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Lenore Thomson's INTP type description

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#1 ·
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INTP Profile by Lenore Thomson

Like ISTPs, INTPs depend on Introverted Thinking, a form of reasoning that operates on the basis of immediate perceptual information. They, too, are able to grasp, all at once, the structural logic of a system or process. ISTPs, however, relate to the outer world with Extraverted Sensation, so the perceptual nature of their reasoning is apparent. They obviously need visual and tactile contact with a process in order to understand it. INTPs relate to the outer world with Extraverted Intuition, so their need for direct experience is not as clear.

Such types are interested in the logical possibilities of structure: the way form and context interact and exert change on each other. Thus, they’re more at home than ISTPs with theoretical reasoning. INTPs do, however, require visual and tactile contact with a system in order to reason properly. Their primary method of exploring structural possibility is almost always a form of design or model making. Such types compose music, render blueprints, perform lab tests, work up magazine layouts, draft construction schemes, and so forth.

Because their focus of attention is on possibility, INTPs are likely to be more interested in the idea that animates a system and its impact on reality than they are with the system’s objective utility. In fact, there’s an old joke, intended to implicate economic theorists, that offers a bit of insight into the type’s approach.

A chemist, a physicist, and an economist are stranded together on a desert island with only a crate of canned tuna to keep them alive. The problem is how to get the cans open. The chemist suggests putting them in the ocean for a while, until the salt compromises the tin. The physicist says, “No, let’s point the cans in the sun until they explode.” They both turn to the economist, who says thoughtfully, “Let’s assume we have a can opener.”

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Galvanized by Intuition, INTPs will strive for theoretical systems that include all possible variables, but such theories can fall short of application in the real world. Accordingly, these types can be frustrated by the need to defend their ideas in terms of Extraverted logic, which begins and ends with material application. Even when they develop high-level communication skills, INTPs aren’t really talking about the same things that concern left-brain Thinking types. Or they’re talking about them in a way that leaves too much room for speculation to suit an Extraverted analytical mind.

The biologist Rupert Sheldrake, for example, developed a revolutionary theory about recurring patterns in nature, which derived, he says, from an attempt on his part to picture God less as an embodiment of unchanging law than as an evolving organic process. This is the sort of metaphor an INTP might use to make clear that the underlying idea informing a project, but it has no means of evaluation in left-brain Thinking terms.

On the other hand, because INTPs see logical implications in terms of systemic change over time, they are often well ahead of the curve on issues of cultural evolution. They seem like ENTPs in this respect, but the two are actually mirror images.

Like all Extraverts, ENTPs take the outer world for granted. They use Extraverted Intuition to gauge a situation’s possibilities, then strategize with Introverted Thinking to bring them about. For example, the man who developed the Wal-Mart conglomerate might well have been an ENTP. He Intuited the venture’s commercial potential, then worked out the structural design for making it happen.

INTPs approach reality from the other way around. They use Introverted Thinking first, to get a sense of a situation’s structural pattern, then use Extraverted Intuition to recognize its impact on what actually exists. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, recognized how prefabrication could lead to superhighways, suburbs, and shopping malls long before Wal-Mart has even a gleam in an entrepreneur’s eye.

Clearly, most people recognize that color, space, light, and order have a great deal to do with their experience of a restaurant or a housing project or a government building, but most of us are not thinking about the internal logic of our technical creations. An INTP designer, however, might spend a lifetime exploring Western culture’s attachments to angled frames as opposed to ovals.

Because INTPs represent only 1 percent of the population, they’re not well understood, and their interests may be just rarefied enough to make them feel isolated. This sense of isolation is compounded by the Introverted nature of their thought process. All Intorverted P types run the risk of losing contact with objective reality apart from the areas of knowledge and experience that suit them.

Unlike the ISTPs, feelings are not usually visible in the type’s demeanor. In fact, these types may find it difficult to know what they’re feeling until they experience themselves as out of control. Their ability to sort out their emotions and recognize their meaning is not well developed.

For this reason, romantic attachment can pose a problem for INTPs. They usually develop enough Extraverted Sensation to engage in experiences that draw on their primary skills, but they don’t fully appreciate the objective image they display to others. And because Extraverted Feeling is their least-developed function, INTPs can be shy and awkward about affectional connections. At midlife, they may abruptly realize they haven’t given enough thought to issues of marriage, children, or domestic stability. They may not even be certain about what they require from a partner. Their sense of predictability involves matters of impersonal design; the personal realm strikes them as utterly without rational order.

Thus, such types tend to marry other INTP colleagues or find themselves blindsided by attraction to people who can make up their deficit in Extraverted Feeling. These latter attractions are not easy to sustain in the long run. INTPs require a great deal of time to be alone with their thoughts. They’re also likely to overlook, or disregard as unnecessary, the ritual signs of affection that Extraverted Feeling types depend on for a sense of well-being.

Most INTPs need more contact with the Extraverted nature of their secondary function. They’re accustomed to using their Intuition only to assess logical probability in a system. They have to make a deliberate effort to apply it to themselves – to see the effects they have on others in the larger picture, or to entertain possibilities outside their familiar framework of expectations.

Without the Extraverted ability, INTPs can get locked into their dominant function, and their least-conscious function, Extraverted Feeling, gets too far away from their will and aims. Such types are gradually flooded with unconscious desires for others’ approval and appreciation, which undermine their impersonal approach to life.

This internal drama is a healthy one. INTPs that are pushed away from their usual frame of mind can get some perspective on their accustomed behaviors. Like all types, however, they don’t experience unconscious pressure as a part of themselves. They experience as something that’s happening to them – a problem with their situation, caused by other people. They may believe, for example, that they aren’t getting the appreciation they deserve.

In response, INTPs sometimes seek reassurance – by turning to Extraverted Sensation and attempting to cultivate a better image. They’re more likely, however to reassert their familiar Thinking oriented sense of self, concluding that they’ve become too dependent on others’ views. They worry that their eneds are right on the surface, so they attempt to increase their self-sufficiency. As a result, they become more self-oriented, disinclined to accommodate others, or to do anything they don’t want to do.

The more emotionally unavailable these types become, the more they experiences themselves as emotionally vulnerable, constantly open to heartache and rejection. They begin to isolate themselves from others, persuading themselves that most people are too pedestrian to grasp what they can see. This is the point at which INTPs tend to lose touch with their secondary function altogether and turn, instead, to their tertiary function, Introverted Sensation.

Well developed, Introverted Sensation helps us to recognize information that has consistent meaning for us, apart from prevailing social assumptions. Such information is crucial for ESJs. Extraverted Judgers are likely to ignore their own priorities for the sake of a job or a social role.

INTPs, however, whose Judgement is Introverted, don’t need more reasons to ignore social expectations for the sake of inner needs. Introverted Sensation makes such types highly critical of others’ expectations. Their Thinking becomes complicated speculative, less and less related to reality as it actually exists.

Introverted Sensation also focuses the type’s defenses on issues of material well-being. Such INTPs worry about the effects of others on their health, or about the harmful aspects of food or the environment, and they circle the wagons accordingly. Sometimes they strike others as hypochondriacs, but their physical states often mirror the emotional states they aren’t recognizing in themselves.

INTPs of this sort are attempting to limit their perceptual intake to the familiar, but the result is the increasing influence of Extraverted Feeling. As Extraverted Feeling gets less conscious and more powerful, it begins to actively oppose the INTP’s dominant approach. INTPs in this position are likely to draw attention to themselves. They’re hyperaware of people’s reactions to them, and they respond with vehemence. Extreme INTPs are frequently embroiled in disputes with people, and they spend a great deal of time and energy defending their thoughts in journals or on the op-ed pages of local newspapers.

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INTPs who make a deliberate attempt to apply Extraverted Intuition to themselves feel an immediate sense of conflict. Like Extraverted Thinkers, these types confuse their ability to be impersonal with the ability to be objective, and Intuition is usually their first recognition that objectivity has nothing to do with removing oneself from the situation. It offers them an image of themselves as apart of the larger picture, with effects on others that can’t be entirely calculated and a dependence on others that is not entirely under their control. INTPs ultimately get in touch with their Feeling function this way – through their Intuitive objectivity.
The late Corita Kent, an American artist noted for her silk-screen prints, offers a nice illustration of this perspective in her description of her work:

A painting [is] a symbol for the universe. Inside it, each piece relates to the other. Each piece is…answerable to the rest of the little world. So, probably in the total universe, there is that kind of total harmony, but we get only little tastes of it….That’s why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with the wholeness.

INTPs who come to terms with relationship by way of Intuition recognize their responsibility to others in the way Kent describes. They feel answerable to the people who share their situation. Such types have a strong sense of purpose, but they don’t feel the need to calculate their behaviors in terms of logical probability alone. They recognize the existence of the unpredictable and the improbable: those aspects of life that require a leap of faith, or the ability to trust someone besides themselves.
 
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#2 ·
I don't think that its a correct assumption in whatever model shes using (lenore uses mbti?) that intuitives have such little access to sensing and sensors have such little access to intuition. I noticed this when she was comparing/contrasting istp/intp. As a matter of fact, I have known very few who seem to use only one or the other most of the time. I think that in those cases they are really stuck in one gear and don't self-develop much. Studying people for 9 years with mbti usually in mind, I have discovered in the past couple of years how the lines between s and n are often blurred, and how people use these things situationally.

There do seem to exist some lazy thinkers who could appear to lean more heavily toward one side, and then there are the "look at me I'm so intuitive" sorts who appear to have more intuition than many. I think a lot of its for show though once they decide that 'intuition' makes them somehow special. I also see a lot of it stereotyped as 'stupid' or 'intelligent' thinking which is stupid in itself.

Anyway meh. I just disagree with the fundamentals in the theory behind this description even if some details here and there are ok. Its not a perspective that I would come from.
 
#3 ·
Yeah, I think she over-exaggerates the detachment from reality of INTPs. Since they are tert. Si types, they don't come off as detached from facts and details - the only way they do come off as out-of-touch is in the Se realm, where they take forever to notice something in front of them, for instance, or they don't react quickly or obviously to sensory stimuli. I think she over-exaggerates the nature of Ti's detachment from external reality a bit also, as in, she makes it out like all they're interested in is the esoteric, which really doesn't have to be true. Most of the ones I know seem comfortable with Te, although they diverge from it to get down to the more essential qualities of analysis at play. That's the one oppositional function they all seem the most comfortable with anyhow, since it's thinking. I've found the males to mainly fit most of the stereotypes better than the females, for whatever the reason (females pay more attention to their F side than males?). Sometimes, Ti-Si can come off as almost Te-like, as in, it looks more practical and less like Kant-wannabe out there philosophical - my twin is one example of this, to the point that she was identifying with ISTJ type descriptions. Frankly, I think the Si interests, rituals, and specialities of INTPs have HUGE bearing over how their dominant function will come off - both being subjective functions, it's all about what's most comfortable for them. That's the case with INFPs also - they don't have to come off as overly spiritually transcendent or whatever stereotypes exaggerate them to be - their Fi will be heavily influenced by what's most comfortable for them. I find it ironic that INTP type descriptions make them out to specialize in certain brands of thinking (Kant philosophical level stuff), when, since it's a subjective function, it can be applied to whatever areas of thought they identify personally the most with. I know some like this, and I know others into biology, evolutionary thought, analyzing archeological and anthropological stuff, movie critiquing, etc.
 
#6 ·
At this point, I'm not really convinced that most INTPs are even like this (I have never met any who are very noticeably defined by Ti-Ne). Most I've ever met are more classically defined by Ti-Fe (I'm talking about their personalities, NOT how they solve problems, which is just a pretty irrelevant thing to focus one when it comes to exploring ego identity - who even KNOWS why people make the points they do anyhow). This kind of represents misunderstandings about intuition (after all, you can be an inferior N type and still show a lot of intuition to the world - it's just largely not productively oriented intuition).
 
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