PHQ | QUESTIONS: INTP vs ENTP

11 comments

• 

  • Molly Irene
  • October 3, 2015 at 2:46 pm

  Hi there! I think I’m a female INTP (keep questioning, and coming back to it), and was an art education major, who then wandered the world for a while trying to learn uncommon languages, and teaching English. I think, because of some of those choices, I’ve spent a lot of time using Ne, and tend to look like a low energy ENTP at work, especially as a teacher. Anyone who tries teaching middle schooler novices art or conversational English with Ti will probably learn pretty fast that it’s a terrible idea (at first I spend hours crying over standards matrixes because I wanted to re-organize and re-word them so that they were beautifully coherent). Doing that with a Ne co-pilot is not tremendously effective, but isn’t disastrous either. Ti worked beautifully for learning Latin (all those delightfully organized grammar systems), but much less well for trying to learn an unwritten dialect of Albanian (so hard to systematize, I think I would have had to write a book myself just to wrap my head around it. So I didn’t, and just absorbed whatever my brain happened to gather. Probably Ne).

  I don’t know if any of that helps. The way I like to think about it is that:

  a) given sufficiently complex questions, I could huddle in my room reading and simply thinking for weeks on end and be basically OK, whereas when I go out into the world to have toasting parties with strangers on random hillsides or teach off the top of my head, I hold it together, it’s an important experience, but I come back exhausted, and relax by learning Myers-Briggs typology, or poking at some question I’ve been poking at for years, like a complex knot.

  b) The things I’m quite good at and feel confident in involve getting inside logical systems of thought. Reading a chapter of Kant three times, until I’m in his head space, and can think and write about the rationality of metaphysical enquiry; following Euclid through the Elements, seeing the inevitability of each step, and how they build on each other. For art practicum I kept trying to get students to see how fun making tessellation is. If I had to guess, I’d say MC Escher was an INTP artist. He went off to Spain and wandered around the Alhambra palace, looking at the fantastic patterns there (Exploration), then came home and spent years fiddling with tessellating patterns; making them perfect, using exacting media like woodcuts and tiles, until they were mind bendingly complex (accuracy).

• 

  • Jupiter
  • October 2, 2015 at 6:22 pm

  Also. Has anyone ever come into contact with an art major with a foreign language minor INTP ? – I find this even more frustrating to try and self profile because i am not mathematically gifted or particularly interested in computer codes. The one computer class I took in college I had to go outside and look at a tree twice during the two hour class.

  Another thing: framework, I have always thought of myself as having drawers. Filing cabinets in my head. With organized information.

  Also. What about environments ? Any other intps find environments important ? I want my home to be beautiful. I want my environment to be soothing and consistent. Uncluttered. Isn’t that more TE than TI ?

  The Struggle is real over here with all these questions. . . .

• 

  • Jupiter
  • October 2, 2015 at 6:16 pm

  Ok. So my friends say I am extroverted socially. Can this be situational. Because when I first read your description of an intp it made me cry to feel so understood. I enjoy people but only certain ones. In new places or even known situations I say ridiculous things that I don’t mean – empty bravado in order to deal with the uncomfortableness of the people around me.

  also which cognitive function am I using when someone says “you just can’t solve every problem or there will always be unknown factors” and I think- “Not if I can help it. We just need more information and time”

• 

  • Foday
  • October 2, 2015 at 9:17 am

  I forgot to add one important feedback, especially in meaningful relationships, being authentic. Being real or authentic is food for an INTP so don’t b.s be real, be authentic.

• 

  • Foday
  • October 2, 2015 at 8:58 am

  Kat is an INTP because she said, “i am not looking for a right or wrong answer just some ideas to play with.”

  Our first function, accuracy, is a function that is not about being right or wrong it is about getting as close as possible to the TRUTH then using the second function to play by brainstorming, speculating or building prototypes. When we play we are like innocent children (with no intent) interested in generating ideas, playing with ideas or solving puzzles.

  Here is a youtube video that shows the difference between accuracy and precision: https://youtu.be/hRAFPdDppzs

  Also we want feedback, someone who thinks he is right or always wants to be right does not want to be questioned or be told that he is wrong. Unless you have malicious intent, giving feedback is very important for an INTP because it feeds into to the brainstorming, puzzle solving process.
  Here are some other important versions of feedbacks:
  1. Asking non-personal questions which is mentally stimulating. A girl did this to me and I was impressed.
  2. Positive feedback which is good for motivation. You can listen to motivational media or the INTP can do self talk and motivate himself, great way to own your own shit.

  What they got wrong about House, on the show House M.D, was that he always wanted to be right, what drove him was the need to always be right and that kind of thinking is not INTP thinking. House is an INTP but having the need to always be right is not INTPs way of thinking, well not a healthy one.

  Also she used the word “idea” and she could accurately tell the difference between an introvert and an extrovert.