The INTP Experience: Tonight's Main Event--Romantic Relationships Versus the Evil Twins of the INTP Psyche

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The INTP Experience - Chapter 2: Overload

**This article has been moved to its new, permanent home at THE INTP EXPERIENCE. See you there!**

How the Grinch REALLY Stole Christmas

My seventh year was the last year I believed in Santa Claus.

And the Grinch is to blame.

I didn't have older siblings to spill the beans. The bratty neighbor didn't dime out St. Nick. No, it happened when I had an epiphany while watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Well, that's not entirely fair. It was a combination of the Grinch and a standard, everyday clock. Those were the tools of my loss of innocence.

Here's how it went down. We all know that the Grinch is a burglar and a larcenist. He'd be doing hard time if it weren't for the fact that the Whos are biologically incapable of conceptualizing jails. I watched the Grinch breaking and entering via the chimney. I watched him slink around the room and manage to add corruption of minors to his rap sheet as he made off with the presents, food, and Cindy Lou's trust in adults forever. The epiphany came, however, when I suddenly realized how…much…time…it……took. Around 5 minutes for a single house.

That got me thinking. Even if you worked in some serious magic mojo and assumed that Santa could teleport himself in and out of the house in 1 second, my immediate neighborhood alone would take one minute to deliver the goods. If my neighborhood took one minute, a few square miles around me could easily take 1 hour. You see where this is going. There just isn't enough time, man. Wake up and smell the math.

I didn't really hate the Grinch for ruining the magic of my childhood.

If anything I blamed myself for being so thick.

But maybe I'm being too forgiving. We just had to break the anti-Santa news to our 12-year-old.

Maybe the song was right. Maybe I was robbed worse that the Whos.

Stink, stank, stunk.

The INTP Experience - Chapter 1: Why Do I Feel Disconnected?

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Jason, the Crazy Teenager (or Lame Photography Tricks)

So, the photography bug first bit me around 17 years old.

Uncharacteristically, I don't remember why it sparked. Probably, it had to do with my personality type's (INTP) propensity for recording nostalgia to immerse in later. But I digress....

What was I doing when all the cool cats were doing awesome teenage sorts of things? Yes, in addition to my snapping shots of evenings and landscapes and houses and cemeteries, I was screwing around with trick photography.



Jason: "Dad, can you do me a favor?"

Dad: "Um, I guess. What is it?"

Jason: "Come into the living room. Over here, by the light switch."

Dad: "So what's with the table and the candle and stuff?"

Jason: "Nothing. Here's the thing. I'm going to open the camera lens in the dark. I need you to hold this thing over HALF of the camera lens. Turn the light on for four seconds, then turn it off."

Dad: "Wait. This has something to do with the camera?"

Jason: "Half lens, light on, light off. You got it?"

Dad: "No."

Jason: "Okay, then when the light is off, I need you move the cover to the OTHER SIDE of the lens. Turn the light on for four seconds, then off again. I'll come back and close the shutter."

Dad: "Why four seconds?"

Jason: "Because four is half of eight."

Dad: "Do you want any popcorn?"

Jason: "You got this?"

Dad: "Sure. Roll 'em!"

Jason: "They say that for movies, Dad. Not photos."

******

No wonder my parents thought I was weird.

Since these were the days of film, and I didn't have a camera that could do multiple exposures, I had to do creative MacGyvers to get these shots in one click of the shutter. Here, I remember that I was going for a personal showdown. The dominant me staring down the more reserved. Some intense, internal struggle. (Wow, things really don't change very much.)

Anyway, Dad came through for this one, no?

Needless to say, I didn't get along with my peers until I got older. MUCH older.

INTP

Have you ever heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? It’s a system, based on Jungian theory, for describing human personalities. In a nutshell, by using combinations of four traits, people can be sorted into one of 16 personality types. Surprisingly, when you find your type, it does a really good job in explaining and predicting how you interact with the world.

Not to bore you with tons of background, the four elements that make up Myers-Briggs are these traits: (1) introverting or extraverting, (2) sensing or intuiting, (3) thinking or feeling, and (4) judging or perceiving. Which you are depends on: (1) do you tend to get energy more from being with people (extraverting) or by being alone (introverting); (2) do you tend to understand the world with your five senses and live in the here and now (sensing) or do you tend to think about things inside your head and understand things through your own interpretations (intuiting); (3) do you tend to make decisions by thinking though a problem (thinking) or by deciding how you feel about it (feeling); and (4) do you prefer to live with the structure and order of having decisions made in advance (judging) or do you prefer to wait and observe and have your decisions depend on the situation as it unfolds (perceiving)? There are tests which hit these questions from all angles in order to sort you into your personality type.

So what am I? INTP. That means introverting, intuiting, thinking, perceiving. It is one of the four rational personality types.

As a rational, I have a drive to pour information into my brain and find structures, predictable patterns, and logical connections in the world. I believe that things can be understood by careful examination and analysis. That is my comfort zone. Rationals differ from the Guardians, who want to follow and maintain rules and traditions, the Artisans, who want to immerse in the present and experience life to the fullest, and the Idealists, who want harmony and eternal connections in the world.

INTP’s are also known as Architects. It is one of the more uncommon types, representing 1 – 2% of the population. (Yeah, Jason, we already knew you were weird.) Because of that, it’s not unusual for INTP’s to feel out of step with the people around them. (Again, not news Jason. Move on.)

One of the extra challenges for INTP’s is the difficult, chaotic, and often scary relationship they have with feelings. Does that surprise you about me? Maybe, maybe not. Since understanding feelings is the last skill to develop in INTP’s, they can go through a kind of emotion renaissance as they age and acquire all those hard life lessons. In the 5+ years that The Clarity of Night has existed, you have been privy to a sort of overdrive time in my development, when I have sought to drop a hand grenade in the pants of my emotions and blow them wide open. That way, I can dissect them and analyze them. I can reach a truce. It’s probably why my writing so often has an almost palpable emotional pulse. And why the emotions are rarely simple and one dimensional. In my writing, I’ve eagerly stuffed myself in the skin of others and really tried to embrace what others feel. Of course, if I’m being brutally honest (which I just reminded myself to be), I probably often take a piece of what I’m actually feeling and build scenes where I can condense it and turn the volume way up. It is a window into me trying to come to grips with its nature and meaning.

Sometimes rationals are likened to Mr. Spock from Star Trek--unemotional, distant, and clothed in logic. The truth is totally the opposite. Emotion is tantalizing, wondrous, and deliciously dangerous. The problem is that emotion feels too big, too hot to handle, and it scares the crap out of us. Logic is where we flee to when the emotions threaten to sweep us away.

Maybe my writing has become almost like emotional impressionism. What I portray is purer, more exaggerated, and more interpretive than real life. Maybe I want to be Monet. Give me the essence of moods and environments. The color and shapes. That’s where I want to begin. Details are just a few brush strokes on the surface. Not the purpose of the portraits I try to paint.

Or more likely, I probably just get the paints all over my shirt. But as an INTP, I’ll always be driven to keep grappling with the questions.