On the INFJ Revolution

I picked this up because I’ve been trying to work out why I’ve been having such a hard time lately. I know it comes off as self-victimization, but I feel incompatible with the life I’m currently living, and to figure out what to do differently I’ve been playing with all kinds of modern divination tools — personality tests, astrology, and the like. One that always comes up is MBTI. I’ve taken it many times over the years and always land on INFJ, though my extraversion/introversion score tends to sit near the border. I’m well aware that the Jungian types MBTI measures aren’t well respected in psychological practice or research these days, but I do think the system helps make sense of the world, and “INFJ” has fit me far better than any other type.

So I decided to learn a bit more, and came across Lauren Sapala’s book; she also keeps a blog about INFJ and INFP types. I wish I’d read more about her before diving in. She seems an interesting, creative person, but the book didn’t seem to have much to say about the types. The biggest problem is that she treats Myers-Briggs as a theory of everything, filtering so much of the world through that single lens — perfectly fine for her experience of reality, but not much help to mine. There’s a lot here about how intuitive INFJs are, natural empaths who see and feel what others miss, all of which is true, but so much of it rests on her own experience and feelings that it didn’t seem useful. It’s great that she’s intuitive and sensitive and an innate feeler; I just don’t think that qualifies her to write the book. Not that qualifications are everything — far from it — but you need a finer grasp of the distinctions between types, and the similarities within them, to make these assertions, and the only evidence here is her own experience and that of the people she knows. It would make a perfectly serviceable memoir, with a bit more storytelling, but it isn’t the self-help or psychology book it advertises itself as, and I don’t feel I’ve come to know myself any better for reading it.

I’m well aware that I’m good at intuiting a situation, bad at recognizing my own emotions, and good at picking up other people’s. It goes without saying that I’m naturally introverted and will sit in my room playing the same song on repeat to drop into a trance-like state of elevated thought and creativity, and that I prefer one-on-one situations to any larger gathering. I feel half-insane when the ineffable tugs at my soul, I clench up when I immediately feel someone else’s emotions, and I need order in my external world before I can dip into the ocean inside my own head. But all of that I’ve just said in far more words than required. I’d planned to read Sapala’s The INFJ Writer: Cracking the Creative Genius of the World’s Rarest Type, but I think I’ll dodge it and pick up something on mysticism instead. The one real strength of this book is that I do feel heard by it — it’s nice to know there are other people like me out there, even when it doesn’t feel that way. I only wish it went deeper.