E/I S/N T/F P/J

Okay! Want to know what your test results mean?

Over the next few weeks, and probably on and on, I'll have a topic on the blog called "Personality Type." Most of my quotations are going to be from Lenore Thomson's books because I think her is the best and most helpful, but there are other books that a person could look at to get a picture of this idea. I'll be mentioning some of those as well.

First, I want to start by saying that some people really hate to be "typed." It seems to some people that if some other person says anything that sounds like, "you are a ____," then a very disagreeable, written in stone, locked in place opinion has been formed. So it's necessary that this is much more like saying "right-handed" than it is like saying "short-tempered." This isn't about character or goodness or evil or anything else a person has free will over. This is about the way you came into this world - tall, short, dark, light, curly-haired or not, left or right handed. Any personality in a human is capable of over-riding impulses, choosing behavior, or learning or un-learning habits. This is just a way to understand a person's own inborn "dominance" (as in left or right handedness) or "preference" (which is how the personality type people talk about it.)

The quiz gives you a set of four letters. You'll be either

Extroverted or Introverted

Sensate or iNtuitive

Thinking or Feeling

Perceiving or Judging

I myself am an INFJ - that is, Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging. So far, an ISTP, a couple of ISFJ's and an INFP have told me what their results are. I'd love to know the results for the rest of my readers. If you haven't done the evaluation yet, hop on down to that post, and line up your columns! Oh, c'mon! It's fun!

In brief, Introverts get recharged and re-energized from inside themselves and the energies of other people deplete them, while Extroverts gain energy from being around other people, and are often thinking while talking or interacting in some way - the interactions are the means of processing information.

Sensates are grounded and aware of the physical world - in their bodies, in their position in the room or the group or the hierarchy, and they generally have a specific relationship to their stuff. Some Sensates need order, and some are energized by more chaos. The point is that they're aware of it in the first place. (Notice how I slip into saying "they"? That's the N coming out in me. Sorry.)

iNtuitives live in their heads instead of in the world around them - as much as they can get away with, anyhow. They're about possibilities and implications and ramifications and what if. iNtuitives can see how things could be (even if they really couldn't be that way). They're all about the imagined reality.

Now, don't get your knickers in a twist about Thinkers vs. Feelers. These slightly unfortunate delineations only mean that some folks organize cognitively by way of structure, logic, and the framework or cause and effect. They tend to want the rules for the thing. (Doesn't mean they'll obey the rules - they just assume that there are some.) Feelers think too, of course. But Feelers think about people and relationships and in a fight between the rules and the people, Feelers would vote for the people.

The last either/or is Perceivers and Judgers. (Again, don't get all irritated - no need for sand in your shorts - they're unfortunate terms, but we can work with them.)

Perceivers have as their "first function" (the part of human functioning that they lead with in their lives and minds) either an interior (introverted) relationship with the thinking or feeling function, or an exterior relationship with thinking or feeling. In other words, they experience things first. They perceive them first. There is always an immediacy to a perceiver's world, and it is apprehended personally.

The leading function of a Judger type is that of cognition rather than personal contact. Judgers have either an interior or an exterior (introverted or extroverted) contact with the world that is either Sensate or iNtuitive first. Information has meaning - it isn't its own thing, with the meanings optional, as for Perceiver types.

Now, if you take the functions, and arrange them in order of the 16 Types, people are going to have one of these eight ways of leading off in the world - these are the eight "handedness" possibilities:

1. Extraverted Sensates (ESTP or ESFP)
2. Introverted Sensates (ISTJ or ISFJ)
3. Extraverted iNtuitives (ENTP or ENFP)
4. Introverted iNtuitives (INTJ or INFJ)
5. Extraverted Thinkers (ESTJ or ENTJ)
6. Introverted Thinkers (ISTP or INTP)
7. Extraverted Feelers (ESFJ or ENFJ)
8. Introverted Feelers (ISFP or INFP)

More - lots more - where that came from on its way! Feedback welcomed, encouraged, begged, and otherwise solicited. Folks is folks ... and it takes all kinds to make a world.