FiNe in practice: Five myths that INFP ain't

Описание: First a disclaimer: I have particular ideas about how cognitive functions manifest. There are lots of different ideas and interpretations. That means there's space for everyone to lay claim to the INFP personality type. But I have some particular ideas of how a cognitive function stack manifests. Each stack including FiNeSiTe (Introverted Feeling, Extroverted Intuition, Introverted Sensing, Extroverted Thinking) stack is a specific thing with specific traits.

Anyway, there are mid-range and smaller MBTI channels that do type interviews, to showcase the archetypes. But in terms of matching INFP to FiNeSiTe collectively they. just. don't. get. INFPs. right. These interviews tend to trot out Fe users and claim they're INFPs. There's the occasional Fi/Se and Si/Te (ISFP and ISTJ) thrown in.

So, here you are, five things you'll hear people presented as an INFP archetype in a type interview often say ... no one thing is definitive, but these sorts of statements are a "tell" that someone is possibly another type, and doesn't have the FiNeSiTe cognitive stack.

00:00 Introduction
01:52 Myth 1: Immediate gut reactions -- fast, decisive, powerful.
(You can recognize an INFP or INTPs by how slow they are to draw a conclusion, not how fast).
04:43 Myth 2: Authenticity is intrinsically tied to physical reality: what you will wear, where you will work, what you will (and won't) do.
(You can recognize an INFP if they go into a whole complicated spiel about how they try to work themselves into physical reality. But they also set these things aside for doing what is correct and necessary for the situation. An INFP will wear a work uniform, or a tuxedo, or whatever the situation requires once they understand the requirement. They stick out unintentionally, when they don't know what they're doing.)
09:26 Myth 3: INFPs listen deeply to find out what others want.
(You can recognize an INFP by the way they explain their 'deep listening', when you're listened to this way, for the INFP it is a phenomenon that pings multiple levels. It's very significant for the INFP. At 11:33, when I say this is "a powerful gift", I don't mean the INFP is gifted: I mean it's a powerful gift that the storyteller gives to the INFP, to be willing to open up this way and present their story. It is a joy and a privilege for an INFP to inhabit your reality and relive in their own way what you felt.)
12:16 Myth 4: INFPs feel with the deepest intensity of all the types.
(I've addressed this before. You can recognize an INFP by resolution and nuance of feeling. Anyone experiences emotional extremes... angry, sad, exuberant... It's about having high enough resolution for feeling-evaluation to do detailed work.
14:46 Myth 5: Intuition means creativity, which is expressed by creating stuff.
(You can recognize the NFPs because Ne is madness, it's intrusive. I've talked about it in the past as trans contextual thinking. It is the garbage stream, it is the Maelstrom, it is chaos inside the head. For a NFP to get things accomplished in the physical world requires suppression of Ne, not activation.)

For a final thought, the point here is not so much the correctness of my individual points. How I packaged and presented the message is the biggest 'tell' for how you can tell if you are dealing with an INFP. This is my frame that I present to you for consideration. To identify INFPs, if you can get one to really open up to you (good luck with that), look for evidence how their thought process works... provided you can get in (again, good luck with that), it'll probably resemble this sort of framing.


#infp