INTP, and I pretty much stay that way. I can understand intellectually that the ISTJ is often right where I am wrong but can't for the life of me emulate the ISTJ's thought patterns. They are actually the one personality type that I have the deepest respect for. Without such, my own ilk would be nothing. But they appreciate my type in return. We do unpleasant things like long-term planning and coping with ambiguity, so they don't have to waste their time with it.
I am absolutely incapable of giving a yes/no answer to a complex question. I can't even answer the question, "who won at Gettysburg?" without first having to give a drawn-out thesis on the proper method for defining a victor in a complex historical battle, and I would probably try to give the asker some important details about key points in the battle that might have helped determine the outcome. The closest I could come to a yes/no answer on it would be, "if what you are asking what is the consensus of most credible historians, essentially all of them would tell you the north won." Other people have the opposite problem in that they can't handle ambiguity, but I tend to be wishy-washy to the point that people eventually get frustrated and annoyed.
Lovers tend to complain loudly that I tend to make things intellectual inappropriately. In fact, this has been a major blight on my love life. Honestly, do you really want someone to, in the middle of lovemaking, explain how there are various theories on how oxytocin is involved in lovemakings? This would be bad enough! But when my lover complains, I will try to make amends by saying something like, "well, this is really only theoretical, and even if it were true then oxytocin would be one of many actors in the formulation of a sophisticated human emotion." There goes that mood.
One place where I don't have as much of a problem is in realizing that my theoretical internal world is not something that I can divorce from external reality, so I can sometimes think at least to a supplementary extent in terms of an ISTP, even though at heart I tend to be more of a foo-headed intellectual.
Also, I'm getting a little bit better at overcoming my introversion, and that makes me happy. There was a time that I could barely talk to people I didn't know without stammering to the point of not even being comprehensible.
Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 02 May 2011, 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
15 Jan 2007, 6:25 pm
