How to have a whole personality...

I think being whole is being happy with yourself, I mean if you find these 'weaknesses' hinder you in every day life, then yeah- try to correct them if it helps you . . . although couldn't we all perfect ourselves to the end of the earth and back?

And besides, us INFJs do have obsessive personalities, if we take to trying to perfect ourselves; will we ever stop?

We are perfectionists after all . . .

 

"Self improvement is masturbation... Of self destruction."

 

Sounds like 'type development'.

Your dominant functions are just preferred functions - I suspect it is possible to develop your inferior functions to the point that they are more refined than your dominant funcitons. Nevertheless, when you use inferior functions it is exhausing and stressful.

I think a good aim is to try to balance type development and contentment in life, so that neither suffer significantly for the sake of the other.

 

There are three different theories on how to become a "whole" personality.

The first was Friedrich Nietzsche's Ubermensch where the focus is to conquer and eliminate the weaknesses of human nature, particularly fear. Imagine people like Thomas Edison and Franklin Roosevelt and you understand what Ubermenschs are. They are people who stand a head above all of the rest of humanity because they made their lives about achiieving dominance over their fear and focusing all their energy and resources on their greatest passions.

The second was Carl Jung's Personality Integration where the focus is to acknowledge and embrace one's weaknesses so that they can become one's strength. This process called "stepping through the shadow" is where a person confronts their primitive and savage side and comes to understand how it inhibigts them from growing. They then slowly incorporate it into their personality through a lifelong healing process where they seek to uncover the hidden depths of their unconcious mind. People like Nelson Mandella and Abraham Lincoln are considered people who have undergone personality integration.

The thrid theory was Abraham Maslow's Hierachy of needs, where the focus was on an acsending order of needs proclaimed universal to all humans. Those humans who have achieved the most basic phsyciological needs, need for safety, need for love and belonging, and need for esteem are at a point where they can transcend into self actualization. This is a point in which people can accept reality for what it is and forever put aside their prejudices and biases, and they can even sacrafice their lower needs in order to pursue some higher ideal. People like Mohandas Gahndi and Martin Luther King Jr. are argued to have ascended to self actualization.

So there is far more to consider in becoming a "whole" personality than just improving upon cognitive processes. How you deal with your fear, how you deal with your own primitive urges and desires, and how you deal with your needs all come into play in developing a "whole" personality.

 

I've read on several INFJ profiles that we are considered unique in having the capacity to be both "dreamers" and "doers." I think for many of us, being able to balance and make full use of those aspects is important in our self-development. Good dreams fuel good deeds, and good deeds inspire further dreaming, and so on.