INTJ

woman_man_boat

25 Apr: Marriage as a “Hotbed of Individuation”

Couples often wonder whether they are “ready” for such a commitment. I look for situations when each person’s “sore spot” is activated. When a couple is able to hold the tension of the activated inferior function and find a way to make their relationship a vehicle for the development of personality, then they are “ready” for marriage in one of the most crucial ways.

seeds_of_areois_gaugin

16 Dec: Sex, Madness, and Spirituality

Many women, and not least women with dominant Ni, intuitively know that their spirituality, their creativity, and their sexuality arise from the same source. The priestess may be found in all walks of life; she is the woman who mediates between matter and spirit, between the human and divine realms, who “will always honor sexual energy as a link to the source of life itself.”

munch_woman_on_shore

03 Jul: The English Patient in the Mirror

The more I fell apart inside, the more I needed outside structure and order. One night I dreamed of an interior colorless and noiseless explosion that was followed by a voice that boomed, “You have the courage to let your interior world be chaos; there are no walls where there should be walls. You are a crab, and you need an exoskeleton.”

ligabue_tiger_head

04 Oct: Trump, Clinton, and Authenticity

Often extraverted sensing leaders are considered more authentic than other types. Trump’s supporters viewed him as trustworthy (“honest,” “outside of the political corruption,” and “not a liar”) while they viewed Clinton as untrustworthy (“belongs behind bars,” “cannot be trusted,” and “nothing but lies”). Even Clinton’s own supporters expressed concern about her trustworthiness.

chagall_king_loves_science

04 Oct: Populism and Extraverted Sensation

Populism has acquired a negative reputation, and this is especially true now with the presidency of Donald Trump, but many other political leaders have used extraverted sensation tactics and policies to rally the cause of the common man. This is true not only of Andrew Jackson—in whom extraverted sensation (Se) seems to be dominant—but also of Lyndon B. Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt.

casorati_silvana_cenni

04 Apr: Anorexia Nervosa and the INTJ Type

Anorexia nervosa can be understood as an archetypal death-rebirth process. A typological analysis shows a psychological syndrome based in archetypal possession resulting from the dynamic configuration of INTJ preferences. The individual with anorexia undertakes her own heroic psychospiritual journey through the underworld to transform personal and collective consciousness.

redon_head_of_sleeping_woman

10 Jan: Dream Tending

“Interpretations” of dreams must be filtered through a layer of consciousness. One contribution of dream tending as an effective tool for Jungian dream work is the value it places on the sensing function as an imaginal way of knowing. Thus, it de-emphasizes the intuitive and thinking functions many Jungians use in traditional dream analysis and brings sensing and feeling to the fore.

popova_man_air_space

10 Jan: Managing Bias in Military Intelligence

Military intelligence is a personality-centric career field because of its reliance on the subjective factor, which tends to creep into every intelligence assessment regardless of how analytically rigorous it attempts to be. To help reduce bias, intelligence professionals have developed brainstorming analytic techniques so that an analytical cell can offset individual biases.

warsaw_sundial

04 Jan: How Timelines Move Goal Lines

The Judging functions influence how we pursue, record, and celebrate goals; but before any action toward a goal is taken, the Perceiving functions influence how we think and talk about them. Goal setting boils down to how different types orient to time, and how people are mentally present varies considerably depending on their preferences for gathering information.

satan_smites_job

04 Jan: Conversations with Satan

What is evil? We know it when we see it. Evil is subjective; it often depends on our point of view. For example, when the two women asked if they could tell me what I did wrong, I had a choice; I could either see their offer as helpful or “evil” in the sense that they were out to destroy my work. Can we utilize the power of psychological type to better understand what evil is?