This is just a topic I need to vent about because I’m so sick of seeing mistypes on certain sites about celebrities and MBTI and other places. By no means do I mean to associate these individuals with each other; they are just the most frequently mistyped famous people who appear over and over.
Virginia Woolf was not an INFP
Many, many wonderful writers are and were ENFP or INFP. Oscar Wilde and Anne Frank were legendary ENFP authors. J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and George R.R. Martin have created amazing worlds from their imaginations and are INFPs.
Many people love to point out how shy Virginia Woolf was and use this as evidence that she was an INFP. This demonstrates a phenomenal ignorance of how cognitive functions work and also a basic ignorance of Virginia Woolf’s personal history and how it affected her throughout her life.
Sexual abuse is a horrific tragedy and no child should ever experience such a trauma. There is quite a bit of evidence that Mrs. Woolf was molested as a child by her brother or brothers. Starting off life with such trauma and ignoring it is a pretty good guarantee for a life filled with PTSD issues, depression, suicide attempts, and withdrawal from others. It is a known fact that she suffered from many of these symptoms before she took her own life in 1941.
Not only INFPs commit suicide. Robin Williams was an ENFP and hanged himself, most likely over fears about his health. Unstable ENFPs can suffer from suicidal ideation and fits of rage, much like Mrs. Woolf was known to experience. However, since I am not a psychologist and therefore not licensed to make such diagnoses, I will show simpler evidence of her true personality type.
Mrs. Dalloway is a story about a party and a young World War One veteran with PTSD who jumps out of a window while his psychiatrist is at the party. One thing that struck me while reading this book was how easily the entire situation could be set in any realistic setting. Clarissa struggles with reaching her middle age while reminiscing over a lesbian experiment when she was a teenager. Peter Walsh was her wistful suitor in their youth, competing with the affections of wild Sally. Septimus Smith could have just as easily been a local Iraq War veteran who returned without a few limbs and Doris Kilman could be one of the People of Wal-Mart. The story is set in London and its suburbs. It shares some of its more shocking elements with that of a diary of a young ENFP hiding in a warehouse with her family during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Both books are about people and their interrelationships and histories living in everyday settings.
Orlando is a bit more of an engagement of unfettered Ne (Extraverted Intuition), but still revolves around the protagonist’s relationships with the people around him/her over the years. The setting is still mostly just outside London, although there is a trip to Istanbul. Orlando never involves any schools of wizardry like Hogwarts or the Cave of the Three-Eyed Raven. Although many have compared Westeros and Middle Earth to England, and Hogwarts and Diagon Alley are implied to be somewhere in Great Britain, these are all speculations. Orlando does take place in England. Young Orlando met Queen Elizabeth I. Virginia Woolf did not build any worlds in this book. The book is far more like Pride and Prejudice, also known as The Holy Bible for ENFPs.
Virginia Woolf’s books do not occur in fantasy worlds from the inner musings of her mind. They are about people interacting in old-fashioned or modern settings. Based on her writing style and her personal history, Virginia Woolf seems to have been an ENFP.
Adolf Hitler, however, was an INFP
INFPs tend to be harmless, but when they go evil, they turn full-on wicked devil Sith Lord evil. Vlad Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory were both INFPs. That’s how dark they can get. Maybe collective human trauma has ingrained us with a revulsion for leaders of that personality type because of such experiences.
Almost everyone says Hitler was an INFJ (I’m guilty of it from time to time as well) because of material gleaned from a book he supposedly wrote, Mein Kampf. Let’s engage in a bit of fantasy here. Let’s pretend that his INFJ cellmate (Rudolf Hess) ghostwrote the book and quoted his Heidelberg professors verbatim in it, rather than the random chance that two male INFJs happened to share a cell and young Adolf coincidentally and independently came up with identical speeches to those of his cellmate’s professors. Not so hard to imagine, is it?
What do we know about Adolf Hitler before he rose to power and during his dictatorship?
- Adolf Hitler had strong beliefs about how to fix everything he thought was wrong with Germany. (Fi)
- Adolf Hitler was an unambitious dreamer who fantasized about becoming an architect and glorious times of Teutonic heroism. When the Allies wiped out his Panzer divisions, he behaved as if they still existed. (Ne)
- Adolf Hitler was a lazy soldier whose inattention to details like shining his shoes and saluting superiors hindered his battlefield promotions, in spite of being highly decorated. (Tertiary Si with a Se blind spot)
- Every German family had a Volkswagon in the driveway and a chicken in each pot, and Germany’s economy had an amazing recovery during the Great Depression. Hitler did get some things done – for a while. (Inferior Te)
P!nk (Alecia Beth Moore) is an ESTJ – not all pop stars are ESFP
Much of P!nk’s image has centered on badassery and other 8 wing 7 don’t-tell-me-what-to-do things, which is probably why she shows up on many Ennegram sites as an 8w7. The thing is, 8w7 is not a normal enneagram type for ESFPs. In fact, I have not seen any evidence other than her being a celebrity to indicate her being a Se-dominant feeler.
Let’s analyze a few of Ms. Moore’s songs and resolve this, shall we?
- Stupid Girls – a scathing criticism of airheads and girls without ambition. This song is so loaded with Te, it could have been written by Judge Judy Scheindlin.
- I Have Seen the Rain is a tribute to her Vietnam War Veteran father. Because traditions and stuff. (Si off the charts here.) Just Like a Pill uses that famous Si compare-it-to-something-else thing as well.
- God is a DJ engages in a bit of fantasy and speculation on what God must be like compared to the well-known scenario of a dance floor. Bonus points for Si combined with Ne on this one.
- Many, many of P!nk’s songs deal with rage, also known as Quaternary or Inferior Fi, a trait ESTJs and ENTJs share. Don’t Let Me Get Me and Conversations with My 13 Year Old Self both deal with rage over being an outsider trying to fit in as a teenager. ESFPs tend to have a good control over their Fi and are not prone to outbursts like Ne-users and specifically Te-doms.
Conclusion: Alecia Beth “P!nk” Moore is an ESTJ.
Bonus mistype: Donald Trump – common knowledge ESTP
It has been common knowledge for over 30 years that President Donald Trump is an ESTP. My brother and I discussed this when I was in high school in the mid-1980s.
He is not an ENTJ as some sites claim. (His treatment of true ENTJ Jeb Bush during the primary campaign proves him to be the guy who bullies ENTJs for thinking too much.) I have seen some compelling evidence that he might in fact be an ESFP, but nothing that has fully convinced me yet. He seems to use Fe, not Fi.
As an ENTJ, please quit listing him as one of us. He has close to zero Ni and lacks the compassion of an intuitive. It is actually a slap in the face to real ENTJs like Jeb Bush who have been insulted by thugs and bullies like Trump. It’s insulting. Just stop.
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