A few weeks ago I took a Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI] test for Torgersen’s class. Just tonight, I finally looked through the results and read my profile. It feels like an epitaph or ultimate conclusion to my autobiography. I am a full-out INTJ.
The nickname for this type is “Scientist” or “Strategist” and it is shared by approximately 1% of the population. Thus, 99% of those you meet perceive the world around them differently from the way you do…. [You] thrive on conceptualization, principles, design and intellect…. The NT’s world view is one of laws and principles, and as a result, could be a skeptic and is often unaware of the feelings of others…. An NT is not prone to offer praise or acknowledgments, since that would be stating the obvious and could be interpreted by the receivr as manipulative and underhanded…. Stress factors for the NT temperament would include incompetence, loss of control, rigidity, absolute statements, inexact language and inefficiency.
The last statement hits me the hardest - there is simply no better of way to describe each type of behavoir that drives me nuts. Or at least bugs me, though I can easily remain silent and just keep going along myself. But there’s more…
Some of history’s greatest inventors and researchers have shared your kind of patient and certain trust in their own ideas.
The last part of that catches me off guard as an interesting turn on invention. I had always perceived that our history’s greatest minds were somehow inspired from outside of their influence - as if Einstein had some mentor giving him the answers and Henry Ford was reading a factory set-up manual from Egyptian pyramid-building or something.
You motto could easily be: “The difficult I do immediately; the impossible only takes a little longer.”
So completely absorbed do you become in your work, that it is often painful to be roused from your thoughts or torn from your creative process by the interruptions of others… Your mind is going a thousand different directions, on the verge of your next realization, and it is hard to snap back to reality sometimes.
Anyone who is around me enough knows that I frequently end up staring. To be honest, my mind is not racing at those moments, but seems to me to slow down to a near halt in a thought. In a way, it is a decomposition of an individual concept and in those moments I often discover something more elemental or my thinking and habits, or of whatever I was considering. I don’t mean to make that sound too chimeric, but I get some productive insights during those staring sessions.
In love with learning and fascinated by the very concept of intelligence, you have an inner drive for performance and you continually strive for self-improvement. You do tend to set high standards for yourself, keeping a mental list of topics you ought to learn, complete and master.
I hate to say it, but I actually write them down. It is a nice feeling to say “On this date, I mastered this whole portion of human understanding, even adding a few perspectives of my own.”
The dilemma of interpersonal relationships for Introverting-Intuiting-Thinking types, is their tendency to not recognize the needs of others for sentiment, support and sympathy…. As a loner, you tend to not need as much emotional qualities as others. Living in the world of the intellectual, you tend to operate first in a more objective environment, and it may be hard for you to imagine how important emotions, appreciation and support are to others.
This actually has come back to bite me several times, particularly so with friends who have more sentimentality than I do, which has seemed to be every friend of mine, save one or two.
In summary, and perhaps this serves as a swift conclusion to an entire night of self-discovery or self-definition, seeing these statements about me is something more than a horoscope. Something closer to a diagnosis, I would say.
Anyways. Having come across this document while studying for Torgersen’s test, I entirely got off track, but not without proper cause. Now I must return to my studies and coffee. And, fyi, I decided to shave off a month’s worth of facial hair, just because. I think I look like a new person.
Music: Torgersen lectures