INTP

You Are an Introverted Thinker

In the inner world of thoughts and ideas, you use your rational ability to analyze coolly, objectively, impersonally. Rarely do you turn your thinking ability to the task of controlling any part of the world "out there:" neither things nor people.

Of all the types, your personality typifies the analytical genius: Albert Einstein in science, Woodrow Wilson in politics, Emmanuel Kant in philosophy, Carl Jung in psychology. Like those great theoreticians, you have the ability to pursue a goal single-mindedly, avoiding distractions, and sidestepping obstacles.

Your greatest personal strength lies in patiently and thoroughly working out the fundamental principles of a system, operation, or problem. You tend to lose yourself happily in thought.

You do not need encouragement or support from others to continue your work. It is not essential that others even understand or appreciate what you do in order for you to function. You are an independent thinker, a world unto yourself.

You may tend to regard others as an intrusion into the sanctity of your thoughts. Needless to say, if your introversion is extreme, it may pose problems for you socially and personally—because there is a world out there to be dealt with, and for many people with your personality constellation, coping with other people is a continual struggle. The dilemma of intimate relationships for many introverted thinkers can be summed up by a single word: feelings. For all the world can see, you just don't have them. You're not mean or unkind: you're just unconscious of the feeling dimension. You let feelings affect your own attitudes and behavior so little that it may be nearly impossible for you to understand how much others value sentiment.

Chances are good that you've been badgered and lectured about this personality trait your whole life. If you're listening to a never-ending guilt tape, you can turn it off whenever you're ready. There's nothing wrong with you. You just don't make your judgments on the same basis as feeling-type people.

On the other hand, you may wish to try some simple personal exercises along the dimension of criticism-appreciation if you'd like to increase your personal effectiveness in dealing with other types.

Since your judging side is introverted, it's not likely that you're prone to overtly attacking and criticizing others. Usually, introverts exhibit their deficit of feeling by small "sins of omission." You may forget the value of a compliment, an apology, a smile, a pat on the back, a thank you. You may appear to be critical, just because you don't make it a point to be appreciative when it's due. You may fall into the habit of saying nothing when everything's all right and pointing out problems as they arise. That can be hard on more feeling types, who take your silence (which you regard as approval) as rejection and are destroyed by your occasional critical comments!

Try a check list approach, if that's helpful for you.

First, notice things that people are doing right before you point out their mistakes.

Second, when you're asked for your opinion of someone's ideas—or when you're preparing to venture it, anyway—begin your statement by mentioning the points on which you agree. Then you'll find a more receptive audience for your comments.

Comment on success more often than you remark on failure. Make a concerted effort to compliment the accomplishments of others. Congratulate others at the moment of their personal triumph. Thank family members, friends, and associates for their kindnesses to you.

Learn the value of body language in communicating feelings. Remember to smile, nod your head, offer your hand, or give a pat on the back.

Intersperse your remarks to your friends and colleagues with the direct address. "How are you, Henry?" is far more personal and friendly than "How are you?" alone. And—after you ask the question—listen to the reply.

It is not prying to inquire after people's personal lives, to the tune of "How's the family?" And, again, stop to listen, take note and remember.

You may find it helpful to jot down the names of the people who drift through your life, their mates' names, their kids' names. As mechanical as these recommendations may sound, you'll be astonished at the results.

Finally, understand that lacking the ability to discover and deal with your own feelings may be less of a problem in this world than the tendency to forget that other people motivate their behavior by sentiment. In your personal or professional relationships, you'll function more effectively if you take the time to learn how to read others' emotional signals.

The easiest way to undertake this learning project is at home, using those closest to you as teachers. If you sincerely ask for their help in becoming more attentive to others' needs for sympathy, support, affection, and appreciation, chances are good that they'll accommodate your request. They have nothing to lose.

Under even the best of circumstances, you may have to work at this project. As an introvert, expressing yourself may be difficult. As a thinking type, you probably don't expect much emotional attention yourself, and as an intuitive you're not likely to be a keen enough observer to recognize others' needs.

But these exercises hold a bonus for characters like yourself: you may find yourself coming into greater contact with your own feeling nature—which many thinking types usually suppress or express in maladaptive ways. Perhaps it's appropriate to point out here that introverted thinkers do have feelings and they do relate to people. But the introvert invests time, energy, and affection in only a few people, measuring friendships by depth and longevity rather than by breadth or number.

As an introvert, you naturally value inner processes over external signs. As a friend, you need little overt reciprocation of your feelings and little active contact in order to perpetuate a relationship. When a friend really needs you, you'll be there: this year, next, ten years from now. That's the way friendship operates among introverts.

You tend to form a kind of quiet, intense, devoted friendship which awes your extraverted friends. They can't understand it. Frankly, you do not understand an extravert's concept of friendship, either. To you, their affiliations seem shallow, fleeting, and devoid of long-term personal commitment.

When it comes to friendship and love, it's apparent that introverts and extraverts speak separate languages using common terms.

It may seem unfair, but it is true that this is an extravert's world. The introvert is expected to adapt, but the extravert must learn the patience to understand.

It is unfortunately the case that many great introverted thinkers fail to have an impact in their field of work simply because they never polish their interpersonal skills, never concoct an effective social mask to wear for the "outside world."

As an introvert, the extent to which you are capable of adapting to life in a populated world depends on how well you develop your auxiliary process . Remember, as an introvert, you turn your most highly developed personality process inward. On a day-to-day basis, it's your less preferred mode which keeps you functioning.

Your Auxiliary ProcessYour outer personality is perceptive, basing itself chiefly on intuition. Your friends are likely to describe you as subtle, imaginative, and ingenious—and a bit shy!

If nurtured, this intuitive self can be extremely effective in supporting your inner intellectual life. Because you are not judgmental, others will respond to you as a curious, interested, and adaptable person, and they will provide you with the substance your thinking nature requires to fuel its contemplation.

Only about 1% of the population falls into your personality category, but you'd never believe that by sampling the faculty of distinguished colleges and universities. Wherever you find an aggregation of individuals whose hallmarks are originality, insight, and creativity, you'll find a number of kindred souls.

Living always on the brink of logical possibility, introverted thinkers with intuition make major contributions in fields such as science, mathematics, economics and philosophy. You are comfortable with abstract work, excited by the unknown, and you can succeed in any occupation which doesn't bog down your expansive mind with too much day-to-day hum-drum routine. The unique combination of introversion, intuition, and thinking creates a difficult interpersonal situation for many with your personality structure. At work or at home, with friends or with mates, you often seem to carry on your relationships in a very preoccupied manner. Part of you is somewhere else. You are almost oblivious to people.

The combination of intuition and thinking forms the very cornerstone of your intellectual, creative personality: the ANALYST temperament!

When intuition and thinking meet, the product is an individual in love with learning, fascinated by the very concept of intelligence. You and those like you share an inner drive toward performance and a highly self-critical nature which continually strives for self-improvement.

Whether or not you feel inclined to control others' behavior, you set high standards for yourself. You're always a mental list of things you ought to learn, accomplish, master. You view your life as a sack that you're always filling with new skills and abilities. Many people who share your intuitive and thinking approach to life have a hard time really relaxing. For one thing, work is your life, and your life is work. Whether you're working at the job that pays your bills or working at learning some new avocational activity, you probably do tend to work a lot.

In fact, you may realize that you even work at play! Do you deal with recreation most comfortably when you call it exercise ("It's good for you, you know!") or when you use it as time to perfect one or another athletic skill. Do you know how to have fun?

Do you often get the feeling that you're on the brink of failure? You're not alone! It's a natural consequence of having that high-energy, ambitious intuitive-thinking temperament!

Since you folks tend to measure your own value (and others' as well!) by a yardstick of accomplishment, and since there is always more to do and know, you may feel twinges of inadequacy, from time to time. You may set your personal standards impossibly high, with the consequence of feeling critical of others and feeling inadequate yourself.

When you compare the wealth of your accomplishment with others, still you don't give yourself the break you deserve. Sure, you know a lot. Sure, you excel at a broad assortment of skills. Just because the rest of the world can't keep up with you doesn't mean that you're OK, it just means that others are less so. In fact, you don't really expect too much of the bulk of humanity.

Maybe you tend to stay away from the bulk of humanity for just that reason.

In many ways, you don't expect the majority of the world to understand you. And you don't go out of your way to be understandable, either. Scratch an intuitive and thinking person and you'll find a predictable bit of arrogance just beneath the veneer.

At times, your lack of connection with the rest of the world shows up in your style of communication. One time, you may be unintelligibly terse ("What the heck; they won't understand it, anyway!"), and at another time you may launch a rambling form of discourse whose outline is impossible to discern.

Conjure up the image of the absent-minded professor giving a lecture, making the simple complicated and the complicated totally obscure, straying off first onto one "interesting point" and then another, and finally asking a thoroughly befuddled student in the front row: "How did I get onto this... Oh, yes, I was talking about..." Does that sound familiar?

Introverted thinkers with intuition often find themselves caught in the absent-minded professor's syndrome in everyday conversation. Simply stated, the problem comes down to having more concern for fidelity to the idea (the exact idea) than to communicating with a person (who may or may not be following your "lecture").

It may be worthwhile to remind you that a disproportionate number of the world's brightest people fall into your personality group, and chances are good that the average person you talk with can't keep up with your mile-aminute mind.

If you're a teacher, or if your job involves occasional instruction, remember to exercise organization, economy of words, and simplification of ideas, and you'll become a more successful communicator. Plan your verbal presentations to be too simple, then scale them down even further, and you'll be just about right for most of your listeners.

Learn to ask for feedback from your friends and colleagues, even in casual conversations, and then use that feedback to improve your communication style.

Scientific careers are attractive to those with your personality, and whether or not science is your chosen profession, your mode of thought will be basically scientific in any career.

You are driven to understand, predict, and explain reality, and you may slip into a favorite habit for those with your personality: living in a world of ideas, trying to figure out what everything means, and, thereby, missing out on a lot of direct experience in life. You live in the future more than you live in the present.

Very few people with your personality profile do well in executive or managerial posts in fields other than science and academia. The obstacles are several: lack of extraversion and a tendency to ignore human factors are the two most obvious. Diplomacy is an art which doesn't come naturally for introverted thinkers, but you can improve your skills with concentration and practice.

The intuitive character is always in danger of confusing possibility with reality, and nowhere is this pitfall more evident than with the introverted thinker. Because you tend to be such a loner, you may quietly nurture your own attractive theories far beyond the point when a more objective observer would abandon them.

You're not a data person, basically. You are comfortable when a relatively small number of facts backs your ideas, and you're not driven—as a sensing person would be—to gather more data to test out your theories.

You may even turn a blind eye to information which tends to refute your views. Succumbing to that tunnel vision can be disastrous in any career field, since you may squander your intellect and ability on ill-chosen projects and costly flights of fancy which may consume years of your productive life.

The Introverted Thinker in the World of Work

Your introverted nature needs peace in order to work most comfortably. Whatever the job, you spend a lot of time thinking before acting, and you're in your element when you find work which gives you plenty of time for contemplation.

You don't mind working long hours on a project without a break, and you take pride and interest in your job, especially if you are kept in touch with the ideas behind your assignments.

You prefer a quiet working environment, and you enjoy working alone. If the telephone never rings, and no one ever intrudes or interrupts your train of thought, all the better.

It's natural for you to regard other people as a necessary evil of most work situations. You tend to have trouble communicating fluently, and names and faces seem to slip by you without registering more often than you'd like to admit.

More so than your extraverted co-workers, you pay attention to details and you are conservative in drawing conclusions from your work. Those who make flourishing statements make you anxious, especially if they're referring to your accomplishments.

You're a thinker, and when you walk into the work place, everyone around you hears a computer switch on. When it comes to matters you assign to your thinking side, you are unemotional: often unaware of and uninterested in people's feelings. Especially where work is concerned—you tend to make decisions on an impersonal, logical basis, and you expect others to follow suit. You probably hurt people's feelings more times than you know.

You can reprimand people when necessary. You can even fire them, when you feel the situation really demands it. No one would deny that can be an asset: the ability to do what needs to be done, free from self-recrimination and guilt. You are aware that you may crush people, from time to time, but, frankly speaking, you regard your ability to separate your personal views from your work personality as evidence of inner strength.

After all, you don't demand personal treatment yourself; you simply ask to be treated fairly. What's more, you understand that there may be adverse reactions to your impersonal stance, and you take some consolation in the fact that you are more capable than others of getting along without harmony.

But you may wish to spend some time examining this part of your personality. If you suspect that most of your associates candidly consider you to be hard-hearted and insensitive; and if you find believable sympathy only among other "thinker-type" workers, you may wish to invest some time and energy in considering alternative points of view. Remember, there are no "rights" and "wrongs", "weaks" or "strongs" when it comes to personality. There are only differences. You may find added insight and sensitivity an asset, both in the practical and personal sense, when it comes to your coworkers.

The perceptive in you likes diversity in work, has no trouble shifting gears from one assignment to another, one technique to the next, just so long as the work doesn't require a lot of decision-making. Your perceptive side is open: patient to changing situations, patient when a task requires repeated revisions. On the other hand, your perceptive side may have a tendency to start too many changes without being asked, revising when it isn't necessary. Many of these self-started activities may wind up in a desk drawer, first postponed, then forgotten.

Unless your thinking and introverted tendencies can temper some of the less desirable aspects of your perceptive nature, much of what you start may never reach completion.

Your perceptive quality ensures that you will always be curious, open, willing to hear all sides of an issue before deciding on a course of action. Of course, you also tend to keep topics open excessively long; coming to a decision is almost painful to you. If you let the perceptive in you dominate the thinker and the introvert within, then you may develop a reputation of being a master of the delicate art of postponement.

As a perceptive you may lack patience with judging sorts when they jump to conclusions, point an accusing finger at your indecisive nature (which you generally deny or explain away!), and suggest that you're basically gullible to everyone's inputs, long after an issue should have been closed and settled.

Try to calm down when you hear those comments; try to weed out the judgmental indignation and see if your occasional critics might not have something worth considering. After all, you know that there are both positive and negative aspects correlated with every personality feature.

Let that perceptive openness lead you to personal revision when it's in your own best interests.

You are an intuitive person, always scanning the horizon for the possibilities in any situation, rather than keeping your eyes on the road ahead. This characteristic arms you well to be a discoverer, a visionary. Your interest is in new ideas, new theories, and you muster a great deal of patience and energy when it comes to tackling new problems in life.

But, watch out when life forces you to work at a job that makes no demand on your intuition! Worse yet is one which forces you to make use of your relatively undeveloped sensing side—making observations, keeping track of facts and figures! You'll do better to target yourself toward work that involves the big picture, not details, on bold concepts, not precise facts.

You'll be wise always to surround yourself with a couple of practical sorts: people who look at things with their sensory capacity. While you may find this difficult—since intuitive people usually prefer the company of other like- minded souls—you will probably find their counsel valuable. An intuitive person with a sensory-type sidekick may achieve more than the intuitive alone, since facts and details will not be overlooked along the way.

Intuitive workers, such as yourself, are in their glory when the work is challenging and novel. When you're inspired, you fire up your furnaces and work with a level of energy and exuberance that staggers the imagination of your sensory-type co-workers. A new task at hand? A new technique or skill to master? No problem for you. You will find the time to tackle the most difficult problem and unravel the most complicated situation.

Then things settle down. You stifle a yawn, while your frazzled co-workers sigh with relief. While you yearn for the next crisis, they make no effort to disguise their earnest hope that routine (blessed routine) is re-established as soon as possible.

Then, one morning, sure as death, you wake up, staring blankly at the ceiling, and you know you've been stricken by the insidious dark side of the intuitive enthusiasm: boredom. You try to fight it, and you deny it to your friends and enemies alike, but the fact is: you know you don't want to go to work. Your energy's gone, your spirit's flat, and you realize you've fallen into one of your slack periods.

Maybe that isn't you. Many introverted thinkers who are also intuitive reflexively exercise personality "checks and balances" to ward off attacks of the dark side of the intuitive temperament. As you've probably noticed by now, the four personality dimensions can have interactive effects to temper each other.

For example, the stability that comes with being an introvert and the logical approach of the thinker may help you reduce the potential "flightiness" that may accompany the intuitive-perceptive combination in less "wellanchored" types. Learning to use these different personality components to your personal benefit may give you more control as the architect of your own behavior.

But, maybe you are troubled by these intuitive down-phases from time to time. It's OK. It's understandable. You're paying the dues for that intuitive fire. That's part of your style, and you may as well accept it without embarrassment. You run hot and cold, up and down, just as a matter of personality.

If you accept it, acknowledge it, with the same pride you hang on your problem-solving, high-energy characteristics, you may learn to temper those down-swings and pull out of them with a bit more style, grace, and professionalism.

And if you can't modify your behavior, once you understand it as the natural "flip-side" of the part of you you love best, then maybe you can find a job that's short-project- oriented, an employer who understands your cyclic nature, and enough stable, well-grounded co-workers to cover those other segments of your personality that may haunt you in the work place.

You know the parts I mean: your tendency to reach conclusions on the basis of unsupported hunches, your habit of not paying enough attention to precision, or your inclination to worry too little about completing projects or checking your work to be free from errors of fact.

If and when you find that job, or that employer, or those co-workers, you'll be valued for the glittering bundle of intuition you provide as a spark to the humdrum of everyday work life. In a work field or an organization dominated by sensing types—especially by sensing, thinking, and/or judging personalities—those with your traits often are regarded as less stable.

Don't let that judgment get you down. You know, just because you're enlightened enough to appreciate both the "bright" and "dark" sides of your personality, that doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the world will share your open acceptance. There will be times when you will have to face rejection, even open hostility, in order to remain your own best friend.

So, what career choices suit those like yourself? Try science, diagnostic medical specialties, logic, mathematics, philosophy, economics, university-level teaching, research. The more abstract and contemplative the field, the better it will suit your personality.

What other fields may suit you depends on the depth and intensity of your introversion, on the extent to which you have developed a social coping mechanism.

Most introverted thinkers, when forced to deal with people, day in and day out—in a sales field, perhaps—live uncomfortable lives. In administrative positions they often feel worn down, unless supervision and direct contact occupy a minor part of a more inward-directed work mission.

If you oblige yourself to function in a people-type job, you may feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and non-communicative much of the time. You may feel smothered, claustrophobic. You may turn inward. People may regard you as arrogant, distant, snobbish, and rejecting. You'll stir up the full complement of others' defense mechanisms. And, ironically enough, you'll wonder what's wrong with them.

For introverted thinkers, writing is usually a more enjoyable form of expression than speaking, especially if there are important ideas to be communicated. People with your personality type often find themselves frustrated and handicapped unless they work actively at enhancing their communication skills in one or another medium.

You are, above all else, an idea person. Any job choice that frustrates your orientation toward vision and analysis will be a poor one for you. Any job that doesn't take advantage of your unparalleled ability to concentrate, learn, remember, synthesize, and analyze is not only a waste for you, but a waste for humanity.

Choose your work carefully. Change if you're unhappy. You owe it to yourself.