Okay, before you flame me I've got to qualify this.
I have a number of friends who are INFJ's and on track to become psychologists and I want to put this out there from their experience and my own.
When I am involved in a 'healing' situation where I am working with a person, I tend to cross a great many of their boundaries and find hidden hurts and fears. In the end, they come away more clear-headed and at peace. This involves any one of a long list of strategies which the American psychological establishment would find bizarre to say the least and yet they work.
Empathizing with people, getting involved in their emotions, getting involved in their lives and giving them a feeling that someone DOES care seems to just restructure a person in a way that the very isolated 'Doctor/patient' relationship doesn't.
Now, when I give someone advice on whatever silly situation they've gotten into and they come back to me later (having survived if they listened or crashed and burned if they didn't) it's nice to hear their thanks but I all too often get this. 'You're so good with people! You should be a psychologist!'
No. Seriously. Just no.
What INFJ's do is not suited to the realm of the psychologist in it's modern methodology.
I often find myself needing to make out that I am some what psychic to get people to listen to me. Largely it is a matter of supreme empathy and close observation but there is nothing magical about it. Still, people listen if you sound like you've got a line in on the cosmic powers that be. This is why people still read horoscopes.
In a psychologist's office there are a list of expectations not the least of which is that the psychologist will help you if you pay them. I much prefer to pick my patients because a great myth of modern psychology is that 'You can help everyone.'
Bullocks. You cannot help everyone. Even an INFJ at the height of their internal balance with years of training cannot help everyone without investing UNSPEAKABLE quantities of resources into rebuilding a person. More often than not, people require time and in cases of terrible damage, a feeling of safety and isolation from the environment which caused the damage. If you can't give them that then there's no sense in taking 60 bucks an hour once every two weeks.
To my mind that's theft.
INFJ's do their best work when they can use their intuition rather than a strict manual for how things are done.
To this end while INFJ's may be the best of brain-fixers we operate very poorly as psychologists because A, we are often required to work with EVERYONE who comes through the door and B, we're restricted in the level of involvement we're allowed to have. I realize there are safety reasons for those restrictions but there are also people in this world it is possible to help who are simply hopeless within those strictures.
For a depressed house-wife, go to a psychologist.
For a rape, for a dead lover, for a child soldier, for a murdered husband...come to the INFJ in a properly balanced state of mind. The brain is our realm and this is as it should be...but not if we have to do things by the book.
P.S. It's not like we're going to say no if someone asks for our help. Seriously, we're kinda dumb like that sometimes.
I have a number of friends who are INFJ's and on track to become psychologists and I want to put this out there from their experience and my own.
When I am involved in a 'healing' situation where I am working with a person, I tend to cross a great many of their boundaries and find hidden hurts and fears. In the end, they come away more clear-headed and at peace. This involves any one of a long list of strategies which the American psychological establishment would find bizarre to say the least and yet they work.
Empathizing with people, getting involved in their emotions, getting involved in their lives and giving them a feeling that someone DOES care seems to just restructure a person in a way that the very isolated 'Doctor/patient' relationship doesn't.
Now, when I give someone advice on whatever silly situation they've gotten into and they come back to me later (having survived if they listened or crashed and burned if they didn't) it's nice to hear their thanks but I all too often get this. 'You're so good with people! You should be a psychologist!'
No. Seriously. Just no.
What INFJ's do is not suited to the realm of the psychologist in it's modern methodology.
I often find myself needing to make out that I am some what psychic to get people to listen to me. Largely it is a matter of supreme empathy and close observation but there is nothing magical about it. Still, people listen if you sound like you've got a line in on the cosmic powers that be. This is why people still read horoscopes.
In a psychologist's office there are a list of expectations not the least of which is that the psychologist will help you if you pay them. I much prefer to pick my patients because a great myth of modern psychology is that 'You can help everyone.'
Bullocks. You cannot help everyone. Even an INFJ at the height of their internal balance with years of training cannot help everyone without investing UNSPEAKABLE quantities of resources into rebuilding a person. More often than not, people require time and in cases of terrible damage, a feeling of safety and isolation from the environment which caused the damage. If you can't give them that then there's no sense in taking 60 bucks an hour once every two weeks.
To my mind that's theft.
INFJ's do their best work when they can use their intuition rather than a strict manual for how things are done.
To this end while INFJ's may be the best of brain-fixers we operate very poorly as psychologists because A, we are often required to work with EVERYONE who comes through the door and B, we're restricted in the level of involvement we're allowed to have. I realize there are safety reasons for those restrictions but there are also people in this world it is possible to help who are simply hopeless within those strictures.
For a depressed house-wife, go to a psychologist.
For a rape, for a dead lover, for a child soldier, for a murdered husband...come to the INFJ in a properly balanced state of mind. The brain is our realm and this is as it should be...but not if we have to do things by the book.
P.S. It's not like we're going to say no if someone asks for our help. Seriously, we're kinda dumb like that sometimes.
Last edited:
