Few questions...

Timmaigh!

Timmaigh!

Newbie
MBTI
INFJ
Enneagram
6,4,9
Hi there,

my first topic here, bar the introduction.

So i have been studying this psychology and MBTI related stuff for past few weeks in my free time, and i have to say, it is truly interesting. Especially, i am interested in connections between the MBTI types and various psychological disorders, as it may kind of relate to me as well. I looked around the internet, googled a bit and from i could gather, there seems to be no definitive conclusion on this matter and more importantly, i havent find any info regarding certain specific questions i have.


First of all, is there actually some objective way to "measure" the MBTI personality? :-) How do you know, whether the result of the test does not reflect how you perceive yourself instead of reflecting who you truly are? Not to mention, while for some questions there are pretty straightforward answers, the others are pretty ambivalent and totally dependent on the context, the answers could go both ways given the situation.

Another thing, the proper way of looking at the result... apparently, you gotta take the whole personality type and look at its specifics (which i find still pretty vaguely defined and way too overarching), not break it into those several letters and look at them separately - why do i feel then, the tests i took were constructed in way, where one question was clearly about introversion/extroversion, another obviously concentrated on feeling/thinking, etc... i took only the free online MBTI tests, most notably the one on Humanmetrics and then free Jungian test on SimilarMinds page, these seems to be the most used/acknowledged, scored on both as INFJ. But on one or two other tests i scored ISFJ or INFP respectively, and this is the thing - if i look at those 4 letters one by one - i actually think INFJ fits me well (although the N/S thing is bit questionable, but i gave the test to my mother, who scored ISFJ /which i actually knew, she is going to :-)/, and i am definitely not like her - so responsible, grounded to earth), but when i read about the descriptions of INFJ, ISFJ and INFP, i could be pretty much all of them and neither (if i need to relate yourself to all the specifics of the type).

Now, on the main topic. Few years ago, i have been diagnosed to have "psychasthenic personality traits". Apparently, per wiki, psychasthenia is akin to obsessive-compulsive disorder. I wonder, what level of influence could such diagnosis have on my possible preference of J over P? In other words, what do you think comes first? Could your personality (and the result of the MBTI) be influenced by the disorder, or is it actually other way around, you are likely to develop the disorder because of the personality type you have? Or do you believe there is absolutely no connection?

Thanks for reading/answers

TLDR: Sorry for TLDR kind of post
 
No I don't think there is an objective way to measure MBTI.

When typing yourself there is no way of knowing how much is what you perceive and how much is what you are.

You are supposed to look at the whole MBTI type because the functions interact with one another in a certain format. For example; most INFJ's have introversion and intuition that have a closer than average relationship.

I think any personality trait that is compared to OCD will probably be correlated with J functions.

"What do you think comes first?" I'm not sure if either comes first. They are both just ways to wrongly categorize and accurately describe you at the same time. Crazy huh?
 
OCD and OCD personality disorder are different. OCD can manifest itself in a number of ways so I don't agree that it would correlated with a J function necessarily. It would depend on how your OCD manifests itself. The personality disorder, yeah probably.
 
I have OCD... :redface: It's a part of me and my personality, it doesn't interfere with my J. More with my F at times... maybe. I don't think that my fundamental traits have changed much since childhood. They just became more layered. But I suspect I was an INTJ child, or better to say INJ.
 
Maybe it is connected:) And maybe we should start a group or thread:) Somehow I think that I become ocd or anxious when my Ni or fe gone wild...you know, that thing when thought just go and go and go...and you are sure that something bad going to happen:)
Hm...
 
CindyLou said:
OCD and OCD personality disorder are different. OCD can manifest itself in a number of ways so I don't agree that it would correlated with a J function necessarily. It would depend on how your OCD manifests itself. The personality disorder, yeah probably.
Click to expand...

What causes OCD?
 
My parents had some OCD patterns too but I think I win... I find that it gets the worst under stress.
I don't know exactly what causes it. Upbringing plays a role, I think.
 
All I know is that if you are crazy you are a N, if you are a jerk you are S. Its a weird system man.
 
It's quite strange reading all this because I can relate. I've been suffering from anxiety for the past 4 years though I'm not sure what actually cause it. I'm a pretty laid back guy but for some reason when I was sixteen I had a massive anxiety attack out of no where and we had no idea what it was. I can remember my parents driving me to the hospital because I could barely stand and I'd lost all of the colour in me. Since then there's been a lot of progress with dealing with it and I now have more of a grasp on what causes it and how I can control it, or stop it from getting any worse in a given circumstance. Occasionally I'll have those nights where I'm a ball of nerves and one time last year I lost my vision for roughly half a minute at my then girlfriend's house as one passed over me.

The second point you bring up about OCD. I must say I'm rather distant from OCD, so much in fact that if OCD were a person I'd pass him by in the street and mistake him for someone else. I have an incredible lack of neatness in my life, everything I have is more a composure of chaos where to everyone else it looks like just a mess but for me everything is exactly where I put it. When it comes to do set things in a certain time frame though I'm rather un-committing unless it's keeping time when meeting others.
 
There's no way to objectively measure your type since the MBTI isn't a scientific system. It's based on anecdotal evidence and conjecture.

Even the professional MBTI tests are like that. Personality questionnaires are far from an accurate way of understanding yourself. The first time you take the test will probably be the most accurate , after that you start seeing the patterns in the questions and realise how simplistic and obvious they are.
 
Breeze;644882[B said:
]It's quite strange reading all this because I can relate. I've been suffering from anxiety for the past 4 years though I'm not sure what actually cause it.[/B] I'm a pretty laid back guy but for some reason when I was sixteen I had a massive anxiety attack out of no where and we had no idea what it was. I can remember my parents driving me to the hospital because I could barely stand and I'd lost all of the colour in me. Since then there's been a lot of progress with dealing with it and I now have more of a grasp on what causes it and how I can control it, or stop it from getting any worse in a given circumstance. Occasionally I'll have those nights where I'm a ball of nerves and one time last year I lost my vision for roughly half a minute at my then girlfriend's house as one passed over me.
Click to expand...

Coincindentally I have been suffering from it for the past 4 years, or better to say, it happened to me twice over past four years, when it manifested and made me feel absolutely lousy. The time between that, i felt kinda content, but i have been taking meds, as the doctors never told me to stop, and even when i tried, it turned out to be quite difficult to stop. Anyway, i actually believe i know the cause of the onset of the disease in my case, it was most likely infection of chlamydia and mycoplasma pneumoniae.

[MENTION=5667]Jacobi[/MENTION]> thanks. That is why i decided to go with INFJ, it was my result on first 2 test i gave a try, when i knew basically nothing about the whole MBTI/Jung thing, and to be fair, it appeals to me to be have the rarest personality type (vanity! haha) I always felt different to other guys anyway, i actually have a colleague same age as me, who seems to be perfectly normal, so it gives me "reference framework" everyday...and i see in certain things i am nothing like him.
 
Ok, so i have been reading on this MBTI topic even more, specifically i read (sofar only) some basics from the Lenore Thompson´s book (thanks to Andy Quellenlicht, who posted it in PDF format, thanks again!) and now i actually understand the system, how are those cognitive functions derived from that four letter moniker you get by filling the test.

So if i understand it correctly, the J at the end means, you prefer to deal with external conditions using one of the Judging functions. Therefore you are more likely, when dealing with people/situations externally, to "hesitate" with your actions and consider them, instead of acting spontaneously. Whether you consider your actions more logically or emotionally depends on your preference toward thinking/feeling. So i feel, in my case this is settled, i am definitely not spontaneous person, i hate to be thrown into new situations, for which i am unprepared, mostly because i would hate to look incompetent, stupid, reckless rejected by people. Additionally, i would hate to hurt someone else, when dealing with people this is usually the bottom line to my actions, when they relate to other people. Based on this "inflexibility" of mine due to this little obsession to be accepted and liked by other people, i think i can be fairly sure extraverted feeling is most likely my auxiliary cognitive function.

Apparently the irrational fear of being rejected by others and some other things, i can identify myself with, are common traits of avoidant personality disorder. Its not the same as OCD, but both are deviations from normal and this again leads me to my original questions: if i was normal in this regard, would i be more likely to score as P on the MBTI? While this is not sure, i suppose, it would make me completely different person, therefore its very much possible.

Anyway, given this thorough analysis :-), i most likely have the IXFJ type. But i am totally unable to say, whether i am Ni or Si dominant. I tried my best to find the most info/explanation on them, some of them were too philosofical and vague to understand, others actually tried to use some nice examples/analogies - the best of them from my limited POV probably was "Si = what it might have been, Ni = what could it be"... do you agree with such description? Apparently Si is commonly misunderstood as having good memory, while Ni... i dont know, most of its descriptions, especially the one by Lenora Thompson seem to me like trying to describe ineffable... conclusion - i would not know. What i know though is, that when dealing with practical things, i tend to follow step by step manuals and rely on my memory. When nothing is at stake and i feel like it, then i like to experiment - just get some basic, overall info on the subject (as reading 30 page tutorial is just plainly boring) and try to work on "details" myself to see where it would lead me. So, it seems to me pretty situational - but maybe i got it completely wrong.

EDIT: Sorry for not just editing previous post.
 
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