she is actually in charge of her own destiny. Ni, for her, only sees what Fi sees, and minor parts of that, being in 3rd place. She is not very developed, cognitively, as you’ve probably gathered, and her 4th place Te is basically non existent. The only things she gets done are 5-alarm emergency situations that, you guessed it, she ignored and allowed to fester because she felt like it wasn’t her problem, when indeed it was.
Now the other ISFPs I know very well are men, one with a bachelors degree and one a medical doctor. Both very quick on the draw (Se auxiliary) both very successful financially, and both are able to handle projects and manage people much like your brother, it sounds.
However, I don’t see that their Ni is exhausted. Rather, I see that their 4th position Te is exhausted. They literally check out when they get home and hyper focus on one hobby or pursuit that is all THEIRS, subjectively (Dom Fi I suppose) and they both have problems with overeating, over drinking, and I would say have addictive personalities when it comes to booze and cigarettes. They seem to not know when to start or stop.
This I think is more the auxiliary Se indulging from the exhaustion of management and getting stuff done with a very weak Te being over used for 10 hours a day. They would both rather completely check out and live on an island with their hobby, and probably would, but they are men, the providers for their families, and they simply keep using Te because they damn sure feel like they don’t have any other choice. But it isn’t comfortable for them, and they are almost, dare I say, resentful about having to do all this hard work all the time. Hence, the overeating and drinking and cigarettes, I suppose. They both see through relief function Ni that a simple life free from getting shit done all the time is possible, but they can’t make enough connections in the outside world due to subjective Dom Fi to figure out how to implement a plan for themselves that works. But their personal focus(es) are very singular.
What this has to do with Russell Brand I have no idea lol, but this has been a nice conversation 🙂
Hi Stewart, thanks for sharing that, and I’m sorry to hear that your brother has been struggling. I think ISFP’s come in loads of different varieties, my dad is one and he comes across as a complete ISTJ, he’s never really opinionated about anything, but he does often ramble about history and literature and doesn’t notice when people are bored. He also has that ENTJ mean side to him but it’s very passive-aggressive.
So I guess Russell Brand could be one too. There is a kind of bullying aspect to Russell Brand sometimes. But it still doesn’t seem right to me. You said your brother has a certain single-minded obsessiveness and he’s obsessed with one main passion. That’s not at all how Russell Brand is, he talks about a bit of everything in not that much depth at all. Like I keep saying this one video of him is quite misleading. He doesn’t ignore Se at all, I think he’s trying to make a point in this video about how there is more, but it doesn’t mean he completely devalues Se. I think the point that he’s trying to make is that once you realise there’s so much more than the Se world and that we’re all a universal consciousness, you can become more aware of Se and more present in daily life. Kind of like Eckhart Tolle, after he had that deep realisation he went and sat on a park bench and appreciated his surroundings in bliss.
Yes, he does. Don’t be fooled by his ENxPish overlay. He does not have true Ne remove. And he definitely does not have Ti remove. That ENxPish impression is coming from his birth chart, which has Aries and Gemini greatly emphasized. That roughly equals ENTP. But, he is not a true ENTP. I’d say the blend of his birth chart with his ISFP temperament kind of comes out to ENFP as a rough equivalent, but, true Ne dominance is more ironically removed than Russell is in this video or the other one I posted.
Thanks for the kind words Olivia.
As you can probably tell, I have a great deal of admiration and respect for my brother, and I love him dearly. I wouldn’t necessarily say that he is struggling to cope with his demanding job, because in many ways he is coping better than I am with the unacceptable stress levels created by the peculiar demands of the modern workplace. He is very clear-sighted about the toll it has had on his health, and is planning for an early retirement, so that he can start exercising again and shed some excess weight.
But these are essentially pragmatic concerns which play well to his Sensing strengths. It’s in the more subtle, intangible Ni realm where he has something of a blind spot. His tertiary Ni may serve him well at work, but I don’t think he is anywhere near as comfortable with applying Ni to personal matters. He gets quite irritated if my own Ni strays too far from proven ideas, so I try to tone it down in his presence.
More concerning is his failure to perceive how isolated and eccentric he and his also introverted wife are becoming by neglecting their extraverted functions. This overdone introversion led to a serious row on the final day of my last visit to the UK, and all over the most trivial of things (a stained hand towel!). My brother sent his wife to basically ambush me as soon as I walked into their house after returning from visiting our parents. No “Hi, how were Mum and Dad”; just an angry tirade about their precious towel! I apologised several times to try and defuse the situation, but she kept on and on about how expensive the towel had been yadayadayada, until I finally lost my temper, took out my wallet, and hurled it at her feet saying “if its money you’re after then just take it from there and buy another sodding towel!”. They slunk away after that (I don’t think they’ve ever seen my fiery side unleashed before), and basically went into hiding until my partner and I left to catch our return flight to New Zealand.
Our relationship has still not recovered from this extreme overreaction on their part, and they never apologised or seemed to register how irrational and inappropriate their behaviour was. Only a few days before, we had all returned from a marvelous tour of Northern England that my partner had arranged and organised so that we could all enjoy visiting historic sites together, culminating with a famous Arts and Crafts mansion near the Scottish Border, which my brother would never have been able to otherwise visit as he doesn’ t drive. I don’t think I ever seen him so excited: it was all we could do to drag him away from the place before it closed!
I’ve shared this story partly to illustrate the damage that unhealthy or inappropriate use of Ni can leave in its wake. My own well-developed dom-Ni understood immediately that the whole towel incident wasn’ t really about the towel, and that there must be something deeper going on. There had been plenty of subtle clues of the real issue during our shared travels (that my ENTP partner also picked up on) and they were all centred on my sister- in-law. My brother’s Italian wife is a strange person, very kind and gentle for the most part, but also neurotic and moody at times. She is almost certainly another INFJ, and I suspect that she is actually the dominant partner in their marriage.
My brother’s tertiary Ni is blind to these subtle undercurrents, and so his preferred Se takes everything at face value. Human behaviour must frequently seem bizarre and inexplicable to his vulnerable Ni, and it also leaves him wide open to his wife’ s emotional manipulations.
Sorry, typo…dom Fi seeks a safe place and validation from Ni in ISFPs (and Dom Ti likewise for ISTPs).
It’s hard commenting on an iPhone lol
@Stewart
“Healthy dominant Ni has many excellent virtues, but a moral compass is not one of them. Possibly the only time Ni ever suffers moral outrage is when it gets caught out. When Ni is intent on mischief, it usually relies on stealth, misdirection, trickery and illusion to slip beneath the radar and hide in plain sight. Under the shelter of my carefully constructed “perfect angel” image, my sneaky Ni was free to get away with blue murder!”
I am starting to understand what Blake means when comparing infjs to infps. It’s not that infjs are going around doing bad things— it’s that they if they calculate an advantage, they won’t hurt inside by acting amorally.
I think I have an example of this. I have an infj who lets us just watch her kids day in day out when we travel from far. We start to feel used. I expect her at some point to suffer inwardly or express gratitude, but it takes me a while to realize that a) she is in part blind to what we are doing (Se=inferior) b) when she does realize it which isn’t often, she actually thinks great I’m gonna take advantage to do some stuff. She is being calculating. Neither one of us (hubby and me) is really capable of that (intp, infp). We can’t just be like f-u I am gonna go do my thing while I leave my kids with you. When we do it we express sincere gratitude and it’s like a conscious favor that we have asked, and we ask it once a year only. We are a couple who never get outside help (no family in our town) whereas this infj has constant help with the kids.
What triggered this memory is your comment that you will suffer moral outrage if caught. I think if this infj were to notice that we see what she is doing and the effect of it, she could start feeling epic guilt etc. I feel like only at that moment would the guilt hit her and it would be a storm that I don’t want to be there for.
@Stewart
“In many ways, he seems to have lost touch with his auxiliary Se ”
Maybe you can nudge him, knowing what you know, to indulge in Se when he can:) Or often praise his Se-qualities so he remember his particular “magic”.
Well it is hard when most of your time is in a job that requires tertiary use to avoid loops, but maybe he can retain appreciation if his Se. That’s tough. I think I see lots of people who are in these loops just cause of their jobs. Not sure what the solution is short of changing careers.
@Stewart
@Stewart
“In many ways, he seems to have lost touch with his auxiliary Se ”
Maybe you can nudge him, knowing what you know, to indulge in Se when he can:) Or often praise his Se-qualities so he remember his particular “magic”.
Well it is hard when most of your time is in a job that requires tertiary use to avoid loops, but maybe he can retain appreciation if his Se. That’s tough. I think I see lots of people who are in these loops just cause of their jobs. Not sure what the solution is short of changing careers.
Hi Lunar,
I’ve just been revisiting this thread and found your kind suggestions, which I missed the first time. Since that time I seem to have rebuilt my relationship with my brother and his wife, thanks in large part to my ENTP partner. He kept the lines of communication open by frequently texting and phoning them both, but kept it light and friendly. And he innately knew how to reach my brother’s Se auxiliary without any prompting from me.
They are now tentatively planning to visit us in New Zealand next year, which is a good sign. They’ve been out here a couple of times already and really love the natural wonders and laid back Kiwi lifestyle (what’s not to love about that?)
Your comment about enforced overuse of tertiary functions is appropriate for me as well. My work as a forensic scientist requires extensive use of Ti on a daily basis, so it’s all too easy to fall into an Ni-Ti loop even though I’m aware of the problem. There are certain warning signs which indicate when this is happening to me, such as repeating an analytical test over and over because Ti thinks it isn’t “perfect”, or spending too long researching work-related issues online.
I don’t always pick up on these straight away, but once I descend far enough into the loop Se kicks in and I may find myself obsessively cleaning my workspace or going through my emails deleting old messages. The latter activity is so utterly pointless that it serves as an unmistakable wake up call that I need to take a break!
Your entp partner sounds awesome:)
“That ENxPish impression is coming from his birth chart, which has Aries and Gemini greatly emphasized.”
You got his birth chart by looking up his birthday?
I have a hard time fully accepting astrology… it’s just not how my mind functions at all even though I am not a priori against it either, but if his chart predicts him to possibly look ENTPish compared to ISFPs, wow. That’s actually pretty cool.
@Niki
“It’s an internal function that supports the internally focused Dom process Fi in ISFP. ”
I think this shows misunderstanding of Fi. Fi can be universal values as well. I know isfps that have philosophies such as all religions are the same, even the nonreligious are religious in a way, etc., it’s all just one and the same thing. Under this umbrella, you have plight of the homeless, you are no different than me even if you are on the streets etc. So internal Fi values can sound very general actually. They can end up too general almost.
Yes I agree. Being that I use tertiary Fi as part of my cognitive makeup I’m very aware of the value system that everything is checked against. I do it with everything…I need to feel like something has an inherent value or worth whether it’s a cause, a crusade, a class, or simply deciding whether it’s worth my time to engage in a social activity with certain people. But I don’t use Fi the way ISFPs use Fi that is..,it must be worth something personally to them to pass muster. I have yet to see (and again, I’ve spent most of my life around one or another on a daily basis) an ISFP take on a cause that doesn’t it some way directly relate to something regarding themselves. The world is a very personal place for them, in my opinion. The ones I’ve been around don’t talk about the plight of humanity or pervasive sadness or even the plight of their very best friend unless it somehow related back to them. INTJs have quite a lot of emotional room for values and “should” statements and they are ones to lead a cause (especially out of anger over the way what they perceive to be an underdog group or individual has been treated). There is no fiercer verbal assault than an INTJ sticking up for someone who has been, in their opinion, mistreated. I would know.
True, an ISFP might say it’s a shame that people are hungry or the world is the way it is and might be refreshingly liberal about agreeing with one meme or another regarding a solution. But I’ve never seen one really get after a cause that didn’t affect them personally in their daily lives. Not to say it could be done. But I think dominant Fi, like dominant Ti, feels and thinks what it wants based on some internal compass, and then tertiary Ni sees what it wants to see, which is generally one solution–their solution—to a problem that they feel they’ve been caught up in haphazardly. I think what they feel is endless and they try to look for the person or reason or whatever that is causing them their feelings, especially when it’s negative.
I just don’t see Russell doing this, but that’s just me. I see him taking on major topics and blasting them open and if his Te is in 4th position a la an ISFP I have no idea how he hasn’t exhausted himself. ISFPs need a lot of time and space to come up with their argument, generally, and generally slink away when people start to question them. They feel the way they feel, they’ve found the solution that works pretty much for themselves through tertiary Ni and you better validate them or else you’re the new enemy in town. Not really an open minded bunch when it comes to how they are so affected personally by the world.
My ISFP friend who’s a medical doctor would love to live in a second world, tropical country but doesn’t want to practice medicine in the “second world” because it’s not lucrative. But he understands the plight of the second and third world not having adequate access to physicians and medical care. He champions his buddies from med school who did military service or a few years in Doctors Without Borders or some other such humanitarian cause. He thinks people SHOULD be doing those things. But, he makes good money in the States, and he’ll be able to retire to a nice island at 45 and not live in a hut, so he ain’t gonna volunteer. But, it’s super nice that other people do. Do you see my point?
All that being said, Russell Brand could be an ISFP on acid, but I don’t see him having the verbal skills he has. ISTP, maybe.
Just my opinions. It’s so interesting that so many people see the same guy a different way!
I always think of intjs as particularly good at sublimating Fi into huge projects. So they can affect great change with their zeal and vision. I think Fi dominants use Fi better closer up. I think it is a question of weak Te. Fi to Te versus Te to Fi. It is like knowing a problem but not the solution. Also strong Te is not good close up one on one ( well imo). So intjs may actually be drawn to wider scale stuff like building a program etc. And yeah Ni tertiary simply has to be more limited by the dominant. Guess that is part of course of the functional makeup. I mean in terms of usefulness in a far reaching way, gotta say strong Te is really an asset.
Nikki, it might also be an Se thing. More immediate arena is their domain. About Randell I got no idea. I can’t tell what he is really like at all.
Lunar, you make some really good points about Fi and Te going in both directions of a respective function stack. And the “immediate domain of Se”. Well said! You’re very observant and profound 🙂
To Niki and Lunar:
I agree that Lunar is observant and profound!
@Nikki and Rita
“I agree that Lunar is observant and profound”
Geesh thanks:) I am obsessed. My phone has put an icon for Stellar Maze.
“over-oxygenate”
That is so great. Yes, dominant fi users have some of the “tightest” feeling personalities around …. I know cuz I’m one! It feels “tight” internally as well, it’s not just how it comes across. It’s very “choking” (to match the oxygen analogy) to constantly analyze. I am sure intps really know this feeling being introverted judging as well.
Whereas N-dominants feel looser…. I picture it feels looser internally, must be nice, easier to breathe. So refreshing…. Great company!
Fi is tight, Ni is intense. The two together is tight and intense!
@Stewart
Introversion can wreak all sorts of havoc in family reunions because the shadow episodes are extroverted and really “push” on others and then also serve as triggers for more episodes.
I am convinced that sometimes it is ONLY in the functions. In fact, this is my main motivation for the mbti. I have seen really weird shit happen in downward spirals. When time passed, I had to conclude that someone had had an inferior episode ala mbti sense and sometimes several had had episodes.
You see adults turning into mere children or beasts. What is most scary is if a person refuses to reflect or introspect afterward.
What is a stressor for an individual isn’t for another etc. One person’s blind spot hurts others etc. the explosiveness of the inferior functions belie the situation etc. hide the original trigger. The tangled mess is really startling sometimes.
One person’s problems get transferred to another and on and on.
Yeah, that is so true, Lunar!
It’s been my observation over many years that major inferior function activations are rarely confined to a single individual. Because these grip episodes are so unpleasant, distressing and potentially catastrophic, our psyches are innately wired to detect the warning signals emitted when another person is slipping into their Shadow, and will take evasive action if at all possible.
Millions of years of evolution have imbued this early warning system with an incredible degree of sensitivity and discrimination; and it can be observed in other mammals as well as humans. For example, when we are reasonably happy and healthy we can easily distinguish a minor hissy fit from a full-blown eruption.
Once the episode is in full swing, however, it ripples outwards like a nuclear detonation, and has a better than 50:50 chance of triggering the inferior functions of everyone in the blast radius.
Extraverted inferiors are exactly as you describe: they explode outwards as if a hand grenade had just been tossed into the room.
Introverted inferiors are more like an imploding black hole: they exude an irresistible gravitational force which sucks everything in range into the dark void.
However, both types are equally devastating in their potential for wreaking havoc, and are more than capable of leaving some serious collateral damage in their shitty wake.
It’s often very healthy and healing to see the funny side of a minor grip episode, once we’ve reestablished normal functioning; but there is also a deadly serious side to the problem of the inferior.
There is a well-reasoned argument among many eminent Jungians (originating with Jung himself) that modern culture’s refusal to recognize and acknowledge the problem of the inferior function (both on an individual and collective level) may ultimately have created the volatile world we now inhabit, with almost unimaginable levels of human misery and ecological disaster as collateral damage.
This online article eloquently discusses the ongoing inferior problem:
http://typeindepth.com/2011/10/the-inferior-function-as-a-moral-issue-2/
OK, enough already with the Ni-preachy stuff – I’ve almost reached the end of a particularly stressful and intense week, and I desperately need to allow my own inferior Se to go out and partay.
Keep it real, dudes!
Stewart,
Thank you so much for that article. I am going to save it and refer to it often. Projections and inferior function expression and the relational interplay is like thought candy with multiple layers to be discerned.
Also, I have to say the comments that you, Lunar and Niki have made about your personal encounters and relationships with ISFPs completely align with my own. I too have an ISFP brother who I adored, but he is 11 years older and it is easy to adore someone who breezes in and sings to you quickly made up songs about “Rita the Frog” and introduces you to Jimi Hendrix when you’re 3. He is a fabulous musician as was my ISFP ex-husband. They are gifted people and I so wanted to be like them. Then I learned that I do not have the stomach for that much chaos and eccentricity. I can handle a lot, but these guys are some hard core mad adventurers. I admire them best from afar. Stewart, I can easily believe your sister-in-law is the dominant partner. However, I might venture that it may only appear that way. ISFPs can be crafty in a passive kind of way and somehow push without seeming to activity on their partners. Anyway, the stories and paths of the ISFPs in our lives may be different, but there is something very familiar in all of your stories.
Russell Brand seems to have an ISFP part in him, but I am with Niki and Olivia? I am also not sure that is his true type. It is dominant enough in him that I will not argue. Artistic experiencer is how I would describe his type if I were to do it without a letter code. Is that close enough to your way of viewing him? Or would you add something more?
@Stewart
“our psyches are innately wired to detect the warning signals emitted when another person is slipping into their Shadow”
That’s comforting. Makes me want to study the signs for each type:)
It’s true that their seems to be this lead up to loss of control. I wonder what one can do at that point to help the other. Because there is a point of no return coming.
Yo, Starlings and Starlingettes!
Se all chillaxed to the max after grooving to the latest banging dance thumpers.
Gonna crash now peeps – seeyas later!
@ Stewart, thanks for sharing the link with us!! I’m reading:) Enjoy your Se! Wiggle your toes!
I will read it when I have access to a bigger screen. The phone is not cutting it. But yes, thank you.
Blake,
Goodness knows I’ve rambled enough in past posts that I am certain you think my loquaciousness is evidenc of an ISFP nature gone loopy. I will keep this question brief. If you are so inclined, would you perhaps address here or in another post about ISFPs discuss their attitudes to materialism and envy. Some others mentioned some aspects that reminded me of those I’ve been close to (some I’ve been exposed to since birth). In all of them I observe envy and competitiveness to varying degrees. All of the ISFPs I know show that artist or musician temperament that everyone has heard about. They do not play well with others who have similar talents or at least for long. Also, while many of the ones I know reject mainstream society and values, they still seem in awe and also resentful of those who have more. Is this a typical trait for ISFPs. Or is it just in the handful that I know or have known and that is just a coincidence?
For what it’s worth, these all describe the ISFP I know.
Thank you Stuart. It is helpful.
@Stuart
“There’s someone who figures things out,” they invite you to think.”
You wrote this about istjs looong ago. I find this so sweet a way to look at an istj in that mode you called Fi-grippy.
Am gonna borrow this mentally the next time I am stuck listening to one of those “reports”.