Saturday, August 22, 2020

Typing Video: Jen

 

Jen has been in the community a long time, and I typed her many years ago. My conclusion remains the same. But this video presents a self-contained and somewhat clearer view of her type than previous ones.

Jen talks a lot about her professional life and how she feels about different aspects of it. She expresses some regret at not having gone after her career ambitions. Her interests are not pragmatic by default, but she seems to have adapted to her new role well.

Jen is a sensitive person who easily takes things personally, and speaks very frankly about her feelings and her relationships. She talks at length about her family members and how they are. She also talks at length about what things she likes. All this suggests higher Fi, and along with the issues and neuroses she faces in her professional life, likely 4D Fi with 1D Te.

Her attitude towards conflict and general soft attitude suggests weaker Se, and that she almost certainly isn't an Se triad type. She is non-judgmental way, and "open-minded to a fault" - preferring to internalize conflict and blame herself rather than others. IEI could maybe superficially work with how she seems to live in her imagination much of the time, but other evidence points quite strongly to Ne values, such as enjoying finding innovative new ways to do her job and being (maybe excessively) open to new information. She is also highly avoidant of conflict and wishes people would be more understanding.

Overall her soft, open-minded nature suggests an Si valuing introvert, which along with the high Fi means either EII or SEI. These are in fact the two main types that have been contested for Jen in the past. How can we decide between them?

One can interpret Jen's career woes as a lack of ambition with respect to future prospects (suggesting lower Ne / higher Si), however this does not seem right given how she explains it. Rather it seems that she had high ambitions, yet lacked confidence in making them real, or taking the right practical steps involved. There are maybe other points that suggest SEI, like putting others' needs above her own, and her interest in drama and singing.

But EII seems to fit the best for several reasons. Jen has lacked confidence to an almost pathological degree — though she does notice this and has been working on it — suggesting Se-4 more than Se-7, as do her lack of discipline in writing and "wishy-washiness". Practical career development is a sometimes painful, yet rewarding area for her, in a way that makes perfect sense for suggestive Te paired with Si. She enjoys getting better at her role and learning whatever is required, despite it not being her dream job. SEIs, with suggestive Ne, are not really proactive when it comes to learning new skills and branching out, and arguably would get bored by the purely practical things she is learning. She also says it's enough to "do your best" at work ("putting in elbow work"), and it doesn't have to be perfect as long as you have good intentions. This is in contrast to the perfectionistic attitude sometimes linked to Ti.

Jen has an active imagination and enjoys fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, but also reading nonfictional guides about her interests - folklore, history, animals. There is Ni in how she immerses herself in fictional worlds, yet it is tempered by learning factoids about the real world (more Ne). Her "sympathy for the devil" attitude is a canonical expression of NeFi — to paraphrase her words: "someone may do something horrible but you have to see them as a human and think of what's led them to be this way, and feel sorry for them". She tries to always "do the right thing", a common-sense approach to morality; she does not elaborate any abstract principles whether in relation to politics, religion, or personal values.

While Jen can be silly and joke around with family members, this seems limited to people she already knows well, and is not at all unusual for ignoring Fe (paired with Ne-2 which is attuned to creative generation of possibilities (creative in the sense of novelty, not the creative function)).

Her boss says that she is innovative and not fazed by changes, though Jen herself questions whether this is true. Her Ne is maybe more subdued than normal for the creative function, but in certain cases the creative function can be difficult to see or even be perceived as a weakness by the person himself. 

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