INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“Contrary to popular belief, giftedness is not characterized by high intelligence alone…”*

“On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, INFP is a rare personality type, found in only about 4% of the general population. Yet, of the possible 16 types, it is the one most frequently found for gifted people. This scarcity, coupled with their extreme intelligence, renders them seldom understood and, thus, rarely validated in relationships. The following material is based on qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with eight highly-gifted INFP adults.

Continue reading “INFP Personality Type in Gifted People”

Characteristics of Gifted Adults
Giftedness Self-Test

Giftedness: There appears to be three sorts of childhoods and three sorts of adult social adaptations. The first of these may be called “the committed strategy.” These individuals were born into upper middle-class families with gifted and well-educated parents and often with gifted siblings. They sometimes even had famous relatives. They attended prestigious colleges, became doctors, lawyers, professors, or joined some other prestigious occupation, and have friends with similar histories. They are the optimally-adjusted. They are also the ones most likely to disbelieve that the exceptionally-gifted can have serious adjustment problems.

The second kind of social adaptation may be called “the marginal strategy.” These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often, they did not go to college at all but, instead, went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And, although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public, they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but, in private, they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The “double life strategy” might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally-gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around but, historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.

And finally there are “the dropouts.” These sometimes bizarre individuals were often born into families in which one or more of the parents were not only exceptionally gifted but exceptionally maladjusted themselves. This is the worst possible social environment that a gifted child can be thrust into. His parents, often driven by egocentric ambitions of their own, may use him to gratify their own needs for accomplishment. He is, to all intents and purposes, not a living human being to them, but a performing animal, or even an experiment. That is what happened to Sidis, and may be the explanation for all those gifted who “burn out” as he did.

Source: TPS

“An INFP is a perfectionist who will rarely allow themselves to feel successful, although they will be keenly aware of failures.”*

Pathological vs. Positive Perfectionism
Source

Perfectionism has, sadly, been hyperpathologized by most mental health professionals, and hence, by popular culture at large. But such unequivocal vilification is unwarranted. 

Perfectionism is, in its purest and most benevolent form, a search for beauty, truth and goodness. Perfectionism is an inner calling to find and fulfill one’s destiny; to realize one’s potential; to pursue vigorously one’s unique vocation. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, vocation is “a feeling that one is called by God to a certain career or occupation.” 

But this feeling of being “called” doesn’t need to be couched in theological terms. It can be seen also as a secular calling, a strong proclivity or inclination of the self toward a particular type of work, trade or profession. 

In either case, when we, like the biblical Jonah, find the requisite courage to follow that inner “voice” of vocation, it is likely to lead us toward competency in our chosen field. When, on the other hand, we refuse the call, as did Jonah initially, we will likely wind up doing some kind of work about which we have no real passion. 

There is a relationship between passion and perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a form of passion. It is an expression of one’s passion for a particular vocation. For balance, form, harmony and wholeness. When one has passion for one’s work, perfectionism is the natural and normal expression of that passion. This is the positive, constructive type of perfectionism.

Positive perfectionism is not, as some assume, the compulsive worship of order and neatness, as we so often see in obsessive-compulsive disorder. This sort of pathological perfectionism is a neurotic denial of life’s inherent imperfection, and a vain attempt to fend off chaos, messiness, disease, suffering, anxiety and, finally, death itself. 

Neurotic, negative or pathological perfectionism can, in fact, impede creativity and competence. Placing unrealistic expectations and demands on one’s own work or that of others is fraught with problems ranging from resentment, shame and erosion of self-esteem, to blocked creativity due to fear of producing anything less than perfect.  

In such cases, psychotherapy can be helpful in accepting and embracing life’s pervasive imperfection. It is a perfectly imperfect world in which we live, inhabited by imperfect beings. 

Perfectionism, when not taken to neurotic extremes, acknowledges the inexorable reality and primacy of imperfection while at the same time heroically striving toward perfection nonetheless.

Non-pathological or positive perfectionism accepts its human limitations and the ultimate impossibility of attaining or sustaining perfection.

What the healthy or constructive perfectionist does is labor as passionately and perfectionistically as possible on a project, knowing all the while that he or she is destined to fail; but that despite the inevitability of failure, something good, something positive, something new, something worthwhile, something meaningful can come of the futile effort.

And, for the healthy, positive perfectionist, this makes the frustrating, arduous and sometimes tedious journey toward certain defeat a worthwhile and triumphant failure.