MBTI as a disorder/disease

[daylen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_naturalism

[FBeyer]

...
In other words what advice would you give in order to round out some of the more negative/undesirable aspects of your type (or a type you find particularly annoying).
...

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9974&p=168680&#p168680
I'd suggest the IPIP rather than the MBTI. Or better yet, take the Virtues in Action test and put your worst sides into use, just to see how you react.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is one of my current most hyped approaches to teaching others about themselves.

[7Wannabe5]

I found this car model that Jacob posted elsewhere quite helpful. Having spent a good deal of time in the company of babies who are now adults, I do not believe that temperament is simply a matter of preference. An individual can grow and mature within or beyond their inherent temperament, but it can't be greatly altered, except, perhaps, as OP noted, through the use of drugs, or behavioral practices known to temporarily alter biochemistry, such as engaging in very hard work-out.

OTOH, growth through acquisition of empathy with other types is always possible. For instance, I associate with many artistic types who have strong emotional and memory functioning which they can effectively process in order to produce something of value. So, it's normal functioning to find artistic types holed up in solitude dwelling on past sad event, and you should just leave them be. However, if you find an ENTP alone and dwelling on a past sad event, please administer a cookie and some sort of fun or interesting distraction immediately!

https://personalityhacker.com/personali ... r-diagram/

@daylen;

Dis-ease or dis-order in the context of living system could be simply defined as that which inhibits homeostasis or maintenance of structural boundaries. That is why, for example, taking your temperature is a first step in objective determination. No verbal communication whatsoever is necessary for two humans to share the determination that a child is burning up with fever, or another person is exhibiting extreme mania. Of course, whether they share the framework of germ theory vs. evil spirits in evaluating causation is another matter.

[daylen]

@7W5 I agree.

I was focused on the original topic of preferences. The pool of potential "flaws" or "disorders" that one person might see in another is much greater than just a lack of homeostasis.

[daylen]

There is probably some ENTJ CEO out there that thinks everyone else is either stupid, lazy, or strange and need to be fixed.

[7Wannabe5]

@daylen:

My experience of ENTJs is that they aren't judgmental in that manner. More like they just think other people are ineffectual, if they bother to stop to think about them at all, as they bulldoze ahead.

[classical_Liberal]

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[jacob]

Weaknesses are fun. Not many typing theories cover the dark side of one's strengths. Enneagrams do a good job of it though, see for example:

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-5/ (most INTJs would overlap strongly with type 5). Change the URL to see the functionality of the other ones.

[FBeyer]

Re ENTJ's. It's more like we realize how others are ineffectual. Particularly when they seem oblivious to it themselves.
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Also: Others might feel intimidated by our overbearing nature but it's nothing compared to the standards to which we hold ourselves. Sure, other people are slow, lazy, and ineffectual, that's only natural. But not us, we must be better than that. Always!

[FBeyer]

Enneagrams seem even more hodge podge than any other test I've taken. I come up as 1, 8 and 7, probably in that order, but the Venn diagram is really squashed together. It looks more like astrology than a factor analysis.

[7Wannabe5]

But not us, we must be better than that. Always!

Right. That's why ENTJs are one of my favorite flavors of bed and project partner, even though they often make me feel the unfamiliar emotion known as anger when they try to micro-hustle-manage the way I load the dishwasher. One of the male members of my marriage therapy group was an ENTJ, and he was always advising the wives who weren't getting laid to "Just put it on your husband's To Do list", oblivious to the fact that there are people who don't even have To Do lists, let alone the drive to get that job done!


Here are two good articles on how different types handle introverted and extroverted thinking.

https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2017/0 ... ion-stack/

https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2017/0 ... ion-stack/

and the difference

https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2015/0 ... -thinking/

I am supposed to be working on beefing up my Ni (Accuracy)relative to my Ne (Exporation.) I wish I could figure out how to do this. For instance, I enjoy studying data science, but being in the virtual company of Alonzo Church and Hadley Wickham for 20 hours/week, rapidly brings out the desire to do the dysfunctional polar opposite, which in my mind would be hanging out in the pool with my 22 year old niece who wants to become a stripper or somebody like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yg05svXp98

[Jason]

would be hanging out in the pool with my 22 year old niece who wants to become a stripper:

I always held to a pro-life view on strippers. That is, at the moment of conception, they are a stripper.

[FBeyer]

... there are people who don't even have To Do lists, let alone the drive ...

I can read the words just fine, but that sentence still doesn't make sense to me

[jennypenny]

Enneagrams seem even more hodge podge than any other test I've taken. I come up as 1, 8 and 7, probably in that order, but the Venn diagram is really squashed together. It looks more like astrology than a factor analysis.

I like enneagrams for distinguishing between different flavors of the same MBTI type. DH and a friend are both INTJs but function very differently. The enneagram results explained the disparity.

[Riggerjack]

I agree about the enneagrams. If only because I don't feel like it's a scale I belong on an extreme end of. Group 5, somewhere between level 4 and 3, after having worked my way up.

All the high numbered levels feel like I had serious potential to have ended up there.

"There but for the grace of (beating my head against walls) go I."

[wolf]

Studying my enneagram type has helped me in some ways to understand my "natural" behaviour.
Of course it is only another personality type model. It could be a way to understand and grow.
And if I read about other enneagram types, I see also some traits, that I have/do.
Maybe I will focus on my "weaknesses" in the following time, although I know that they are only aspects of my personality. (not good, not bad).
What I learned ist, that there are times when I focus more on my strengths (improve strengths even more), and that there are times when I concentrate on my weaknesses (try to achieve balance). Is it the same for you?
For me the common basis of all personality type models are the Big Five personality traits. In my opinion this (Big5) is the most scientifically validated knowledge.

Edit:
In order to learn more about the Enneagram, I made some overview of the types and traits.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10113#p173021

[Mikeallison]

Wow, I had no clue there were so many different personality tests out there...down the rabbit hole I go.

[jennypenny]

Do the Math: Programmed to Ignore?

"... I think there is something more fundamental going on here. I think we’re dealing with personality traits cooked into human nature. Are we capable of mitigating a far-off potential calamity via proactive efforts decades ahead of a putative crisis? In this post, I’ll use some survey data suggesting that we may be in trouble."

[7Wannabe5]

Interesting chart. Makes sense to me since I swing a bit from ENTP to INTP.

[UK-with-kids]

Firing another one off the cuff. What if you framed your personality type in the context of a disorder instead of simply an approximate description of how you operate?

In other words what advice would you give in order to round out some of the more negative/undesirable aspects of your type (or a type you find particularly annoying).

It feels to me like this is the way the world already operates, much to the detriment of people who don't 'fit in'. For example, I'm an INTJ with about 90% introversion tendancy. I've spent my career being forced to work in open plan offices (we don't have cubicles in the UK). I've had to waste time 'learning' in teacher led lessons before I'm allowed to go home and study the textbooks to work things out for myself. I've needed to pretend to respect imbecile authority figures. I've had to tolerate and even participate in mindless gossip to get along in teams.

Fortunately I'm now self employed and mainly work from home, with a partner who understands me and my needs. However, I see the same happening with my daughter in mainstream school. All the children are pushed through the same sausage machine and treated as if they're exactly the same personality type, and all are expected to develop in all skills at the same rate. I constantly hear about how my daughter needs to "come out of her shell" when she's perfectly confident but just doesn't feel the need to be the centre of attention, and is frankly exhausted from being in a noisy class of 30 children all day.

A friend of mine once said he thought putting all your employees in a big open plan office is like opening a zoo with all the animals in the same cage and expecting them to all get along and behave in the same way.

Now, another thought I had about this, which is probably a bit off topic on this thread, is that I've heard about this movement in the US to send kids to special educational institutions that "cure" them of autism. In Europe and the UK we consider high functioning autism such as Asperger's to be just a different way the brain is wired, and trying to change children to fit in with societal norms is both morally wrong (cruel) and doomed to failure anyway. I mention this because I see some overlap between my personality type (INTJ) and some characteristics of high functioning autism - difficulty with relationships, introversion, wanting things to be planned in detail and so on. In particular, if you do online questionnaires like Meyers-Briggs and then do online autism questionnaires you can get correlated results. In fact I just googled "Meyers Briggs autism" and the top result is an article asking which personality type is most likely to be autistic. Spoiler: they say it's INTJ.