Discussion on Will Smith's type

I get the Se part, but I just don't see him being Fi over Fe.

 

Fe Preference

 

Fi is about internal sentiment; it often wants to experience these sentiments to the purest extent, untainted from outside influence. Fi (as a function), according to Jung, “has no desire to affect others, either to impress, influence, or change them in any way.” You can already see where Will Smith misaligns with Fi, no? He definitely wanted to affect others, to impress, influence, and change them. His sentiment wasn’t kept purified and away from outside influence but put out into the world in a more preachy way. More of a bridge to others than an island to itself, so to speak, in terms of values. One might say that since Te is not repressed in the EFP (and them not being Fi dominant) it sort of “mutes” Jung’s Fi description a bit but even taking that into account I don't see Will Smith as someone whose values are purified from external factors (which would still apply to EFPs with Fi being fully conscious and not having Fe in their consciousness), on the contrary his values seem moreso informed by the external.

Your mileage may vary, but another point against Fi I would highlight is his general lack of inner alignment. For instance, he admitted to playing a public “character” that he has maintained all these years that didn’t reflect or align with his real self, implying that his public persona was more about maintaining a certain image rather than being true to himself, and mostly decided to become more authentic later on because, in his own words, “the eyes and ears of the world are starting to demand more and more authenticity” (as opposed to a intrinsic desire from within to stay true to his sentiments at the expense of the external world):

[Interviewer: “How have you maintained your authenticity?”]
Smith: “You know, it’s really interesting. I haven’t maintained my authenticity, per se. I’ve maintained my ‘character’ … the character ‘Will Smith’ signs every autograph and is always happy, and wants to see the fans, and is always in a good mood. That’s actually not authentic. … So in terms of authenticity… I have successfully maintained positivity.”

To my mind, he is influenced by external input in a way Fi wouldn't be. All else being equal, a type with conscious Fi is highly unlikely to compromise themselves (typically resisting the influence of external pressures or expectations instead) for that long. I don’t think Will Smith filtered everything through the prism of “Is this authentic to me? Is this true to who I am?” I think his values is more oriented objective data.
 
Another thing to note, as Boye Akinwande has said regarding Fe, "Starting with people as their cognitive nexus, and seeing people as the carriers of principles and values, the Fe type may at times be too beholden to the feedback and opinions of the people they encounter." By contrast, Fi, according to Akinwande, "[due] reacting to the impressions of objects in their own subjective way, they can be allowed to follow their own subjective passions in a sympathetic fashion that exists in a parallel dimension from what is actually possible." Will Smith fits the former (whereas his son Jaden Smith seems to fit the latter):
 
Smith: “Where [me and Jaden are] not alike is [that] Jaden doesn't give one damn what people think. Jaden is fearless in his pursuit of his individuality. I was certainly not like that. … At his age, I was easily injured by people's opinions.” [Source]
 
Obviously this is an extreme example on Jaden Smith's part but hopefully it is a pointer towards what I mean.  

Interviewer: Is that like your philosophy on life? When there’s something in the way you just have to look it in the eye?
Hugh Jackman: “Totally, … When people say what’s your biggest fear, it’s fear itself for me, because it just stops you living, it stops you enjoying so many things. So if I’m scared of something, if I have to bungee jump, which I now would love, I’ll be straight off, don’t think about it, just go.” [Source]

Smith: “When I see this list and series of nominations that come out, and everybody is fantastic and that’s the complexity of this issue — everyone is beautiful and deserving and it’s fantastic — but it feels like it’s going the wrong direction. ... This is so deeply not about me, this is about children that are gonna sit down and they’re going to watch this show, and they’re not going to see themselves represented. ... we’re a part of this community, but at this current time, we’re uncomfortable to stand there and say that this is OK.” [Source]

Possible Si preference?

For starters, Boye Akinwande, in the IDRlabs article "On Kanye West and the ISFJ Type", has stated that, "As a pattern of consciousness, one of Si’s dispositions is to absorb and reinforce the lessons taught by experience, forming accurate, deep, and rich impressions of the way in which reality was brought to bear on the Si type. Since a child’s caregivers and role models will often be central components of the person’s reality in childhood, one may often see Si types referring to the lessons imparted to them by their role models as, by comparison, Si types are uniquely suited to pay attention and hold on to those lessons from early childhood on." This pattern of Si can be found in Will Smith:

Interviewer: "You are really becoming an iconic figure, what do you think of that?"

Will Smith: "It's what my grandmother told me what I had to do." [Source]

Smith: "I consider myself an 'alchemist' ... My grandmother used to say 'life give you lemon, you go ahead and make lemonade', to me that's alchemy." [Source]

Smith: "You know it's an idea that my grandmother always had, that if you're gonna be here, then there's a necessity to make a difference. ... She always instilled the spiritual responsibility that you have to make every group you come into contact with better." [Source]

 

Smith: "My father used to say all the time, 'Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.'" [Source]

Smith: "I learned very young from my parents ... that you don't try to build a wall. You don't set out to build a wall. You don't say, 'I'ma build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that's ever been built.' You don't start there. [Instead] you say, 'I'm gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. There will not be one brick on the face of the earth that's gonna be laid better than this brick that I'm gonna lay in the next ten minutes.' And you do that every single day. And soon you have a wall. ... My father owned ... an old bakery. When I was growing up, my father was an electrician and a refrigeration man. We would install supermarkets - ... long freezer cases in supermarkets ... and all the lights. That's what we would do every summer. So this one year, my father had his shop, and he decided, for whatever reason, that he wanted a new wall on the front of his shop. So he tore down probably about 16 feet high and probably about 30 feet long. He just completely tore the wall down. My brother and I had to dig a six-foot hole ... for the foundation. We would mix in the concrete by hand [for] a year and a half. We were building this wall for a year and a half. Every day after school, we would come in, mixing concrete, put it in the hole, doing it. And it was just myself and my little brother. And I remember standing back, looking at that wall, saying, 'There's going to be a hole here forever.' ... A year and a half later, we laid the final brick. My father stood back with my brother and me. I know he planned this, he says he didn't, but I know he had been planning this and writing this for the past two years. We stood back, looked at the wall, and he looked at me and my brother. He said, 'Don't y'all ever tell me that you can't do something.' And he walked into the shop." [Source]

 

Smith (the reason he didn't cuss in his songs): "I was writin' my stuff and I had all my little curse words in my rap book. And my grandmother found my rap book. She never said nothin', turned to the back page and she said, ‘Dear Willard, truly intelligent people do not have to use words like this to express themselves. Please show the world that you’re as smart as we think you are. Love, GG.’" [Source]

 

In all of these quotes, he seems quite caught up in his own impressions. One may argue that these quotes illustrate mental contents and not processes which I don't entirely disagree with but, all else being equal, a type with conscious Si is more inclined than other types to often reference the lessons imparted from childhood from their caregivers because of the reasons Akinwande has given.

 

To expand upon the quote regarding the "wall", Akinwande has also stated, in the same article, that, "[Si types] are primarily orientated towards their own repository of thoroughgoing, yet at times also overly personalized and specific knowledge of the facts. ... In this respect, the Si type is not different from the Ni type who sees his own perspective and how his own idea must be true to the exclusion of all others; only the Ni type deals more with possibilities where the Si type deals more with facts. ... The same pattern [regarding Si] may also be observed in [Kanye] West’s own stated mentality concerning his recent attempts to break into the fashion industry: 'I have put in my 10,000 hours,' he said in reference to a commonly-known regimen for success introduced in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. ... He seems eager to subject all his knowledge to a predictable regimen. ... Having a hard time disengaging from his personalized and deeply-keeled sense impressions [and] the diligence and thoroughness that he knows he has put into the effort." 

 

Similar to what Akinwande stated about Kanye West's eagerness to subject all his knowledge to a predictable regimen and exhibiting a diligence and thoroughness in his work, we can draw a parallel with Will Smith, where he stated that "you say, 'I'm gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. ... And you do that every single day. And soon you have a wall."

In addition, he has stated to have consistently focused on one brick throughout his career is in line with IDRlabs' observation that individuals with Si preference prefer to remain dedicated to a single task at hand. As IDRlabs has stated in their Woodrow Wilson article, Si prefers "to stay with the one task at hand. As Jung also says, 'the Sensation type remains with things' (Tavistock Lecture I §33). This 'thing' may be big or small, abstract or concrete, long- or short-term, present- or future-oriented, but the common denominator is that the psyche of the Si type stays in harness throughout the task set before it. ... The Si type may also operate by amplification, but it is usually by way of the concentration and patient focus on the amplification of one object that the Si type reveals himself."

 

With all this information in mind, it might be reasonable to assume that Will Smith wants to ‘recreate’ a pre-existing sensation, an abstracted sensation that he determined to be a trusted method of perceiving/living reality. "Retaining the information in the same context that it had when it was experienced" as IDRlabs puts it.

 

In addition to all that has been said, Christian Vieweg in his IDRlabs article "Ni, Si, and Self-Delusion" said, "the Si bias towards perceiving the world as fundamentally unpredictable also carries its own capacity for engendering irrational ideas. Because Si types tend to see their own experiences as they relate to their personal subject, they sometimes fail to see the underlying connections between one experience and the next." I think the "bias towards perceiving the world as fundamentally unpredictable also carries its own capacity for engendering irrational ideas because Si types tend to see their own experiences as they relate to their personal subject" applies to Will Smith:

Oprah.com: "But even amid all their success, Will says he can't shake the survival mind-set of his youth. 'I still have a poor person's mentality. I can't shake it, and it gets really detrimental when you can't just shake off the ideas. It's like when I go to sleep at night, right now, I'm as financially nervous as I was 20 years ago.'" [Source]

 

 

One might argue that Se types can also be persistent in pursuit of their goals and distill lessons from personal experience (which is true) but one general theme amongst them is that they are typically "less consistent, more freely adapting themselves to the unordered ever-changing object" which I don't think applies to Will Smith as much as it may seem, with him saying "over the past thirty years ... every single day, still, I got up, mixed concrete, and laid another brick" in his memoir intro. 

 

Will Smith's meticulous preparations and attention to detail, such as memorizing the entire script for "The Fresh Prince," could be indicative of Si's tendency to contingency plan and consider all the minutiae. Si types, especially those with Si as one of their upper functions, often develop a thorough knowledge of all the details and plan against future possibilities. Will Smith's approach to his work and his desire to avoid failure by knowing every aspect of the script could be a possible check mark for Si:

Smith: "You can look at the first six episodes of The Fresh Prince and I was so just hell bent on not failing that I memorized the entire script. And you can see in certain shots they tried to cut around it as much as they can, but I am mouthing the other actor's lines." [Source]

 

Fe Preference?

 

I don't see Will Smith as someone's who's values are formed in isolation, on the contrary his values seem oriented towards the external.

 

This last part might be my weakest point but it's still something to consider. As IDRlabs has said regarding the extroverted judging functions, "If a judging function’s extroverted, it’ll have a preference for imposing an intelligible structure upon outer events. Outer objects & events are arranged according to schemata that come from the EJ type’s own mind rather than from the outer objects themselves." Simply put, Te and Fe are the functions most concerned with forming things into something else (even if done benevolently):

 

Oprah.com: "Willow says her dad is the disciplinarian in the house. 'When I'm in the studio, he keeps me working. He gives me motivation,' she says. 'He says, if you work through this, then you'll get a hit and everybody will buy it and you'll get lots of money. And he also teaches me that it's not all about money. It's about what you want to do.'" [Source]

 

Smith: "What you're trying to do, as artists, is to elevate humanity. When you're choosing your work and you're choosing the material that you're putting into the world, you have to understand that somebody else's kids are going to see that. Somebody's grandmother is going to see it. Are they going to be better or worse after they have contact with your material?'" [Source]

That is the end :) I have more points I could flesh out but I'll leave it here. One can certainly make an argument for a possible Fe preference for Will Smith (In fact, even if it doesn't turn out that he has Si, I still think Fe fits him better than Fi) but for now I will leave it here.