Texten om Patrik

Då har det blivit dags att presentera texten om Patrik. Den bygger på ett personlighetstest i boken ”Please Understand Me II” skriven av David Keirsey. Det händer inte speciellt ofta att en bok, eller upplevelse, verkligen rycker tag i mig och kastar ut mig på andra sidan mig själv. Men det var precis vad som hände när jag läste om min personlighetstyp, plötsligt förstod jag väldigt mycket mer om mig själv och hur jag fungerar. Det var som om någon stått i skuggan bakom mitt liv och antecknat, från uppväxten till där jag står nu. Så på något väldigt konstigt, men intressant sätt, så presenterar jag härmed en ganska lång utläggning om vem jag egentligen är. Antagligen det mest personliga som någonsin skrivits i denna blogg.

Vilka följder dessa insikter har fått kommer kanske att presenteras på bloggen i framtiden. För er som funderar på livet och andra saker som är lite tyngre, för er kan den här boken hjälpa till att förklara väldigt mycket. Hypotetisk tycker att det är årets bästa julklapp.

The Healer (INFP)

To the INFP healing means mending those divisions that plague one’s private life and one’s relationships. It means treating oneself and relating to others in a conciliatory manner, helping to restore lost unity, integrity, or what INFPs call “oneness.” These Healers present a tranquil and noticeably pleasant face to the world, but while to all appearances they might seem gentle and easy-going, on the inside they are anything but serene, having a capacity for caring not usually found in other types. Healers care deeply – passionately – about a few special persons or a favourite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace to the world and wholeness to themselves and their loved ones.

As a variant of Plato’s Idealists and Aristotele’s Ethicists, the INFPs are little different from other NFs in most respects. Like all the Idealists they are abstract in communicating and cooperative in implementing goals. They want to learn about the humanities, are preoccupied with morale, and work well with personnel. In orientation they are altruistic, credulous, mystical, situated in pathways, and with they eye on tomorrow. They base their self-image on being seen as emphatic, benevolent, and authentic. Often enthusiastic, they trust intuition, yearn for romance, seek identity, prize recognition, and aspire to the wisdom of the sage. Intellectually, they are prone to practice diplomacy far more than strategy, logistics, and especially tactics. Further, with their probing or exploring nature they lean more toward the Advocate’s informative role than the scheduling Mentor’s directive role. And because of their seclusiveness and reserve they seem to care more to be a Healer of conflicts than a people’s Champion. To visualize INFP intellectual development consider the following bar graph depicting the most probable profile of their diplomatic roles [picture of chart]

Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. They are the Shaman, Medicine Man, or Which Doctor or the tribe, the Prince or Princess in fairy tales, the True Knight or Defender of the Faith, like Don Quixote or Joan of Arc. Isolated by their seclusiveness and infrequency (around one percent of the general population), their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.

It may be that Healers seek unity within themselves, and between themselves and others, because of a feeling of alienation which comes from their often unhappy childhood. INFPs live in a fantasy-filled childhood, which, sadly is discouraged or even punished by many parents. With parents who require them to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also with down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types may shrug of parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the INFPs. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing that they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from others – swans reared in a family of ducks.

Even so, Healers find it difficult to believe in themselves and to trust themselves. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, they can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. They are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with sin, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when they believe they have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the INFP, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

In evaluating things and making decisions, Healers prefer to follow their intuition rather than logic. They respond to the beautiful versus the ugly, the good versus the bad, and the moral versus the immoral. Impressions are gained in a fluid, global, diffused way. Metaphors come naturally to them but may be strained. They have a gift for interpreting symbols, as well as creating them, and thus often write in lyric, poetic fashion. They show a tendency to take deliberate liberties with logic, believing as they do (and unlike the Rationals) that logic is something optional. They may also, at times, assume an unwarranted familiarity with a certain subject matter, believing in their impressionistic way that they “know all about that, ” though they’ve never really mastered the details. They have difficulty thinking in conditional “if-then” terms; they tend to see things as either black or white, and can be impatient with contingency.

At work, Healers are adaptable, welcome new ideas and information, are well aware of people and their feelings, and relate well to most others, albeit with some reserve. They dislike telephone interruptions and work well alone. They are patient with complicated situations, but impatient with routine details. They can make errors of fact, but seldom feeling. The INFP’s career choices should tend toward the ministry, missionary work, social work, library research, tutoring, child counselling, college teaching in the humanities – and away from business. They seems capable of applying themselves scholastically to gain the necessary training for professional work, and often do better in college than in high school. They have a natural interest in scholarly activities and demonstrate, as do the other NFs, a remarkable facility with language. Often they hear a calling to go forth into the world to help others, and they seem ready to make the personal sacrifices involved in responding to that call, even if it means asking their loved ones to do likewise.

In their mating role, Healers have a deep commitment to their vows. They are loyal to their mates and, while they might dream of greener pastures, if they stray into those pastures they soon locate the nettles. They like to live in harmony and they go to great lengths to avoid interpersonal conflict. They are sensitive to the feelings of their mates and enjoy pleasing them, although they may have difficulty in expressing interest and affection openly or direct. INFPs cling to their dreams, and often find it difficult to reconcile a romantic, idealised concept of conjugal life with the realities of everyday living with another person. Even at the best of times, they seem fearful of to much marital bliss, afraid that the current happiness may have to be paid for with later sacrifices. The devil is sure to get his due if one experiences too freely of happiness, or, for that matter, of success, or beauty, or wealth, or knowledge. This almost preconscious conviction that pleasure must be paid for with pain can cause a sense of uneasiness in INFPs when they marry; they may feel that they must be ever-vigilant against invasion, and can therefore have trouble relaxing in the happiness of mating.

The reserved and soft-spoken Advocates are fierce protectors of home and family – their home is indeed their castle. As parents, they are devoted to the welfare of their children, treating them with great sympathy, and adaptability. In the routines of daily living, INFPs tend to be flexible, even compliant with their mate’s ideas of discipline, and thus are easy to live with. They will often give their children a voice in family decisions – until their value system is violated. They dig in their heels and will not budge from their ideals. Life with a Healer parent will go harmoniously along for long periods, until an ideal is stepped on. Then they will resist and insist.