Negative Typing Challenge
As a community online, Typology people have a habit of being overly positive about personality. While this is understandable, because MBTI is ultimately about self-discovery and empowerment, the need for good-feels may have taken us from self-discovery to self-delusion. The types themselves are described in hyperbolic terms and their strengths are exaggerated beyond all recognition; and so, we end up with INxJs who are straight up psychic, ESxPs who would more readily jump out of a plane for thrills than pick up a book, and ENxPs who spew rainbows and marshmallows wherever they go.
This is obviously all wrong, but the bias is now so strong that it’s nearly impossible to correct, particularly for newcomers or people who are only casually interested in MBTI. Because the types are idealized and warped, they become ideals of what we want to be rather than reflections of what we actually are, which is natural: if you can associate with something that makes you feel good about yourself, why wouldn’t you? And if you’re only momentarily interested in MBTI, why would you want to dig any deeper?
However, even when you start going a little deeper into MBTI blogspace, there is another a priori that, while never made entirely explicit, seems to hold sway: that a given type will use most of its functions in a healthy fashion, particularly the two dominant ones, and will only ever be tripped up by the inferior. This is particularly infuriating, specifically when it pertains to INxJ types, who tend to not see the value of their inferior anyway (or, in the case of some INTJs, believe that Extroverted Thinking somehow compensates for inferior Sensing) and therefore believe themselves to be without weakness; after all, Ni is all about being omniscient, so why could they possibly need Extroverted Sensing?
My suggestion is that we strike at these cliches that have built up over time by undermining the positive glow of the functions themselves and emphasizing the flaws of all of the functions, in every position. High (unhealthy) Ni is not omniscient, it’s dogmatic and assured in its self-delusion. High (unhealthy) Fi is not about authenticity, it’s about compartmentalization to preserve self-image. In fact, most of the introverted functions have aspects of concealing or rationalizing away flaws and weaknesses; the extroverted functions can be used to distract from problems or externalize them to attempt to dominate them. These flaws are not exclusive to people who are truly unhealthy: they happen to all of us, all the time, and we generally don’t even notice. It’s part of being human.
To better undermine this overly positive glow around all of the functions, perhaps we should emphasize their weaknesses at every level when typing characters, and therefore make it more difficult to wave away challenges to the perceived perfection of any given type,
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