Changed my mind about my Myers Briggs Typology.

Post Reply New Topic

I really don't think the test applies to Aspies very well. I always type as INTP. It fits me very well but I was looking at ISTP and if fits me even better, the key difference being that ISTPs are more tuned in with their environment. Basically I'm an ISTP with AS or ADHD, I think I'm somewhere in between the two, really, I just don't know that an Aspie can get a truly accurate result from that test when so may questions are based on how in tune you are with your surroundings, this is a key marker of AS, yes? I also think I would actually be less detail oriented if I were NT because I'm comfortable with ambiguity and abstract thinking (to an extent), the main reason I'm so focused on details is because of the obsessive traits and repetitive behaviors, but I will always type as INTP because of this.

I have a pretty strong feeling this isn't coming off as clearly as I wanted it to, didn't sleep at all last night XD.

That's interesting, it never occurred to me to read the other descriptions. I always come up INFP and recently I read a description of the I the N the F and the P that made sense to me.

Here's a link. It discusses the Myers-Briggs as it relates to ADD.
For instance, I don't consider myself particularly intuitive but the description described it in such a way that I could see how it applied to me.

add link
http://borntoexplore.org/addtemp.htm

Last edited by Aimless on 08 Jun 2010, 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think I'm a straightforward INTP but I don't know what I would be instead.

Aimless, I think you forgot to put your link in. I wouldn't mind reading whatever you've got there.

If I remember correctly I got ISTP or something. I cant find the original poll anymore :/

oops. I'll try again

Thankyou.

If it helps, my boyfriend is an ISTP.. it suits him so well. Yet when he take the test he gets INtJ. I think it is his aspie traits that make him select the answers, bt he is quite clearly an ISTP. The tests dont always come up with the bet answer, it is better to read about the different profiles. And many people fall between the profiles too.

Hi folks,

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here - I'm neurotypical (love that term by the way), but an MBTI trainer, and I have a Google Alert set up to find mentions of the MBTI on the web, and it brought me here. I have an interest in the MBTI and how it relates to Autism, Asperger's and ADD diagnosis and have come up with a few ideas about their relationships. Mind you, none of this has been tested or researched, but I think I can at least shed some light on the Jungian theory, and maybe you can shed some light my way on Austism. I don't know if there's been any in-depth study of the ideas together yet. If I could, I'd do it myself. In the meantime, maybe we can fumble our way through the dark with two candles instead of one. [Aside to Aimless - thanks for that link about Type and ADHD - it's a great website and the author really knows how to present the info]

I'd like to recommend a book to you all, one of the best I've ever read. It's very approachable to the layperson, and even I've found it to be quite deep and revealing. Plus, the author is a big Star Trek fan, and uses the characters a lot to describe Type. Here's the link: Personality Type: An Owner's Manual by Lenore Thomson.

First, the MBTI is designed to indicate and present psychological types of "neurotypical" people, but with that caveat out of the way, I *do* think it's valuable and validating to the members of your "planet" anyway! The basis of Jungian psychology is more *descriptive* rather than *prescriptive* so it won't show the underlying cause/effect of Type differences, even in the "normal" population, but I think there are going to be some patterns in the results amongst people on the spectrum, and the rest of it is good for describing the differences in how Austism is expressed. In the end, there may be 16 different Types of each Type of Autism, if there's no relationship. I think there's at least a lot of correlation.

The MBTI is primarily designed to measure how we Perceive and Judge information, and the two worlds in which we do that - our inner Introverted one and the outer Extraverted one. Everybody does both, and lives in both, but the MBTI shows which ones we prefer. Like left- and right-handedness, none is better than the other, they're just different, and result in different approaches to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Additionally, the MBTI presents a hypothesis, (a very educated one, but a hypothesis nonetheless) and it's up to the individual to validate the results. That's why a good trainer won't present your indicator results until you've heard an explanation of the dichotomies and chosen your preferences for yourself (called self-selection) and then there's the work of compromising the two hypothesis to come up with your "best fit" Type (unless of course, they're in agreement, but I've had instances where someone showed one Type both ways and *still* chose another Type as their Best Fit). I waffled between ENTP and ENFP for almost a year until I had an AHA! moment at my qualifying training and realized I was an ENFP fer sher.

Of course, trying to do this with someone in the Autistic spectrum presents a challenge, since the neurological basis for "normal" is different. At the risk of poorly extending a metaphor, it's like trying to indicate if your a lefty or a righty with a cast on one of them, or judging that you're poor at cutting paper when you're given lefty scissors and you're a righty.

There are 16 basic Types in the MBTI theory. Each uses four letters (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P). The Type code actually summarizes a very complex dynamic system and represent layers of emergent properties. The layers of emergent properties of Type are revealed when we look at combinations of letters, which I'll do later. So it's truly "greater than the sum of its parts" and considering the complexity of the system it's attempting to capture, I personally think Jungian psychology does a pretty good job. Because of this, there's a lot of room for variation within Type, and that's without considering special circumstances, as we have here. I'm gong to get a little complicated with my explanations here, so please bear with me. I will start it off with a possible over-generalization, but I suspect that of the 16 basic Types, INTP (and INTJ) are going to show up as the most common Type amongst those in the autistic spectrum, especially amongst Asperger's Syndrome types. You'll see why, and the other more common Types, below.

The first letter of the MBTI code indicates our dominant Energy orientation; which one of the two worlds (Introverted or Extraverted) you prefer to live in, and which one *energizes* you. We live in both, but prefer one over the other, and too much time in our opposite preference can be draining if we don't feed the other on occasion. My suspicion is that most people on the Autistic spectrum prefer Introversion naturally, and that the challenges the Extraverted world presents will heighten that preference. I'd be interested to see if there's anyone in your community who prefers E over I, and how they deal with a need to engage in a world that seems to be the source of such "consternation." There may be a chance that, because of the nature of how the MBTI works (a forced choice format), it may be showing a preference for I *as a result* of *reacting* to the outside world, as opposed to a natural *preference* for the inner one. This is where the MBTI may fall short, since it's not designed to show the "why" behind it (no test truly can - only brain scans can really), and why Self Selection is so important in the process of validating Type. So to summarize, members of the Autistic spectrum may prefer I over E generally, naturally and/or in reaction to the challenges of E.

The middle two letters of the MBTI code are the Mental Functions. The second letter will either be S or N (Sensing or iNtution), which are Perceiving functions, which is how we gather or recall information. The third letter will either be T or F (Thinking or Feeling) and are Judging functions, which is how we make decisions based upon or evaluate the information we've Perceived. I'm going to skip over descriptions of them and their differences for the moment.

The last letter of the MBTI is the most important in this discussion, because it focuses on indicating how you deal with the outside world (the Extraverted one), whether your prefer it or not (i.e. whether your code starts with I or E). We all have to deal with the outer world, and in MBTI theory, we use one of our mental functions (one of the middle two letters) to do so. So mental functions have an energy orientation too. The last letter indicates *which* other letter of the MBTI code we use extravertedly. P stands for Perceiving, and J stands for Judging. So if it's P, it's the second letter (either an S or an N) and if it's J, it's the third letter (an F or a T).

[In MBTI "201" we use lower case e's to talk about the extraverted energy of mental functions, so we get Se, Ne, Te and Fe when we're talking about them outside of the four letter code. The remaining mental function of the pair is the introverted one (Si, Ni, Ti and Fi for those of you keeping score). If this is getting a little complex for you, don't sweat it. It's why I put it in brackets ]

My hypothesis is that the majority of your Planet's citizens are going to have P as their last letter, because the descriptions of Autism consistently describe Perception the same way we describe Se and Ne, and when considering emergent Whole Type, extraverted Perceiving is going to win out over extraverted Judging most of the time. There are two notable exceptions to this, I think, which are INTJ and INFJ - which happen to be the rarest of all of the Types.

With the first and last letters in combination, we end up with four possible pairs (IxxP, IxxJ, ExxP and ExxJ) and I think the majority are going to show up as IxxP - people who prefer the Introverted world but whose Perception is extraverted (again, with the exception of INTJ and INFJ). As a related note, it's been shown that people diagnosed with ADHD show up often as ExxP - they prefer the Extraverted world *and* their Perception is Extraverted. Even people who aren't "diagnosed" as ADHD, but who prefer ExxP, seem like those with ADHD (except to other ExxPs!).

When you look at Type as a system description, you can see where the similarities of ExxP and IxxP to ADHD and autism lie. Perception is termed an Irrational process in Jungian psychology, which basically means you can't turn it on or off - it just is; unlike Judgment, the Rational processes, which are actively engaged. In both Autism and ADHD it's almost like we have an extraverted perception that can't be turned off AT A REALLY HIGH LEVEL (like adding bold and italics and underscore to the P in the code). A goofy analogy is putting jet fuel in the extravert's ferrari and putting it an introvert's gocart. For the ferrari, it's the ultimate thrill ride (that you may not survive). For the gocart, it's just a weee little bit much, eh? Both used for racing, but over fueled.

A second hypothesis is that ambiguity of either S or N is going to be similar to the possible ambiguity of I or E at the beginning of the code, for the same kind of reasons. As a neurotypical, it's difficult for me to understand exactly the hows and whats of the Autistic experience since it's really easy for me to differentiate between Sensing (actual, factual, real and present) and iNtution (theory, metaphor, ideas and absent), and it's obvious to me which one I prefer. I don't think that's necessarily the case here - one may *prefer* S or N, but the brain and the nervous system are saying something altogether different. Sometimes the parts and the whole aren't in agreement. Hence why the possibility of zen-mistress' bf seeming to be both an INTJ and an ISTP. And hence, where the model may fall short.

The Judging processes work the same, but I think there's an obvious tendency for T to show up more often. In some ways, it seems like Autism (and especially Asperger's) seems like a heightening of the preference for Thinking to such an extent that it "crowds out" Feeling, to the point of eliminating its expression; much as William's syndrome does the opposite, where the preference for Feeling overwhelms Thinking. Again, this is metaphorical description. I have a short post to my Amplify blog about just this topic.

A third hypothesis has to do with what Jung called "undifferentiated" functions - Jung basically said that individuation is the process of separating the mental functions from another and figuring out our preferences. We begin life undifferentiated - as children we experiment with all of them (there's a lot of world to Perceive and Judge at once!) and we don't necessarily use them separately or appropriately (using and fusing Sensing and iNtuition for example). After we learn to sort and separate our parts, and own them (around 20 or so) we can begin the slow process of using our non-preferred ones as well. There may not be this chance when we're dealing with neurology that's wired differently, where we have a preference, but don't have a choice in exercizing it. Again, this is descriptive, not prescriptive, so we're not saying "be/cause" here.

And lastly, to address zen-mistress's comment about people falling in between Types, Angelo Spoto is a Jungian psychologist that proposes that there can be more than just the 16 Types, because instead of developing one Mental Function in the E direction and the other in the I direction, they both develop as E or I. Another variation is that we develop both Perceiving functions (S and N) or both Judging functions (T and F) as our first two preferred functions (the former possibly being the case in Autism).

The Singer-Loomis Type Deployment inventory takes this idea to the ultimate extent, theorizing that there aren't any rules of development order, resulting in a possible 40,320 combinations (much more granular and fine-tuned, but also *much* more complex). So if you feel that the 16 Types of the MBTI are too restricting for your unique cases, you might try the the SLTDI instead. It would be interesting to see the results if a large number of people in your communities took that version and consistent patterns kept showing up, considering the vast array of possible patterns with that method.

But back to the MBTI codes - Generally I think IxxP will show up pretty consistently (INTP, INFP, ISTP and ISFP, and generally in that order). INFJ and INTJ are the two exceptions. I don't think you'll find as many ISTJs or ISFJs, or the ExxP combos (ESFP, ESTP, ENTP and ENFP). And chances are, you'll probably feel members of at least two clans, because the MBTI is designed for the majority of the population, not the exceptions. As I read on a bumper sticker once (and now incorporate in my training), "just because it's common, doesn't mean it's normal." The MBTI isn't designed to box you in - it should be used to anchor yourself. If you happen to have anchors in two ports, count yourself a fortunate sailor. Just be sure you have comfortable homes at both. I won't address if you should have a girl/guy in every one though

Basically, I think the different Types of autism are going to result in, or scramble, the Type code consistently. Again, it would take a researcher to really show the correlations, but I suspect that they're there. If anything, I hope I've given you some deeper insight into the Jung and the MBTI anyway, even if all of my extrapolated ideas are off-base and long-winded and a helluva lot more than you (didn't) ask for, and I'm just showing (off) my bias as a neurotypical who knows just a little too much info about the MBTI and Jung. I hope to learn just as much from all of you if we have the opportunity to talk further.

Regards,

michael j pastor

Hm...ADHD and the extraverted type don't necessarily correlate. I know it doesn't for me--once I learned to control my blurting a little better it became clear that my true type was introverted...VERY much so.

I don't believe I'm misdiagnosed, though...some parts of me are Aspie-like, but I don't believe I fit the criteria. But as far as MBTI goes, INFP definitely fits, with a dash of INFJ.

IA. Even at the height of my ADHD tendencies I'm still an introvert, i think this is just AS traits balancing things out though. I bet someone who has true ADHD with no co-existing disorders or AS would probably appear to be extroverted. anyway. It also depends on the severity but it's been true of most ADHD'ers I've known. You could always tell there was something beneath the surface but they always came off as VERY outgoing people.

I've gotten various results, depending on which site I take it at. I can't remember which ones I've gotten except for my most common type: INTJ.

I don't really like judging. Honestly, I'd rather not have an opinion. I don't think INTJ fits me very well anyway. Part of the problem, is that on the tests, I'm not certain how to answer some of the questions. The answers aren't always applicable. For example, on this test, the a question is:

No... And yes! It depends, greatly! If I wasn't certain of something, and I didn't have enough information and had to make a decision immediately, then it would seem fitting to pick something that could easily be changed. If however, I had time to contemplate the options, then I might find the best decision would be something else.

Interesting post. You are right that the majority of the board are either INTJ or INTP. INTJ is the most common.

I am an exception... an ENFP.. very rare here.

My brother is not on the Autism spectrum though, he is very ADHD, and he is an ENTP.

This is just me talking and my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it (nothing ), but I can be shy depending on the situation and I don't think I have AS. I actually remember the exact moment in my childhood, when I discovered that sitting and being quiet could keep me occupied. I was a bit older, and was waiting in a restaurant, a situation that would normally drive me batty. This was a big revelation to me! I think that's when my "real" personality finally started to assert itself, once I began to find some ability to control my impulses to run my mouth. I may well overcorrect in some cases...I dunno.

I just want to emphasize that Extraversion is really just a Mode of being, and it's only when someone definitely prefers it over Introversion is when we say "they're Extraverts". Technically, as a trainer, I shouldn't ever say that, . I think if you understand theory a little bit, holding to it can be a little pedantic sometimes though. It can get a little tiresome typing (let alone saying) "those who prefer Extraversion" all the time. As I said before, we all do all of these some of the time, we just prefer one over the other. Of course, we only readily see the Extraverted portions of another's psyche. Some are more seen than others, regardless of our home planet

Since you brought up your Type as INFJ and I see that you list synesthesia amongst your differences, I have noticed a seeming correlation between them. Not sure of the strength of it, but I was alerted to the uncanny frequency of it via one of the synesthesia boards, similar to this one, a while back. The *descriptions* of each certainly correlate, if they don't also correlate statistically.

Yes, I agree that Extraversion and ADHD don't "necessarily" correlate. But the thing about correlation is that unless it's a correlation of 1 (meaning 100%) "not necessarily" and "correlate" are kinda synonymous Even if it's a weak correlation, if it's above a certain threshold (.2 I believe), it's statistically significant. It doesn't mean that it will flow in both directions either, i.e. that every (or statistically significant numbers of ) ADHD person is going to be an Extravert.

Since I was concentrating on explaining my hypothesis vis a vis Austism and Type, and not ADHD, I neglected to mention that there's a concern in the Type community that this correlation with ADHD may exist, not because there's a common cause somewhere down the neurological tree, but that many ExxP types are being misdiagnosed as ADHD, when in reality, they're just Extraverted Perceiving Dominant Types. It's the outer letters (the 4 Energy Pairs I described) that determine dominant functions, and the population is roughly 25% each (IJ 28.9, IP 21.8, EP 24.5, EJ 25.2). That basically leaves nearly 75% of the population *not* your Energy Type (more if you're an IP), so there's a chance for majority prejudice against you, regardless. But it's only a correlation, which means it needs more study, not that the suspicion is correct.

Thank you zen_mistress, for your summary of the majority of Types being INTJ and INTP. I knew INTJ would show up often, but I'm honestly quite surprised that it outnumbers the INTPs. It partially supports my hypothesis, but if INTJ is *more* common, it definitely requires some modification. The combination of NxJ means that iNtuition is introverted (Ni) - and Ni is a funky, weird and abstract mental function (said with affection, and in comparison to the other mental functions, and with the idea that the predominate American culture doesn't exactly embrace Ni as a Dominant mental function).

Ni doesn't see the world as we know it. It immediately perceives "beyond the veil" so to speak. Se is present and factual, Si is past and historical, Ne is future and hypothesis, which leaves Ni as timeless and theory. It's not exactly easy to drive to work every day when your dominant mental function is occupied with the Holodeck in your head where time doesn't exist and you can implement any theory (but only the truly supported ones). [That description was provided by my fellow MBTI Trainer (INFJ)].

Again, INFJ and INTJ (Ni dominants) are the rarest Types (1.5% and 2.1% respectively, and with gender included, even moreso - INFJ M:1.2%, F:1.6% and INTJ M:2.1%, F: 0.9%! !). If the population was broken up evenly across all 16 Types, the most any one Type would be is 6.25%. But the population isn't, and some Types are "overrespresented" in the general populace (leaving the rest, of course, underrepresented). Most of the disparity comes where Perception is concerned. Only 25% choose N as their preference over S at 75%. Since many of the things we are talking about here could be described in Jungian terms as extreme differences in Perception, I don't think it's coincidence that N seemingly outnumbers S in the reverse proportion, if not more, amongst those who don't describe themselves as "neurotypical." Y'know, common vs normal and all that.

Thanks for your responses. I continue to learn

regards,

michael j pastor

You could also look at this thread, it has a poll....

There might be the odd NT voting in it though, but it is mostly people on the spectrum....

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt67764.html

Caveat: I voted in that poll. Count one INFP result as ADHD. (Though as mentioned I can verge on the INFJ.)

Anyway, that's very interesting info, zen_mistress. Sorry for a short comment, but have you observed synesthesia a lot with INFPs as well?