# Lenore Thomson's Extraverted Feeling



## surgery (Apr 16, 2010)

*All the information in this post comes directly from "Personality Type: An Owner's Manuel" by Lenore Thomson. I own nothing. Please excuse any typos.

http://personalitycafe.com/esfj-articles/132055-lenore-thomsons-esfj.html#post3336615
http://personalitycafe.com/enfj-articles/132057-lenore-thomsons-enfj.html#post3336624

Extraverted Feeling
*
“As discussed in previous chapters, the left brain prefers to focus on one thing at a time. Its global limit seems to be about seven pieces of information. For this reason, left-brain functions always encourage us to define boundaries. When we use them, we’re deciding that some perceptions are more important than others and restricting our attention accordingly” (317).

“*The left-brain Judging functions, Extraverted Thinking and Extraverted Feeling, prompt us to do this rationally—by defining familiar perceptions and organizing them in a systematic away. As Extravarted functions, they also adapt us to consensual reality—that is, to the standards of reason that characterize a given society, which determine its conventions and expectations*” (317).

“As discussed in chapter 18, Extraverted Thinking supports an impersonal standard of reasoning, based on general principles. Essentially, principles tell us how things are supposed to happen. Under specified conditions, a principle says, things always proceed in the same sequence: first this, followed by this, then this” (318).

“Once we know the principle that governs a system, we can focus our attention selectively. For example, if we’re looking for ‘Zerbe’ in the phone book, we can disregard the names from A to Y. The principle of alphabetical order tells us how Z is logically related to the other letter, so we won’t have to consider data irrevlant to our goal. Even principles of behavior work this way. They tell us how to proceed and what should claim our attention, despite the influence of other kinds of perceptual information” (318).

“But general principles are not the only way to manage direct experience” (318).

“Say we’re making a list of people we call every week, so their numbers are handy whenever we pick up the phone. Although it’s possible to organize these names impersonally—by alphabet, for example, or frequency of contact—most of us don’t do this. Most of us list the people we know in order of their relationship to us: family members first, then friends, then coworkers, and so on” (318).

“This, roughly speaking, is the domain of Extraverted Feeling*. When we use this function, we aren’t organizing data sequentially and logically, by way of principles. We’re organizing data by relatedness to ourselves. The categories of relationships we maintain in the external world—and the way we maintain them—reflect our values*” (318).

*But Isn’t Feeling Opposed to Reason?
*
“Because Feeling involves personal relationship, it’s easy to assume that using it is a matter of emotional preference. But like all left-brain functions, *Extraverted Feeling is conceptual and analytical. It encourages us to make rational choices, to measure our options for relationship against an external standard of behaviors*” (318).

“*What distinguishes this function from Extraverted Thinking is the fact that relatedness involves human beings, not impersonal abstractions*. Thus, the systems that Feeling determines aren’t logically accessible. For example, if we know the alphabet, we can always anticipate the logical order of names in a phone directory. Not so with a list of calling partners. Its specific order depends on the human being who taped it to the refrigerator. *But the absence of logical predictability doesn’t make a system unpredictable or based on individual preference*” (319).

“*‘Family,’ ‘friend,’ and ‘coworker’ aren’t states of emotion. They’re categories of human alliance, organized be degree of relatedness*. *What we’re doing, when we use these categories, is accommodating our specific experiences of people to the conceptual shapes the terms offer. This is a rational process, not a sentimental one*” (319).

“Even if we’re trying to decide whether a person is more of a friend than a co-worker, we aren’t making this decision by consulting the depths of the heart. We’re measuring our external experience of the relationship against the behavioral standards we associate with the category of ‘friendship.’ *These standards constitute one aspect of our societal value system. They set up conventions that tell us how relationships are ‘supposed’ to be conducted, and what responsibilities they entail*” (320).

“For example, if the clerk in the supermarket tells us that his cellar was flooded in the last big rain, we have no reason to believe he expects more than our sympathy. If our best friend is bailing out her living room, however, the nature of the relationship will determine a different standard of response—like showing up at her door with a mop and a pail” (320).

“To be sure, our categories of relationship result in a myriad of assumptions about appropriate behaviors, and our emotions ultimately operate in concert with them. *But the fact remains that we use these categories for rational purposes: to set our priorities, to make decisions, to understand our obligations to others, and to anticipate others’ behaviors toward us*” (320).

“Subjective and irrational approaches to life have their own merit, as type studies make clear, but they don’t result in expectations, conventions, or external systems of order. An _irrational_ approach to a list of phone numbers—say, tossing the names in a hat and writing them down as they came to hand—would create a random pattern, without meaning to anyone. And a purely _subjective_ approach might incline us to organize our list differently every time we had a pelasnt or unpleasant conversation with someone” (320).

*But Aren’t Feeling Types Motivated by What They Feel?
*
*Of course. Everyone is. The point, however, is that our functions are mental processs. They operate separately from our emotional system. When we use a function often enough, we’re emotionally invested in the choices it encourages, but this is true of all functions, and it’s not the same thing as acting directly on what we feel*” (320).

“As far as type theory is concerned, _all_ Extraverted functions are objective, because they focus our attention on the outer realm of observable phenomena. *Extraverted Feeling is no exception. It focuses our attention on people’s outward behaviors and prompts us to interptet them in a standardized way*” (320).

“*Given this outward focus, Extraverted Feeling is likely to prompt this disregard of immediate emotional preference*. Consider, for example, the Feeling type who dislikes his father’s new wife but is obliged by her category of relationship to include her in all the family get-togethers. What the man actually ‘feels’ doesn’t matter. There is no way to leave out his stepmother and also meet the conventional standards of familiar behavior” (321).

“All those TV movies in which the cost-conscious hospital administrator accuses the research director of emotional blackmail because she says a cut in funds will hurt innocent children are trafficking stereotypes. The research director’s argument is a rational one, based on value. She’s saying that society’s behavior toward children is regulated by standards that conflict with the administrator’s focus on logical efficiency” (321).

“*Ultimately, an exclusive reliance on Extraverted Feeling leads to anything but a reliance on emotion. Extreme Feeling types ignore their immediate impressions and focus only on people’s social obligations*” (321).

*OK, but Values Still Seem Subjective
*
“*The word objective simply means ‘having material existence.*’ We’re disposed to hear this, however, as though it meant ‘existentially indifferent.’ Thus, general principles seem objective to us because they have nothing do to do with our behaviors as people; they’re abstractions—like the letters of the alphabet, or the concepts of unity and duality. Values, on the other hand, are personal and human. When they change, our behaviors change” (321).

“*The term family values, for example, isn’t an impersonal truth that can be abstracted from reality; it’s a behavior ideal, dependent on what we know about the relationships actually involved*. In ancient Mesopotamian societies, where responsibility for a woman’s children resided in her brother, people’s family values would have been different from our own—particularly their standards for ‘paternal’ and ‘avuncular’ behaviors” (322).

“Cultural specificity, however, is not proof that people’s values are just a matter of what they happen to believe. Our knowledge of alphabetical order won’t do us to a bit of good in a Moscow phone booth, where the equivalent letters run A, B, V, G, D …, but this hasn’t convinced us that the alphabet is ‘just’ a parochial belief system’ (322).

“It’s the personal specificity of our values that gives us a problem—the fact that they refer to standards of human relationship. When we try to conceptualize them, we end up universalizing our own experience, or, like Huck Finn, reducing them to ‘civilizin’ tendencies’: manners, decorum, being ‘nice,’ waiting our turn, apologizing, saying thank you for gifts. *In point of fact, Extraverted Feeling does preside over ‘civilizin’ tendencines,’ but their evidence is systemtic, not individual*” (322).

*The Collective Power of the Function
*
In myths, Extraverted Feeling is associated with Hestia, goddess of the hearth. After Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind, Hestia taught people how to maintain it—both at the center of the community and at the center of each home. When someone left a household to find his own, he took a bit of the home fire with him to start a heart in his new dwelling” (322).

“*This sort of custom isn’t a matter of emotion, impulse, or doing what we learned in kindergarten. It’s a secular ritual—a visible sign that marks a participant’s membership in the community at larger. Such rituals can touch us, but they aren’t occasions of sentiment. They’re a vocabulary, part of our Feeling lexicon. They submit to collective form of experience ordinarily confined to individual history, allowing us to express the kinds of relationships important to us as a people*” (322).

“It may be easier to see how this vocabularly works by considering an episode of _Star Trek: The Next Generation_. Captain Picard has met with a Tamarian ship in the system El-Adrel, but communication with these potential allies has proved impossible. Tamarian words translate as name and places, but they don’t seem to mean anything” (323).

“Picard is about to give up, but Dalthon, the Tamarian captain, takes a different tack. ‘Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra,’ he says, and shows Picard two knives. The men are then transported to a hostile planet, where a predatory creature obliges them to join forces. Handing Picard one of the knives, Dalthon says again: ‘Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra” (323).

“Meanwhile, the crew, shocked by this turn of events, is trying to beam Pciard back to the ship. For a brief moment they succeed and Dalthon, at the creature’s mercy, is mortally wounded. In his grief and horror, Picard begins to understand” (323).

“The names and places in the people’s language operate as metaphors, their meaning derived form a common stock of myths and historical events. Darmok and Jalad are characters in a Tamarian myth: strangers who learned to understand each other by facing a common enemy at Tenagra. Picard’s relationship with Dalthon now has meaning in those terms” (323).

“Armed with this knowledge, Picard pays tribute to the dying man by telling him a story form Babylonian mythology—the tale of Gilgamesh and the comrade who stood by him: ‘He who was my companion through adventure and hardship is gone forever’” (323).

“*The customs that constitute our Feeling vocabularly are very much like the language of the Tamaraians—inherited forms that shape the relationships we establish and maintain. Their meaning is not straightforward but cumulative, becoming apparent as we use them and recognize their effects*” (323).

“Among the boxes and ashes of our long-dead forebears, *anthropologists routinely look for artifacts of such Feeling vocabularies: rites of transition and commitment; ceremonies of planting and harvest; customs of bith, family, caretaking, and burial. These conventions of birth, family, caretaking, and burial testify to a society’s values. They tell us about the relationships that mattered enough to organize—relationships between men and women; between children and parents; between the community and its helpless, its old, its dying; between the community and the land; between the community and the divine*” (324).

“*Without question, social values have a strong moral component, enjoining the ‘right’ ordering of our alliances and loyalties*. Our increasing emphasis on direct experience has encouraged us to question traditional moral expectations, to note their effect on individual freedoms. But this is to miss the point of collective responsibility. *Social values mark those areas of decision making that go beyond one person’s immediate experience to affect the community as a whole*” (324).

“Picard, for example, recognized in Dalthon’s actions the moral sensibilites of the society that formed him. In the same way an act of rape or child abuse is not one person’s violation of another but a collective responsibility, because the society that tolerates such behaviors ensures that all its vulnerable members live in fear” (324).

“*Apart from questions of moral rectitude, our behaviors toward others have implications, whether we intend them or not.* *When we have clear-cut standards, we know what to expect and what’s expected of us in return. In the absence of collective expectations, we’re constantly negotiating these behaviors, attempting to correct people’s misreading of our motives*. This is particularly evident when the responsibilities accruing to one social role conflict with those of another” (324).

“A recently retired minister went to the hospital to visit a sick friend who was also a memer of his former congregation. As it turned out, two other of his former parishioners were in the hospital at the same time, and they were aggrieved and insulted that the minister had not visited them as well. As far as the minister was conscerned, he was visiting his friend _as_ a friend, not as former pastor. He didn’t even know the other people were in the hospital. But as far as those church members were concerned, the man’s ministerial role was primary, and he should have checked the hospital register” (324).

“Embarrassed about the oversight, the minister called the two members to apologize. The next day, his pastoral successor got in touch with him, infuriated by his attempt to reinvolve himself with hospital visitation, which, of course, was no longer his official responsibility” (324).

“What ‘should’ have happened in this situation? Which priorities obtain? *If we can’t rely on social consensus to resolve questions of everyday behavior, our only recourse is our own experience, and ultimately, subjective preference*” (325).

*Tradition…
*
“The dilemma of choosing rightly from a mutlitide of individual preferences is generally referred to as a postmodernist one, but typologically speaking, what we’ve got here is the natural outcome of a Perceptually oriented approach to life. *If we can’t depend on a stable social framework (Extraverted Feeling) to make our decisions, our only recourse is to rely on our diret experience of good and bad behaviors (Introverted Feeling). This shift has given us more subjective freedom, but it also forfeits cultural consensus, an objective sense of community*” (325).

“It’s worth discussing, in this respect, the dilemma that drives the plot of _Fiddler on the Roof_, a play that says a great deal about values and the stability of a community. The principles in this play, Tevye and Golde, preside over a Jewish family in nineteenth-century Russia whose Judging traditions have prevailed for generations. They have five marriageable daughters, and custom dictates the use of a matchmaker to find them husbands. But each daughter, in turn, falls in love outside the prevailing system” (325).

“The play is interesting from a typological standpoint because it doesn’t draw the usual head/heart distinction between Thinking and Feeling positions. Tevye and Golde are both Extraverted Judgers. Both have a stake in the organized community” (325).

“When the matchmaker selects a husband for their eldest, Tzeitel, Tevye reacts impersonally, in the manner of an Extraverted Thinker. He knows that his daughter will never find the man attractive—he’s the village butrcher, a coarse widower twice her age. But these issues strike Tevye as circumstantial. The butcher is clearly the logical choice: he’s financially comfortable, has a strong work ethic, can support children. These principles help to maintain the external structure of the family as Tevye understands it” (325).

“The match also satisfies Golde’s Extraverted Feeling values. She, too, recognizes that Tzeitel doesn’t love the man. But love, for Golde, is largely irrelevant to a stable marriage. Indeed, when Tevye asks her if she ‘loves’ him after twenty-five years of wife—and motherhood, she scarcely knows what to make of the question. Relationship, on the other hand, is a manageable entity. The butcher was faithful to his first wife; he’s a good friend and neighbor. He can be trusted to make a marriage work” (326).

“Tzeitel, for her part, has fallen in love with the village tailor. She didn’t plan for this to happen, but now that is has, she wants the freedom to choose her own husband. Her conflict is a familiar one, becaue it’s ours: a Perceiving versus Judging approach to life. Tzeitel understands freedom as the absence of social coercion, but it may be suggested that she’s captive to the effects of her subjective experience” (326).

“It’s instructive, therefore, that Tzeitel does_ not_ try to solve her problem by confiding in her mother and enlisting her support. If Extraverted Feeling really presided over issues of individal preference, she’d expect Golde to empathize, perhaps advise her to ‘follow her heart.’ But Tzeitel has no such illusions. She goes to Tevye, the Thinking type, and asks _him_ to deal with Golde” (326).

“Why? Because Tevye’s reasoning is impersonal, and Tzeitel can count on its objective flexibility. In the abstract realm of general principles, any number of routes can take us to the same goal. If Tzeitel can make a case for the tailor’s youth and compatibility as variables comparable to the butcher’s wealth and status, Tevye may see the logic of her choice” (326).

“Like all Extraverted Thinking types, Tevye works out the question by weighing the pros and cons. ‘On the one hand,’ Tevye muses, ‘being rich couldn’t hurt. On the other hand, the butcher is older than I am; they have no common interests. Besides, Tzeitel is committed to the tailor, so she’ll make the sacrifices poverty requires” (326).

“*Extraverted Feeling is equally objective, but it doesn’t have the same flexibility, because values are not abstract variables*, like the princiles of wealth or youth. *Values are tied to the specific behaviors that maintain them, which link us to a place, a time, a family, a society*” (326).

“Just a Thinkers who neglect issues of value may find tha tone variable seems a likely as another, Feeling types who ignore logic tend to make decisions in all-or-nothing terms. As far as Golde is concerned, either Tzeitel marries the butcher or the world as she knows it falls apart. There _are_ no ‘other hands’ (327).

“What’s at stake, of course, is the community—its history, its continuity through time. To circumvent the matchmaker is not an issue of personal taste; it degrades all marriages in the village, suggests that a family can be predicated on the random attractions of children. The logical argument that persuaded Tevye—that there are other ways of ensuring familiar stability—is not a hypothesis that Golde will entertain” (327).

“Indeed, Tevye knows that the only way to change Golde’s mind is to bypass her dominant Feeeling viewpoint and make contact with her subjective Perceiving side. He tries to do this by persuading Golde that the ‘right’ way of doing things will exact too high a price under the present circumstances” (327).

“To this end, Tevye fabricates a dream. He tells his wife that Grandmother came from beyond the grave to celebrate Tzeitel’s impending marriage—_to the tailor_. The ruse nearly fails. She must have heard wrong, Golde says. She meant the butcher. So Tevye embellishes the story with a vistitation from the butcher’s late wife, who threatens vengeance on Tzeitel if the arranged wedding should ever take place” (327).

“This is information that Golde can hear. Grandmother’s access to the supernatural grapevine is one thing, but the butcher’s wife was volatile enough as a flesh-and-blood neighbor. To tempt her malice as a jealous ghost is too high a price for Golde to contemplate. The community may not care what happens to Tzeitel, but she does, and that’s all there is to it” (327).

“_Fiddler on the Roof_ is particularly interesting because it’s presented as a cautionary tale. With each daughter’s marriage, Tevye further breachers his accustomed principles, until his logic bumps squarely into a priority he considers involiable. His third daughter marries outside the faith, and he severs the relationship” (327).

“Significantly, this is where Golde is willing to compromise. How moral is the dissolution of a family, even for the sake of religious principle? But it no longer matters. The winds of change that have been blowing through the household are part of a much larger social upheaval that is beyond their power to control. The entire village is razed, and the people are forced to begin anew, somewhere else” (328).

*Values in a Perceiving Society
*
“Most of us can identify with the terms of conflict in _Fiddler in the Roof_, because the struggle to reconcile individual potential with others’ expectations is quintessentially human. If we had to choose, however, most of us would come down on the side of individual freedom. Although we empathize with the parents’ discomfort, we understand very well Tzeitel’s yearing to be the architect of her own destiny” (328).

“This is why the play works so well as a commentary on our own society. Typologically speaking, Tzeitel recognized the claims of subjectiviety, which cracked open the frozen pact she’d made with community standards. Like a spring thaw, that recognition liberated the free-flowing potential beneath the surface of organized relationship in the village” (328).

“We support her position because the cards are pretty well stacked in her favor. ‘Falling in love’ with the socially inappropriate person has set stroies in motion for a long as peole have been capable of telling them. Few of us would advise the heroine of this one to sacrifice her rich interior life on the altar of an inherited social compact” (328).

“It should be recognized, however, that Tzeitel’s dilemma is emblematic. As human beings, we’re always caught between individual aspiration and the interests of society at large. The point of developing our secondary function is to take on the burden of this conflict—to recognize competing claims for our loves and loyalties. Tzeitel’s response to this universal dilemma was a defensive one, and it forced her to choose between self and other. Understandably, she tried to make that choice without price” (328).

“I am not, in this respect, suggesting that Tzeitel should have married the butcher and conformed her life to others’ expectations. Like the heroine of such stories, she’s locked into a social structure that won’t support female independence, and her realistic options are few. I’m suggesting that taking on the burden of her secondary function would have moved her beyond the terms of her apparent either-or situation” (329).

“For example, if Tzeitel had spoken to her parents honestly before the match was made, she might have persuaded them to take her feelings into accounts, or at least apprised them of the price she was willing to pay to honor her own experience. In the process, she might also have generated positive social change. When her sisters’ turns came up, her parents might have handled things differently; or they might have talked to others in the community about the drawbacks of the matchmaking system as it existed” (329).

“Tzeitel’s attempt to escape her portion in the larger community led her to determine that her problem was merely external—a systemic obstacle to her individual satisfaction and well-being. This moved her to use her tertiary function to devise a solution: that is, to use _Extraverted _Perception. It is here that the play is instructive with respect to our own society and our consistent elimination of perceived obstacles to individual aspiration and desire” (329).

“The more a society determines its priorities on the basis of Extraverted Perception, the more individual experience becomes primary and the less faith its members have in law and custom to set limits applicable to everyone. Under such circumstances, _Introverted_ Feeling, which is subjectively determined, comes to seem like a more honest approach to moral decision making. One can see this shift happening simply by looking at our media heroes—people impelled by an elemental sense of good and evil to make choices beyond the constraints of community expectations” (329).

“The prophetic nature of such choices is real and positive. *However, as a primary societal approach to Judgment, Introverted Feeling is dangerous because its power is not collective. A society that substitutes it for the Extraverted sort gradually trains its memers to believe that all values are a matter of individual experience.* We find ourselves thinking, ‘Well, I believe this is wrong, but that’s just me. I can’t tell _you_ what to do. You have to take responsibility for your own behaviors” (329).

“This is one reason we’ve resorted to legislating our standards of relationship. *In the absence of an objective sense of values, we have no other means of ensuring our rights and responsibilities to each other.* One can see how this happens simply be looking at the gangs that flourish where family systems have broken down. Although members regard normative socialization as alien to their needs and background, the peer communities they’ve established are unified by highly rigid codes of external conduct, ensuring relationships more preditable than those of a Victorian social club—formal rites of passage and precisely determined hierarchies, along with exaggerated ideas about postures of social respect and disrespect” (330).


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## surgery (Apr 16, 2010)

*All the information in this post comes directly from "Personality Type: An Owner's Manuel" by Lenore Thomson. I own nothing. Please excuse any typos.

The EFJ Types
*
“Like Extraverted Thinkers, *EFJs make up about 18 percent of the population*. If we include the Introverted FJs (who use Extraverted Feeling as a secondary function), about a quarter of the population takes an Extraverted Feeling approach to outer reality. Almost all these FJs are *ESFJs (13 percent)* and ISFJs (6 percent), people and service oriented, with strong values that link them to their families and to the communities they support” (330).
“*ENFJs (5 percent)* and INFJs (1 percent) share these charatcteristics, but they’re galvanized more by peoples’ potential. Such types usually express their values in counseling, teaching, the ministry, or writing. *All EFJs identity with the roles they play in society*, and they enjoy careers in which they can give others the benefit of their experience and knowledge” (330).

“As Judging types, EFJs have a good deal in common with ETJs. *They want things settled and organized, and they want an external guide they can rely on*. Pragmatic, disciplined, and inclined to take on too many responsibilites, they want tothers to keep their promises, to follow through, and to show up on time” (331).

“Unlike ETJs, however, *the EFJ’s primary focus of attention is people*. *These types are not only energized by their relationships; they need people’s opinions and reactions in order to make objective decisions*. Accordingly, EFJs spend a fair amount of time in conversation—exchanging observations, getting feedback, offering advice, volleying plans and ideas, telling and hearing stories about things of mutual interest and concern” (331).

“Thinking types sometimes dismiss this kind of interaction as ‘small talk,’ but an ETJ’s impersonal priorities dictate a view of social conversation as a ‘break’ from what someone is actually ‘doing.’ For Feeling types, talking is doing. It’s a purpose, something that people plan for, make time for, engage in” (331).

“EFJs have a hard time understanding how people can get together _without_ exchanging information about their lives. *Unless they know real facts about people—where they grew up, where they live now, what they do for a living, what their family’s like—they don’t have enough data to relate to them*” (331).

“It should be noted that EFJs are not social butterflies in this regard. They’re no more tolerant than Thinking types of ‘idle chitcat’ that simply passes time or keeps them from meeting their obligations. Feeling types are too conscientious to use time frivolously, and they invariably have a full dance card of responsibilities to others” (331).

“If they’re not serving on committees, they’re meeting colleagues for lunch; visiting relatives; driving the kids to Scouts making; meals for a sick friend; attending graduations, school plays, and concerts; getting people together for celebrations, picnics, dinners, and so forth. EFJs are constantly reaching for their calendar or date book” (331).

“It is this broad range of social interaction that seprates EFJs from IFJs, although some of their behaviors look similar. As discussed in chapter 15, IFJs experience themselves as helpers or nurturers, and they’re guided by the immediate needs of the people around them. They tend to resist social leadership, particularly the onus of making decisions for a group, but will take a great deal of authority in a service position” (331).

“*EFJs, by contrast, experience themselves as coordinators who can anticipate and handle the needs that arise in the normal interplay of established relationships with others*. This is what makes EFJs so good at careers in sales, teaching, and group motivation. *They have no doubt that their way of organizing a situation will benefit all concerned, and they’re good at making decisions and delegating tasks as required*” (332).

“*Indeed, such types have a hard time not coordinating the situations in which they find themselves*. At a party, they’re likely to make sure that everyone feela at home and included, and they may get involved in preparations or cleanup if no one tries to stop them. They keep lists of names and birthdays; show interest in other people’s welfare, homes, and families; make others feel important and valued. They celebrate with those who are happy, cry with those who are not; remember the ages and hobbies of everyone’s children; and stay current with news about people’s joys, sorrows, and problems” (332).

“These behaviors strike us as warm, related, and caring—and they are. Feeling types laugh and cry easily, are ‘there’ for people in trouble, referee arguments, soothe egos, are nurturing, concerned, attentive. *It should be emphasized, however, that their behaviors are also part of our social lexicon—a vocabulary that signals the concern and attention we read into it*” (332).

“*Fluency in this language is the type’s strength, and it gives EFJs the ability to engage people’s trust and cooperation—to teach, to inspire, to lead, to reach out*. *However, their reliance on social cues to interpret reality in general inclines them, almost inevitably, to merge signs and substance. The absence of an expected social gesture can hurt and offend them, as though a relationship had to be experessed in the appropriate way in order to be genuinely experienced*” (332).

“Many of the letters that appear in the advice columns are seeking clarification of such issues. For example, a woman wrote to Ann Landers asking if she were right to feel demeaned and cheated when her fiancé bought her a piece of land in Texas rather than the diamond engagement ring she was expecting. Ann Landers, a veritable bellwether of traditional social values, agreed with the writer, maintaining that a ritual declaration of intent is simply not interchangeable with an ordinary property investment” (333).

“Tellingly, the resulting mail ran against her. Our ideas about what’s important are no longer well matched by Extraverted Feeling gestures. But the entire issue is a good illustration of the way EFJs themselves understand reality” (333).

*How Extraverted Feeling Develops
*
“As discussed in chapter 18, *a preference for Extraverted Feeling appears to coincide with a tendency to register physical signs of pleasure and displeasure in a visible, predictable way. Because these signs are apparent to others, they become forms of communication, and people respond to them*” (333).

“*We all rely on such responses, of course, to organize our social expereicne and to gauge the nature of others’ expectations*. For example, almost all children, when negotiating the unfamiliar, look to a parent or peer for the smile or frown that signals encouragement or caution. *Over time, we associate certain kinds of responses with validation, approval, and warm relationships*. One can see this happening even in the preschool years, when children experiment with exaggeration and denial, attempting to gauge, elicit, and avoid the reactions of the people around them” (333).

“*EFJs, however, are motivated to use their interaction with others as a primary basis for decision making. They’re highly alert to signs of pleasure and displeasure in others, so they generally consider the effect their behaviors will have on the people around them*” (333).

*Don’t Women Care More about Social Cues Than Men?
*
We hear this all the time, of course—that women have a strong grasp of social expectations even in childhood, whereas men regard a social expchange as something that kills time between innings. Current research even suggests that an awareness of social cues is genetic to females, determined by the X chromosome supplied by the father” (333).

“The fact remains, however, that such distinctions don’t show up on type tests. *Men and women prefer Extraverted Feeling in nearly equal numbers. Moreover, as stated, EFJs constitute less than a quarter of the population, which wouldn’t be so if women were ‘naturally’ disposed to a Feeling orientation*” (334).

“*What’s undoubtedly true is that men and women are socialized to recognize different categories of relationship, along with the specific behaviors they entail. Some of these social incentives may reflect biological propensities, but they’re just as likely to keep FJs locked into the forms they’ve inherited lest they express themselves in the ‘wrong’ terms*” (334).

“*It should also be emphasized that energetic potential is no insurance of good interpretive skills. Like logic, an understanding of expressive cues requires training and cultivation, along with strong cognitive and analytical abilities. Young EFJs can be surprisingly awkward in social situations—particularly when compared with the more outgoing Extraverted Perceivers.* *Until they know how to gauge people’s expectations well enough, they’re self-conscious and reluctant to take action*” (334).

“*Moreover, these types can find it difficult to negotiate our culture’s self-oriented priorites. ESFJ children, in particular, anticipate criticism for failure, and they want to know how things are ‘supposed to be.’ In a culture that values independent action, they can experience a kind of catch-22 situation, in which social approval appears to require that they have no need for social approval*” (335).

*The Objective Nature of Extraverted Feeling
*
“*Because EFJs learn to use their dominant function by anticipating the effects of their decisions on others, they may not be comfortable with internal states that can’t be harmonized with the values of the group to which they belong*. *Asked how they actually ‘feel’ about something, EFJs react uneasily, as though the question were designed to elicit a negative response and create disharmony*” (335).

“For example, I overheard a conversation during the coffee hour at church one Sunday in which someone asked an ESFJ whether she really believed in life after death. The ESFJ was embarrassed and defensive. She said it was no one’s business what she believed; her faith should be apparent by the fact that she came to church every week and served on the board of trustees” (335).

“*As stated earlier, this distinction—between public behavior and subjective experience—has come, in our Perceptally oriented society, to seem like evidence of calculation, tantamount to cultivating the right image. But EFJs aren’t thinking about their image in the way that P types imagine. They’re concerned about the meaning their behaviors have for others. They feel guilty about expressing needs and impressions that would cast doubt on their values and commitments*” (335).

“The ESFJ just described, for example, didn’t hear the question about eternal life as an invitation to discuss theology. She heard it as a criticsm, a suggestion that her relationship to the church wasn’t good enough. As far as she was concerned, that relationship was _evidenced_ by her outward behaviors. She had no intentions of questioning it or causing a problem” (336).

“Indeed, *EFJs will deny negative thoughts or opinions for the sake of social harmony, particularly if the category of relationship warrants the strategy. Such denial strikes them as the better part of valor*” (336).

“Thinking types, with their penchant for impersonal accuracy, regard the whole business of tailoring truth to the category of relationship as dishonest—and more than a little irrational. But, of course, TJs spend most of their lives trying to _separate_ their judgment from degrees of relationship. *For EFJs, right and wrong behaviors can’t be determined until the category of relationship is established*. *To behave otherwise strikes them as dishonest and irrational*” (336).

*Of Ritual and Romance
*
*“The nature of an EFJ’s value is nowhere more apparent than in the gesture and signs EFJs describe as ‘romantic.’ Because the word implies a situation that enthralls or enchants, it’s often applied to right-brain Perceptual experiences—events in which we’re caught up in the moment, without reservation or expectation*. For example, we talk about the ‘romance’ of sailing, exploring, falling in love at first sight” (336).
“These experiences, however, are transient by their nature. A recent cartoon depicts a small mouse, dead drunk, slumped over an empty bottle. The bartender explains: ‘He says life just hasn’t been the same since he spent those few, glorious hours as one of Cinderella’s horses” (337).

“*As left-brain types, EFJs appreciate the all-consuming nature of immediate engagement, but they’re more likely to apply the word romantic to behaviors that sustain the experience in time, deliberately kindle or renew it, or testify to its ongoing power. We use the word in this way, for example, when we talk about romantic devotion to cause*” (337).

“*Traditional literary romances concern themselves primarily with behaviors of the latter sort, and such stories tell us a great deal about the way EFJs understand questions of relationship and conflicts of obligation*. The typical Medieval romance, for example, includes a plot about star-crossed lovers—usually a knight in love with a married noblewoman” (337).

“*We’re meant to recognize in this doomed relationship the possibility of perfect communion; however, the pair’s behaviors are ultimately dictated not by that compelling promise but by their responsibility to commitments already made*. The noblewoman struggles to feign indifference, while the knight sets off on a Crusade, wearing her scraf like a banner” (337).

“*Such decisions not only show strength of character—the ability to sacrifice immediate advantage for the sake of one’s values. They also keep the promise of the forfeited relationship intact. And it is here that one sees the primary signficance of romantic signs and gestures. They testify to the ideal nature of a relationship, which exists despite the inevitable claims of finitude, imperfection, and competing obligations*” (337).

“*EFJs are masters or ritual declarations, whether they’re cultivating a friend, reassuring a partner, or making children feel special and important*. *They buy small gifts that echo important conservations, display mementos of happy occasions, create family traditions, and make time for events that symbolize commitment to the ideal, even if everyday interactions tend to fall short of it*” (337).

“Although the yearning for symbols of this sort is sometimes stereotyped as feminine, a great many of our romantic media images involve Perceptually oriented males caught off guard by their own romantic idealism. One might consider, in this respect, the war-weary protagonist in the film _Casablanca_, undone by a song, or the ‘Sorry, honey, gotta ramble’ photographer in _The Bridges of Madison County_, who finds himself gathering flowers and dancing by candlelight” (338).

“Like _Casablanca_’s Rick and Ilsa, the protagonists of _Bridges_ are clear descendants of our medieval twosome: the knight-of-the-road with a poet’s heart, passions contained by the perogatives of chivalry, and the woman imprisoned by matrial convention, whose soul mate shows up one promise too late. Both recognized, almost despite themselves, the power of ritual intimacies to idealize the relationship and acknowledge its promise; and both (albeit in late-twentieth-century fashion) sacrifice its potential to the case of fidelity and honor” (338).

“*Although most types employ ritual declarations when they’re obliged to do so by standardized social occasions—such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and the like—for EFJs, displays of ongoing interest and devotion are a primary means of communication*. *Their absence almost inevitably persuades them that the other person doesn’t care enough about the relationship, doesn’t feel its effects*” (338).

“Thinking types, in particular, who append the word _romantic_ primarily to the worked _illusion_, can easily strike EFJs as oblivious to romance in general. And in truth, Thinkers don’t pay much attention to states of relationship that otherwise elude their cognitive grasp. Even when they’re trying to use Feeling signs and rituals, they’re likely to understand what they’re doing in terms of logic, not ideals” (338).

“The character Seven of Nine, in _Star Trek: Voyager_, nicely illustrates the extreme reachers of a Thinker’s general attitude. Seven of Nine is a human female, raised from childhood by the Borg, a cybernetically enhanced race with a hivelike structure of collective logic. Now separated from the collective mind, Seven of Nine is trying to work with _Voyager_’s crew but has no idea what human relationships are all about” (338).

“When one of the helmsmen flirts with her, asking if she’d like to see a simulated moonrise on the holodeck, she’s puzzled. ‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Because it’s beautiful,’ the helmsman says. ‘Beauty is irrelevant,’ she snaps. ‘Unless,’ she says thoughtfully, ‘you mean to change the nature of our alliance with ritual deception…” (339).

“This is not far from what Thinking types actually believe—that romance is basically strategic deception, pleasurable perhaps, but utterly goal oriented. Thus, Thinkers have a hard time understanding why the characters in literary romances are so annoyingly impractical” (339).

“In a Thinker’s medieval narrative, a knight who had withdrawn from a relationship for the sake of honor would scarcely advertise his ongoing interest in it. And if he were willing to sacrifice his principles and pursue the woman, by God, he’d execute a plan—hire an attorney, acquire a title, seek grounds to annul her loveless marriage. Such campaigns, for TJs, evidence devotion no less enduring but more efficient outcome than the display of a lady’s scarf amid the wreckage of Byzantine kingdoms” (339).

“*Thus, it should be emphasized that ritual signs have meaning for EFJs because they don’t represent a logical problem-solving approach to relationship. Their purpose is frankly sacramental, requiring an investment of faith: a belief in the existence of infinite possibility in a finite and imperfect world*” (339).

*Secondary Considerations
*
“*Because EFJs concentrate their attention on standards of relationship, they tend to use their secondary Perceiving function (Introverted Sensation or Introverted Intuition) largely to acquire immediate information about others’ reactions and expectations. Like Thinking types, they aren’t comfortable with the indiscriminate content of their subjective life—disruptive thoughts and fantasies, questionable motives, unpredictable impressions, unmet needs. They don’t react to this content, however, the way Thinking types do*” (339).

“As noted in chapter 18, ETJs experience their Percieving side pretty much the way Spock experiences the human half of his personality: as illogical and potentially out of control. *EFJs understand their inner life differently. Accustomed to measuring behaviors against collective standards of good and bad relationship, many of their subjective thoughts strike them as negative, because they’re self-critical or disapproving, EFJs believe such thoughts are unworthy of them and shouldn’t be entertained*” (340).

“A cartoon comes to mind from a few years back, meant to illustrate the difference between East and West Coast attitudes. The cartoon consists of two panels, one labeled New York, the other California. Both panels contain the same two people, one of whom is talking to the other. In the New York Panel (with all due apologies for language), the person is saying, ‘F**k you!’ but he’s thinking, ‘Have a nice day!’ In the California panel, the person is saying, ‘Have a nice day!’ but he’s thinking, ‘F**k you!’” (340).

“*EFJs appear to be believe that people who are truly good would say ‘Have a nice day!’ and mean exactly that. They try very hard to change or eliminate what they see as negative thoughts and reactions*. *If they can’t, they try to live above them, hoping to inspire themselves to do better. EFJs feel this way because their approach to life is guided by rational ideals, and rational ideals are maintained by focusing on the predictable—things that can be anticipated and controlled*” (340).

“*When EFJs rely too heavily on Extraverted Feeling, they have no way of perceiving the messy, unpredictable, irrational side of life—except in negative terms: as something to be gotten under control. This is why their Introverted secondary function is a valuable source of information. By paying more attention to their immediate reactions, EFJs learn to deal with areas of life that can’t be addressed with rational Judgment*” (340).

“*For example, the classic EFJ has a hard time saying no, even when time and energy are in short supply. Such types don’t want to let people down, so saying yes satisfies their Extraverted Feeling ideals*. *Their inner reactions, however, are correspondingly realistic, based on life as it’s actually happening to them. They may feel resentful, wondering why people don’t realize they’re overextended, or anxious, because, given their other commitments, the job won’t get done as well as it ‘should*’” (340).

“*In the long run, EFJs swallow their resentment and live with the anxiety. They’d rather maintain a harmonious relationship than put their own needs first. But they always feel bad about the part of themselves that won’t ‘get with the program.’ They figure a good parent/partner/friend/neighbor wouldn’t ‘feel like this’* (341).

“*And, ultimately, because Extraverted Feeling is the type’s strength, the EFJ’s ability to put others first, despite the clamor of that inner voice, because a source of pride. EFJs are like ETJs in this respect, who pride themselves on staying in logical control—even when self-interested immediacy is the healthier option*” (341).

“The EFJ’s viewpoint becomes particularly clear in Bible study classes when the discussion turns to the story of Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Such types hear this story as a criticism of the strengths they’ve worked so hard to develop. Indeed, it’s worth considering the Gospel narrative, because it raises so many of the issues that EFJs associate, negatively, with their secondary function” (341).

“Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem with disciples, stops in to see his friends Martha and Mary. Martha immediately welcomes these unexpected guests and sees their neeeds, while Mary, her sister, settles in at Jesus’ feet and listens. Finally, overwhelemed by the work, Martha asks Jesus to take her part. ‘Lord,’ she says, ‘don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the serving myself?’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ Jesus answers, ‘you’re distracted by so many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen it, and it won’t be taken from her’” (341).

“A generation ago, feminist theologians heard in this corrective an implicit criticism of women’s traditional roles in society—which is precisely why many EFJs are uncomfortable with the story. Why should Mary’s self-interested choice be considered superior to Martha’s? Why is it wrong to show love in a traditional way?” (341).

“*This is how EFJs usually experience the promptings of Introverted Perception. It makes them aware of needs they ordinarily discount, and their reaction is to feel defensive. Like Martha, they know they’re doing too much, but they feel caught between two inadequate solutions: they can exhort others to work harder, or they can ignore their responsibilities and do as they like*” (341).

“It’s important to note, in this respect, that the Gospel story doesn’t set up this kind of choice. It doesn’t pit responsibility to others against immediate desire. At the time of his visit, Jesus was a marked man, an outlaw. Within a week, he’d be sentenced to death. He was asking Martha to recognize her immediate subjective _priorities_. _Under the circumstances_, her obligation to provide for guests was not the most important consideration” (342).

“*This is always the issue for EFJs—not the will to escape the roles they’ve taken on, but the ability to take circumstances into account, to recognize when immediate priorities are more consequential than objective standards, to know that receiving is sometimes a more responsible choice than giving*. *EFJs can be so distracted by taking care of things that they miss the import of life as it’s really happening to them*” (342).

“Unquestionably, Thinking types share the EFJ’s tendency to confuse responsibility with taking care of things. The entire cirty could be flooded and ETJs would drown before giving up on getting to work. But a personal crisis—of health or relationship, for example—can shock Thinkers into using their secondary function. If they can’t master a situation with logic, they have little choice but to accept it on its own terms” (342).

“*Feeling types are different. Their reason isn’t anchored by impersonal logic. It’s anchored by the people who depend on them, and they work hard to divide their time and energy among family members, employer, neighbors, friends, clients, and all the others in their life who expect their loyalty and devotion*.

Given these objective priorities, a life crisis may not test their faith so much as increase their resolve. I’ve seen EFJs put of surgery rather than let someone else organize the annual card party. Letting go, for any reason, strikes these types as a misplacement of values, a willingness to put their own well-being above the people who are counting on them” (342).

“*In consequence, EFJs frequently end up being the person who does everything for everybody. They may be completely swamped, but their ability to keep things organized confirms their self-worth, so they don’t have much incentive to do things differently*” (342).

*Introverted Thinking: The EFJ’s Inferior Function
*
“*EFJs who rely too long on their dominant strengths eventually leave their inferior function, Introverted Thinking, far behind. As discussed in chapter 19, Introverted Thinking is a right-brain form of Judgment that makes us aware of a situation’s many variables. When we use it, we recognize our power, as individuals, to exploit some variables at the expense of others*” (343).

“This kind of awareness is not only impersonal; it’s graphic, immediate, and wholistic. It prompts no assignment of predetermined categories of good and bad. *Variables that have unusual or perverse potential are accorded the same consideration as variables that assure a socially appropriate outcome. EFJs can’t acknowledge this viewpoint as part of their own makeup; it’s too alien to the way they see themselves*” (343).

“*As I’ve said in other chapters, all types are capable of using the skills their inferior function offers.* *EFJs who crochet or play softball are obviously aware of the impersonal variables involved, and they may be highly talented in using them to advantage when the outcome is compatible with their Feeling goals. What’s at issue here is the approach to life Introverted Thinking makes possible. The impassive curiosity it fosters strikes EFJs as cold and inhuman, tantamount to pulling wings off flies to see if they feel pain*” (343).
“*EFJs need experience with their secondary function, Introverted Perception, to even recognize Introverted Thinking in themselves, much less consider its moral potential. Until that point, the function remains primitive and egocentric, the source of prejudice and stereotypes about others. Whenever EFJs feel stuck, because a situation can’t be handled with Extraverted Feeling, Introverted Thinking gets out of control, flooding them with impulses that undermine their usual Feeling behaviors*” (343).

“*Like all types, EFJs don’t recognize this psychological pressure as an opportunity to move beyond their accustomed choices. When they can’t handle a situation in their usual way, they project their inferior impulses outward and see their conflict as a problem they’re having with others. They focus on other people’s selfishness, inconsiderate behaviors, poor judgment, seduction by negative options*” (343).

“*It should be emphasized that well-developed EFJs are instrumental in supporting people’s strengths. They listen sympathetically, interpret problems, brainstorm solutions, bring out the best in others. EFJs pressured by Introverted Thinking aren’t motivated in this way. Such types consider themselves authorities on human relationship, and they’re always ready to tell others how to live their lives. Fearing that people aren’t as strong or as logical as they are, their advice is often unsolicited, intended to keep people from making bad decisions*” (344).

“*EFJs of this sort are deeply affected by unconscious Introversion, and many of their social concerns are focused on creating safe and secure environments. They work hard to set up rules and systems that will guard people against dangerous influences*. Such types believe they’re taking action on behalf of others, but they’re increasingly stubborn about getting their own way. *They don’t recognize they’re deciding for others, limiting people’s opportunities to take responsibility for themselves*” (344).

*Turning to the Teriary Function: Extraverted Perception
*
“*As Introverted Thinking gains unconscious power, it begins to seriously color the type’s behaviors. Such EFJs are socially motivated, but they’re self-protective and insecure, all their energies devoted to controlling their relationships. They need increasing reassurances that they’re important to people, but they can’t accept them even when they’re offered. Any show of independence or interest in something they don’t approve of impresses them as a betrayal of the relationship. People see them as jealous, possessive—and, ironically, unaware of others’ feelings*” (344).

“*This is generally the point at which the type’s tertiary function, Extraverted Sesnation or Extraverted Intuition, steps in*. As stated in other chapters, our tertiary function normally provides an outlet for ‘the other side’ of our personalithy. *It prompts EFJs to make room for pleasure, to laugh at themselves, to take life less seriously*” (345).

“*However, as a last-ditch defense against Introverted Thinking, Extraverted Perception simply convinces EFJs that others are to blame for all their negative thoughts*. Indeed, these types can be overwhelmed by the need to escape the constant external conflict—to walk out on people who don’t appreciate them, to them all to go to hell” (345).

“Just as extreme Thinking types project their unruly FP impulses onto people who depend on them, thus to keep them under control, *extreme Feeling types project their rebellious TP traits onto the people they love, thus to keep themselves under control*. They see themselves as victims, obliged to carry of the burdens of relationship, and they’re determined to do so, despite others’ apparent selfishness and lack of appreciation” (345).

“*It should be recognized, in this regard, that the success of a tertiary strategy is not in its capacity to make us happy but in its ability to keep us from experiencing inner conflict*. Because extreme EFJs have projected all their questionable motives onto others, they feel decisive and morally strong, quite certain they’re on the side of the angels. They may even consider themselves role models” (345).

“Indeed, the tertiary influence of Extraverted Perception pushes these types to place increasing emphasis on how things look. As with extreme ETJs, their Judging and Perceiving worlds can become quite polarized, so they’re actually living two different lives—the public one, in which all the appropriate behaviors, grooming, and rituals are in place; and the private one, which is devolving into a series of stormy arguments, silences, and recriminations” (345).

“Although extreme EFJs can sometimes lock themselves into relationships that are genuinely exploitive, most such types feel mistreated because others won’t conform to their unrealistic expectations. *They aren’t taking people’s individual needs and experiences into account. Extraverted Perception ultimately persuades them that they’re justified in interfering in people’s life choices: doing, as it were, what people aren’t doing for themselves—behind their backs if necessary*. They talk constantly about the sacrifices they’ve made on others’ behalf, the love and involvement they’ve shown—and does anyone thank them? No. They get heartache, grief, ulcers” (346).

“*The fact is that extreme EFJs really are working hard to maintain their relationships. But the problem isn’t people’s ungrateful receipt of their efforts*. *It’s the EFJ’s insistence on controlling other’s behaviors, the impossible standards they’ve set as evidence of people’s devotion*. In many of these situations, people are thwarting the EFJ’s expectations not because they’re irresponsible and unappreciative but to force the type’s receptivity, to make contact somewhere outside of the Feeling frame” (346).

*Developing Introverted Perception
*
“In Australian aboriginal society, there exists a method of self-discovery called walkabout. Native peoples who have lived or worked in the city for a long period of time begin to forget who they are, so they return temporarily to aboriginal life and ‘walk about’ in the bush until they ‘meet themselves’ again. This is the sort of thing that happens to Extraverted Judgers when they get in touch with their secondary function. Something pushes them out of their relational framework and they’re forced to deal with experience on its own terms” (346).

“*As started earlier, Extraverted Thinkers are often shocked into using Introverted Perception. Sometimes EFJs are, too, especially at midlife, when relationships can change rather abruptly. But most EFJs simply reach a point where they aren’t sure who they are anymore. The identity they've established with and for others doesn’t give them large enough answers. Despite all the people in their lives, they feel lonely*” (346).

“This vague feeling of loneliness is a hallmark of unresolved secondary issues. *When EFJs have depended too long on Extraverted Feeling, their relationships aren’t mutual. The feedback they’re getting is based on their social roles, not on who they are*. They living, breathing human being who experiences things exactly as they happen isn’t being perceived—not even by themselves” (346).

“A rather interesting look at the phenomenon occurs in an early episode of Star Trek called ‘Metamorphosis.’ Nancy Hedford is a Federation diplomat in the throes of a termial illness. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are taking her to the Enterprise for medical treatment when a peculiar cloud creature draws their shuttle craft off course and brings them to the planet Gamma Canaris N. There they meet Zefram Cochrane, a fame scientist thought to have died in old age many years before” (347).

“It turns out that he, too, was diversted by the cloud creature, whom he calls the Companion. The Companion periodically envelops the man in a kind of mist, and merger with the immortal creature has kept him young; but Cochrane has been lonely. The creature evidently captured the shuttle craft to solve the problem. With the aid of a universal translator, Kirk questions the entity and discovers that she’s female. She’s in love with Cochrane and, despite Nancy’s deteriorating health, has no intentions of letting any of them leave the planet” (347).

“Cochrane is repulsed by this revelation. He had no idea the Companion’s merger with him was an act of love, and he feels violated. Moreover, the fact that the creature would allow Nancy Hedford to die strikes him as literally inhuman. He can’t even imagine returning the entity’s declared affections” (347).

“Meanwhile, as her life ebbs away, Nancy is realizing that she’s even more of an alien than the Companion, who at least knows what it is to be in love. Nancy has spent her entire adult life resolving conflicts in the galaxy, and she’s never experienced either love or romance with anyone” (347).

“Recognizing that Cochrane will never love her as she is, the Companion makes a fateful decision. In the moment before Nancy’s death, she unites with the young woman, preserving her life at the price of her own immortality. Nancy rises from her sickbed, vibrant and warm, feeling human love for the first time. The Companion part of her, unable to survive outside the planet’s atmosphere, is astounded by the loneliness and limitations of human existence. Her vulnerability moves Cochrane, who now feels needed, and he elects to stay behind and grow old with her” (347).

“Like the Companion*, EFJs relate to people by caring for them, taking responsibility for their welfare and their needs*. This is the way they know how to love, and they want to be loved in return. *But EFJs who have relied exclusively on Feeling for relationship aren’t in touchs with their mortal human nature—the need to be cared for as well as to serve; the need to be sustained and loved as they are, imperfections and all*” (348).

“*When EFJs aren’t in touch with this aspect of themselves, they experience their very real desires for space, relaxation, and self-interest as weaknesses to be overcome*. This is what makes their relationships unequal. They unwittingly assume a position of superiority, as though they were intended by fate to Companion others, without needs, flaws, feelings, and potential of their own. Like Nancy Hedford, the vulnerable part of themselves has never loved or been loved on its own terms” (348).

“In many cases, *EFJs recognize this other part of themselves only when it’s in desperate need of attention and it sends frantic messages from the inner world*. Such types may experience these messages as external events—aches, pains, depression, ancxiety, obsessive worry, sleep distrubances, and the like. *Unaccustomed to looking within, it’s hard for them to get hold of their subjective impressions until they exist as entities that others recognize and identity with*” (348).

“In fact, these types have a tendency to treat their symptoms as external problems that can be talked about with others, defined, treated, and made to disappear. It should be emphasized in this regard that Nancy Hedford would not have fared better if she had reached the _Enterprise_ and been ‘cured’ of her illness. Rather, she might never have found her true path. This is the value of an EFJ’s experience of loneliness. It pushes EFJs to accept their subjective experiences as part of themselves” (348).

“Many of the unfocused anxieties these types experience turn out to be not symptoms of illness but information about the life path they’re taking and how it relates (or doesn’t relate) to their inner Perceiving nature. Although they’re resisting this information, it’s crucial to their health and well-being. *If they aren’t in touch with who they are apart from their social roles, then they aren’t really sharing themselves with anyone, and they won’t feel truly appreciated no matter how much they do for others*” (348).

“EFJs who struggle with their actual needs and potential often need encouragement to contend with the conflicts that arise in the process. To that end, they may need to share their thoughts and ideas with other people—perhaps just one other, who can be counted on to accept the new information and give them nonjudgmental feedback” (349).

“However, *it’s also important for these types to enjoy themselves in activities that don’t involve others at all*. They need to find out what makes them feel truly alive and whole—whether this involves listening to music, spending time in creative pursuits, or just taking walks in the sun now and then” (349).

“*EFJs who cultivate their inner life never lose their fundamental Feeling orientation. As they bring their values into harmony with their real needs and potential, their dominant goals are broadened and deepened*. Moreover, because they know what it is to be vulnerable themselves, they’re able to accept people for what they truly are. This capacity, along with their warmth, humor, and understanding, makes them genuine leaders and guides” (349).


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## Elaminopy (Jun 29, 2011)

Wow, you typed all these, too? A lot of work, huh?

http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/122974-extraverted-feeling.html


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## surgery (Apr 16, 2010)

Elaminopy said:


> Wow, you typed all these, too? A lot of work, huh?
> 
> http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/122974-extraverted-feeling.html



 oh, sorry. if i had known you already posted these, i would have refrained from doing so again ((


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## Elaminopy (Jun 29, 2011)

surgery said:


> oh, sorry. if i had known you already posted these, i would have refrained from doing so again ((


No biggie. It's a lot of posts to go through just to find if someone else did. It's also a lot of work to type them all, but at least her work gets more exposure now.


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