Why is INFJ the rarest type? | Page 9 | INFJ Forum

Why is INFJ the rarest type?

@Ren @Anomaly

I think it's pretty obvious our unconscious minds can use language quite happily. All kinds of strange not-me characters talk to me in my dreams, and my wife tells me I have been known to talk in my sleep.

On the other hand, it seems to me that language is not necessary for rational thinking - I'm thinking all the time while I'm driving, in response to the road conditions and where I'm headed, and I'm and acting on those thoughts all the time. Apart from the occasional expletive, I do this mostly without any verbalisation apart from that associated with verbal road signs or in map annotations. Playing a game such as tennis, etc, is also similar - lots of thinking, but no words. The thinking is not just a variety of T either, but may be F too if I let you in on a busy junction, or set a psychological trap that bring you too close to the net.
 
@Ren @Anomaly

I think it's pretty obvious our unconscious minds can use language quite happily. All kinds of strange not-me characters talk to me in my dreams, and my wife tells me I have been known to talk in my sleep.

On the other hand, it seems to me that language is not necessary for rational thinking - I'm thinking all the time while I'm driving, in response to the road conditions and where I'm headed, and I'm and acting on those thoughts all the time. Apart from the occasional expletive, I do this mostly without any verbalisation apart from that associated with verbal road signs or in map annotations. Playing a game such as tennis, etc, is also similar - lots of thinking, but no words. The thinking is not just a variety of T either, but may be F too if I let you in on a busy junction, or set a psychological trap that bring you too close to the net.
John, thank you for these examples. I can see more clearly why this is certainly the case. : )
 
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John, I think we are similar in that drive to find the truth. I can see that you are a life-long learner, and being such, it requires flexibility as new things are constantly coming into focus. I enjoy the process very much. I think you do too, and I'm grateful to glean from you while I can. It doesn't bother me that you consistently question, refine, and re-state. I'm glad that I could help you to settle on some things as you mull them over. I've enjoyed our discussions here.
I am indeed :) - for me learning is like with those fish that have to always keep swimming in order to breathe. Older folks who stop experiencing the new start to wither and fossilise.
I will look to see if I can find the thread about Fe. It sounds interesting.
I will look to see if I can find the thread about Fe. It sounds interesting.

What you said about Fe being used in a way which is in contention with harmony, is so true. I've tried to understand my own use of it, and how it manifests in others. I've experienced Fe manipulation before from a friend and a past co-worker. I am ever aware of my own capacity to manipulate another. I have those kinds of questions looming in the back of my mind, "Am I manipulating them? How do I know? What is my part in this?". Sometimes, I ask, just in case to be held accountable. I think it's why I'm so open about my perceptions, that 'knowing' that come to the surface. I feel that they deserve to know that I have access to their secrets, to their wants, to their needs. Then I try the best of my ability to protect them, instead of harm them. Sometimes, I fail, and am devastated to find out. Have you ever gone through this, John?
This is the link: hope it makes sense to you :sweatsmile:
https://www.infjs.com/threads/how-do-you-use-extraverted-feeling-how-do-you-experience-it.36145/

I've certainly used Fe across the whole spectrum, as I expressed it in that thread. For INFJs there are two sorts of guilt trip we can go on in this space. One is that we can lash out and hit people where it hurts with what I called the spite and discord parts of the spectrum - we usually do this in retaliation to a real or imagined injury, and it may take a pattern of such injuries before we retaliate in a major way. On the other hand - I have been known to tailgate a chance idiot in front of my car (more of the :sweatsmile::sweatsmile:) until my wife tells me to back off and brings me to my senses. One way we can slip up badly is when we call out on someone else's shadow, confusing it with their consious personality - it's easy for us to see thier shadows in the subtext of how people behave (even in posts on the forum it's often quite easy to read below the manifest lines), but directly confronting these unconsious behaviours with the dark side of the Fe spectrum is cruel - and is the sort of thing INFJs remember and replay with regret in their minds, sometimes even years later.

The other way things go wrong, like you describe, is at the other end of the spectrum, when we cop out and go for harmony when what is needed is what I called nurture - which includes the possibility of tough love and a challenge to others when it's necessary. A good teacher or coach will be a master of this kind of Fe. This too is a place where we can have long term regrets but this time about taking the easy way instead of the most beneficial. Managing a team of people, it was easy to see who had potential for advancement and who hadn't but what to do about it ..... sometimes easy to leave people with illusions rather than help them to see themselves more clearly, and that's always wrong.

But just because we may have a degree of insight into others doesn't mean it comes with a prefabricated competency badge in how to use it, and we bring along our own faults, our own need to climb the learning curves, and our own human weaknesses. When things go wrong with people, we need to be gentle with ourselves and accept it's a lifelong learning curve - and let things go once we've taken steps to put right any actual damage.

Further, I think F can also lead to a bitter irony. You desire harmony, but given all you know about the other, you end up losing your voice in the pursuit of providing for them. You grow sad, resentful, passive. It's a false harmony, built on tip-toes and tight lips. However, if you faced conflict, and shared your voice, then they would be given the opportunity to truly know you. Thus... harmony of two in relationship, fully known. I agree that you can generate emotion to empathize when appropriate. I think it gives others a sense of peace, as sometimes all you want is for someone to laugh or to weep alongside you instead of covering you in pleasantries and platitudes. Do you find that you are able to cry when others cry? It never fails, when someone cries I cannot help it, I am compelled to weep with them (for some reason, especially when a man cries).
Ah! Now you touch on one of the darkest of INFJ secrets - the intense and compelling need to be needed. So we can easily get caught up with someone who becomes dependent on us, but at some point our well runs dry. This can happen unexpectedly, and we didn't realise that there are these sorts of cliffs inside us till we fall over one of them. Compassion fatigue is truly horrible - an emotional burnout that leaves us feeling complely drained and filled with deep sadness. It can take a long time to recover from this. We need to know where these cliff edges are and avoid getting too close to them. It's usually associated with a boundary issue where we lose control of our empathy and bring someone into our core to try and support and heal them, but they end up affecting us badly instead. It's rarely the other's fault - they don't realise what's happening. I fear this isn't a bit of theory from me, but hard experience.

I guess there must be some lucky INFJs who find someone they can exchange souls with safely for a lifetime, but that's like a quest for the Holy Grail!

I think I've become battle hardened in a sense when it comes to crying with others. I've cried long and hard over my wife often enough in the past when she's been really ill, and shared her journey through all the ups and downs of this over our lifetimes. It's been the same with my father over several years of his diving deep into dementia. It's not easy to express what has happened with me - it's as though the tears have turned into a deep well of pity and sadness that's always there, but it's not a negative thing but closely bound up with my love, empathy and compassion. Perhaps Nienna in Tolkien's pantheon is a representation, if you know the Silmarillion. I've had to play the responsible parent a lot to people of all ages, and that's my natural way now of being with anyone in distress.
 
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@Ren @Anomaly

I think it's pretty obvious our unconscious minds can use language quite happily. All kinds of strange not-me characters talk to me in my dreams, and my wife tells me I have been known to talk in my sleep.

On the other hand, it seems to me that language is not necessary for rational thinking - I'm thinking all the time while I'm driving, in response to the road conditions and where I'm headed, and I'm and acting on those thoughts all the time.

I’m not sure the kind of thinking done while driving qualifies, because it doesn’t create representations. Without the representations, is it possible to determine a personality structure à la function-stack?

As for dreams, well, I think Freud and Lacan hold that the unconscious is actually behind the images, but not the images themselves. For example, if I dream of fighting a tiger in a boxing match, the tiger is only a symbolic representation of something “deeper”. And dreams both overdetermine and condense that something-deeper.

The problem is that in everyday conversation, we don’t admonish others by suddenly behaving like tigers, or telling them that a huge hydra is going to attack them if they don’t change their habits. In other words, the symbolic representations of our language seem to be underlain by the conscious, not the unconscious.

Now, let’s suppose some representations actually are of the unconscious, in the midst of mostly conscious representations. How to distinguish them, if they look the same? How to surmount that empirical obstacle, except by assuming in the first place that whatever “sounds like Fi” must be an unconscious representation, and therefore falling into circularity?

We have some evidence, like slips of the tongue, and so on. But whole cogent arguments, spread over duration of 20mins or maybe longer? I’m not sure.
 
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I look forward to reading through it. Thank you, John. If there is anything which doesn't make sense, I will ask you for clarification (as if you haven't read this to be my pattern already). haha.

I have been known to tailgate a chance idiot in front of my car...
Oh, how this got me. haha. I love your admissions, which are entirely relatable. I've met many the chance idiot on the road. While driving, I've imagined creating some sort of system which could link to their radio signal and broadcast my voice to them. If so, I'd give them a 'podcast lecture' on the function and utilization of a blinker signal. :tearsofjoy:

it's easy for us to see thier shadows in the subtext of how people behave (even in posts on the forum it's often quite easy to read below the manifest lines), but directly confronting these unconsious behaviours with the dark side of the Fe spectrum is cruel - and is the sort of thing INFJs remember and replay with regret in their minds, sometimes even years later.
Yes, I liken it to a whip or a sword, able to slice through the (excuse my phrasing) bull-shit to get to the heart of the matter, but sometimes it comes on so suddenly that others are given whip-lash and stunned. The guilt is terrible, and yes... lasting. Sometimes, I find myself apologizing for something said years prior, and the involved party will say, "What are you talking about? I don't even remember you saying something like that." And, I'm left thinking... "I actually lost sleep over that comment..." hehe.

We can be our most brutal critic, and perhaps for good reason. I find that it gives me ample supply of humility, and in learning to tread fastidiously until a firm foundation has been established (though this can lead to what you've said below, if not careful to discern the correct time to 'cut' someone with truth).

But just because we may have a degree of insight into others doesn't mean it comes with a prefabricated competency badge in how to use it, and we bring along our own faults, our own need to climb the learning curves, and our own human weaknesses. When things go wrong with people, we need to be gentle with ourselves and accept it's a lifelong learning curve - and let things go once we've taken steps to put right any actual damage.
Oh yes, the worry for other's perceptions. I think that's why I am drawn to Stoicism, in that only I have the ultimate power in how I choose to respond. The fears of abandonment, fragmentation, or rejection tend to conflict motivation for wanting to speak in truth. I find that in the past I have had to weigh whether expressing the truth was worth the fragmentation, or if I should allow the 'chips to fall as they may', and try to pick up the pieces. More and more, I long to live in truth, regardless of those fears. Though, a careful balance of the two is preferable. Offering truth with careful and discerning words, at the correct time, tends to elicit a more pleasant response.

I fear this isn't a bit of theory from me, but hard experience.
Unfortunately, I've learned the brunt of this lesson as well, John. It's likely why I hold solitude as so sacred, to revitalize from the longing to meet other's needs. I no longer apologize for it, which is huge.

I guess there must be some lucky INFJs who find someone they can exchange souls with safely for a lifetime, but that's like a quest for the Holy Grail!
If only... one can hope. : )

I think I've become battle hardened in a sense when it comes to crying with others. I've cried long and hard over my wife often enough in the past when she's been really ill, and shared her journey through all the ups and downs of this over our lifetimes. It's been the same with my father over several years of his diving deep into dementia. It's not easy to express what has happened with me - it's as though the tears have turned into a deep well of pity and sadness that's always there, but it's not a negative thing but closely bound up with my love, empathy and compassion. Perhaps Nienna in Tolkien's pantheon is a representation, if you know the Silmarillion. I've had to play the responsible parent a lot to people of all ages, and that's my natural way now of being with anyone in distress.
Bless you for sharing such an intimate side of your life, John. I am sure that having to deal with those things has been quite arduous, but I can only respect you for your resolve and ability to teach and nurture others in their own facing of difficulties. I'm similar in some regards; having lost the man who was a father to me (my papa/grandfather), growing up the way that I did and enduring traumas, as well as many hard life trials. These shape you to then be an impetus for many others. It would be quite difficult not to glean something from your learned wisdom. I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity to learn from you.
 
I’m not sure the kind of thinking done while driving qualifies, because it doesn’t create representations. Without the representations, is it possible to determine a personality structure à la function-stack?

As for dreams, well, I think Freud and Lacan hold that the unconscious is actually behind the images, but not the images themselves. For example, if I dream of fighting a tiger in a boxing match, the tiger is only a symbolic representation of something “deeper”. And dreams both overdetermine and condense that something-deeper.

The problem is that in everyday conversation, we don’t admonish others by suddenly behaving like tigers, or telling them that a huge hydra is going to attack them if they don’t change their habits. In other words, the symbolic representations of our language seem to be underlain by the conscious, not the unconscious.

Now, let’s suppose some representations actually are of the unconscious, in the midst of mostly conscious representations. How to distinguish them, if they look the same? How to surmount that empirical obstacle, except by assuming in the first place that whatever “sounds like Fi” must be an unconscious representation, and therefore falling into circularity?

We have some evidence, like slips of the tongue, and so on. But whole cogent arguments, spread over duration of 20mins or maybe longer? I’m not sure.
I suspect that some of the differences here are of semantics and definitions. In addition, you have a philosopher’s precision in the way you express these things, whereas I tend to be much looser in the terminology, and more figurative in expression.

If the very notion of consciousness is bound up axiomatically with linguistic articulation and sustained rationality then of course the two become inseparable by definition. If then a dream character that doesn’t carry the dream ‘I’ expresses something in words, we could say either that it isn’t really language because the words are used symbolically rather than normally, or that we were actually conscious in the dream without which we wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.

The terms conscious and unconscious suggest a hard boundary as well, but that’s not right. The number of times I have had an apercu that has disappeared again into the depths a few minutes later lol. Again it could be argued that the idea was only crystallised into words when I was conscious of it. It doesn’t feel like that but that may easily be an illusion.

Again, we could say by definition that the judging functions T and F are only expressed linguistically, through a structured symbolic representation, and that seems to me to be a valid position to take. But it seems to me that this perspective implies we must recognise the non-linguistic processes I described (driving or playing tennis), ones that use an analogue of unarticulated logic, as conscious psychic decision making processes in their own right; that implies we may need additional functions to describe them, beyond T and F.

I feel that whether the unconscious has an MBTI stack of its own is really an artifice of the MBTI extension of Jung’s original concepts. It seems to me that things are much more complex than this, because our unconscious is not a single focus like our conscious mind. It’s more like the sea, with many things swimming about in it. Some of these have their own semi-independent partial personalities - for example our complexes - that can express themselves to the external world outside our conscious control. These are the source of psychological distress and illness for many. They can also appear as characters in our dreams. When they do manifest in an obvious way, they appear to have functional attributes, and these will typically be different to those we prefer consciously. I don’t think this means that our unconscious has these attributes itself but that it uses them as a means to an end - for example by attracting our conscious attention, or that if other people.
 
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For now, what you've said makes me question my previously held thought, but I also posed a similar response to your YouTube on the unconscious, which I'll post here (for those who may wish to answer or have thoughts on it and haven't seen it):

"The notion that the conscious is the rational, and the unconscious could only be 'rational' due to the structure of language is interesting. Does the fact that we are able to articulate those things which come to the surface, in the instance of those things which were once unconscious becoming conscious (exploring those things which surprise us for example), mean that those unconscious desires/wants/needs only have a 'structure of language' because they have 'exited' the irrational (unconscious) and have been given 'meaning' in the rational (conscious)? In that when we compile this empirical data of those instances, we can extrapolate a sort of pattern which leads to some semblance of that very structure?

If we are rational creatures, in that we can not only experience that drive that compels us to not only survive, but to live in a meaningful way, why would it be absurd to assume that the unconscious could be rational at least in structure, even if it takes time to work out the why behind those innate impulses that rest beneath everything we will ourselves towards?"

Sorry I didn't catch your comment on YouTube, Lore. That's a very thoughtful response.

I think @John K is right that we probably are operating with slightly different definitions, which may explain part of the circularity you've observed. This is not really on us, though, because the unconscious is just so damn difficult to define, lol. The vagueness and fuzziness of the unconscious itself, I suspect, injects a dose of vagueness into our conceptual discussions, making it difficult to know exactly where we stand.

The problem is similar with the concept of rationality. It's less fuzzy, but that doesn't mean we'll necessarily agree on what it means. I would argue that rationality carries with it the ability to reflect on our words and actions in a critical attitude (not negatively critical, but constructively, as in being open to critique, including self-critique), and to adapt our approach on that basis. If we adopt that definition of rationality, it seems obvious that the unconscious can't be categorised as rational. And yet, this ability to enter into a reflective mode doesn't look either like a necessary condition for 'having a structured personality'. It may be that my ENFP shadow is completely incapable of reflecting on its words, listening to others' critiques open-mindedly on the basis of validity claims, etc. It still could have the NeFiTeSi structure.

So the question here would be, is that definition of rationality partial only, and if it is, is what is left out incompatible with the structuring of a shadow personality? It may in fact turn out that, contrary to what I suggested before, rationality is not a precondition.

The stronger objection to the idea of a unitary shadow personality is maybe the empirical one. That is: when I observe a person over the span of a day, or a week, how can I identify those utterances which are representations of the shadow, without presupposing the shadow in the first place? How can I tell that when an INFJ seems to be using Fi, they are in Fi-critical parent mode and not simply consciously making use of Fi?

Lore, I think you may have an interesting answer to this. In a past YouTube comment, you seemed quite comfortable with analysing the shadow manifestations of Jordan Peterson's personality. It would be fascinating if you could give us some concrete examples of where you picked those up, and how you arrived at your conclusion.
 
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@John K @Anomaly

Just a quick note on my approach. I think my emphasis on language is also a simple reflection of the fact that I am, philosophically, the heir of Wittgenstein, Searle, and other philosophers of language. I tend to orient my analysis that way, due to training, but that doesn't mean it's the only valid approach. I very much accept that too much of an emphasis on language and linguistic utterances may cause us to miss some important insights into the discussion.

This is where I'm relying on you guys :D
 
@John K @Anomaly

Just a quick note on my approach. I think my emphasis on language is also a simple reflection of the fact that I am, philosophically, the heir of Wittgenstein, Searle, and other philosophers of language. I tend to orient my analysis that way, due to training, but that doesn't mean it's the only valid approach. I very much accept that too much of an emphasis on language and linguistic utterances may cause us to miss some important insights into the discussion.

This is where I'm relying on you guys :D
It's very important for me to acknowledge the symmetry in this Ren. I rely on you to a considerable extent to champion the pivotal role of language :).

There is a relativistic issue here - because what exactly is language? There are layers below layers, and I am always conscious that anything I experience is a representation and a modelling, symbols mediated to me by the structures inherent in my mind, rather than a direct access to the reality of what is out there in itself. It is easy to accept my perception of the world as the way it really is, but it cannot be really like that - the way it presents is an artefact of the structure of my perception processes, long before I try and express it in words. Are the things out there 'things in themselves'? - I do not know and never can, but it seems rational to believe that they are, and gives peace of mind to accept them as such. It means though that whatever is out these is always going to be, in many ways, other than how I experience it.

Much of this is not presented to me in language, but a much more primitive sort of symbolic representation, which we share with most other creatures in the world. This is the one most people accept as a direct experience of the world, but it isn't - it's still a representation and I find there is a spectrum rather than a hard boundary between our primary experiences presented to us in this way and the expression of these in humanspeak linguistic terms.
 
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Why we're rare, huh. This is how it makes sense to me.

Although there's a high concentration of INFJs here; and this is only because this is a "You Belong Here, because everyone that is similar to you is Here" in bold baby blue letters, there aren't many out in the world.

I have two reasons for this,

One, they haven't typed themselves yet. I have two others on the same team as mine, whom I've distributed the personality test to get to better understand my co-workers (for them to understand themselves, really). That's 3 out of 15 members of our team. That's 20%. What are the chances that they're also on my team, in a company of roughly 7,300 people. If I expand that hypothetically, that's 219 out of 7300 people, meaning 33.3% of us are INFJ vs the whole company. Kinda small still.

Imagine if none of them took the test and they never found out. That number would drop, even hypothetically.

Two, we've tried interacting with extroverts, it might have worked for a while, we fell back into our coves, we're introverted, we're more likely to gather online than in person.
And even then it can get crowded if it's too often.

To combine the two, I'd say most INFJs are soo busy in their heads figuring out why they're "like this way" that the haven't reached the point where their "MBTI personality" is the definition they were looking for. Surely they'll come across it at some point, but some later than others. Along with the INFJs who haven't developed their extraverted whatever, they'll be even more so shy and introverted to the point where they just don't do interpersonal gatherings offline or online.

What I mean by out there in the world, is, letting you know they're INFJ. Why would you? It's the Fight Club of personality types, you either in or not. First rule is don't talk about it.
(I've never seen the movie that people quote 10,310,204,399 times because I think the quote is good enough expression for the whole movie, I'm sure)
 
I don't know why INFJ is the rarest type but I know Imm glad it is. Speaking from what I’ve found in myself and most INFJs I've met both in real life and online is that we can be a tremendously toxic lot if pushed to the dark side. Not only toxic but wrathful too. No wonder Hitler was an INFJ.

Yes we can be the best of humans but also if pushed, there is no bottom to what we are capable of haha.

But still, I think the worst of us are those that show off that we’re some kind of unicorns and label any toxic behaviour as a result of their mbti lol.
 
Oh yes, the worry for other's perceptions. I think that's why I am drawn to Stoicism, in that only I have the ultimate power in how I choose to respond. The fears of abandonment, fragmentation, or rejection tend to conflict motivation for wanting to speak in truth. I find that in the past I have had to weigh whether expressing the truth was worth the fragmentation, or if I should allow the 'chips to fall as they may', and try to pick up the pieces. More and more, I long to live in truth, regardless of those fears. Though, a careful balance of the two is preferable. Offering truth with careful and discerning words, at the correct time, tends to elicit a more pleasant response.
Ultimately I think that the 'so be it' attitude when it comes to the truth is far more fulfilling in the long term, and a strong motivator within me.

The truth has that curious quality of being... well... the truth. There are no errors that can be made with it; no mistakes or alternate strategies of delivery. It has its own sovereignty which supersedes its human reception.

And when this is realised, it liberates us from the toxic tangle of social pandering. Any bond worth the name can survive the truth.
 
Ultimately I think that the 'so be it' attitude when it comes to the truth is far more fulfilling in the long term, and a strong motivator within me.

The truth has that curious quality of being... well... the truth. There are no errors that can be made with it; no mistakes or alternate strategies of delivery. It has its own sovereignty which supersedes its human reception.

And when this is realised, it liberates us from the toxic tangle of social pandering. Any bond worth the name can survive the truth.
I appreciate this, Host. There is something admirable in the pursuit of living as tranparently as possible. Trusting that if there are bonds made, they will not only survive the burns that are an inevitable part of those utterances, but would edify and cultivate the strengthening of that bond. To be just as you are- fully known, yet delightfully chosen again and again, well I can think of no better gift.
 
After some few time of "investigation" and exploration, I did came to a reasonable explanation to both "Why is INFJ the rarest type?" (https://www.infjs.com/threads/why-is-infj-the-rarest-type.38214/page-9) and the explanations behind the image below the MBTI types through different age coming from this thread Official MBTI Statistics. This was posted by @Deleted member 16771 .

mbRLSsW.jpg


But this requires that one of these 3 links below works (because searching had been difficult last month - disappeared from Google Scholar simple search) and these links are going to lead to a read of a few pages from a book...

There is a theory called ego-control and ego-resiliency from Block & Block. This theory validation is a little bit hard to access from the internet - except in one of its most common use, as a typology for the Big Five. Yes, its a typology based on clustering - basically, types by data science, where people analyze hundreds or thousands or up to hundreds of thousands of tests results on Big Five, recognize clusters, and through these clusters types are formed. This personality typology is the most scientific ever because it is falsifiable and can be subject of replication - and it has been through the years. So just a few articles that I've searched randomly, just to exemplify:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027273581630294X

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.557

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.495

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.495

(these are not the links that are supposed to work yet...)

These typologies are a part of an empirical finding (it has a few controversies...such as that types are similar but different in different contexts and countries AND the failure of a good replication on HEXACO) and originally it was meant to bring support to theory.

The core part of the theory is presented on "Development of Cognition, Affect, and Social Relations
The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, Volume 13", on chapter 2 with the name “the role of ego-control and ego-resiliency in the organization of behavior”.

Hopefully, one of these 3 links will work:

https://books.google.com.br/books?h...ehucIiRuWks9oaJuWIhbXzX_g#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=6fghAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=pt-BR#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com.br/books?i...avior&lr&hl=pt-BR&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false

You should be directed to a book written “2 - The role of ego-control and ego-resiliency in the organization of behavior” starting with “For what now approaches 30 years”. Read from that first phrase, which is page 39, until page 51 right before “the longitudinal study”.

I hope they did work (or you guys found a good way) otherwise writing this was sort of a waste of time (so yeah, Im betting it did work).

So proceeding to the explanation, Introversion is related to high ego-control even though is not the same as it is explained on the book, but keep in mind that it correlates - so higher inhibition relates to both introversion and high ego-control and 'boastful' talking relates to lower ego control and extraversion. At the same pace, the J style of the MBTI J - organized, scheduled, planned, disciplined, relates to high ego-control either. So IXXJ relates to high ego-control while EXXP relates to low ego-control.

Now comes part 2 - where intuition kicks in. As it is mentioned on the book, there is the integrated concept of permeability on ego-control - "overcontrol: Excessive boundary impermeability (...) undercontrol: Excessive boundary impermeability". The systems they are referring to are actually systems and inside these different systems there are the conscious and the many parts of the unconscious (in case you don't know, the unconscious is not a single entity neither in neuroscience, nor in Freud nor in Jung). An intuitive by Jung's and MBTI's definition is more in touch with the unconscious than when compared to a sensor, so N does relates to a higher permeability and lower ego-control.

So IXXJ means that a person is inhibited (I) and more disciplined (P), IXXJ automatically has a tendency towards high ego-control, which in turn means less permeability and thus less likehood of being in touch with the unconscious, so given a person is IXXJ, the person is less likely to be in touch with the unconscious due to this mechanism, meaning that the person will be less likely to be a N and more likely to be a S, that is why ISTJ+ISFJ>>INFJ+INTJ and that is why INFJs and INTJs are so much rare. Even if we rip off the MBTI J/P, that still holds true to Jung's Ni originally. On the other hand, EXXP means that a person is less inhibited (E) and less disciplined (P), thus more permeability and more likely to be touch with the unconscious, and that is why ENTP+ENFP almost equals ESFP + ESTP in numbers regardless the 2 Sensors : 1 Intuitive proportion (its more like 7 sensors per 3 intuitives, actually). Since Feeling relates at least a bit but not totally to emotions, and a flow of emotions does relate to higher ego-control (its written on the book that an undercontroller is supposed to be mroe emotive), thus EXFP will have a strong tendency towards low ego-control even higher than EXTP, which will push intuition up, and that is the best explanation why ENFP is the only intuitive type more common than its sensor's counterpart, ESFP. This is also why there is the ENFP-ISTJ polarization on MBTI stats (if you evaluate internal correlations, it forms ISTJ-ENFP and no other opposing pair; ENFP is the most common intuitive while ISTJ is the most common sensor).

There is one more part: Ego control and aging. There is one part of the brain that relates to ego-control: Prefrontal cortex.
"The researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory discovered “prominent connections” between two parts of the brain: the prefrontal cortex and the brainstem, which is at the base of the organ and leads to the spinal cord. According to a statement from the lab, experts already knew that the brainstem was involved in instinctual behavior and suspected that the prefrontal cortex played a role in how we control it, but did not understand how the latter region did that."(https://www.medicaldaily.com/self-control-and-human-brain-neuroscience-impulse-control-408348)

"This brain region has been implicated in executive functions, such as planning, decision making, short-term memory, personality expression, moderating social behavior and controlling certain aspects of speech and language.[4][5] Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes).

The frontal cortex supports concrete rule learning." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex)

"Although brain development is subject to significant individual variation, most experts suggest that the brain is fully developed by age 25. For some people, brain development may be complete prior to age 25, while for others it may end after age 25. The mid-20s or “25” is just an average age given as checkpoint for when the brain has likely become mature.

It may seem logical that those aged 18 to 25 are completely mature, the brain still is maturing – specifically the area known as the “prefrontal cortex.” (https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/18/at-what-age-is-the-brain-fully-developed/)

Adolescents and people at their earlier 20's does NOT have a full developed prefrontal cortex and their ego-control is lower than people of higher age, thus they tend to be lower on ego-control, and that impacts on the MBTI, increasing the numbers of ENFP (the lowest extreme ego-control inside MBTI specifically) at earlier years and decreasing the numbers of ISTJs. As they age, ego-control increases, and that creates the overall movement you see from ENFP to ISTJ on the graph at earlier age. This does justify most of the movement but not entirely, since ENTP doesn't move much on the graph. Also, the changes at the elderly ages are probably another story, even though by Conscientiousness Ps tends to die earlier than Js (more reckless and more likely to be involved in accidents; Less caring about your own health) which explains part but not total the movement of the final graph. Also notice that MBTI can be a little bit vague and things gets more clear if you put up the enneagram; Not all ENFPs and ENTPs are necessarily low on ego-control (but most are), for example ENTP 5 have a more neutral tendency on ego-control. But a properly typed ENFP 7 and ENTP 7 are low on ego-control by conceptual definitions of both ego-control, ENFP/ENTP and E7.

But grasping this requires an open mind, since this contradicts the "you are MBTI XXXX since you are born" and "MBTI/Jung type doesn't change" dogma... and maybe some other few dogmas as well.
 
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I’ve thought about this for quite a while, and I’m starting to think that this is mostly due to the fact that infjs are extremely compassionate and caring people and that ends up extremely misunderstood or even taken advantage of. Even then, we could say the absolute same about infps, but it’s not as direct for how deep care and emotion is expressed. That does also leave things open to mistyping and even misdiagnoses, which is a whole other shibang that would involve possible diagnoses like expressed before that would mistype either. So things like infps feeel misunderstood where as infjs ARE misunderstood would be considered an ineffective typing tool for any type that exists and even possible diagnoses. Considering we all have been similar feelings and go through pretty similar things, those feelings are valid depending on each situation and choice, so I can’t really be too sure nor could we ever really come to an actual answer rather than appreciation for everyone’s differences and to not allow type to be a factor in how we understand eachother.
 
I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about this.
When it comes to anything within psychology or even in the philosophical or soulful practices of what we’re looking for in anything, I noticed there’s always this schism between ideas that completely supersede the very thing we’re wishing to diminish.
Like all light and dark triad traits for example in relation to mbti type. When we go to any extreme as to call it one thing, we’ve diminished the possibility of another simply by the action that has occurred in calling it such.
Ex: intj- Machiavellian with tertiary Te being savior to both conflicting perceptions.
Infp- being narcissistic due to immediate judging with heart matters.
Enfp- psychopathic for inability to make positive choices and perceptions on things and falling into forgetfulness of previous mistakes when looking for new outcomes.
Infj- borderline of all the above due to pain, insecurity, etc etc etc. whatever.
The point being that we’ve automatically assumed the darkness therefore have a misperception of the light that is within it.
Best traits of these types being:
Intj: humanism
Infp: kantianism
Enfp: faith in humanity
Infj: spending life learning all the above.

In general the rarity of the importance of it is startling, but we’re all learning and growing as we go, so I’d say typing is out of the question when it comes to looking at people and genuinely seeing them, though it’s the goal of mbti to begin with. Therefore why are infjs so rare? Why is everyone themselves let alone existing? Wouldn’t we all answer this differently or carry it out in other ways? And if that’s the case why should it get in the way?
 
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Could someone enlighten me on the answer to this question? According to this link, INFJ is the rarest type. I wonder why this is?

https://www.careerplanner.com/MB2/TypeInPopulation.cfm

It would be cruel for more people to suffer this way. Lol

We can’t really know, but I think there’s a balance in place for a particular mix of people for life to reach a particular potential, I personally doubt it will reach due to humanity’s flawed nature.

Also, as a kind of self-sacrificing savior type figure, being INFJ would simply not be as appreciated (for what it is) if there were more of us. The few and the bold! To me, life is a story being written and our role is part of the necessary tragedy, and our personal triumph, if we keep ourselves and fight till the end.

Another way to look at it is this. We are more choosy when it comes to partners and don’t pass on the genes. Or we are too sensitive and don’t breed/die sooner.

What do y’all think?
 
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Another way to look at it is this. We are more choosy when it comes to partners and don’t pass on the genes. Or we are too sensitive and don’t breed/die sooner.

Then Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World would look more and more appealing everyday apparently. Lol.
We may as well all lament our existence.

Nice avatar btw.
 
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