INTP is one of the 16 personality types of the Myers-Briggs system. This article assumes you have already been introduced to the system, as its general theory will not be explained here.
The INTP has a few different nicknames including:
- The Engineer
- The Thinker
- The Architect
Being typed as an INTP
A friend who studied MBTI first told me I was an INTP and introduced me to the system. The more he told me, the more I agreed that I was an INTP. I then did my own research and the more I found, the more I agreed. I took one of the free tests and it also indicated that I was an INTP.
I’m a little weary of having 100% confidence in MBTI tests (although I didn’t take the official one) because I found to be on the fence with many answers and could have been misled in my interpretation of the question in a way that would type me incorrectly. Looking at the cognitive functions has been the best way for me to see if I match up.
I have heard INTPs spoken of like scientists or computer programmers, but I don’t think all INTPs are necessarily that, because I am not. It seems there different types of INTPs and while a scientist or a computer programmer does seem fitting for an INTP, I am more of a philosopher. I am looking to understand reality in a very abstract sense, not to cure cancer or build artificial intelligence. I want to know the truth in its purest form.
The Cognitive Functions of INTP
- Hero | Ti – Introverted Thinking
- Parent | Ne – Extroverted Intuition
- Child | Si – Introverted Sensing
- Inferior | Fe – Extroverted Feeling
- Nemesis | Te – Extroverted Thinking
- Critic | Ni – Introverted Intuition
- Trickster | Se – Extroverted Sensing
- Demon | Fi – Introverted Feeling
Hero | Ti – Introverted Thinking
I am constantly processing information internally, relying entirely on my own connection to how something is true. I’m totally dissatisfied by being asked to believe or follow anything externally by others when I cannot see the logic in it. Truth is of very high value to me and I will always shift my perspective when there is good evidence.
Even in a heated argument, if a person tells me that I am wrong about something, I can’t help but consider if what they are saying is true, detached from all emotions and ego. If I am too much in a state of reaction, I may not admit to them that they are right but I will totally reorient myself to them being right and change my behavior if I see some truth in what they tell me.
I don’t care about the vast majority of the things people talk about. Small talk can feel very draining to me. I may seem boring, strange, or aloof in some social situations, especially when I am with sensing types, who want to talk more about concrete facts and avoid anything theoretical or philosophical. But when the topic is something I am interested in, I get full of energy and there is literally no end to how long I could entertain the conversation so long as the other person is interested as well.
In my thinking, I am always trying to get to the bottom of things and am constantly testing my own ideas. I intellectually try to break things apart by seeing any holes in reasoning in the concept and from the rubble I will see if anything can be built without any gaps in logic. Recognizing fallacies is second nature to me. Instinctively, it feels like alarms go off inside me when errors are made in reasoning. I am very critical of leaps of faith.
Parent | Ne – Extroverted Intuition
Pattern recognition has always been very strong in me. It could be in predicting the next number in a sequence of numbers, predicting how someone will think or respond to an idea, or predicting what will happen next in my environment.
There is an adventurous aspect of my personality that loves to explore new environments to provide me with a greater sense of possibilities. I am very curious about anything external that I have not experienced or thought about. I like to see things from beyond a static subjective lens to gain new, valuable contexts.
Sometimes I won’t bother asking someone for something because I feel I already know their answer. I’m very conscious of any repeating patterns in another person’s personality, providing me with a sense of prediction. Sometimes I will simulate a conversation in my head to see how I might get through to someone and generally it is pretty accurate. Often it is to serve my Ti hero function that has an unbaised goal of sharing truth rather than some form of manipulation for personal gain.
Often my extroverted intuition is pointing out possible dangers in my environment which are useful, so long as there continues to be some form of outer exploration. When I break my own patterns to explore the world in an extroverted manner, I feel very alive and the world becomes meaningful and beautiful. I naturally become more charming and playful with other people. This could be through things such as travel, meeting new people, or taking up new hobbies.
Child | Si – Introverted Sensing
I’m very aware of my past experiences. When an important moment occurred, such as a life-changing realization or conversation, I generally accurately remember surrounding factual, sensory information such as when that happened, where that happened, and the movement and postures that were in that moment. More than others, I seem to remember things that people have said in the way that they actually said it.
I have a high degree kinesthetic memory, such as what it feels like in my body to walk down stairs, walk through tall grass, or be in the rain. Introverted sensing is about the actual experience I am having or have had in a given moment. I am somewhat oblivious to facts about the physical world around me unless it directly affects my personal sensory experience. For example, I am very aware of how my clothes feel – if they are too tight or too loose, if they are too soft or too rough, if they are comfortable or not. However how my clothes look is something that often doesn’t even enter my mind, because it is something that other people are sensing, not me. If my shoes look worn and new ones are needed, I may not notice for a long time or am reluctant to take action quickly when I do notice, because it is naturally of such little value to me. But if my shoes are wet and my socks are beginning to get wet, I am highly aware and will take action.
A downside to the introverted sensing child is a desire for comfort that can interfere with productivity and advancement. This function wants me to repeat experiences that I know I like and avoid anything that is uncomfortable. It does not have a positive future orientation on its own. If it dominates, it can create a secluded life where I am ‘protected’ from the world and am left alone to repeat the same experiences such as with food and entertainment. A sense of duty and responsibility seems to be one of the best things to prevent me from withdrawing into Si comforts, especially when others are counting on me due to commitments I’ve consciously made.
A positive to a Si child is my ability to know what experiences I like and sharing that with others. For example, I know exactly how I like my experience of eating to be, going beyond just the taste, to the look, feel, and aesthetics of the whole experience. I can then share this experience with someone else with a lot of interest in them having the best experience I can provide. Introverted sensing seems to have given me a creative interest in video editing, where I tinker with sound and video to produce the best experience for myself that I am capable of. After making the video, I am curious if others can share my experience. I attempt to combine Si with Ti to share the experiential quality of my ideas in this way. So Si can be productive when used in creative expression.
It seems that the Si child works best when it is properly looked after by the Ne parent. The Si child wants to do things that give it pleasure. It tends not to want to grow and take responsibility. Ne can give the child too much of what it wants by avoiding the risks in the environment. But when the parent securely explores new situations, it creates new experiences for the child that cause it to grow. The proper harmony of exploration and experience has always given me the feeling of great meaning and that life is so worth living.
Inferior | Fe – Extroverted Feeling
My undeveloped, natural experience with Fe is as something I wish didn’t exist. I can’t help but to notice and care about what other people are feeling and caring about. It can create a lot of conflict in me because the things that others feel and value can often be counter to the logic I see with my Ti function. I can put the values of others above my own and can follow their way even if I disagree, or go against their way and feel guilty about it. It can feel that if this function didn’t exist, I could live a more truthful life and avoid being taken advantage of. I know the answer lies of course in developing it rather than dismissing it.
I am aware of group norms and they often feel like irrational restrictions. But on an emotional level, I do care, despite any logic. I will generally do whatever is necessary to fit in, conforming externally, though internally rebelling. I tend to ignore my own feelings and values, and resentment can slowly build towards any conformity that I feel is imposed on me.
The general way I have dealt with people or groups who either cannot listen to my logic or I feel manipulated by is to end the relationship and leave them. I will first use my Ti to question everything, including plenty of self-doubts. If I conclude that something is indeed wrong in my social environment, I will use my Ne to look at all the patterns and if I can predict any action that could potentially change the future for the better. If I see a possibility, I may take a long time to plan and implement it. It can sometimes take me months or years to end relationships that others may have ended in a day or a week.
In its inferior state, Fe feels like an unfortunate side of being alive. It can seem on the surface to lead to negative control, abuse, and irrationality. The seemingly irrational or negative beliefs of others can cause me to behave against my better nature.
As I am developing myself further as a person, however, I have experienced some periods where I not only enjoyed Fe, it became like a superpower. It only happens in the very highest range of my states of consciousness that I have experienced. Generally, I am feeling a tremendous amount of unconditional love, peace, and stability when I can positively engage Fe. Once in that state, I can perceive what others are feeling and caring about with great empathy, yet feeling zero personal guilt or negativity. It is a pleasure then to interact with them to have the opportunity to make things better for them. I flip from trying to think of how to personally solve problems, to instead listening to them and giving them my attention, caring greatly about them, yet feeling totally detached from identifying with them. I look for narrow windows of opportunity to give to them what they care about and make them feel supported. The experience energizes me and makes me feel much better about the whole world, rather than depleting me and making me feel that I want to run when Fe is undeveloped.
Nemesis | Te – Extroverted Thinking
Due to the confidence in my ability to parse out good ideas from bad ones, I have a tendency to have a pessimistic attitude towards relying on the thinking of others. It can worry me that others may not think as rationally as I do. I am reluctant to share my thoughts with many people because I feel that they are incapable of understanding or won’t value it at all even though I feel I can objectively prove their value. I can sometimes feel that other people are like children and you have to play silly games with them, rather than just being direct, mature and objective.
When people tell me their ideas, I try to see how accurate the information they are giving me is. Often I will question and challenge them, sometimes giving very precise evidence of how they are wrong. Some people take two steps back, become humble and then move forward grateful at the logical course correction. Or give me more information to show me that they are correct, which is great. But usually, people are either unmoved or angered if I have a different viewpoint. If they are totally unphased by being given better information, I tend to lose respect for them and our relationship becomes more superficial. I become less like to share my thoughts with them in the future, because what is the point?
I knew someone who was identified with being spiritual and would share their spiritual philosophy with me. I was once telling them about something I was going through and they started to give me advice from a spiritual perspective. I saw a flaw in their thinking and started describing in detail how that view was wrong. Then I saw them cross their arms, and begin to look angry. This caught me off guard because I thought we were simply collaborating to discover truth together and realized they are viewing this exchange of ideas as a competition. They seemed to feel intellectually bullied by me in an area they thought they were strong in. They gave some rationalizing defense clearly coming from their ego which I could have easily torn apart with reason but instead I allowed it to be the final say in the conversation. I tried to give them some credit for their thinking, but it was too late. It was damaging to our relationship and I had to be very cautious from then on. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have even noticed them getting upset and would have just kept plowing forward with logic, maybe because my Fe was less developed.
I tend to close myself up to people who are incapable of being intellectually honest and open myself to people who are and care about things that I do.
When I am working for a business and the established systems don’t make sense to me and my ideas to improve them aren’t heard, it can feel meaningless and depressing to work there. When I have the power to change business systems or improve them, it becomes very exciting for me and I can be highly motivated.
Critic | Ni – Introverted Intuition
There is no greater self-criticism I experience than my own sense of my patterns about myself and my possibilities for the future. A digestible amount of it can provide valuable insight that provides me with the potential to change. Too much of it and I become despondent and hopeless, feeling that there is so much wrong and that the possibility of change for the better isn’t worth trying. I can project myself into the future and witness myself failing. I may choose to not put myself at risk by not even trying. This can lead to me caring about myself less.
This also seems like it can delay me in taking action because Ni will be critical of any action I propose myself to take. I tend to try to make sure I have used 100% of my capacity to maximize positive results and minimize negative results before making decisions, especially important ones.
This is a difficult function for me to keep in check and use productively. It seems when I consult my Ni proactively, there is useful and reliable information that guides me in a better direction. If I don’t consciously check in with my Ni, it can begin to haunt me and create anxiety.
Trickster | Se – Extroverted Sensing
I am definitely very unconscious when it comes to being aware of the physical world around me. Physical things tend to need to break or start giving me a negative experience in order for me to take notice of them. Or others need to point it out in a way that matters to them. Until the physical world is screaming for my attention or connects to one of my other functions, it is almost like it doesn’t exist to me.
One time after dating a girl for six months, she asked me on the phone what her eye color was and I guessed wrong. She then asked me her hair color and I guessed wrong. I cared deeply for her, yet I was blind to the colors of her body. I can recall the experience of being in a friends car – how comfortable the seats are, if the seatbelt cuts into your neck, if the ceiling is to low, etc., but I tend to have no idea what kind of car they drive and what color it is.
To most people, the physical world around them must seem like the most valid reality. This is understandable, yet for some reason to me, it doesn’t seem real or valuable. I’m far more interested in thoughts and feelings and trying to discover a deeper, truer conception of reality.
I don’t care for nice flashy things such as a nice car or an expensive watch. I especially don’t care for fashion but recognize on occasion that these things do matter to others and make weak attempts to fit in. I take notice of things when they look to me to be either useful tools or directly cause me pain or pleasure.
When I in a dream and I am talking with someone, there is generally no background or foreground, there is no color, there are no shadows, and there is no texture. I ‘know’ who the person I am speaking to is, not because they look like themselves, but because I just ‘know’. They are faceless and have no clothes, nor are they naked. They have an outline of their body to give them a form and I do see their posture and what their movements communicate. When they speak to me, I do not hear any sounds. I just ‘know’ what they are saying. I am, however, strongly able to emphasize with their feelings, perspective, ideas, and experience. Dreams can reflect how we perceive reality. When I used to practice lucid dreaming, one way in which I could recognize if I was dreaming or not was by paying attention to the sensory environment. If I was dreaming and began focusing on sensory data, all of a sudden colors, textures, sounds, etc, would start filling in all around me. In dreams I don’t have the capacity to recreate the world in a full and stable sensory way so things literally wobble, appear and disappear, and morph. When I am awake, all that sensory data exists even when I am not paying attention to it. When I really look around, everything already had color, I just didn’t notice it. Nothing is morphing in and out of reality. In this way, I can know I am awake.
Sometimes the way in which I do meditation is to stop thinking and start sensing my environment. It can work best when I am walking or traveling alone. For me, this is an act of becoming more conscious and balances me.
Demon | Fi – Introverted Feeling
There’s a contraction that exists in me in which I put little value on my values. I have a very difficult time knowing what I want out of life. When I do know what I want, I have a difficult time pursing it and creating boundaries with other people to prevent them from disrespecting what is important to me. I have difficulty finding a place in the world that feels right to me.
But deep down I do have a moral compass, boundaries, and things I care about. They can get abused by others due to my own Te nemesis thinking that I can’t talk to others because they won’t understand, my Fe inferior that can be overly sensitive to the feelings and values of others, and my Ni critic presenting only negative outcomes of my possible actions. My Si remembers the past and my Ne predicts the future, so in a present moment I’m not dealing with one occurrence of feeling wronged, but a long history and a future that is likely to continue indefinitely until I do something drastic. The longer I ignore my Fi, the more harmful it can be when I eventually enter into a state of impulsive reaction. It doesn’t help that my nature is to take a long time to take action. This can get me to lose control and yell at people or possibly to fight them if I am dealing with another man. It is a rare occurrence but it can happen if I let it go all the way there. During my Fi outbursts, I can feel like a cornered animal whos only choice is to fight its way out. It is generally the only time that I feel hate and rage.
Thankfully, this is happening less frequently as I mature and continue working on myself. I am learning to confront people or end relationships much earlier. It is still difficult to know how to use this function positively to know what I really want and do that, but at least I am making progress from preventing it from getting out of hand.
