"Natural" INTJs v. "Formed" INTJs

Storm · 03-31-2009, 06:13 PM

I've noticed that some people claim to have fallen into the INTJ personality due to life experience, sometimes even citing a traumatic event, while others claim to have been an INTJ their whole life.

Do you think there is any common differences between the two types?

I'll give my own answer later, just want to see what people think first.

**intjdude** · 03-31-2009, 07:45 PM

I don't know that there's really any natural INTJs... wouldn't everyone be a F when born technically? I think reasoning is something that is developed only with time and influenced by environment.

One might have more capacity to think over someone else when born, but that doesn't mean they are a T at that time.

Storm · 03-31-2009, 07:51 PM

Well, they think that children do develop their letters over time - but you have a natural inclination toward one or the other.

**imfrndly2u** · 03-31-2009, 07:58 PM

I was always a little different than everyone around me (much like everyone else describes themselves on this site)but never could put my finger on why I was different. I was raised thinking I would always be a blue collar person and never really took the opportunity to "flex" my mental abilities. I made straight A's all through high school, but was never encouraged to take advanced classes. It wasn't until I was in my late 30's when I was given the opportunity to assist a chemical engineer on a project at work that I realized what I missed. Since then I read everthing I can get my hands on. One of the first books I read was "catcher in the rye" I only wish I had read that book in high school. Later I read "please understand me" and that's when I discovered there were more of "me" out there. It was actually very theraputic for me, though I now feel like the dumbest INTJ in the world. I have a very well paying job and couldn't possibly go back to school, but I often wonder what I might have been if I had applied myself more. Looking back, I feel like I was always an INTJ. Most of the info I have read suggests you are born one personality and that never changes. I get the feeling that phsycologists support the single personality idea because the idea of multiple personality changes causes multiple problems to their "put people in a box" efforts.

**Synamon** · 03-31-2009, 08:01 PM

	Originally Posted by intjdude To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I don't know that there's really any natural INTJs... wouldn't everyone be a F when born technically? I think reasoning is something that is developed only with time and influenced by environment. One might have more capacity to think over someone else when born, but that doesn't mean they are a T at that time.

What?? The ability to "think" is not T. Every single person on this planet "thinks".

Why on earth would you believe that people are born F? Have you read anything Jung or Myers-Briggs have written about functions or how they are developed?

Storm · 03-31-2009, 08:06 PM

Here is the
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to the most informative source I know of describing the development of the type.

Anyway, I started this thread because it seems people who have been "forced" into the INTJ personality (it may be a mask for their true type, however you want to think of it) cling more/pride themselves of rational and detachment, while the natural INTJs are just sort of clueless that they have a tendency to be this way.

**intjdude** · 03-31-2009, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by imfrndly2u
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I was always a little different than everyone around me (much like everyone else describes themselves on this site)but never could put my finger on why I was different. I was raised thinking I would always be a blue collar person and never really took the opportunity to "flex" my mental abilities. I made straight A's all through high school, but was never encouraged to take advanced classes. It wasn't until I was in my late 30's when I was given the opportunity to assist a chemical engineer on a project at work that I realized what I missed. Since then I read everthing I can get my hands on. One of the first books I read was "catcher in the rye" I only wish I had read that book in high school. Later I read "please understand me" and that's when I discovered there were more of "me" out there. It was actually very theraputic for me, though I now feel like the dumbest INTJ in the world. I have a very well paying job and couldn't possibly go back to school, but I often wonder what I might have been if I had applied myself more. Looking back, I feel like I was always an INTJ. Most of the info I have read suggests you are born one personality and that never changes. I get the feeling that phsycologists support the single personality idea because the idea of multiple personality changes causes multiple problems to their "put people in a box" efforts.

so which category are you in?

**Synamon** · 03-31-2009, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Storm
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Here is the
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to the most informative source I know of describing the development of the type.

Anyway, I started this thread because it seems people who have been "forced" into the INTJ personality (it may be a mask for their true type, however you want to think of it) cling more/pride themselves of rational and detachment, while the natural INTJs are just sort of clueless that they have a tendency to be this way.

Sign me up for clueless then. My default way of thinking has never changed. I have developed a more balanced approach and I can wear a variety of masks as the situation requires now, but no one forced me to be anything.

**LionsPride** · 03-31-2009, 08:18 PM

I'm one of the people who feels that MBTI type is consistent through life and forms a base type. I view MBTI as a characterization of how a person thinks more than what they think. How a person thinks strikes me as more hard wiring whereas what a person thinks is always fluid. As Storm mentioned, the type develops through childhood though whether it develops as a result of nurture or patterned from birth as nature I'm not sure.

Even though the base type is always there, it doesn't mean that a person will act the same on the outside for all their life. Experiences provide new information and people adapt, I just don't think it results in a true change of type.

Traumatic events might be different. I would be willing to believe that they could permanently alter personality.

LionsPride added to this post, 2 minutes and 22 seconds later...

	Originally Posted by Synamon To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Sign me up for clueless then. My default way of thinking has never changed. I have developed a more balanced approach and I can wear a variety of masks as the situation requires now, but no one forced me to be anything.

I have a similar experience to Synamon.

Storm · 03-31-2009, 08:21 PM

Well, I was assuming that there are people who have truly changed type through a traumatic event (or think they have) - my question was more to if such a person would have a different, noticeable personality from a natural INTJ.

For instance, I am a natural INTJ (I actually have recently realized "society" has forced a bit of an S role on me, with it's advantages and disadvantages.), and I actively want to develop my other traits, I would think a person with a traumatic event wouldn't want to.

**intjdude** · 03-31-2009, 08:21 PM

	Originally Posted by Synamon To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What?? The ability to "think" is not T. Every single person on this planet "thinks". Why on earth would you believe that people are born F? Have you read anything Jung or Myers-Briggs have written about functions or how they are developed?

it could have been better worded...
"more capacity" = propensity
What was meant is that 'one may have more propensity for thinking (T) over someone else..'

I think making decisions based on feelings is innate and default...just like a reflex to yawn when you see someone else yawning... isn't that why babies cry? does a baby actually use T and decide he needs to cry for food?

Storm · 03-31-2009, 08:29 PM

	Originally Posted by intjdude To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think making decisions based on feelings is innate and default...just like a reflex to yawn when you see someone else yawning... isn't that why babies cry? does a baby actually use T and decide he needs to cry for food?

A baby's instinct to cry for food has nothing to do with T or F.

**intjdude** · 03-31-2009, 08:31 PM

	Originally Posted by Storm To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	A baby's instinct to cry for food has nothing to do with T or F.

How so? Why not laugh?

**Ender** · 03-31-2009, 08:35 PM

	Originally Posted by intjdude To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	it could have been better worded... "more capacity" = propensity What was meant is that 'one may have more propensity for thinking (T) over someone else..' I think making decisions based on feelings is innate and default...just like a reflex to yawn when you see someone else yawning... isn't that why babies cry? does a baby actually use T and decide he needs to cry for food?

I think your definition of T and F is quite a generalization. I think I see what you're getting at though.

At any rate, I don't feel like I forced myself into INTJ. It's possible that I'm actually an INTP and society forced me to take on a significant amount of S (I have tested as ISTJ before) and J. If there's one thing I'm certain of though, it's that at my core I've always been able to detach myself emotionally and think things through + I've always been comfortable with more abstract things. (NT) And unless something happened when I was like 3 or younger that scarred me, I've always been very introverted.

**intjdude** · 03-31-2009, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by Storm
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Here is the
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
to the most informative source I know of describing the development of the type.

Anyway, I started this thread because it seems people who have been "forced" into the INTJ personality (it may be a mask for their true type, however you want to think of it) cling more/pride themselves of rational and detachment, while the natural INTJs are just sort of clueless that they have a tendency to be this way.

As it says at the link you've provided.

"As children grow and learn and develop, their personalities take shape and begin to obviously influence their behaviors and attitudes. By the age 13, a child's baseline personality can be considered fairly set, and we can usually identify which of the sixteen "adult" personality types a teenager fits into."

It seems to imply that it's not set when born... so time and environment is required

if F/T are supposed to be preferences, how could we argue that they are 'natural' and preset?

**Stratego** · 03-31-2009, 08:39 PM

I consider myself something of a "formed" INTJ.

In my case it was not traumatic experience that shaped my "final" personality but education, choice, my career, and a thorough commitment to developing and strengthening what was already there. As I stated in another thread, the two aspects that changed most dramatically in my test results were my feeling and perceiving functions. When I first tested in my freshman year of college, I was an INFP. Nearly ten years later I tested as an INTJ, and when I read more about the personality type I was amazed at how closely it described me, and I matched on nearly all points.

But I think personality is more fluid and versitile than can be measured or defined by a test, not matter how ingenious. Some behaviors are natural and others are learned or adopted by necessity. Here are some examples of what I mean--

I was always a natural introvert, and that hasn't truly changed--but my career and all the practical demands of making a living have more or less forced me to practice a sort of surface extroversion, to adapt or fail. I am far more extroverted in my working behavior than I am truly comfortable being, but I have no choice. I have to force my sensing and emotive side to surface---raise my head and make eye contact, smile and say hello when people walk by my desk or else I'm cited for being "unfriendly" or "cold," and too much of my natural behavior could mean I lose my job--

My natural instinct to come to a conclusion and express a judgement, my preference for precise, efficient communication is constantly challenged when I interact with patrons and fellow staff members. I can't really tell my boss what I think or I would certainly get on her bad side. No one wants to hear the stark truth.

I loathe small talk but must participate to some degree or my colleagues complain that I'm "cold," "aloof," or more viscerally, a "bitch." I have to wait for a patron to get to the effing point when they approach my desk asking for help, and have to tell me their life story before they can ask a simple question. So I learn patience but have to remind myself to smile and perform all the social gestures to put people at their ease.

But what has changed most dramatically for me are my feeling and perceiving functions. I was, as a younger woman, more a feeler than a thinker. But this was prior to my education and due to an isolated, limiting upbringing by conservative, religious parents who were ceaselessly emotional and not the least logical.

Since I never felt comfortable or safe with such (as I later thought them to be) "hysterical" parents, I began at an early age to fashion a self that was contrary to their example. Over time I began to surpress my immediate emotional reactions and favored reason and logic when solving a problem or dealing with a situation.

Likewise, I loathed being in the center of their indecisive and circuitous way of handling things--they never thought things through and could never make up their minds about the slightest issue. Going to the store to get groceries was suddenly a full-blown debate and major production---and most if the time I was sitting there in this noisy midst thinking---just make up your damn mind already.

So I think somewhere along the way some of my personality traits were more formed than forming, if that makes any sense. In essense this gos back to the nature versus nurture debate, and I guess I come down more on the side of nurture. I think it may have the bigger influence in the end.

Rudy · 03-31-2009, 08:40 PM

The biggest evidence against MBTI types being a purely natural inclination is that genetic disposition, if it exists at all, is very weak. That is, there is no good correlation between the MBTI type of children and of their parents.

This means that MBTI type is not based on DNA, or at least, only partially so.

Well, what's left? Nurture. This could include everything from how healthily your mother eats when she is pregnant, to whether you had corporal punishment used on you. There is no way to suss out properly which of these things, if any, affect MBTI types without proper studies.

**Synamon** · 03-31-2009, 08:41 PM

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is a link from the MBTI site which states the following:


	Jung believed that all the functions are largely unconscious and undeveloped in infants. As we grow and develop, the different functions develop.


	Developing a function involves consciously differentiating it from the others, exercising it, and becoming more skilled with it.

Storm · 03-31-2009, 08:44 PM

(Referencing post #17)Hmmm....or one could say that as you reached the stage when a child starts making decisions using either F or T, you simply naturally preferred the T. If you were an F, you wouldn't have seen a need to rebel against your parents.

**LionsPride** · 03-31-2009, 08:47 PM

Originally Posted by Storm
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Well, I was assuming that there are people who have truly changed type through a traumatic event (or think they have) - my question was more to if such a person would have a different, noticeable personality from a natural INTJ.

For instance, I am a natural INTJ (I actually have recently realized "society" has forced a bit of an S role on me, with it's advantages and disadvantages.), and I actively want to develop my other traits, I would think a person with a traumatic event wouldn't want to.

I'm not sure; having not gone through or known someone who went through a traumatic event where I had them typed before and after and compared them to someone else of that type.

Speculating, I presume that traumatic events would produce an unhealthy change and regardless of whether they want to change or develop their other types they would be unable to.

Do you think that people who have suffered traumatic events test more like INTJ after? INTJ over any of the other types? Even if they did, I wouldn't say they are actual INTJ's, since they wouldn't gain our thought process, they just might seem like one on the outside. That is, if people even test as INTJ after a traumatic event.

Rudy · 03-31-2009, 08:49 PM

I just thought of an interesting possibility, and I'm somewhat embarrassed that this has never occurred to me before. It could be genetic, and entirely natural, in the following manner.

Rather than individual types competing against each other in natural selection, what if the human race is evolved to have a certain distribution of types. That is, a certain number of each type creates the optimal society that is able to maintain the most cohesion, output, cooperation, etc., as compared to other societies that would have been in competition in our prehistoric past?

Thus, the type could be influenced by DNA, but intentionally have a certain amount of randomness intentionally thrown in by nature to maintain certain bounds on type distribution within a given population.

**Hysteria** · 03-31-2009, 08:50 PM

I don't believe I have always been INTJ. I remember once I started middle school I seriously thought that I had developed a mental disorder. I was a completely different person. In elementary school I was always an introvert but I was friends with everyone. When I hit middle school I felt like I just couldn't stand the majority of people. I started thinking a lot and I was always talking to myself. Kids would come up to me at recess and ask me to go hang out with them, but I simply didn't feel the need to go play/talk with them. I'd rather just stand by myself and think. I didn't understand that at all, because I used to have tons of friends and loved hanging out and talking with them. Now I felt no need to talk to anyone but myself. And it simply manifested. I never had friends in middle school because I didn't enjoy talking about the things that everyone liked. I used to love small talk, but I simply couldn't stand it anymore. I got a heck of a lot smarter though. I went from being lucky get C's to getting straight A's and making it into honors courses. I became a lot more logical and began to love problem solving even more than before. I started staying home and reading articles on current events, finance, psychology, science, anything I could get my hands on instead of going out with friends like I used to, because I found it more interesting.

Plainly, I was always an introvert and I was always a thinker. I have never been a feeler, but I believe that my thinking side just developed more as I grew up. If I were to guess, I think I would have been more ISTP when I was a kid. But there was such a huge change in my personality that I thought I had become clinically depressed. I remember doing research and finding out I somewhat fit characteristics of narcissism and anti social disorder. I kind of think I hit that stage where I realized life wasn't rainbows and butterflies. And I realized mommy and daddy weren't always right and just because they say it doesn't mean it is correct. And I just developed from there. I think my mother's S rubbed off on me when I was a kid and my father's P. But as I got older and started becoming "myself" and not "my parent's daughter", my personality changed.

That turned out to be a novel! Sorry.

Storm · 03-31-2009, 08:51 PM

Yes, LP, I think that might be a good way to talk about it, that such people only seem like INTJs. I do wonder if the INTJ personality would more often be a "mask" personality - since its weaknesses are connected to detachments and its strengths could also be a form of detachment in an unhealthy individual.

**LionsPride** · 03-31-2009, 09:07 PM

I'm not sure how much they would seem like INTJ's. I don't think that being detached is really enough to be INTJ. And being detached because it makes a person feel better (safe from harm) would be more of a damaged F more than a damaged person becoming a legitimate T.

I think that the idea that people who have suffered traumatic events can't be differentiated from INTJ's (even the immature ones) is a stretch. Do you have any statistical data that shows that people tend to test INTJ after traumatic events? I think that any type is fair game for people following a traumatic event, but as I mentioned, it's not a true type, it just seems like that type. I think if you analyze some of their behaviour, the seams of the costume they wear will always show. Some of their behaviours may not seem...natural.

**azelismia** · 03-31-2009, 09:14 PM

Originally Posted by LionsPride
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I'm not sure; having not gone through or known someone who went through a traumatic event where I had them typed before and after and compared them to someone else of that type.

Speculating, I presume that traumatic events would produce an unhealthy change and regardless of whether they want to change or develop their other types they would be unable to.

Do you think that people who have suffered traumatic events test more like INTJ after? INTJ over any of the other types? Even if they did, I wouldn't say they are actual INTJ's, since they wouldn't gain our thought process, they just might seem like one on the outside. That is, if people even test as INTJ after a traumatic event.

too specific, if someone changes that dramatically after a traumatic event it could be to ANY of the types. I don't see why a traumatic event would lend itself to being INTJ. I can see why people with mental disorders might appear to be an intj but I can't see how people suffering from PTSD would appear to be INTJ. I don't remember reading a single story where someone has said xxx happened and suddenly I was INTJ. I don't think it works that way. I think some people like to think of themselves as intj because it seems "cool" to them.. but I just don't see this theory of TE patients becoming INTJ.

no evidence.

03-31-2009, 07:45 PM	#2
intjdude Member [19%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 779	I don't know that there's really any natural INTJs... wouldn't everyone be a F when born technically? I think reasoning is something that is developed only with time and influenced by environment. One might have more capacity to think over someone else when born, but that doesn't mean they are a T at that time.
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03-31-2009, 07:51 PM	#3
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	Well, they think that children do develop their letters over time - but you have a natural inclination toward one or the other.
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03-31-2009, 07:58 PM	#4
imfrndly2u New Member [01%] MBTI: intj Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 21	I was always a little different than everyone around me (much like everyone else describes themselves on this site)but never could put my finger on why I was different. I was raised thinking I would always be a blue collar person and never really took the opportunity to "flex" my mental abilities. I made straight A's all through high school, but was never encouraged to take advanced classes. It wasn't until I was in my late 30's when I was given the opportunity to assist a chemical engineer on a project at work that I realized what I missed. Since then I read everthing I can get my hands on. One of the first books I read was "catcher in the rye" I only wish I had read that book in high school. Later I read "please understand me" and that's when I discovered there were more of "me" out there. It was actually very theraputic for me, though I now feel like the dumbest INTJ in the world. I have a very well paying job and couldn't possibly go back to school, but I often wonder what I might have been if I had applied myself more. Looking back, I feel like I was always an INTJ. Most of the info I have read suggests you are born one personality and that never changes. I get the feeling that phsycologists support the single personality idea because the idea of multiple personality changes causes multiple problems to their "put people in a box" efforts.
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03-31-2009, 08:06 PM	#6
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	Here is the To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. to the most informative source I know of describing the development of the type. Anyway, I started this thread because it seems people who have been "forced" into the INTJ personality (it may be a mask for their true type, however you want to think of it) cling more/pride themselves of rational and detachment, while the natural INTJs are just sort of clueless that they have a tendency to be this way.
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03-31-2009, 08:21 PM	#10
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	Well, I was assuming that there are people who have truly changed type through a traumatic event (or think they have) - my question was more to if such a person would have a different, noticeable personality from a natural INTJ. For instance, I am a natural INTJ (I actually have recently realized "society" has forced a bit of an S role on me, with it's advantages and disadvantages.), and I actively want to develop my other traits, I would think a person with a traumatic event wouldn't want to.
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03-31-2009, 06:13 PM	#1
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	I've noticed that some people claim to have fallen into the INTJ personality due to life experience, sometimes even citing a traumatic event, while others claim to have been an INTJ their whole life. Do you think there is any common differences between the two types? I'll give my own answer later, just want to see what people think first.
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03-31-2009, 08:39 PM	#16
Stratego Veteran Member [57%] MBTI: InTJ Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 2,283	I consider myself something of a "formed" INTJ. In my case it was not traumatic experience that shaped my "final" personality but education, choice, my career, and a thorough commitment to developing and strengthening what was already there. As I stated in another thread, the two aspects that changed most dramatically in my test results were my feeling and perceiving functions. When I first tested in my freshman year of college, I was an INFP. Nearly ten years later I tested as an INTJ, and when I read more about the personality type I was amazed at how closely it described me, and I matched on nearly all points. But I think personality is more fluid and versitile than can be measured or defined by a test, not matter how ingenious. Some behaviors are natural and others are learned or adopted by necessity. Here are some examples of what I mean-- I was always a natural introvert, and that hasn't truly changed--but my career and all the practical demands of making a living have more or less forced me to practice a sort of surface extroversion, to adapt or fail. I am far more extroverted in my working behavior than I am truly comfortable being, but I have no choice. I have to force my sensing and emotive side to surface---raise my head and make eye contact, smile and say hello when people walk by my desk or else I'm cited for being "unfriendly" or "cold," and too much of my natural behavior could mean I lose my job-- My natural instinct to come to a conclusion and express a judgement, my preference for precise, efficient communication is constantly challenged when I interact with patrons and fellow staff members. I can't really tell my boss what I think or I would certainly get on her bad side. No one wants to hear the stark truth. I loathe small talk but must participate to some degree or my colleagues complain that I'm "cold," "aloof," or more viscerally, a "bitch." I have to wait for a patron to get to the effing point when they approach my desk asking for help, and have to tell me their life story before they can ask a simple question. So I learn patience but have to remind myself to smile and perform all the social gestures to put people at their ease. But what has changed most dramatically for me are my feeling and perceiving functions. I was, as a younger woman, more a feeler than a thinker. But this was prior to my education and due to an isolated, limiting upbringing by conservative, religious parents who were ceaselessly emotional and not the least logical. Since I never felt comfortable or safe with such (as I later thought them to be) "hysterical" parents, I began at an early age to fashion a self that was contrary to their example. Over time I began to surpress my immediate emotional reactions and favored reason and logic when solving a problem or dealing with a situation. Likewise, I loathed being in the center of their indecisive and circuitous way of handling things--they never thought things through and could never make up their minds about the slightest issue. Going to the store to get groceries was suddenly a full-blown debate and major production---and most if the time I was sitting there in this noisy midst thinking---just make up your damn mind already. So I think somewhere along the way some of my personality traits were more formed than forming, if that makes any sense. In essense this gos back to the nature versus nurture debate, and I guess I come down more on the side of nurture. I think it may have the bigger influence in the end.
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03-31-2009, 08:40 PM	#17
Rudy Administrator MBTI: INfJ Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 21,722	The biggest evidence against MBTI types being a purely natural inclination is that genetic disposition, if it exists at all, is very weak. That is, there is no good correlation between the MBTI type of children and of their parents. This means that MBTI type is not based on DNA, or at least, only partially so. Well, what's left? Nurture. This could include everything from how healthily your mother eats when she is pregnant, to whether you had corporal punishment used on you. There is no way to suss out properly which of these things, if any, affect MBTI types without proper studies.
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03-31-2009, 08:44 PM	#19
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	(Referencing post #17)Hmmm....or one could say that as you reached the stage when a child starts making decisions using either F or T, you simply naturally preferred the T. If you were an F, you wouldn't have seen a need to rebel against your parents.
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03-31-2009, 08:49 PM	#21
Rudy Administrator MBTI: INfJ Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 21,722	I just thought of an interesting possibility, and I'm somewhat embarrassed that this has never occurred to me before. It could be genetic, and entirely natural, in the following manner. Rather than individual types competing against each other in natural selection, what if the human race is evolved to have a certain distribution of types. That is, a certain number of each type creates the optimal society that is able to maintain the most cohesion, output, cooperation, etc., as compared to other societies that would have been in competition in our prehistoric past? Thus, the type could be influenced by DNA, but intentionally have a certain amount of randomness intentionally thrown in by nature to maintain certain bounds on type distribution within a given population.
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03-31-2009, 08:50 PM	#22
Hysteria New Member [01%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 14	I don't believe I have always been INTJ. I remember once I started middle school I seriously thought that I had developed a mental disorder. I was a completely different person. In elementary school I was always an introvert but I was friends with everyone. When I hit middle school I felt like I just couldn't stand the majority of people. I started thinking a lot and I was always talking to myself. Kids would come up to me at recess and ask me to go hang out with them, but I simply didn't feel the need to go play/talk with them. I'd rather just stand by myself and think. I didn't understand that at all, because I used to have tons of friends and loved hanging out and talking with them. Now I felt no need to talk to anyone but myself. And it simply manifested. I never had friends in middle school because I didn't enjoy talking about the things that everyone liked. I used to love small talk, but I simply couldn't stand it anymore. I got a heck of a lot smarter though. I went from being lucky get C's to getting straight A's and making it into honors courses. I became a lot more logical and began to love problem solving even more than before. I started staying home and reading articles on current events, finance, psychology, science, anything I could get my hands on instead of going out with friends like I used to, because I found it more interesting. Plainly, I was always an introvert and I was always a thinker. I have never been a feeler, but I believe that my thinking side just developed more as I grew up. If I were to guess, I think I would have been more ISTP when I was a kid. But there was such a huge change in my personality that I thought I had become clinically depressed. I remember doing research and finding out I somewhat fit characteristics of narcissism and anti social disorder. I kind of think I hit that stage where I realized life wasn't rainbows and butterflies. And I realized mommy and daddy weren't always right and just because they say it doesn't mean it is correct. And I just developed from there. I think my mother's S rubbed off on me when I was a kid and my father's P. But as I got older and started becoming "myself" and not "my parent's daughter", my personality changed. That turned out to be a novel! Sorry.
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03-31-2009, 08:51 PM	#23
Storm Administrator MBTI: xxxx Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 14,687	Yes, LP, I think that might be a good way to talk about it, that such people only seem like INTJs. I do wonder if the INTJ personality would more often be a "mask" personality - since its weaknesses are connected to detachments and its strengths could also be a form of detachment in an unhealthy individual.
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03-31-2009, 09:07 PM	#24
LionsPride Core Member [225%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 9,029	I'm not sure how much they would seem like INTJ's. I don't think that being detached is really enough to be INTJ. And being detached because it makes a person feel better (safe from harm) would be more of a damaged F more than a damaged person becoming a legitimate T. I think that the idea that people who have suffered traumatic events can't be differentiated from INTJ's (even the immature ones) is a stretch. Do you have any statistical data that shows that people tend to test INTJ after traumatic events? I think that any type is fair game for people following a traumatic event, but as I mentioned, it's not a true type, it just seems like that type. I think if you analyze some of their behaviour, the seams of the costume they wear will always show. Some of their behaviours may not seem...natural.
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