According to a basic personality evaluation developed by Jung and Kiersey, I am a type INFP person. That qualifies me as a minority- as there is only a 4% demographic of INFPs. It's a pretty sound test though it is simple (no test is ever truly a real science, but it was fun to try out). INFPs are categorized as "idiosyncratic dreamers with strong imaginations". They are strongly linked to the "Avoidant personality". INFPs are also linked to histrionic disorder (which I entirely disagree with in terms of myself) or dependent personality disorder (which sounds much better). Every personality type is susceptible to something, so this isn't unusual to be cited. It also notes that INFPs "repress their extroverted thinking function, meaning sometimes they preserve their own opinion in the face of facts and evidence to the contrary". None of this sounded quite positive to me, but as I scrolled down the list of historical or famous figures who are identified as INFPs, I realized most of them were authors quite like myself! Here are some of the pleasant surprises I found- some people who are both INFPs and favorites of mine.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Philosopher and author of the Enlightenment
- "Reason is greatly indebted to passion. The human race would long since have ceased to be, had its preservation depended only on reason."
- Virginia Woolf
- Renowned author
- "My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"
- George Orwell
- Author, most infamously for 1984 and Animal Farm
- "I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons."
- Homer
- Famous ancient author of epic novels the Illiad and the Odyssey
- Homer: "Hateful to me ... is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another."
- Edgar Allen Poe
- dismal poet of famous works such as the Raven
- Poe: "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
- J. K. Rowling
- author of the Harry Potter series
- Rowling: "Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can ... think themselves into other people's places."
- John Lennon
- musician and peace advocate
- Lennon: "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
- J.D. Salinger
- author of the Catcher in the Rye
- Asked why he wouldn't sell film rights: Salinger: "For me, the weight of my book is in the narrator's voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his ... asides ... his thoughts. He can't legitimately be separated from his own voice."
- Vladimir Nabokov
- author of Lolita
- Nabokov: "I think like a genius and speak like a child." (which may I add, sums me up perfectly.)
- Anais Nin
- dubbed a "diarist"
- Nin: "My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living."
- William Shakespeare
- playwright
- Shakespeare: "To thine own self be true."
- Sylvia Plath (my babygirl).
- author of the Bell Jar and poetess
- Plath: "I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person."