Male INFj (EII) type - my socionics activity relationship

11:34 AM 2/27/11

6-28-11 Well, yet another person has google searched for 'male INFJ' and read this post today.  I've decided this is probably my Worst Post Ever, yet one of the most frequently read.  Perhaps I should rewrite an entirely new post from scratch, after having searched for and found and interacted with some real-world examples of INFJ men.  I'm sorry, but this post is just so bad it's hardly even worth reading.

*****6/21/11 Disclaimer:  I'm editing this post.  It's one of my most frequently viewed posts, and a lot of people are finding it by google searching for "male INFJ" and things like that.  Unfortunately, when I read this post several months after having written it, I see that a lot of the stuff in it is wrong (or, I've changed my mind about it), and that's a shame because a lot of people are reading this and probably taking it seriously, as though I have authority.  In fact, I would describe this as one of my 'worst posts ever' in terms of information qualtity!  I am ashamed of this post, yet hundreds of people are finding it and reading it. So, take this post as being something that I wrote while still learning about socionics, during a time when I was learning new things and changing my beliefs about a lot of things that I had known for a long time.  I've known about personality types since the early 1990s, but I've only recently been learning a lot more about them, and I no longer believe a lot of things I used to believe.*****

Now that I am paying attention to socionics relations, I am looking for male INFjs, or EIIs (Ethical Intuitive Intratims) and noticing how I feel with them. I have several examples that I suspect are EII. (I am trying to teach myself to use the socionics initials as well as the MBTI initials.)

Author Warren Farrell, who writes about masculism

Steve Godfrey, the 'reluctant medium' who I heard on a radio show last night. He was talking about soulmates.  (*Edit:  He might be an IEE.  The IEE (ENFP) type and the EII (INFJ) type have a lot in common, but it's hard to explain why unless I talk about 'functions.'*)

Author of The Socionist at http://socionist.blogspot.com/. (*Edit, nope, it turns out he's an ENFP, or an IEE in socionics. Some of these other people might actually be ENFps too.*)

It's possible that Weston Price could have been one of these, too. I'm not sure what he was. Or he could have been an ISTp. Whatever Weston Price was, I feel that I strongly relate to him and connect with him too.  (*Edit, no, not likely to have been an INFJ.  What was I smoking when I wrote this post???*)

A new one:  I just watched 'Super 8,' the movie, and I think Joe Lamb is probably an EII, and the writer of the movie might be an EII too.  That movie values introverted sensing, which is something that people in the delta quadra value, and EII is in the delta quadra in socionics.  When I say 'they value introverted sensing,' I mean, they pay attention to, and have a lot of sympathy for, someone's health and comfort.  For instance there are lines in the movie such as 'He's terrified and hungry and he wants to go home.'  This is being said by people who value someone's health and comfort, people who view 'the enemy' as being not really an enemy, but just another vulnerable creature that has its own needs, something that you can feel sorry for.  (I hope that doesn't give too much away, if you're planning to see that movie sometime.)

It's easiest to find them when they are authors.  (*Edit, apparently not, since I'm still having trouble thinking of examples of them from books I've read!  I seem to recall that somebody somewhere said that Steven King was an INFJ, but I could be remembering wrong.  Now that I think about it, I also recall reading that he was an INFP.*)

I think I interacted several times with a male INFj on the typology central forum, and we had the 'so much to say that we can't say it all' problem, and a sort of exhausted overloaded feeling. That's the activity relationship. I'm just guessing he was an INFj based on my interactions with him.

My best friend in college, Valencia, might have been an INFj. She sometimes typed as that, and sometimes as an ENFj. We were very good friends, spent a huge amount of time together, and laughed endlessly, so she was probably my activator, and not my blood feud mortal enemy the ENFj. (*Edit... One of my old classmates in school, I have figured out, is probably an ENFJ.  She wasn't a 'mortal enemy' in any way.  She was just somebody who I had a hard time understanding.  If we talked to each other, it was hard for us to think of anything to say.  The conversation didn't flow easily - it was a strain.  I'm learning more about socionic intertype relations, and it isn't as straightforward as 'this person is your enemy.'*)

(I don't really know if they would actually be my enemy or not. I haven't interacted with lots of ENFjs, or read things they've written, to find out. Ayn Rand's character was typed as an ESTp on one of the socionics sites that I visited, but she could have been an ISTp. (I looked at this a few more times and I think they might be right - she could be an ESTp. It's interesting that her books appeal to a lot of ISTps.) (*Note: Some socionists type her as LSI, or ISTJ.*) Everyone else types her as an intuitive. Anyway, the point is that somewhere else, I saw Ellsworth Toohey, the really bad character in Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead, typed as an ENFj, so that might suggest Rand was an ISTp and she was aware of who her enemy was (and I could be totally, totally wrong about all of this, too). Also, I saw Draco Malfoy typed somewhere as an ENFj. These are books that appeal to ISTps (note, I shouldn't even say that - they actually appeal to lots of different people). 'The Enemy' in those books is often the ENFj, if they are typed correctly. The Beta Quadrant is the 'Slytherin' quadrant from the point of view of a Delta quadrant member, if we see ourselves as Griffindor.)  (*Edit... When I said that 'almost everything in this post is wrong,' I meant it!  You can't connect the four houses of Hogwarts to the four quadras of socionics.  It just doesn't work.  They don't match.  Don't do it.  The end!*)

What happens when I read or hear these people, the INFj (EII) is that I react with a strong desire to 'tell them something' or 'give them an important message.' I know something important that I think they would want to know about. I feel that I have a thousand things to say and I can't say them all at once. This should be an 'activator' or 'activity' relationship, if I have corrected typed them.  (*Edit... This might have turned out to be happening when I was talking to ENFPs, not INFJs.*)

The dual of an EII (INFj) is the LSE (ESTj). This would be a woman who is a boss or manager or CEO of a company, or someone who wants to be that, but feels frustrated by women's lower status in society, someone who tends to be a feminist and has a hard time finding men who get along with her. But I haven't yet learned how to distinguish between a type and its lookalike - I can confuse an ESTj with an ENTj. I'd have to interact more with them to learn how to recognize the feel of them.  (*Argh... No, they're not 'bossy' in that way.  Extraverted sensing, or Se, is not the same as Te, extraverted logic.  An ESTJ doesn't 'push people around' in the same way that an ESTP does.  I was totally having a hard time telling the difference between various ST personality types, but I'm getting better at it now.  I think that all of the female coworkers of mine are actually SLE (ESTP), not ESTJ as I originally thought they were!*)

I think I know of two possible ESTj females where I work. Maybe three of them. They tend to boss other people around, but they also get disrespected because they are inferior - they have the 'I'm bossing you around but you're not listening to me because I'm a woman' phenomenon. I get along relatively well with them and I can see their feelings easily. They are my 'mirror' relation.  (*It turns out they were ESTPs, and I can understand them because they are similar to myself in a lot of ways, as I am an ISTP.*)

Male INFjs are relatively rare. But then again, everything that I like is relatively rare! (*This is one statement that I still agree with.  I don't find many intuitives at all, but it's mostly because I work at McDonald's, and all the intuitives are working at other jobs that let them use their strengths.  McDonald's is a very physical environment, and most (not all) of the employees there are sensors.  So I am surrounded by sensors all day long and I rarely see intuitives, but they might be plentiful elsewhere.  So they might be rare for real, or else they might just be located someplace other than where I am.*)