Monday, April 15, 2019

INTJ, yes. Scary-Smart Criminal Mastermind, No.


Professor James Moriarty, Walter White, Tywin Lannister, and Petyr Bealish “Littlefinger.” All fandom polarizing characters. All INTJs.
The Myers-Briggs INTJ classification aligns with fiction's more infamous Architect/Masterminds - strategic, self-confidence, and willing to walk outside 'normal' rules and ruthlessly leverage loopholes.
With publicity like this, it's not surprising the INTJ group gets held at arm's length. (Real life examples aren't much better - Michelle Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.) We are the introverts that combine creative imagination with a strong rational drive; those “quiet, ambitious ones” you should watch. A female INTJ, like me, is a calculating ice-queen – you don't know you've crossed until you lie broken and bleeding at her feet.
…excuse me while I go laugh myself silly. 

Does Not Compute

I'll freely admit I'm not typical. However, the idea of me being a villainous anything is hilarious. Manipulate people in a long game? No thanks. People make less sense than logarithmic algebra. Yes, I'd rather deal with 'black-box' functions than play mind games.
One of my childhood epiphanies about social interaction was that other people aren't interactive scenery, like NPC's. You can't truly 'redo' a conversation or restore disposition like in a video game. You can make amends and adapt, but other people are always growing and changing. I can use perfect manners and follow social rules to a 'T' but someone's upset stomach could mean I'm blindly walking into a grouchy bear's den.
I'm just smart with good instincts for patterns. However, people are surprising and chaotic. I'd need a supercomputer's worth of brain power to try to track all the variables. (Why do you think so many stories about villains' downfall use the “for-want-of-a-nail” cliché?)

Rational Doesn't Mean Lack of Empathy

At less than 0.2% of the population, INTJ's often grow up the odd duck in a crowd. Ever hear the argument 'think about how it would make you feel?' It didn't always apply to me. I didn't consider or value the same things other kids, teens, and, later, adults did.
Now in most comic books, this would be the start of a villain or anti-hero's descent into darkness. (There is certainly enough complicated drama in my back-story for it.) It's so easy for that disconnect to develop into narcissism or self-loathing.
Purely by the grace of God, I had a third behavior modeled for me. “Yeah, you may be a weirdo but you're MY weirdo.” My family accepted and ferociously defended me, warts and all. I learned that you don't need to have matching personalities to care about someone.
Other people don't need to 'make-sense' to have value. I would never become a Moriarty or Lannister because my sensibility rejects the idea of someone else being just a face in the crowd or a chess-piece. I can respect feelings and choices that I can't understand.
(Do I still have days feel like a castaway trapped on an island where nobody speaks my language? Yes, very much so.)

Part to Whole Fallacy

Not every musician becomes world famous. Not every college drop out becomes a minimum wage slave. If you were to make a Venn Diagram of INTJ and 'Scary-Smart Masterminds' you'd get two intersecting circles with plenty of unclaimed room left in the INTJ bubble.
Are the INTJ stereo-types still valid? Yes, but fictional INTJ's are caricatures. Features are exaggerated to help move the story along.
If you try understand me with a caricature or a politician's public persona, I will laugh in your face. (FYI, I sound like a hyperventilating seal, not a Disney villainess.)


Interested learning more about the Myers-Briggs personality types? I recommend 16 Personalities. The site and test are easy-to-use and descriptive (even thought I spend most my time laughing at the "___'s You May Know" clipart).