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Myers Briggs test

INFJ, hunh?

100 years ago, my partner of the time, who couldn’t make sense of me, decided a Myers Briggs Personality Type Test was essential, as in, right this minute. On a website with a comprehensive test, like, 16 Personalities, you answer 60 questions and you get categorised in the continuum between a few opposing poles. Just bear in mind that these terms have a specialised meaning for this test, they are not necessarily what you might think.

1. Energy, ie, where you get it from: if it’s by being with other people, you’re an Extrovert; if from being alone, an Introvert. No surprises on my rating, after all I survived four years riding a bicycle across the Australian continent on my own, not quite at the extreme edge.

2. Information gathering: sequentially, step-by-step, concrete, is termed Sensing; a Big Picture snapshot, jumping to conclusions, abstract, Intuitive. I’m apparently in the Grasping-It-All-At-Once-Minimal-Evidence-Required, Category.

3. Decision making: objectively, logically, rationally, ie, termed Thinking. Stepping into the situation, empathetic, Feeling. I’m the pathetic empathetic type.

4. Dealing with the world: spontaneous, making it up as you tootle along, then get it together with a rush of activity, ie, Perceiving. Scheduling things to a deadline, organised, that’s Judging. Yup, always the planner.

So, 16 possible combinations and I find I’m in select company, the smallest of the groups, the INFJ.

Seems I have some extreme company, both the good, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Thomas Jefferson and, the less so, Osama bin Ladin, Hitler, Trotsky. Also in this particular grab bag are a few creatives, Prince, John Coltrane and Tom Yorke.

Major personality characteristics: supersensitive behind that cool exterior, resilient, self-contained, and unneedy. On the other hand, the complete door closer, quite able to walk away when the time comes, no looking back.

Yeah, we are the archetypal Outsiders, I note as I sit here on my lonesome with the wind vigorously blowing in the trees.

author | GJ Coop | posted | 01 July 2014
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