On Meyers-Briggs Personality Types: P vs. J

If you are interested in, or are trying to learn, Meyers-Briggs personality types (the kind that has things like INFP or ENFJ personality types), there is something that has helped me in understanding the P vs. J category.

J's are Organizers.

P's are Improvisors.

J's like to organize, compose, write and make outlines.

P's are more like jazz musicians.  They like to improvise.

If you don't like personality type categorization, I will say this: you are still a unique and valuable individual.  Don't think that we think otherwise.  Don't worry about it.  Perhaps it just isn't for you.  Just like heavy metal is not for everyone.  But it doesn't mean that we don't think that each and every person is a unique and valuable individual.

One more thing, unrelated: some scientists think that Meyers-Briggs personality types are unscientific.

This is because the theory deals with things that are hard to define and categorize scientifically.

To put it in Meyers-Briggs and Jungian terms, an Intuitive would have a much easier time understanding it than a Sensor.

It deals with things like feelings and intuition that cannot be scientifically defined and categorized easily, and that science tends to dismiss.

It is no coincidence that it is the Thinker/Feeler and Sensor/Intuitive categories that scientists have a hard time with.

Modern science in the 20th and early 21st Century tends to dismiss feeling and intuition, to think that Intuitives and Feelers don't exist, because modern science does not believe in Feeling and Intuition.

I can't help you with Feeling.  But I might be able to help with Intuition.

Intuition is the ability to feel your way through very complex things without looking specifically at every step.

It is still based on logic.  But it means that you can take the complex whole and make a good educated guess without having to look at every element of logic separately.

I am an Intuitive.

I often look at the thing my Intuition tells me, analyze it logically, and then realize, 'yeah, that's the logic that I was feeling!'

It is still based on logic.

Feeling, on the other hand, well, you simply have to admit that not everything can be explained easily by science.

We have feelings.  Science cannot explain them except on a very superficial and greatly oversimplified level.

Science can explain why we feel fear.  But it cannot explain why I feel in a certain beautiful, subtle way when I hear the opening of Miles Davis's So What, the opening track on Kind of Blue, or why we feel glorious and sublime when looking at Yosemite.

But we have feelings.

Anyway, have a nice day!

God loves you!

Sincerely,

David S. Annderson