INFP: Keiko Ishikawa-O’Brien, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”
INFP – the Healer, the Dreamer, the Clarifier
Keiko O’Brien put up with a lot, and never really got her due. She joined the crew way back in TNG, then left her career to cross over with her husband Miles to DS9, highlighting the show’s themes of family life and diversity. Once the focus shifted to the O’Brien-Bashir bromance (which, to be clear, I think is wonderful), our intrepid botanist went neglected.
Most of her episodes catch Keiko on her bad days, bickering with her husband or worrying what to do with her life. It was tough deciding whether she was always in the grip, or just aggressively using her higher functions. When we see her on good days, she’s obviously smart, sweet, and crazy in love with an Irish engineer who’s as stubborn as she is.
Dominant Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
Keiko and Miles love each other deeply in a way that’s obvious to everyone, but also a little inexplicable given how often they seem to be at odds. They clash in the hard-headed way of two Fi-users exasperated with constant compromise. His Fi is lower, so he has trouble working out how to emotionally respond, while her higher Fi wants to be understood without having to explain itself (as an INFP who has dated two ISTJs, I can assure you this never happens in real life…ahem).
Their marriage isn’t easy, but it’s interesting to note that Keiko never brings up the option of separation once she’s committed to Miles. She’s mama-bear protective of her husband and kids on the multiple occasions when various outer space phenomena threaten them, as they do often to Starfleet types. She argues loud for her husband’s innocence when he’s unjustly accused by the Cardassians, and she has a gut feeling that he’s still alive after he’s apparently killed. She has to hold in her feelings when interacting with Miles’ imposter, but the creepiness proves overwhelming, and she makes excuses to get away.
Keiko will stick to what she believes outside of her family life, too. She feels that the kids on DS9 need education, so she starts a school. Vedek Winn tries to shut her down for teaching the scientific explanation about the wormhole without the religious story, but Keiko refuses to budge. She takes in a Cardassian war orphan, and pulls her husband aside during dinner to confront him over his bigoted behavior toward the boy.
They may sound argumentative to those outside the O’Brien household, but Miles declares that Keiko is the most supportive person he knows. When Lwaxana’s telepathic illness causes various members of the crew to randomly fall in love with each other, nothing happens to Keiko and Miles. The others were affected because of latent attractions they held unconsciously, but the O’Briens’ internal compasses point only at each other.
Auxiliary Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
Keiko is willing to pick up and move their family to DS9 for the sake of Miles’ career, and after a few weeks of boredom, she finds something productive to do and throws herself into the project. She protests Vedek Winn’s intrusion into her classroom because she sees her job as opening the minds of her students and exposing them to new and diverse ideas. When her unborn child has to be transplanted into Kira after an accident, Keiko just rolls with the new situation, inviting Nerys to live with them during the pregnancy and learning the Bajoran birthing ritual.
When we first meet her, Keiko’s freaking out over her impending marriage to Miles. She backs out, then re-commits, changing her mind virtually every few hours. She knows she loves Miles, but she’s anxious about making the right decision for her life.
This is the frustrating thing with Fi+Ne. Every types’ functions push and pull against each other, particularly when they’re far apart in the stack. It’s how the MBTI model explains the inner contradictions we all have, and helps us to grow. But even our top two functions, the ones that turn us into stereotypes if we only work from them without our lower half, can conflict with each other. Fi, in my INFP experience, is often the most rigid of the functions, while Ne is the most changeable.
Living with these two functions tag-teaming each other at the top of your stack gets exhausting.
On the one hand, you want to stick with the position you know is right, but on the other hand, you’re compelled to always be hunting for unexplored options. So while Keiko looks like a crazy person to her husband, I can completely sympathize with her frustration. She wants to support Miles in his career, but she needs to have her own opportunities to pursue.
Being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t work for her (particularly in an advanced future where there’s not much housework). Being a schoolteacher fulfills her for a while, but then that well dries up. Miles tries to build her a small arboretum where she can work with plants in her spare time, but botany isn’t her hobby—it’s her vocation.
Keiko needs to be a botanist. She joins a Bajoran expedition to explore undocumented species on the planet, and then she’s continuously gone on missions for most of the rest of the series. It’s a constantly moving, always changing lifestyle, and it seems to be the best choice she ever made.
Tertiary Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
Keiko gets bored with routine. She assures Miles she’s okay sitting in their quarters when he leaves for work, but she needs something to engage her interests and skills. Still, she values her home life, and after months of traveling for work, she feels relief at coming back where she belongs. She keeps many traditions, especially food, from her Japanese heritage, and her wedding to Miles is a tasteful mix of Japanese and Irish customs.
Keiko gets help from a telepath to help her recollect the details from a certain childhood memory. She has various pieces—images, textures, a piece of a song—but she can’t quite recall why it’s important to her. The experience brings her memory into focus, and she finally remembers time spent with her grandmother doing calligraphy.
Keiko believes that footage of her husband’s death has been faked, because it shows him drinking coffee in the afternoon, and Miles never drinks coffee in the afternoon. Her certainty sends Sisko and the crew off on a whole investigation, and sure enough they discover Miles (and Julian) still alive and on the run. When she gets him back, Keiko discovers that she’s mistaken—Miles drinks coffee in the afternoon all the time (cue laugh track, freeze frame, end credits)!
Inferior Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
Keiko can put her foot down, and often does, leading to stand-offs with her Te-aux husband. She rises to the occasion when she decides the station urgently needs a school, planning and scheduling the curriculum and persuading Sisko to give her the space for it. She even gets Rom on board, convincing him that education will be good for his son.
And let’s not forget she managed to give birth to Molly in the middle of a ship-wide disaster.
(In the not-strictly-canon post-TV novels, Keiko takes a job after the war helping Cardassia regrow its biosphere, and then it’s Miles’ turn to give up his career for his partner. I think it’s a lovely development, bringing the O’Brien family full circle.)
Originally, I didn’t think I would be able to fully type Keiko, and I intended to include her in a quick list of supporting characters. While writing the list, I argued myself into an INFP typing. Back in the TNG series, I ended up typing another troublesome Star Trek character as an INFP, and I’m hoping this doesn’t reveal some sort of bias. I have no deep personal connection to Wesley or Keiko, so I don’t think I’m projecting my own type onto them. If I had to guess, when the show requires a character to act one way this week and another way next week, that Fi-Ne combo seems like an easy explanation.
As always, I welcome input and opinions.
Rosalind Chao certainly deserved better, so catch “The Assignment” from Season 5 to see her absolutely owning the episode.
INFP: Benjamin Sisko, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”
INFP – the Healer, the Dreamer, the Clarifier
The revelation that Sisko is an INFP hit me one day like a ton of latinum bricks. I was trying to explain his moody attitude in the first episode compared to his later boldness. Cycling through a half-dozen or more different types and cognitive functions, I suddenly recognized the Fi-Si loop. I’ve been in one many a time, and now that I know we share the same type, I wish I had more of the positive aspects of Sisko’s personality in common with him. But Star Trek is about nothing so much as aspiration, so I hope all the shy INFPs out there can look to this commanding example of the INFP as a figure of power and passion.
Dominant Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
Once Sisko believes in something, his intensity can be scary, even to the family and crew who know him well. Witness his fury for fighting the Dominion, hunting down Eddington, or saving Bajor.
When he first takes the DS9 assignment, this intensity is in danger of trickling away. Sisko is stuck deep in an Fi-Si loop in the wake of his wife Jennifer’s death at the hands of the Borg, and he’s become withdrawn, directionless, and moody. Meeting the wormhole aliens grants him the emotional catharsis he needs to properly grieve Jennifer’s loss, and he returns to his mission with renewed energy.
Over the years, the assignment takes on greater personal meaning for Ben—he is “of Bajor,” and he calls DS9 the place where he belongs.
For all his passion, Ben usually keeps a reserved, somewhat brooding composure. His bond with his son Jake appears through warmth, physical affection, and shared meals. He and his eventual new wife Kasidy strike sparks together instantly, but he has trouble voicing his feelings at certain awkward points in their relationship. For a long time, he won’t join the DS9 crew at Vic’s, until Kasidy drags out of him that he morally objects to joining a re-creation of a time and place where brown people like themselves weren’t allowed.
Even when healthy, Sisko’s Fi smolders—he rarely reacts in the moment unless called for. Given time, he erupts, embarking on a bold course of action, or delivering a stirring moral rant. All Star Trek captains excel at speechifying, but Sisko’s brand of righteous fury is particularly invigorating to behold. He dresses down recalcitrant officers, calls out stubborn Starfleet leadership, and takes devious villains to task.
Ben trusts his own judgment, in spite of entreaties or orders to the contrary. He leads a mission to rescue Odo and Garak from the massacre at the Omarion Nebula, despite Starfleet’s orders and the risks involved. He never believes that smooth-talking villains like Dukat, Winn, or Weyoun are up to anything other than no good. He shows faith in Kira and Odo from the beginning despite their prickliness and initial conflict. He takes it really hard, and really personally, when Eddington betrays him, because he didn’t see it coming while the man served right beside him.
Sisko’s Fi works through his decisions carefully, and in the morally gray environment of DS9, it has to work overtime. He constantly has to settle disputes and arguments in a politically tricky environment. He preaches about how it’s easy for Starfleet Command to overlook the plight of the Maquis because Earth is a Paradise. He believes bringing the Romulans into the war is the right thing to do, but in the aftermath, he needs to privately process the shady things he did to make it happen. He comes to a place where he’s okay with what he’s done, makes his peace with himself, and then deletes the log entry.
Auxiliary Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
Sisko explains to the Prophets in their first encounter that life is like baseball. With each new pitch, each new swing, a thousand potential outcomes arise which cannot be predicted. This, he preaches, is the joy of linear existence—while the Wormhole Aliens see all of time all at once, humans have to experience time moment by moment, never quite knowing what will happen next.
By explaining it out loud to the Prophets, Sisko realizes he has not been living this way. He’s been stuck in an Fi-Si loop since the death of his wife, unable to move forward. Sisko engages his auxiliary function and looks to the future—in his vision, he leaves his wife’s body and turns to his young son.
Ben is bright and accomplished, with expertise in engineering and military strategy—and baseball. He excelled and achieved at the Academy, and had a diverse career before taking the DS9 assignment. He’s possessed of an obsessive curiosity, and once he gets started on a project or pursuit, he can’t stop. Building the Bajoran lightship, exploring the ruins of B’Hala, beating the Vulcans at baseball, even tricking the Romulans into the war, are all paths he took from which he couldn’t retreat.
He even performs the part of the villain when chasing down Eddington, playing into the man’s martyrdom complex and going to shocking lengths to make him surrender.
Sisko is extremely patient with his angry, diverse, misfit crew as they learn to work together. He’s able to understand and appreciate the ideas and perspectives of other cultures, whether it’s the religion of the Bajorans or the greed of the Ferengi (though Quark has to school him a couple times). Although he’s uncomfortable with the implications at first, Sisko can hold on to the apparently contradictory concepts that the creators of the wormhole are both Wormhole Aliens (a scientific description) and the Prophets to the Bajoran people (a faith-based proposition). He eventually accepts that he is both a Starfleet officer with a job, and the Emissary of the Prophets with a calling.
This does not make either Starfleet Command or the Bajoran religious establishment entirely happy, but Sisko thrives in the paradox between these two ideas.
As Benny, his persona in his vision of the 1950s, Sisko is even more obviously an INFP. Benny writes short stories at a science fiction magazine, imagining a better future where anything is possible—like a black man commanding a space station. Later, when Benjamin returns to his life on DS9, he wonders if his whole existence here, and the life of everyone on board, might not be entirely in Benny’s head. And again, just like the dichotomy of the Aliens and the Prophets, Sisko is okay with this ambiguity.
Tertiary Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
Sisko describes to the Prophets how each moment that a human experiences prepares them for the next—but no past experience prepared him for the day Jennifer died. He sees her “every time I close my eyes.” In the time-warp limbo of the Wormhole Aliens’ space, Sisko literally lives in that moment, continuously.
Sisko loops again, though not as severely, after the death of Jadzia, heading back home to Earth to peel potatoes at his father’s restaurant while he clears his head.
In fact, home is a familiar retreat for Ben. In his first few weeks at the Academy, he spent all his transporter credits beaming home for dinner every night. Years later, Sisko and Jake have lived on DS9 for over two years before he finally unpacks their stuff from Earth. Ben confesses to Jake that he’s finally begun “to think of this Cardassian monstrosity as home.”
Ben enjoys having the crew over to his quarters for dinner, which he cooks himself with real ingredients, carrying on the culinary legacy of the Sisko family. He also treasures the near-extinct Earth sport of baseball, keeping the tradition alive with his son Jake, and teaching the crew to play. At the end of the series, Ben decides that Bajor will be his home when he retires, and nabs a parcel of land to start building a house.
Jadzia tells him he’s a builder, the kind of man who needs to stay in a place and get the job done, rather than administrate from a distance (which is proven true the couple of times he’s given desk jobs). This healthy Si keeps Sisko grounded and focused while tackling the daily surprises that the job on DS9 brings.
Inferior Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
Sisko’s comfortable enough with his Te that he makes an effective and even intimidating commander. He rarely has trouble telling his crew what he wants or confronting them on their mistakes, though it’s typically low-key or one-on-one. When faced with orders or situations he dislikes or disapproves of, he’ll speak out or even yell out one of his epic moral rants, but often this is only after he’s kept his temper bottled up for a while.
Normally patient in his leadership style, Ben can become controlling and heavy-handed under extreme stress. He pushes the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth when he suspects Changeling infiltrators are afoot. Starfleet security officers march the streets, and ordinary citizens are ordered to give blood tests. It takes a lecture from his father to cool him off and set him back on the right track.
Ben gets aggressive as the coach of the DS9 baseball team, determined not to let the team of smug Vulcans beat them. He takes the competition too personally—the Vulcan team captain has been taunting Ben about human inferiority since their Academy days—and bullies the crew to be better. He embarrasses Rom and kicks him off the team, and then gets kicked out of the game himself for laying hands on the umpire (ISTJ Odo, sticking to the rules).
The team loses, but not before Sisko reinstates Rom, who scores a run. The Niners celebrate afterward, because scoring against Vulcans at all after only a few days of practice is a victory of its own. It is not logical, as the Vulcan points out, but Sisko has stopped caring what his rational adversary thinks of him. He revels in the happiness of the moment, because more than being a Starfleet Captain, more than being an Emissary, Ben Sisko is a human.
My Fi-dom and Ne-aux moral code about letting others having their own opinions only go so far as to opinions that don’t intentional attack others. I can sometimes seem like INFP are so open to everyone’s opinion, but I know that I draw a line. Not sure if any other INFPs feel this way or not, I feel like some others have a line that the draw in this situation. I just wanted to put this out here.
