Sometimes I think that there is a huge growing edge for the INFJ where one can switch out from applying Fe that is directly in the service of Ni (which is more of what we naturally/instinctively do) and can switch into a more pure Fe mode. 

To simply engage with other people in a way that isn’t tethered to analysis, prediction, or anything intellectual in its quality, but to simply be here now with others and to connect with them as they are….in the moment … without going overboard and overly caretaking and/or advising them in overprotective ways. 

This is definitely our type’s growing edge when it comes to hitting the sweet spot of utilizing Fe.

A mode of deep listening is required within the framework of a dynamic/fluid conversation.

Regarding biases/projections, it is important that the person doing the typing recognize that he/she will not be completely devoid of bias and to accept this fact. At the same time, by listening deeply and asking thoughtful questions that may address one or more cognitive functions, the person doing the typing attempts to minimize projection as much as possible and aims to put the focus first and foremost on dialoguing with the client in the type of dynamic ‘dance’ that can naturally occur within the typing session.

When listening to the client comes first, the presence of bias can be minimized as best as humanly possible.

Bias can never be eliminated but only reduced. So by aiming towards accuracy and towards hearing the client and matching the responses (as best as possible) to what is known of the 8 function model, some great progress can be made towards landing at a type that fits the client in a natural way.

So much energy goes into studying and debating the accuracy of various personality typology methods.

What if typing didn’t have to be that complicated?

Imagine… the consternation and stress many people experience when they are typed incorrectly could become mostly a thing of the past.

There is a lot of discussion these days about bringing objectivity into the typing process.

To remove bias from personality typing, and make the process as objective as possible, then how about we just let AI do the typing?

Carl Jung created typology to be used as a tool for individuation, so at first glance this concept might seem oxymoronic, if not downright appalling. I’ll address that in a moment, but first let’s take a quick look at the technology aspect.

The technology already exists. It simply needs to be tailored for typology.

For example, HireVue created assessment and video interview softwarethat eliminates the need for resumes and traditional interviews. It is now widely used by employers

Applicants upload their LinkedIn profile. Then, if it passes the AI screening process, the applicant receives an invitation to play 12 online games that assess cognitive, emotional, and social traits.

The next stage is a digital one-way interview. The applicant answers a series of pre-recorded questions via computer or smartphone from the comfort of their home.

AI assesses the video and analyzes the speech-to-text translation for the words used and notes how often the person uses the word “I” instead of “we,” and picks up on other EQ skills.

The bias, fatigue, projections, hunger pains, etc., of a human interviewer are removed from the process. At the end, if selected as a finalist, the applicant talks with a real human.

It’s not a stretch to see how a similar AI approach could be used for personality typing.

To be statistically valid, one would need a sample size of at least 350+ people for each personality type. The text of those interviews, facial expressions, tone of voice, and emotion detection become part of the algorithm. The algorithm would pay attention only to those factors that have proven to predict a particular type. Regular audits and testing would be done to eliminate bias in the algorithm.

It removes the typologist bottleneck. AI could type people at scale much more quickly than typologists ever could in person.

One could easily find outliers and those would be followed up with by a human typologist. Refinements and adjustments made to that typing would be entered into the algorithm to improve accuracy in the future. It would be very iterative.

The data could be used for more than just typing people.

You could do a search of the data to find out characteristics and trends of a particular type.

You could compare, say, ENTP’s over the age of 65 to those under the age of 30. How often does an ISTJ mention books compared to an INTP? Are INFJ’s really only 1% of the data set? And so on.

It could eliminate the anecdotal profiles that proliferate today. There would now be actually data to drive the writing of the profiles.

This is similar to customer experience/feedback management software by companies like Qualtrics that businesses use to analyze the thousands of phone calls, emails, live chats, survey responses, etc. they receive every day.

Users of this software never long to return to the days when humans had to attempt to acquire this data through manually listening to a smattering of call recordings and taking a guess at what was upsetting customers. Instead the desire is simply for more and more data from AI.

The data can be served up in something as simple as a word cloud. You also have the ability to drill down deeper and find detailed insights. Instead of having to spend time finding data, there is the luxury of analyzing it instead.

Again, it is easy to see how this could apply to typology as well.

Why humans can’t be objective

Daniel Kahneman makes the bold claim that “humans should be replaced by algorithms whenever possible.”

This is because human thinking is too noisy and narrow to be objective:

Wisdom is breadth. Wisdom is not having a narrow view; that’s the essence of wisdom. It’s broad framing, and a robot will be endowed with broad framing.

And I really do not see why, when it has learned enough, it will not be wiser than we people because we don’t have broad framing. We’re narrow thinking, we’re noisy thinkers, it’s very easy to improve upon us, and I don’t think that there is very much that we can do that computers will not eventually be programmed to do.

Let’s also not forget how much projections get in the way of objectivity. A projection is when we observe our own unconscious tendencies in other people. We tend to be unaware of our projections.

Marie-Louise von Franz, Carl Jung’s close associate, said:

Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships.”

OK, fine. Robots can type people. But should they?

According to psychiatrist and Jungian analyst John Beebe, The Association of Psychological Typing says it’s unethical to type someone without interviewing them.

Therefore, follow up with a human typologist would be imperative. But it there would be the luxury for the conversation to focus on the inner work needed for individuation and living out one’s type, and less about the typing process.

And, dare I say it, there could be less conversation about disagreeing about type and more about integrating it.

Knowledge of one’s personality type has to slowly seep inwards. There is the gradual slow reveal of your type as you receive confirmation of it through dreams, engagement with your shadow side, and one-on-one work with an analyst/coach/therapist, etc.

Those not interested in that kind of depth would at least be likely to learn insights about themselves they may not have have otherwise. Personality typing could benefit more people who know little or nothing about typology.

Even though Daniel Kahneman says that humans won’t always prefer emotional contact with other humans over robots, I suspect for the foreseeable future it will be real, non-artificial intelligence that will help people integrate their typing.

And, in the final analysis, your psyche will always know more about your true type than any robot or human ever will.

___________

Sources:

AEI public policy January 11, 2018 blog post about Daniel Kahneman

On Being interview with Daniel Kahneman

Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung

Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type by John Beebe

Net Prompter System Podcast interview with HireVue’s Kevin Parker

As an INFJ, when I receive an Ni insight, it is generally of a non-verbal, symbolic nature.  It is often very right-brained and it gives me this gestalt insight. It is as if this insight comes to me in this large block or chunk.  It is highly raw and often gets right to the point. But even as it gets to the point, it is still very holistic and is often hard to break down.  By its nature, it is very symbolic and taps into some very intuitive archetypes that can often come from the collective unconscious. It may have a narrative that I cannot fully articulate, but that I can feel quite viscerally.  

It is my Ti that aims to put language to my insights.  And to do that, it often feels like I am taking an axe and chopping away at that block of insight until I can find just the right words to articulate my thoughts.  Since my Ti is my tertiary function, which simply doesn’t have the same adeptness level as my dominant Ni, there are times when I will struggle to find the proper articulations necessary to verbalize the idea.  It is often a hit or miss proposition.

When I can capture a certain truth, using primarily Ni with a backup of Ti, it usually is something non-verbal that I can just so readily vibe that it is in alignment with something either true, good, or beautiful.  Ni simply knows the essence of these three qualities, and when something external taps into these states, something inside me simply goes ‘Uh Huh!’ with this sense of inner rightness. While Ti certainly taps into this assessment of the truth, especially when something makes logical sense, it is Ni that simply reaches a state of unwavering gnosis.  So when I am learning something and arrive at a point where I just GET IT, it is Ni that is involved with this process. However, because of this, Ni feels amorphous. What makes this really challenging is that it is very hard to justify the rightness of an Ni-derived truth. It is hard to take truth and to thin-slice it in a way that is fully explainable or articulable to the outside world.  To people who want all truths and all data to be verifiable, this can be a daunting task because it involves chopping up that Ni chunk after all.

As a result of everything that I’ve just described, I strongly suspect that Ni-dominants can sometimes become stuck with the innate challenge of explaining, justifying, or articulating a deep symbolic truth.  To other types, they may be able to attain the language to do this. Even to Ni-doms, ever so often, they can succeed at articulating these ideas. However, at other times, they are at a loss for words, since thin-slicing gestalts is not always attainable.  I tend to think that many Ni dominants will lean more towards writing than speaking, because in writing, they have the advantage of having time on their side to hopefully find some novel context (or canvass) by which they can create some mode of explaining their insights.  But even then, it can sometimes take months to years to fully describe a vision in all its splendid details (in ways that Si users might be more able to encapsulate).

With all this being said, Ni is likely the cognitive function most interested in addressing some of the most panoramic and big-picture archetypal themes that exist.  It is the pleasure of the Ni user to deal in paradigm-changing domains and to influence these areas in notable ways. So because these types will often think about grand concepts and themes, it is not uncommon for the grandness of these themes to be quite challenging to language in a highly detailed way.  This might appear frustrating at times for such an individual, as I’m sure that they would love to be able to concretely explain every archetypal and symbolic understanding that they encounter. However, undoubtedly, this pales in comparison to the Ni-user abandoning the complex for the sake of only dealing with highly routinized or simplified objects.  They want and crave to grapple with the complexities of life. To do so carries the utmost sense of meaning and purpose. For this sake, with all its payoffs and drawbacks, Ni-users would gladly say that grappling with the complex is well worth it!

The second (auxiliary) cognitive function is, in archetypal terms, your parent function. This is the function you can call upon when “parenting” others.

Someone who is an ENTP or ESTP type, for example, has introverted thinking (Ti) as their parent function. They use this function to help others define their problems more sharply and bring clarity to the situation.

An INFJ or ISFF has extroverted feeling (Fe) as their parent function. When advising others, they use this function to relate to the other person and understand their motivations.

Things get more complicated and nuanced, however, when factoring in the age of the other person and their relationship to you.

Keep the Hero in its proper place

When interacting with a peer that you get along with well, it is fairly easy to remain in parent function mode when providing assistance or interacting with them.

When dealing with the elderly, a vulnerable person, your own parents. or a peer that you dislike, however, it is all too easy to slip into Hero (lead) function mode instead. The hero function’s more proper role is to serve in developing your personal identity. When used in an interaction with someone you are ‘parenting,” it can overwhelm them.

For example, an INFJ has Hero introverted intuition (Ni). When they have an insight to share with someone, it is best if they filter it through their parent function first and not just blurt it out. That filtering process will quite often result in the person keeping that insight to themselves until the time is right to share it.

In their zeal to help a person in need, an ESTJ or ENTJ might overwhelm the person with too much extroverted thinking (te) style solutions.

Things get even more interesting when pondering which functions you use with your parents. Karma and baggage from childhood may trigger you to use the Hero in anger, or regress into using the Child function, all too often. When you find yourself triggered in this way, it will reveal growth opportunities. If your parent is elderly, try using your parent function with them as much as you can (assuming your relationship with them is fairly healthy).

If you find yourself feeling impatient when helping someone, or if it is obvious that you wounded them or were unable to help them, check to see if you inadvertently slipped into Hero mode instead. Of course there are more extreme situations when, in order to get through to someone, or to set a boundary, you may need to invoke your Hero, with a strong helping of Anima/Animus, and bypass the parent function.

How to (not) use your parent function with children

When interacting with young children, using your child function instead of your parent function will help you meet them at their level.

One of the ironies of parenting is that using the parent function can backfire. This is because the shadow function of the parent function (the Witch/Senex) can get activated. The Opposing Parent contains the scripts of things we received in childhood from our own parents. Complexes sometimes run amok here. Before you know it, your parent function can be overtaken by your Opposing Parent function if you aren’t conscious of it. And if the Hero function gets thrown into the mix, it will escalate into a contentious situation.

For an interesting twist, or to break a negative pattern, if you are a parent of teenagers or young adults, try tapping into the child’s parent function. You might be pleasantly surprised at how well an ISFP teenage daughter can redecorate a room for you or pick out an outfit for you in a store. A 23-year-old ESFJ son could be just the right person to plan the family next vacation. An INTJ child could help you learn the best practices of a particular video game. And so on.

An important factor of children in regards to typology is that they can help you type into your Anima/Animus (inferior function) in a healthy way. A daughter may see her father’s feminine and softer side in a way her brother, and even her mother, does not. The same is true of mothers and sons. A mother may be able to better tap into her masculine energy if she has a son.

How to parent yourself

Re-parenting – or, parenting yourself – is an important part of maturity. Eventually one has to take care of oneself and stop relying on, and blaming, their parents for their problems.

However, you can’t use the parent function to parent yourself very well. You’ll need the parent functions of others for that, along with your other three functions, especially the Hero and Anima/Animus functions.

The right archetype for the right situation

A great thing about viewing the functions as archetypes is that it makes it is easier to call upon the functions deliberately – and to avoid using a certain function – as needed,

Keep in mind no two people use the same parent function the same way, because the parent archetype means something a little different to each person, so therefore there isn’t a “right” way to use a parent function.

There is a delicate geometry involved when interacting with others and the unique expression of their own functions. Respecting this will result in fewer collisions and more harmony and self-awareness.