Bill Clinton

Counterargument

 

Before I get to the functions, I would like to counter some of the claims that your site (and you) have made regarding Clinton.

 

To start things off, you suggested that social psychologists are projecting their intellectual interest onto Clinton due to his high IQ, implying that Clinton himself lacks intellectual interests himself, saying "Social psychologists who work with the Big Five don’t always understand IQ as well as they should and equate it with intellectual interest, as, for example, some of Bill Clinton’s biographers have done. That’s likely because social psychologists are often high-O[peness] people themselves, so they read their own values into the analysis." I would disagree with that as there is evidence that Clinton *did* have an inclination towards intellectual interests (an intellectual engagement and curiosity that is separate from pure ability and intelligence):

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: "During his first campaign, Clinton had mentioned that his favorite book was 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' ... I thought he had said it simply to pull in the Latin vote [but] after greeting me on Martha's Vineyard, he at once assured me that what he said had been quite sincere. ... When we asked him what he was reading, he ... mentioned a book on the economic wars of the future, author and title unknown to me. ... He asked us what our favorite books were. ... Clinton said [one of] his was the 'Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,' and Carlos Fuentes stuck loyally to 'Absalom, Absalom,' Faulkner's stellar novel. ... Clinton, in homage to Faulkner, got to his feet and, pacing around the table, recited from memory Benji's monologue ... from 'The Sound and the Fury.'" [Source]

 

Haynes Johnson: "Clinton likes to quote Machiavelli." [Source]

 

Clinton: "I like long books, raced through 'War and Peace' [by Tolstoy] at 22." [Source]

 

Clinton: "I feel like a character in a novel. I feel like somebody who is surrounded by an oppressive force that is creating a lie about me and I can't get the truth out. I feel like the character in the novel Darkness at Noon." [Source]

 

Harold Evans: "Clinton has had a problem finding space for his books in the White House. ... He is [a reading] omnivore." [Source]

Clinton: "[I would've liked to meet] Mark Twain. I would want to know what he believed and what was show." [Source]

So as shown, Clinton wasn't merely intelligent; he displayed genuine intellectual interest. He referenced and quoted complex literary works and the like. He was a voracious reader, drawn to lengthy and challenging material. All of which paints the picture of a person with a active intellectual life, not just someone with high cognitive ability. So based on that, we can say that the quotes I'm about to show below are not mere projections but observations/statements that do indeed hold actual weight:

Bob Woodward: "Clinton ... had an unusually broad national network of political, media, and academic friends, and displayed an obvious fascination with ideas." [Source]

Bob Woodward: "He was at home with ideas." [Source]

Rubenzer: "He liked pondering ideas and theories." 

 

Rubenzer: "Clinton ... took much ... pleasure in solving brain-teasing puzzles. ... Clinton was [very] much ... prone to value open-mindedness." 

 

Tom Rosenstiel: "He possesses ... a fierce thirst for knowledge and insight." [Source]

 

Secondly, IDRlabs has stated that "Clinton’s raw intelligence is legendary, but few people ever accused him of being prone to deep introspection." I would like to contend that there were indeed people who described Clinton as "introspective":

 

Haynes Johnson: "[Clinton] is a remarkably analytical, introspective person. To a degree that is quite stunning. ... Clinton ... was extremely, remarkably thoughtful and introspective." [Source]

 

Jerry Tarde: "[Thomas L.] Friedman had interviewed Clinton several times before at the White House ... he found the president most expansive and even introspective." [Source]

The Boston Globe: "The 42nd and 43rd presidents contrasted in many ways. ... Clinton was introspective and complex [while] Bush [was] breezy and unburdened by nuance." [Source]

 

Steven M. Gillon: "Clinton was introspective, full of doubt and uncertainty." [Source]

 

So as shown, there were indeed people who described Clinton as introspective so it's important to recognize that the idea of him "not exhibit[ing] a preference for introspection" is far from being something that is unanimously agreed upon. So while IDRlabs suggests that Clinton does not demonstrate a tendency toward introspection, numerous accounts have challenged this notion.

IDRlabs compares Clinton with Obama, saying "Barack Obama, by wide agreement, has a very high level of introspection, but has often been faulted for being indecisive and 'stuck in his own head' for this reason." It's interesting that they mention this comparison, considering Clinton has also faced criticism for similar things as stated here:

 

Bob Woodward: "Clinton would not fully commit to run. ... He set August as a personal deadline for a final decision, but the deadline slipped. Clinton had no campaign manager and not much organization. He appeared locked in a perpetual debate and argument with himself and with dozens of friends and advisers. His thinking never seemed to go in a straight line. He was unable to bring his deliberations to any resolution." [Source]

 

Los Angeles Times: "Clinton had written a speech and debated the pros and cons endlessly with anyone who had an opinion. But right up to the last moment, not even his closest aides knew which way he would go. ... Early in his career Clinton often appeared flatly indecisive." [Source]

New York Times: "In mainstream journalism, and even more so in popular entertainment, President Clinton is routinely depicted [as] a chronically indecisive man." [Source]

 

Why Ne over Se

 

Now onto the actual functions themselves. It is my contention that his indecisiveness (at least in part) is rooted in his Ne. Don't worry, I won't bore you to death by bringing up the just previous mentioned quotes regarding his indecisiveness (those quotes were mostly counter arguments to challenge the idea that he was decisive if you get what I mean) because I have a quote that I think better directly illustrates his Ne:

Bob Woodard: "Clinton was even a step above Carter [in that] he could 'correlate' various ideas and issues. In many respects, Clinton was well suited to the presidency. He had a superior, inquisitive mind, especially when compared to Reagan, and was capable of genuine vision, especially when compared to Bush. But the very discord or range of opinion that Clinton craved in making his decisions often got him bogged down. Bentsen once described Clinton as the 'meetingest' fellow he’d ever seen. The very fact [is] that he wanted debate. ... The war for Clinton’s soul, that great struggle over which ideas and approach to use to guide the nation, continued unabated." [Source]

So as illustrated by Bob Woodward, Clinton, with his "inquisitive mind", was someone who "craved" (which is a important word here) a wide range of perspectives before making decisions to the point of getting "bogged down." As Mary Arrington has said in the article "ESFP vs. ENFP, Part 2", "Because of this focus on multiple possible perspectives on reality at the same time, ENPs are actually quite poor at dealing with situations where it is necessary to engage with factual reality as it is happening here and now." Se types can also be interested in other perspectives, yes, but they typically don't get "bogged down" by them. It is also reasonable to assume that his "struggle over which ideas and approach to use to guide the nation" comes from Ne's tendency to, as said by IDRlabs, "not subsume or reject the individual component that makes up the whole but aim to afford each its own place in the overall unity."

 

IDRlabs implies that Clinton lacked the transcendental aspects of Ne but I disagree with this. First lets see what IDRlabs meant by "transcendental" with regard to Ne: "Ne types may not even recognize that they have it in themselves. But it is nevertheless there and stems from the fact that Ne is bound to always be dissatisfied with the world in its current state. In the words of Isabel Myers, the Ne types 'regard the immediate situation as a prison from which escape is urgently necessary.' ... The escape from the status quo is worth more to the Ne type than the world as we know it." I think this very much applies to Clinton, he was not someone who was at home in his current context but sought to go beyond it:

 

Bob Woodward: "But Paster was, once again, amazed at Clinton’s willingness to allow these extended debates where they essentially talked to death the inevitable. Clinton was always trying to pick out a new course, move the debate or the policy slightly. The dynamic had a pattern. Clinton, unaccepting of the conventional wisdom, especially about Congress, would test the edges of what was possible, stretching the boundaries of the Washington and congressional playing field." [Source]

 

So as shown, Clinton "was always trying to pick out a new course" and "unaccepting of the conventional wisdom" and had a desire to "test the edges of what was possible", all of which paints the picture of someone with tendency to look beyond the immediate and explore novel solutions and approaches (the transcendental quality you guys talked about). The willingness to engage in "extended debates" can also be linked to Ne's comfort with exploring various theoretical angles, as well as van der Hoop's observation that Ne finds self-expression easy, which could manifest in prolonged discussions.

 

His divergence from the status quo got to a point where leaders around the world at the time called some of his initiatives "novel, bizarre and unprecedented" and "something like a UFO" as shown here:

 

The Washington Post: "French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl were quoted by aides as saying they could not believe Clinton wanted to affix his name to [his initiative]. Calling the plan 'novel, bizarre and unprecedented,' spokesman Jean Musitelli said Mitterrand judged it to be 'something like a UFO.'" [Source]

 

Another way to differentiate Se and Ne (or S vs N in general) is that Se stays with the object while Ne bypasses the object. As said in the IDRlabs article "A Definition of Se and Si", "Intuition is not Sensation with an extra layer: Intuition oversteps the object, while Sensation remains with it." Clinton seemed to be more geared towards always moving beyond the initial data:

Bob Woodward: "Stephanopoulos was practically jumping out of his skin. He had seen Clinton act like this before; disliking, discarding, or wanting to change what he read. [Clinton's] initial reaction was *always* to ... force more discussion and debate." [Source]

 

("Always" being a key word here as it indicates that this was something habitual for Clinton as opposed to something that was just a one-off.)

 

Another point for Ne was his verbosity and long-windedness. Yes, I am aware that Se types can be talkative too but overall the tendency to be loquacious sounds more Ne than Se:

Rubenzer: "Clinton was very talkative, wordy, and verbose."

 

Time Magazine: "[He was] notoriously long winded." [Source]

Politico: "[He was] known for his long-winded and meandering speeches." [Source]

One could draw parallels with this and Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi (both ENFPs), both of whom were also known for their long winded conversational style and speeches.

 

Final Note

Okay so this last part is going to be the weakest part of my argument but it's still something to consider. In the IDRlabs ENFP description it says, "The ENFP will naturally see things from the point of view of the outsiders and seek to champion their cause. ENFPs tend to be incredibly accepting of people, even accepting of those who may have drastically different stances on things than they do."

 

Steven M. Gillon: "He enjoyed talking to everyone, but had a special affinity for reaching out to people who were different, or somehow out of the mainstream." [Source]

Edwin Dunaway: "He talked a good game and he had big ideas but he never followed through."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walter Isaacson: "The combination of analytic and emotional intelligence that made him a great politician now makes him a compelling raconteur."

 

 

 

"Bill Clinton enjoyed an extended adolescence that allowed him to experiment with new ideas. ... He led a cosmopolitan life during the late 1960s, traveling around the world. ... His curiosity, both intellectual and personal, drove him to experience first-hand as much of the ferment of the decade as possible. He surrounded himself with a diverse group of people—antiwar protestors, civil rights leaders, future gay rights leaders, and feminists.’"

 

Clinton: "I am a living paradox -- deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often giving way to falsity. ... I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day."

 

 

 

 

https://www.jfklibrary.org/events-and-awards/kennedy-library-forums/past-forums/transcripts/a-conversation-with-former-president-bill-clinton

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/bill-clinton-right-wing-is-weaker-027617 

Gibson's type discussion

My biggest contention against Se dominant is that he is way too analogical/metaphorical in my opinion. Se is usually quite straightforward and literal in communication:

Gibson: "If you can maintain a neutrality [while approaching a character] ... then [you can] branch out from that, add on ... It's like Mr. Potato Head, slap whatever you want on it, a mustache or, you know, different attributes of a character. It's much easier to paint on a bare canvas than one that's already got a picture on it." 

Gibson: "I guess it gets almost to a question of like kind of a religion. Mecca for filmmakers is this industry here, it's where there's the biggest pool, it's the watering hole where everyone comes to see, to measure up, to include themselves in the pool, their talent, and that collective thing. It's like you go to the smorgasbord to feed your need to work and your need to tell stories and your need to express yourself [in] whatever form that is."

 

Gibson: "I've often felt that I've sat there and I have felt the knife slipped firmly in between my shoulder blades and tried to have it shoved through the other side through my heart, and I've actually felt the whole thing and I've gone, 'Ah! Where till next week?' you know, or I'll think, 'fuck', and you'll resent it for a little while, then you have to let it go, otherwise you'll eat yourself alive, and I think it takes that kind of cockroach resilience to survive in this town."

 

Gibson: "This is what I mean by actually starting to swim up or downstream with the rest of the salmon, ... if you stay here long enough, yeah, you'll find yourself doing that."

Gibson: "[Rising to overnight stardom is] like being a blind man walking into the woods. It takes a while to come to terms with that, this new world that you're having to exist in."

Gibson: "[Being a first time director is] like being tossed in a very big body of water and told to swim to shore. You have a general idea of which direction the shore is, but you may not get there for a long time."

Gibson: “[Improvising with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg] felt like a spectator at a Beijing Ping Pong match with the flip-flapping back and forth between them that I was trying to keep up with."

Gibson: "I could tell jokes and stories, and make stories up and convince people of things that weren't true."

Interviewer: "You were a liar."

Gibson: "Kind of, yeah. A great liar, yeah, a good liar."

 

Alex Simon: "His quick wit was palpable, with a mind that moved with the speed and precision of a Ferrari racing engine. Gibson was intellectual."

van der Hoop on Ne

If intuition is combined with an extroverted attitude, then the individual will form intuitive judgments of what goes on in the outer world and will be apt suddenly to discover connections between things without being able to explain them in a very elaborated manner. Extroverted intuitive perceptions and the actions and expressions resulting from them are sometimes surprisingly justified later on by events or by an indirect process of reasoning.

While sensation is chiefly concerned with the empirical actuality of things, intuition sees what is of noetic and ideational importance. Intuition is especially acute in discovering all the various possibilities of ideational development and activity. Even in cases where intuition is not the leading function, it is often capable of finding a solution where no other function could succeed.

Jung writes of intuition that if it predominates, all the ordinary circumstances of life seem to be enclosures out of which intuition must find a way. It is often seeking for new paths and new developments of life in an outward direction; all circumstances soon appear to the intuitive mind as a prison or as an oppression, which causes a longing for liberation.

Things in the outer world seem at times to acquire an exaggerated value when they can be made use of for the purpose of a solution, liberation, or the discovery of new possibilities. But as soon as they have served as a bridge or ladder, they seem to have lost all value and are cast aside as unnecessary lumber. A fact is only valued insofar as it may contain new potentialities that may outgrow the original fact and serve, in turn, to liberate the individual.

Possibilities that arise suddenly become compelling motives to the intuitive mind, and it will sacrifice for them everything else. In contrast with the advantages of this rich variety of possible activities, we find the disadvantages of such qualities as changeableness, fickleness, and lack of harmony.

Disagreements with IDRlabs

1. Ti is deductive and Te is inductive

Jung and even IDRlabs themselves have said that "the logic is the same" between Te and Ti, meaning that "there is not one kind of logic for Te and another for Ti; it is the orientation and selection of the premises which are used to form judgments that are mirrored between Te and Ti, but the logic is the same." I'm not going to argue against the idea that on average Ti may be more deductive or that Te may be more inductive but, in IDRlabs' own words, "averages do not say anything about specific individuals."

2. Fe/Ti sees people as more similar while Te/Fi sees people as more different

This goes into a more broader issue that I touched upon in my Why I Care About IDRlabs Typology blog, stating "their axes theory kind of makes sense in a broad and subtle perspective, but it breaks down when considered more important than that." There are a lot of reasons why I said that (most of which I won't go into right now) but one of the reasons is that seeing people as more different or similar is ultimately a content (belief, opinion, conclusion, whatever word you want to use). I get it, they wanted to make the most out of Jung's theory, but in principle it's best to just stick to individual functions.

My Typings (that's not on IDRlabs)

Disclaimer: The quotes shown here are not intended as standalone proofs (though a few of them are), but rather as extracted data from a specific context, such as an interview, from which we intuit a given function-attitude.

Morrisette: "I play with words linguistically like

they're paint."

Morrisette: "There was a time in my life, and

still an element of it now, where the only things

I wanted to do were things that scared me

[because in doing that] I felt alive, I felt like I

was transcending something, that I wasn't

stuck somewhere."

Morrisette: "Everything that happens is 

temporary for me."

The Atlantic: “Her verbosity [and] twee

wordplay [are] hard to resist. … She’s as

much of a storyteller ... as she is a

performer, which is why that sense of

identifying with her angst … is so sharp.”

 

Waltz: "Whether it’s a job, a relationship,

even a hobby that you follow for your own

amusement: eventually, you get to the

point where perseverance is what’s

needed."

Waltz: "I don’t like improvisation. I am not

a writer and creating a script is a writer’s

job. … I wouldn’t like it if an author came

up and told me how I should play a scene.

… I am not very good at it!"

Waltz: "[I do acting because] it's my
profession, no different than it is for any
other profession.”

Waltz: "I try to follow the lead of the writer,

and the script ... and find what's in the

case at hand and not so much in the

generalization of, for example, the genre

or the actor's persona. I really make an

effort to stick to the individual character

because it serves a very specific purpose.

And without the specificity you have more

or less nothing."

 

Waltz: "I think it is absolutely ridiculous that actors go on their bonus 

DVD interviews and explain what they were doing. That’s not what an 

actor does. ... It’s completely counterproductive for an actor to talk about 

his part."

Waltz: "I don’t like talking about [my roles]. If you go into a restaurant 

and you have been served an exquisite meal, you don’t need to know 

how the chef felt, or when he chose the vegetables on the market. I

always feel a little like I would pull the rug out from under myself if I 

were to I speak about the background of my work."

Waltz: "When Jochen Rindt was racing ... I remember everything about 

his crash; I remember exactly where I was, all the details. I’m not

particularly into motor racing, but I am into the tyre changes, the pit

stops. It is the most incredible thing to watch. That’s perfect

co-ordination between people and all their motor senses, every

movement perfectly rehearsed. Each person is 100 per cent perfect and

then it’s ten people together! The efficiency is breathtaking. ... this is ten 

people doing something which takes effort, concentration, knowledge 

and practice. It’s like playing a musical instrument."

Waltz: "I have a less romantic and idealistic approach to acting."

Waltz: "[Dialogue in film] should be dealt with with equal attention and 

diligence [as the visuals], but sadly it isn’t. You only have to listen to

people talk on the street, unless they’re talking this gibberish that seems 

to be the main mode of communication now."

Norton: "It's everybody's duty [and] social

responsibility to ... not be unpleasant."

Norton: "It is weird when you see people

without the 'wanting to be liked' gene, like you

see something like Simon Cowell or Anne

Robinson who [are] just quite happy to be

loathed. It's a weird thing isn't it."

Allen: "I never really liked school ... I didn't

really like sort of authority, and I kind of felt

like I wanted to educate myself, really. I just

knew I was never gonna be at a job that

required me to have a degree."

 

Allen: “[I'm open] to any opportunities that

come my way."

 

Allen: "I definitely hope I'm touching a nerve,

because I think that's what I like to do, is to

get people thinking."

NY Time: "She [has this] kind of irresistible

frankness that has gotten her, time and

again, in trouble."

 

 

Plaza: "The only thing I don't like about [my

previous roles] is if it prevented me from doing

other things, and it has become a bit of a

challenge, because people are stupid and

afraid to take risks."

Plaza: "The most fun part [is] trying to really

find the truth in every moment so that you're

not making these wild leaps of logic."

Plaza: "You can't be fully prepared for 

something like [acting] because you don't

know how it's going to feel [until] you're

actually in the moment doing it. ... [You] just

[have] to kind of do it."

Plaza: "I never had a time in my life where I

thought 'I don’t know what I want to do'. It was

always me saying, 'I know what I want to do

and I want to do it now!'"

 

Harper's BAZAAR: "[She has a] straight-

talking attitude. ... She cuts through the

usual obsequiousness of what can be."

 

Plaza: "Scenes where I'm breaking down or having really crazy

stuff happening to me [are] hard. I've not had to have all of those

emotions coming out of me. I'm not a super emotional person."

 

Plaza: "I’m just in the moment at all times.”

Plaza: “I guess whatever my character has to say, I have to say. I mean, 

what are words anyway? They’re just words: ‘chair’, ‘lawn’, ‘fuck’!”

Clark Gregg: “She’s fearless, she does it in a way that’s so humiliating 

and so embarrassing and so completely brave that you can’t help but

love her. And as someone acting with her, can’t help but go there with 

her.”

 

 

 

Burr: "You have to be up here [in your head] and think logical, and not be in your heart."

Burr: "[Stand up is] like, This is what I’m doing now. ... I obviously learned from a bunch of masters, but it always flowed into me. When you find what you’re supposed to do there’s not a lot of thinking. It just is."

Burr: "Life is all about getting knocked down and learning how to come back up even harder. Not being stupid about it and keep running into the same wall the same way, you adjust and try to get over it."

Burr: "I feel like we live in this ridiculously over-sensitive time where people get offended over nothing."

Harding: “Honesty is the great essential.

It exalts the individual citizenship, and,

without honesty, no man deserves the

confidence of the people in private

pursuit or in public office.”

Steven J. Rubenzer: “[He was] usually

cheerful and pliable.”

Steven J. Rubenzer: “Harding always tried

to maintain a positive approach.”

Steven J. Rubenzer: “He was decidedly

not ‘contemplative, intellectual,

introspective, meditative, philosophical.’”

Steven J. Rubenzer: "Harding's enthusiasm

and optimism were his real assets as

president."

Steven J. Rubenzer: "Harding had great difficulty resisting

temptation and was not inhibited or restrained. Not liking to do

things alone, he very much enjoyed big parties, spending time

with people, and being part of a crowd. Definitely not known as

cold or distant, he welcomed close relationships and was warm

and self-disclosing. He was outgoing and friendly toward

strangers, 'casual, easygoing, informal, natural, relaxed,' and

made friends easily. Harding clearly saw himself as a lighthearted

person and very plainly showed it when he was happy. His

feelings showed in his facial and body language; his gestures

were adroit. He often felt very energetic and vigorous."

Steven J. Rubenzer: "Harding and Clinton ... were warm and

self-disclosing, outgoing, friendly to those they just met, and not

detached, secretive, or reserved. Each enjoyed being part of a

crowd and showed his emotions in his facial and body language.

Neither had a reputation for being distant or cold, nor was

'bashful, shy, timid.' They preferred to do things with others rather

than alone and made friends easily."

Steven J. Rubenzer: "Virtually nobody considered him cold or

calculating. Nor was he defensive or lacking in humor about his

faults. He empathized easily with others, believed most people

were honest and trustworthy, and assumed the best about those

he met."

Natasha Bedingfield

"As a performer ... you have to just be who you are."

"I want people to have fun. We need to let our hair down sometimes, because we get so serious."

"I enjoy the fact that you get to try different styles."

"I like clothes that are flattering on your figure - they can be designer stuff or not you know. It’s quite fun to mix the high street with vintage - maybe one designer item or something. ... You can finish up mixing and matching a lot with other things."

 

 

Scott: “I want to live big. I want to laugh big, I

 want to love big, I want life to know I was here 

… and somehow make a difference in the 

process.”

Scott: “Don't let your character change color

with your environment. Find out who you are

and let it stay its true color.”

Scott: “[I] want to live every moment to the

fullest.”

Scott: “Bubbly. Perky. Outgoing. That’s what

grownups always say about me.”

Scott: “I [always] wanted to be on the front lines. I wanted to be there, 

right in the middle of everything. You know, I’m the girl who loves to 

make grand entrances. I’ll always choose vibrant, bold colors over 

boring pastels and given a choice, I’d rather go somewhere than stay 

home. … Rather laugh than cry.”

Scott: “When it comes to having a relationship with God, I could sit here 

and tell you what to do and what to say and how to pray, but where will 

that get you if you just sit there? … Best thing I can tell you is, go after 

God. … Christianity is not a label, but a lifestyle, something that has to 

be lived from the inside out.”

Scott: “I hate cliques. I’m not into being labeled in any way. I don’t like 

wearing jeans that have somebody’s name on my back pocket. Forget 

Khakis and shirts with little emblems and sweatshirts with big fat names 

across the front.”

Scott: “I wanted to be a high-impact, make-a-difference, love-the-world-

and-turn-the-tide kind of Christian. Not a wimpy, polite, no big deal, 

politically-correct-and-don’t-make-waves kind of Christian.”

Dido: "I really feel things deeply and that’s 

why I write songs."

Dido: “I write based on how I see and feel

things ... It’s all about transferring how I see

 the world into a song."

Dido: "To me a song is just about the flow of

it, it just has to flow and me to never notice

in a way, it has to feel whole and real.”

The Guardian: "[Her parents were] angry at

her lack of self-discipline."

Dido: “[The way] sort of been the way I’ve been with everything in life [is]

if I’m not feeling like I want to put the music out, then I won’t put the

music out. Or if I’m not feeling the need to get up on stage, then I won’t

get up on stage.”

Dido: “People keep saying, ‘Why did you step away [from making

music]?' It didn’t really feel like that to me. I just write songs. ... I’ve

never made records until enough of it builds up and I feel like I’ve got

something to say."

Dido: "I [am] very clear on what [I] like, and what [I] don’t."

Dido: "Music had always been my personal thing, no one invaded

it, no one bothered me, it was absolutely mine. It was my escape.

Whenever anything was bugging me, I'd just go and play my

music and it made me happy. And there was something about

them giving me money for it that, to me, symbolised it being taken

away. I felt like I no longer had the thing that made my life worth

living."

Why I don't think Hugh Hefner is Se dominant

The following argument's aim is to explain why I don't think Hefner is a Se type as opposed to advocating for another type that I think better fits. That is to say, the main purpose of this argument is mostly a case against Se dominant.

One might say “how can someone who devoted their life to ‘Se activities’ be anything but an Se dominant type?” And that is a good question, after all Hefner was a champion of the hedonistic YOLO lifestyle and was guilty of sexual objectification with regard to women. Are these not strong indications of someone who has a preference for Se? Well for starters, as IDRlabs has stated in their “Why Epicurus is ESTP” article, “What is important to understand when inquiring into the type of Epicurus is that one cannot simply conclude that he had a preference for sensing over intuition just because of his championing of pleasure and sensual enjoyment. In Western philosophy, the British empiricists similarly held the senses in high regard as a source of information, yet in terms of type they were mostly NTs. … In short, we cannot look so much at Epicurus’ conclusions … when determining his type.” In other words, we cannot conclude that Hefner is an Se type because he lived a lavish lifestyle nor can we look at his behavior as a direct constituent of his type. That being said, behavior shouldn’t be completely ignored as we, to some extent, have to look at their behavior to infer their cognitive processes. So 

 

 

This first part of my argument will be a counterstereotype that challenges the perception of Hefner being naturally predisposed to the stereotypical Se inclinations using quotes from people who were either close to him or knew him personally:

 

Arthur Kretchmer (former editorial director of Playboy): “Victor Lownes played a great role at the company. He was something that Hefner was not... bold, brash. He was the complement to Hef, who was, after all, a little bit shy and cerebral.”

 

Christie Hefner (daughter of Hugh Hefner): “Victor [Lownes], in some ways, was more the image of the editor/publisher of Playboy than my father was, because Victor was someone who loved good food and wine, who loved to travel, who was more gregarious and sociable.”

 

Rolling Stone: “Whereas Hefner was ‘shy and cerebral,’ Lownes … was gregarious and promiscuous – the sort of person Hefner wanted to be."

 

So while Victor Lownes naturally had a lot of the (stereotypical) Se type traits, Hugh Hefner arguably ran counter to the Se stereotype in a lot of ways. As shown, in contrast with Victor Lownes', people who were close to Hefner described him as "shy and cerebral" and very different from Lownes. All of which, paints the picture of someone who was more reserved and in his head than lively.

Now I'll move on why I don't think Hefner fits Se *dominant* specifically (along with some evidence for intorversion). The dominant function is one's bread and butter, their modus operandi. Hefner was not someone who was married to the empirical world (as Se types wont to do), so to speak, but rather had a tendency to neglect it:

 

Steven Watts: “He tended to be reserved in formal situations at school or home. ... Absorbed in his imagination, he often neglected his studies. ... In his early teenage years he continued drawing cartoon strips — eventually they would number about seventy different series — and to write and illustrate stories. He had begun to read fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells and became a devotee of Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu tales and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. ... Indeed, throughout childhood Hefner created vivid fantasy worlds in which he immersed himself, a trait that would prove to be lifelong. The boy who wouldn’t answer the telephone or venture alone to the dentist’s office a few streets away preferred to inhabit a reality he had created.”

 

Steven Watts: "[His mother] Grace was repeatedly struck by Hugh’s insular creativity. 'As a child, he found it very difficult to make new friends. When he was in school, he was a dreamer, and sort of lived his own life in his own mind,' she observed. 'I would ask him who some of his classmates were, and he wouldn’t know the names of very many of them. ... You couldn’t always tell what was making Hugh feel unhappy, because he was very much a loner,' a baffled Grace admitted. 'He always lived in a fantasy world.' ... Often shy and insecure with other people, the boy did not like venturing out. ... Even as a kid, noted [his brother Keith], Hugh wanted 'his world to stay exactly as he made it, and doesn’t want to go anywhere else where that isn’t the reality.'"

 

Hefner: "I withdrew into ... a lot of my own dreams and fantasies, and that's what led me to writing. ... I think that anyone who is interested in the creative arts, to some extent, needs that sort of detachment and that kind of introspection ... and you know, that led me into all kinds of [stuff like] writing and cartooning."

 

As shown, Hefner often withdrew into an internal world of thoughts and images, being “absorbed” and “immersed” in his imagination, neglecting his daily practical tasks and responsibilities (such as school studies, answering the telephone, or venturing alone a few streets away to the dentist) in the process; was an avid reader of fictional novels in his teenage years ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to H. G. Wells. All of which paint the picture of someone who was very much in his own head (a trait not typically associated with the Se type) rather than someone who is at home in reality as it exists.

 

Moving on to introspection, IDRlabs has said that “using a person’s measure comfort with introspection as a parameter for S/N is at least not an incidental parameter, but rather one that pertains directly to the nature of the dichotomy.” The type of introspection IDRlabs alludes to is "synonymous with a sort of meta-awareness or reflective awareness." Se types repress N, so they typically don't have this predilection for introspection. Here is some quotes that indicate that Hefner did have an inclination towards introspection:

 

Hefner: "The boy is the father of the man and so I still fight some of those same Puritan things in myself that I'm fighting in society.”

Interviewer: “Do you find yourself at all uneasy fighting those things?”

Hefner: “No, no, I'm just, you know, aware of it. I'm a very introspective person."

 

Hefner: “I can see now that I was fighting the same kind of things on the playground, when I was a kid, that I do in the magazine now, in other words the kind of social inequalities and things that bothered me then have simply going on and grown and disturb me now.”

Hefner: “I think my [parents] were rather typical of their generation, they really believed the Horatio Alger sort of American fundamentalist values and I responded to it in a way I think that is rather typical of my own generation and the insights that it produced I think are responsible for where I've taken my own life and for Playboy.”

 

Hefner: "The whole idea behind Playboy was to try and put sex back into the total fabric of the interest of man because traditionally in our society we've kept them separate. We've created a whole concept of the devil in the flesh in competition with the spirit of man, body pitted against mind and spirit, this earth and its pleasures pitted against the hereafter, it was that fundamentally that I was really fighting and it's something tha, even today, is not clearly understood."

 

 

Steven Watts: “While searching for vocational direction in the early 1950s, Hefner also struggled to shape his views of the world into some kind of cohesive form. In typical adolescent fashion, this bright young man had soaked up a mishmash of ideas and theories during his high school and college years, ranging from Hollywood movies to Freud, popular cartoons to Darwin, Protestant theology to Tarzan. He had come out of college with more questions than answers. ... Increasingly, he drew together several elements—Ayn Rand and heroic individualism, popular psychology, Alfred Kinsey and sexual liberation, and sentimental images from popular culture, particularly the movies and ... they became the building blocks of a social fantasy.”

Transcendentally Oriented:

Now I’ll move on to the functional approach to determining type. According to IDRlabs, “Ne is bound to always be dissatisfied with the world in its current state. In the words of Isabel Myers, the Ne types ‘regard the immediate situation as a prison from which escape is urgently necessary.’ … The escape from the status quo is worth more to the Ne type than the world as we know it. For his interest is not in the world as it is, but in the world as it could be.” Now, I must preface by saying that any type can be discontent with the status quo, as that can also be a subject of upbringing, beliefs, ambitions, etc. (factors outside of typological functions) but, all else being equal, Ne types are more likely to want to "escape" their current context and be attuned to issues that transcend the here and now compared to Se types. One could say that the combination of Ne and Fi causes the ENFP to often, as IDRlabs puts it, “undertake a crusade in order to help the marginalized or the underdogs in society. [They] will naturally see things from the point of view of the outsiders and seek to champion their cause” and be "tireless in your pursuit of the untested, the untried, and the fight against the status quo." And with the aid of tertiary Te, ENFPs, as Michael Goist in the IDRlabs "Why Ludwig van Beethoven Is INFP" puts it, "can often be surprisingly entrepreneurial with regards to motivating real-world movements and pushing for specific values and outcomes to be applied to the sphere of real-world affairs." Here are some quotes by and about Hefner that exemplify the aforementioned characteristics:

Rolling Stone: “His metamorphosis into Mr. Playboy in 1962, for all its PR value to the magazine, was never just a self-serving effort. It was also an attempt to change American ideas about sexuality, a way to challenge the stigma of sexual freedom. When Hef took on his role, blending his political rhetoric with a promiscuous lifestyle, he was trying to challenge the idea that casual sex was immoral.”

CBS: “‘I felt from a very early age that there were things in society that were wrong, and that I might play some small part in changing them,’ Hefner said. … Hefner was … a man on a mission to alter society's conservative views on sex, politics and social equality. Playboy would be his tool. ‘Playboy was the first mainstream club, non-black club that actually put on stage black comedians,’ Hefner said. … From abortion to capital punishment to the Vietnam War, Playboy was the forum for Hefner's concerns in society.”

NY Times: "The Playboy Philosophy advocated freedom of speech in all its aspects, for which Mr. Hefner won civil liberties awards. He supported progressive social causes and lost some sponsors by inviting black guests to his televised parties at a time when much of the nation still had Jim Crow laws. The magazine was [also] a forum for serious interviews, the subjects including Jimmy Carter (who famously confessed, 'I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times'), Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Malcolm X."

Rolling Stone: “Hefner explains that, during this time, he was ‘exploring the outer limits of what it really meant to be moral.’ … He was stifled by the traditional values that, up until that point, choreographed his life, and that he is purposefully discarding them.”

Hefner: “I’ve always … was able to see the inequalities in power relationships, and have always felt connected to the underdog whether it was in a sexual situation or political or anything else.”

Hefner: “There's always been a little bit of the crusader in me, and you know, you need dragons to slay.”

Hefner: “[If you] eliminate the importance of self [and] drag everyone else down to the common denominator, [then] you are walking right into the society that George Orwell warned us about in 1984.”

Manner of communication:

The quotes I will be presenting in this section all involve bringing together different perspectives to an illustrate abstract idea which, all else being equal, suggests more Ne than Se which tends to be more straightforward about the point it wants to make. Another thing to note is that while reading these quotes, we should also keep in mind the point I made earlier of Ne regarding the status quo "as a prison from which escape is urgently necessary [and] it's interest in not the world as it is, but as it could be" as those tend to also be a theme in these quotes, all of which are from the same interview (warning, many of them are long):

Hefner: “Puritanism is not there for the puritan, by it's nature Puritanism is there as a set of values that you must live by, however you feel about them and that of course is the authoritarian scary part of it. … The fact that women in their quest for a liberation should also include in their agenda the notion of taking some of the personal freedom away from another part of society is very puritan, and you can call it a radical or liberal or left agenda, but of course it isn't and the labels become very confused. And once again you have to go to Orwell to see how the labels of things change the perception of things, I mean that's what Orwellian Newspeak was really all about, the notion that you could change the labels and the language of things and you would change the perception, and we have seen that certainly in terms of sex in really dramatic form in the last twenty years in which sexual images that were perceived in the past as simply pin-up pictures were then perceived and called exploitation and then eventually called pornography, and they are the same innocent pin-up pictures, and I think that that is the way you change the perception of things and you change of course the perception of sex itself, when you begin to define it as sexual harassment and date rape and increasingly you start to think that sex is really the ugly part of life. Now that is … not to say that … sex [doesn’t have] its darker side, but I think that … one of the things I tried to do with the philosophy was to suggest that the one area of human activity that we don't have truly moral perceptions on is sex. We were raised in a time in which what was called moral in the sexual arena was simply a set of thou shall nots, taboos that were not necessarily good for the people, and in … all other areas of human activity, what is called moral is what benefits people and is good for people, and I hope that we can begin to, and what I called back in the sixties, [form] a new morality, that we begin to find a form of situation ethics that would define sexual values not as a set of absolutes but [as] things that really were good for people. … Because sex is more than simple procreation. … We have to … try to define a set of sexual values that don't perceive that sex itself and the attraction between the sexes is, is somehow equivalent to violence, because after all sex and violence are the polar opposites. One is the life force, the warming force and the other is death and destruction and war and murder.”

[Interviewer: "The nineteen sixties were a period of great change, what do you think overall were the causes of this change."]
Hefner: "Well I think we came out of a very conservative time in the fifties, part of it raised by the political climate at the time but also reflected in conservatism, in lifestyle and I think that a new generation was growing up that was responding to that. To some extent you see a kind of cause effect that is like a pendulum, it swings back and forth. I think that the conservatism that occurred in the nineteen eighties was a direct reaction to and response to the liberal changes that took place in the sixties and seventies. … With all of this kind of thing we get two steps forward and one step back and you know one hopes we’re coming out of the tunnel again. Always we find reasons to thwart and work against the personal freedom with some other explanation. During the fifties it was the cold war much of the repression that occurred, the sexual repression in particular that occurred during the eighties, they related it to Aids. The politicization of the disease … was cause and effect [but] backwards, because it's not really the disease that caused the conservative agenda, the conservative agenda was there already and we have had in America a rather dramatic rise in the Christian right, in America. they actually elected Reagan and gave us for one of the first times … in my lifetime a rather unholy alliance that existed between religion and the state, and that in turn gave us the Mise commission and the Mise commission was nothing more than a cross country witch hunt that had nothing to do with … research related to sex and there are many other evidences of it. … It’s very difficult for me to believe - when I was a kid I grew up, fascinated with Darwin and fascinated with the monkey trial [that took place] in nineteen twenties - … that that controversy would still exist. That creationism would still be perceived in some quarters as a viable perception and there would be controversy as there is in American schools, with evolution on the one hand, with science on the one hand and religious state of superstition on the other, in the form of creationism is strange, but this is the nature of the way we are, we and I don't just mean America I mean, I mean the world, we you know we have in this century you know reached the moon and the stars, our technology and our science is at such an incredible level and in so many other ways we are still superstitious savages in the jungle with some of our social and religious values."

[Interviewer: "How would you describe your own role in the sexual revolution in the 1960's and onwards."]
Hefner: "Well I think that I was very influenced by the, … to some extent the sexual revolution part two, that came after world war two, began really for me with Kinsey, and the research that he did in the books that he published, which were very unpopular, in particular the second book, was scandalous because it involved women, but it made a tremendous impact on me. The first book came out when I was in university in Illinois and I wrote an editorial about it at the time, and then mentioned … the second book in my introduction to the first issue of Playboy. I do think that there were other things going on at the same time and you see those interconnections, but I do think that we were one of the first to voice a set of values, a point of view that in turn became the sexual revolution, so I guess I'm one [of] the founders of that portion of it and I take a great deal of pride in that, but I think it's related to other things that were going on at the time, one can see the change in censorship laws related to some books in the sixties, in the fifties, and I think that you could look to rock and roll as a … part of what this is all about, I think the arrival of Presley a couple of years after the beginning of Playboy. ... to a new set of, more possibilities with personal sex, and when I started doing the philosophy. in 1959 Arnold Gingridge who was the editor of Esquire at the time did an editorial in which he talked about an arrival that he anticipated called the new Victorianism, and he thought it was going to be a more conservative time and he welcomed it, but he was a little older than I was and I think that the generation gap was … showing at the time, and there is something else that you can't separate at the time also, the pill was invented in 1960 and could you have a sexual revolution without the pill. It's all sort of kind of interconnected."

Additional Notes:

While this section may be my weakest, it is still important to consider. Viewing "possibilities" and "willingness to break the boundaries" as inherently positive may at best circumstantial evidence for Intuition, but when combined with a plethora of other evidence, it can strengthen a case, even if it is just a small addition:

Hefner: “I didn't want to repeat my parents' life. I saw in their lives a routine and a lack of dreaming, a lack of the possibilities, a lack of passion.”

Hefner: “[George Carlin] as with Lenny [Bruce was special because of] the combination of the insights and the willingness to break the boundaries.”

Why I think Joe Biden is ESFJ (and not ENFJ)

The following blog will be more casual and less exhaustive/elaborative like some of my other ones but it is still something I think is worth considering:

I agree that Joe Biden is Fe dominant, his values are external and mediated between people, but I won't go too deep into that territory and will mostly focus on the S and N distinction (as well as Si and Ni). For starters, I think his N is too low to be one of his uppermost functions, semi-conscious N makes a lot more sense. As IDRlabs has said in their basic general portrait of ENFJs, “the ENFJ tends to have an intellectual, even scholarly, side which they use to delve into abstract problems concerning the whole of society, if not the world. In truth, most ENFJs are quite comfortable juggling complex facts and challenging situations that require a firm grasp of the theory involved.” This "intellectual" and "abstract" side of the ENFJ is in no small part due to their auxiliary Ni, which is arguably the most abstract function imo. Anyway back to Joe Biden, there seems to be much more evidence of him *not* being oriented towards the abstract:

The Atlantic: “Though plenty smart, Biden is not an intellectual. He makes few references to books and learned influences in his speeches and autobiography, and he displays little interest in theory. An indifferent student at the University of Delaware and Syracuse University College of Law—he describes the latter as 'boring'—Biden got by with prodigious cramming sessions. Today, by contrast, he is described by Tony Blinken, Biden’s national-security adviser, as a compulsive studier who likes to be overbriefed." [Source]

Howard Fineman: “Biden is not an academic, he's not a theoretical thinker, he's a great street pol." [Source]

Now ENFJs don't repress Se and are not Ni dominant so I'm aware that this cerebral aspect of their personality is not their most prominent characteristic but, in my view, we shouldn't downplay the auxiliary for the sake of the tertiary. While we should not underestimate the charm and influence of the tertiary function (it's not repressed after all), in the end, it's mostly a third flavor and supports the main two functions in a way that is aspirational and puerile.

Regarding Si specifically, some quotes about Biden where I find that Fe supported by Si (meticulous, practical) makes more sense than Fe supported by Ni (ideational, holistic):

The Atlantic: “The guideposts in Biden’s political landscape are often not ideas, but people. Many of the world leaders with whom the United States has business are men and women he has known for years, even decades. In fall 2009, for example, after Obama had decided to abandon plans to build land-based missile defenses in eastern Europe—a move interpreted as a concession to Moscow—the White House sent Biden on a three-day swing through Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic to reassure the leaders of those countries that their security would not be compromised. Biden had mastered the details of the issue—the virtues of sea-based anti-missile technology versus land-based, and so on—but his most important asset was that he knew many of the leaders personally.” [Source]

The Atlantic: “It’s clear that Biden feels he has the superior people skills—not that he puts it that way. He says the skill set he brings is ‘different,’ but it’s a difference he values, and one that he sees as part of his contribution to the administration. … ‘I’m a little more Irish. I’m more old-school.'" [Source]

This last point isn't going to be my strongest point but it is something to consider. IDRlabs defines Si as "a way of perceiving psychic material by way of past impressions that have been subjectively associated with the outer occurrence at hand, causing the subject to experience deep and ineffable qualities in even ordinary sensations." Here is another quote from Mark Bowden about Joe Biden that seems to suggest that Joe Biden could have a preference for Si:

The Atlantic: “In his personal life, Biden could hardly be more traditional. In the scruffy ’60s, when so many young men of his generation went unkempt as a social and political statement, Biden dressed up for class in college, sometimes wearing a tie. He says his first wife, Neilia, described him as ‘the most socially conservative man she had ever known.’” [Source]

One might interpret Joe Biden being "traditional" and "socially conservative" is a result of the emotional significance in the routines he has become accustomed to.