Are analytical and impersonalOF THE SIXTEEN specific types that result from the various combinations of the preferences, each is the product of its dominant process, extraverted or introverted as the case may be, and modified by the nature of its auxiliary. (The modification is especially marked in the introvert types, whose auxiliary is mainly responsible for their outer behavior.) When statements made about a type are thought of in terms of cause and effect, the characteristics of each type are easier to remember and look for.
The descriptions do not include all the traits arising from each preference, which were discussed in Chapters 4–8. Every introvert type is expected to have the general introvert characteristics. To repeat them each time would only tend to obscure the special characteristics of the particular variety of introvert.
Critics of Jung’s theory have often charged that introversion is not a unitary trait: There are “too many kinds of introverts.” Introversion is not a trait, but a basic disposition or orientation. In each of the eight kinds of introverts, this orientation takes on a different aspect as a necessary result of the other preferences involved.
Each of the following descriptions deals with two types that differ only in the choice of the auxiliary process. The first description considers the two extraverted thinking types, ESTJ and ENTJ, what they have in common, and the ways in which they differ. The next description deals with the two introverted thinking types, ISTP and INTP, in the same fashion. Then extraverted and introverted feeling types, extraverted and introverted sensing types, and extraverted and introverted intuitives are discussed.
As might be expected, the greatest similarity between an extravert type and an introvert type occurs when the two types differ only on EI. They will then have the same combination of perception and judgment, and their outer lives will be shaped by the same extraverted process. The resemblances are likely to be most marked in daily living, and less marked when something very important is in question and the introvert’s dominant process takes over.
The descriptions are designed to apply to each type at its best, as exemplified by normal, well-balanced, well-adjusted, happy, and effective people. So the basic description assumes good development of both the dominant and auxiliary processes. Actually the types come in widely different states of development. If the auxiliary process is undeveloped, the person will lack balance between judgment and perception, and also between extraversion and introversion. If the dominant process is also undeveloped, there will not be much left of the type except its weaknesses.
Well-developed or not, everyone has a shadow side. Just as the conscious personality is the product of the best-developed processes, the shadow is the product of the least-developed part, which a person rejects and disowns. The shadow uses relatively childish and primitive kinds of judgment and perception, not intentionally in the service of conscious aims, but all on its own in an escape from the conscious personality and in defiance of conscious standards.
The results are usually regrettable. Acts of which a person says afterwards, “I don’t know how I came to do that. I didn’t mean to!” are usually the work of the shadow, and so are other regrettable things that a person may not even be aware of having done. The irascible Professor Henry Higgins insisted that he was “a very quiet man.”
It is well to understand the shadow, as it explains some curious contradictions in people. If a person’s apparent preferences indicate a given type, yet he or she has behaved in a way wholly alien to the type in question, consider the quality of the act. If it was inferior to the person’s usual standard, there may have been a shadow at work.
A person’s type is the product of conscious orientation to life: habitual, purposeful ways of using one’s mind—habitual because they seem good and interesting and trustworthy. The shadow is something that happens when a person isn’t looking.
Some introverts pay so little conscious attention to extraverting that they achieve little or no development of their extraverted auxiliary process. Their extraversion will be largely unconscious and their shadow processes may be more apparent than their conscious personalities. A woman completing the Type Indicator for her extremely introverted ISFJ husband as she sees him, may make him an ISTJ, missing the feeling he does not express, and reporting instead the unconscious, inferior, and critical thinking of his shadow side.
Are analytical and impersonal
May be executive, legal, technical, or interested in reform
Organize the facts—and everything else within reach
Are decisive, logical, strong in reasoning power
Aim to govern their own conduct and other people’s in accordance with thought-out conclusions
Value truth in the form of fact, formula, and method
Have an emotional life that is accidental
Have a social life that is incidental
Extraverted thinkers use their thinking to run as much of the world as may be theirs to run. They are in their element whenever the outer situation needs to be organized, criticized, or regulated. Ordinarily they enjoy deciding what ought to be done and giving the appropriate orders to ensure that it will be done. They abhor confusion, inefficiency, half measures, anything that is aimless and ineffective. Often they are crisp disciplinarians, who know how to be tough when the situation calls for toughness.
This might be called the standard executive type. There are other kinds of executives, some of them brilliantly successful. But it is doubtful whether any other type so enjoys being an executive, or works so hard to get to be one. Sometimes at an early age, a child of this type, with systematic purpose and natural interest in running things, becomes, popularity aside, the leader of the school class.
Much of the extraverted thinkers’ effectiveness stems from their willingness to issue as strict orders to themselves as to anyone else. They stake out their objectives well in advance and put a lot of systematic effort into reaching them on schedule. At their best, they turn an unsparing eye upon their own conduct and revise whatever does not come up to standard.
Extraverted thinkers naturally prefer the judging attitude, and they act forcefully upon the basis of their judgments, whether well-founded or not. One of them wrote me: “Say something about the almost irresistible urge to make decisions, just for their own sake. Under this urge I will not only make quick and accurate decisions in my own field but will tend to make equally quick but faulty decisions in a strange field, just because I’m intent on decisions and do not take time to perceive the facts fully.”
Extraverted thinkers must develop a good perceptive auxiliary to give them grounds for judgments and must learn to suspend judgment long enough to give perception a chance. This might be difficult, but the rewards are substantial. Not only will better perception make their judgments sounder, but if they use it to see other points of view, it will help them in human relations, where they may well need help.
Extraverted thinkers construct a code of rules embodying their basic judgments about the world. They aim to live by those rules, and consider that others should as well. Any change in their ways requires a conscious change in the rules. If their perception is not good enough to show them, from time to time, how their rules should be broadened, the code will be so narrow and rigid that it becomes a tyranny not only to the thinkers but also to those around them, especially their families. Everything that conforms to the rules will be right; everything that violates them will be wrong; and everything not covered by them will be unimportant. They will become, as Jung puts it, “a world-law whose realization must be achieved at all times and seasons.... [Anyone] who refuses to obey is wrong—he is resisting the world-law, and is, therefore, unreasonable, immoral and without a conscience” (1923, p. 435).
The basic mistake here is the infliction of one’s own judgment on other people. Judging types should use their judgment on themselves, not on others. Thinking judgments are usually harder on the person judged than feeling judgments, because thinking is naturally critical. It analyzes, decides that things would be better if they were different, and usually says so, whereas feeling judgments tend to be complimentary part of the time. Feeling enjoys appreciating things. That may be too much to expect of thinkers in whom feeling is the least developed process, but thinkers can put it into their rules that from time to time they will use perception to see what there is about a person to appreciate—and mention it.
Against that background, any suggestions can be carried out with better grace than would otherwise be the case. Everyone likes to be treated perceptively, but it is especially important with subordinates, who cannot fight for their own viewpoints, and with children, husbands, and wives, who can do so only at the expense of family peace.
There is another reason why the thinkers should, for their own sake, practice the perceptive attitude. If they let thinking judgment dominate their every waking moment, their feeling will be too suppressed to be of any use to them. It may even acutely embarrass them at times by unexpected explosions of temper which consciously they would never “think” of committing. If they cultivate perception, however, by now and then turning off their thinking judgment, they give feeling a constructive outlet before it reaches the boiling point.
Extraverted thinkers are convinced by reasoning, and when they are convinced, that is quite an accomplishment, because when they decide to do something, it gets done.
ESTJs look at the world with sensing rather than intuition; hence, they are most interested in the realities perceived by their five senses, so they tend to be matter-of-fact and practical, receptive and retentive of factual detail, tolerant of routine, deft at mechanical things, realistic, and concerned with the here and now. Their thinking process appears deliberate, because it often is actual thinking, rather than the shortcut that is frequently furnished by intuition.
The curiosity of an ESTJ is stirred mainly by new things that appeal directly to the senses—new objects, gadgets or contrivances, new physical activities, new people, new houses, new food, and new scenery. New things that cannot be grasped through the senses—abstract ideas and theories—seem less real and are much less acceptable. Anything intangible is rather distasteful, as it undermines the security of a factual world in which people can be sure of their judgments.
The ESTJs solve problems by expertly applying and adapting past experience. They like work where they can achieve immediate, visible, and tangible results. They have a natural bent for business and industry, production and construction. They enjoy administration and getting things organized and done. Executives of this type prefer to base plans and decisions on established facts and procedures; they do not listen to their own intuition very much, and may need an intuitive around to point out the value of new ideas.
This is perhaps the most traditionally “masculine” type and includes more men than any other.
ENTJs look at the world with intuition rather than sensing, so they are mainly interested in the possibilities beyond the present, obvious, or known. Intuition heightens their intellectual interest, curiosity about new ideas (whether immediately useful or not), tolerance for theory, taste for complex problems, insight, vision, and concern for long-range possibilities and consequences.
ENTJs are seldom content in a job that makes no demand on intuition. They need problems to solve and are likely to be expert at finding new solutions. Their interest is in the broad picture, however, not in detailed procedures or facts.
Executives of this type are likely to surround themselves with other intuitives, because they like people who are quick on the uptake, with minds that work in the same fashion as their own, but they do well to have at least one good sensing type on their staff to keep them from overlooking relevant facts and important details.
Are analytical and impersonal
Are interested primarily in the underlying principles
Are organized in relation to concepts and ideas (if INTP) or facts (if ISTP)—but not people or situations, unless of necessity
Are perceptive, not dominating, as the decisiveness of the thinking usually shows only in intellectual matters
Are outwardly quiet, reserved, detached, perhaps even aloof except with intimates
Are inwardly absorbed in the current analysis or problem
Are inclined toward shyness, especially when young, as the chief interests of introverted thinking are little help in small talk or social contacts
Introverted thinkers use their thinking to analyze the world, not to run it. Relying on thinking makes them logical, impersonal, objectively critical, not likely to be convinced by anything except reasoning. As introverts, they focus their thinking on the principles underlying things rather than on the things themselves. Because it is hard to switch their thinking from ideas to details of daily living, they lead their outer lives mainly with their preferred perceptive process, which makes them detachedly curious and quite adaptable—until one of their ruling principles is violated, at which point they stop adapting.
They are likely to be persevering and independent of external circumstances to a marked degree, with a singleness of purpose that subordinates the social and emotional aspects of life to some long-term achievement of the mind. They may have difficulty in conveying their conclusions to the rest of the world and getting these accepted or even understood. Jung says the introverted thinker “will hardly ever go out of his way to win anyone’s appreciation of his ideas.... He merely exposes them, and is often extremely annoyed when they fail to thrive on their own account” (1923, p. 486).
Introverted thinking applied to mathematics can be seen in Einstein; applied to philosophy, in Kant; applied to world affairs, in Woodrow Wilson; and applied to psychology, in Jung. In the industrial field, the introverted thinker’s job should be to work out the needed principles underlying a problem or operation. Then other types can go ahead and do the operating. A sweeping application of the principles underlying mass production may be seen in the achievements of Henry Ford. (Ford always took great pains to preserve his independence of action and spare himself the necessity of converting others to his plans.)
To be effective, the introverted thinkers must have a good auxiliary process to supply perception in support of their thinking. If neither their sensing nor their intuition is serviceably developed, they will suffer a general deficit of perception, so that their thinking will not have enough to think about and consequently will be barren and unproductive. The lack of an adequate auxiliary process will leave them short on extraversion, too. They will have inadequate relationship to the outside world, even by introvert standards.
The least-developed process of the introverted thinkers inevitably is extraverted feeling. They are not apt to know, unless told, what matters emotionally to another person, but they can and should act on the principle that people do care about having their merits appreciated and their point of view respectfully considered. Both the working life and the personal life of the introverted thinkers will go better if they take the trouble to do two simple things: Say an appreciative word when praise is honestly due, and mention the points on which they agree with another person before they bring up the points on which they disagree.
With introverted thinkers, as with all introverts, the choice of the auxiliary process makes a great difference and colors the outward personality. In the ISTP combination, sensing will lend realism, matter-of-factness, sometimes an unexpected gift of fun for its own sake, often an interest in sports and outdoor recreation in general. In the INTP combination, intuition will lend subtlety, imagination, and a liking for projects and occupations demanding ingenuity.
Choice of the auxiliary process also affects the use that will be made of the dominant process, because the kind of perception employed determines in large part what elements of the outer world will be brought to the attention of the ruling thinking. If sensing makes the selection, the material presented will be more tangible and concrete, often involving mechanics or statistics but in any case factual. If intuition does the choosing, the material will be more theoretical and abstract, giving scope for the exercise of insight and originality.
ISTPs have a vested interest in practical and applied science, especially in the field of mechanics. Of all the processes, sensing provides for the greatest understanding of the visible and tangible properties of matter, how it behaves, what you can and cannot do with it. People of this type are likely to be good with their hands, which is a genuine asset in the practical application of scientific principles.
With nontechnical interests, the ISTPs can use general principles to bring order out of confused data and meaning out of unorganized facts. The capacity of sensing to absorb fact and detail can be very useful to ISTPs who work in the field of economics, as securities analysts, or as market and sales analysts in business and industry—in short, in dealing with statistics in any field.
Some ISTPs, especially young ones, are great believers in economy of effort. This belief can contribute to their efficiency if they judge accurately how much effort is needed and proceed promptly to exert that much effort. However, if they underestimate or underperform, economy of effort can come perilously close to laziness, and little may get done.
INTPs make scholars, theorists, and abstract thinkers in fields such as science, mathematics, economics, and philosophy. INTPs are perhaps the most intellectually profound of all the types. Intuition brings a deeper insight than is granted to thinking alone. It gives its possessors intellectual curiosity, quickness of understanding, ingenuity and fertility of ideas in dealing with problems, and an extra glimpse of possibilities that logic has not yet had time to reach. On the debit side, intuition makes routine harder, though an intuitive may, in the course of a lifetime, achieve a sufficient adaptation to it.
People of the INTP type, therefore, are particularly adapted to research and the attainment of new clarities. They are quite likely to be more interested in analyzing a problem and discovering where the solution lies than in carrying out their ideas. They formulate principles and create theories; they value facts only as evidence or as examples for a theory, never for their own sake.
A psychology professor of this type explained to an extraverted student, “This paper is perfectly correct, but you have put so much more stress on the facts than on the principle that it is obvious that you consider the facts the most important part. Therefore, your mark is a “B.” The student was far more indignant over the reason than over the grade. “But of course the facts are the most important part,” she said.
Many scholars of this type are teachers, especially on the university level, because the university values their attainments, and they themselves value the opportunity for study and research; but it is characteristic of their teaching that they care more for the subject than for the students. Gauss, the great mathematician, found teaching so painful that he tried to discourage all prospective students by telling them that the course about which they were inquiring would probably not be given at all.
The problem of communication also hampers their teaching. When confronted by a simple question that needs a simple answer, the introverted thinkers feel bound to state the exact truth, with every qualification that their scholarly consciences dictate; the answer is so exact and so complicated that few can follow it. If the teachers would scale down their explanation until it seemed, in their own opinion, too simple and obvious to be worth saying, they would have it just about right for general consumption.
INTP executives are probably rare outside scientific or academic circles. The good executives will be those who have acquired a very definite facility at extraversion sufficient to keep them in touch with the situations they must handle. Exercising their authority in a perceptive manner, such INTPs will use ingenuity and understanding to find ways of achieving the desired ends. But they will test every proposed measure by the exacting yardstick of their principles, so that whatever they direct will embody their own integrity.
The temptation for INTPs (as well as for extraverts with intuition) is to assume that an attractive possibility suggested by their intuition is as possible as it looks. They need to check out even their most attractive intuitive projects against the relevant facts and the limitations these facts impose. Otherwise they may find too late that they have squandered their energies in pursuit of an impossibility.
Value, above all, harmonious human contacts
Are best at jobs dealing with people and in situations where needed cooperation can be won by good will
Are friendly, tactful, sympathetic, able almost always to express the feelings appropriate to the moment
Are sensitive to praise and criticism, and anxious to conform to all legitimate expectations
Possess outwardly directed judgment, which likes to have things decided and settled
Are persevering, conscientious, orderly even in small matters, and inclined to insist that others be the same
Are idealistic and loyal, capable of great devotion to a loved person or institution or cause
May use thinking judgment occasionally to help in appreciating and adapting to points made by a thinker, but thinking is never permitted to oppose feeling aims
The extraverted feeling types radiate warmth and fellowship, and they have a vital need to find corresponding feelings in others and to meet a warm response. They are particularly warmed by approval and sensitive to indifference. Much of their pleasure and satisfaction comes not only from others’ warm feelings but from their own; they enjoy admiring people and so tend to concentrate on a person’s most admirable qualities.
They are remarkably able to see value in other people’s opinions, and even when the opinions are conflicting, they have faith that harmony can somehow be achieved and often manage to bring it about. Their intense concentration on other people’s viewpoints sometimes makes them lose sight of the value of their own. They think best when talking with people and they enjoy talk.
All their mental processes seem to operate best by contact. Van der Hoop says, “Their thoughts take shape while being expressed” (1939, p. 84). However, thoughts arising through and during the process of expression often seem lengthy and clumsy to a rapid abstract thinker. There is probably an advantage for lecturers and orators in this blending of thought with speech, but it hinders extraverted feeling types from being brief and businesslike, and it often slows them down on the job. They tend to spend a great deal of time in conferences and committee meetings.
Their well-known idealism works two ways. They try hard to achieve their ideals, and they idealize those persons and institutions they prize. In both instances, extraverted feeling types are bound to repress and repudiate everything in themselves and in others that conflicts with feeling; this proceeding gives rise to a lack of realism wherever feeling is involved. (The extraverted sensing types resemble the extraverted feeling types in their ease and sociability; but when faced by the same cold, inharmonious fact, extraverted feeling denies its existence, and introverted feeling condemns its existence, whereas extraverted sensing accepts its existence and lets it go at that.)
Since the dominant process, feeling, is a judging process, these extraverted feeling types naturally prefer the judging attitude. It is not so much that they consciously enjoy settling things, as the extraverted thinkers usually do, but that they greatly like to have things settled, or at least to feel that things are settled. They tend to regard the world as a place where most of the decisions have already been made. The desirability or undesirability of most varieties of conduct, speech, opinion, and belief seems clear to them, a priori. They hold these truths to be self-evident. Thus, they are likely to have an immediate valuation of everything and an impulse to express it.
To have any validity, these judgments must be based on a well-developed perceptive process. If intuition is well developed as the auxiliary process, it will supply insight and understanding. If sensing is well developed as the auxiliary, it will supply first-hand, realistic knowledge of life. Either can furnish genuine grounds for feeling judgments, but if neither has been cultivated, there are no individual grounds to speak of.
Extraverted feeling types without a balancing auxiliary have, nonetheless, an urgent need to base their feeling judgments on something. They have no recourse but to adopt the forms of feeling judgment that the community sanctions as suitable. Accordingly they adapt to the collective community, but their deficit of perception prevents them from adapting to other individuals.
One very unperceptive extraverted feeling type, who was having a great deal of trouble with her teen-age children, was persuaded to try to suspend judgment and consistently use the perceptive, unjudging attitude with them. She reported, “It works like a charm, but it’s the hardest thing I ever did.”
In the absence of adequate perception, the extraverted feeling types are prone to jump to conclusions and to act on assumptions that turn out to be wrong. They are especially likely to be blind to the facts when there is a disagreeable situation or painful criticism. It is harder for them than for other types to look squarely at things that they wish were not true; actually it is even hard for them to see such things at all. If they fail to face disagreeable facts, they will ignore their problems instead of finding good solutions.
ESFJs tend to be matter-of-fact and practical, conventional, copiously and factually conversational, and interested in possessions, beautiful homes, and all the tangible adornments of living. ESFJs are primarily concerned with the details of direct experience—their own, that of their friends and acquaintances, even the experience of strangers whose lives happen to touch theirs.
In a 1965 study by Harold Grant (see p. 157), ESFJs were the one type that chose “an opportunity to be of service to others” as the most important feature of the ideal job. They are more attracted to pediatrics than to any other medical specialty, and they are more strongly attracted to it than any other type. Their compassion and concern for physical conditions often take them into health professions, particularly nursing, where they provide warmth and comfort as well as devoted care. (Together with their counterpart, ISFJ, they had the lowest drop-out rate in my 1964 study of nursing students; see McCaulley, 1978.)
Even in office jobs their feeling plays a prominent role, and they manage to inject an element of sociability into any work they are assigned. Of all the types, they make the best adjustment to routine. They may not care too much what kind of work they do, but they want to be able to talk while they do it, and they want to work in a friendly atmosphere. A telephone company employee opposed a transfer to another unit, until she was assured that she would be given a farewell party by her old associates and a welcoming party by her new ones. Raised to the level of a social event, the change became acceptable to her feeling.
ENFJs tend to have curiosity for new ideas as such, taste for books and academic interests in general, tolerance for theory, vision and insight, and imagination for new possibilities beyond what is present or obvious or known. ENFJs are likely to have a gift of expression, but they may use it in speaking to audiences rather than in writing.
The NF combination of warmth and insight reaches its warmest and most gracious aspect in this type. ENFJs do well in many fields, for example, as teachers, clergy, career and personal counselors, and psychiatrists. Apparently the urge to harmonize extends even to intellectual opinions. A very charming ENFJ who has been interested in type since her high school days told me earnestly, “So-and-so asked me what I thought of type, and I didn’t know what to tell her, because I didn’t know how she felt about it.”
Value, above all, harmony in the inner life of feeling
Are best at individual work involving personal values—in art, literature, science, psychology, or the perception of needs
Have feelings that are deep but seldom expressed, because inner tenderness and passionate conviction are both masked by reserve and repose
Maintain independence from the judgment of others, being bound by inner moral law
Direct judgment inwardly toward keeping all lesser values subordinate to the greater
Have a strong sense of duty and faithfulness to obligations, but no desire to impress or influence others
Are idealistic and loyal, capable of great devotion to a loved person, purpose, or cause
May use thinking judgment occasionally to help in winning a thinker’s support of feeling aims, but is never permitted to oppose those aims
Introverted feeling types have a wealth of warmth and enthusiasm, but they may not show it until they know someone well. They wear their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat. Reliance on feeling leads them to judge everything by personal values; they know what is most important to them, and they protect it at all costs.
As their feeling is introverted, they conduct their outer lives mainly with their preferred perceptive process, either sensing or intuition. This makes them open-minded, flexible, and adaptable—until one of the things they value most deeply seems in danger: Then they stop adapting.
They work twice as well at jobs they believe in; their feeling adds energy to their efforts. They want their work to contribute to something that matters to them—human understanding or happiness or health or perhaps the perfection of a project or undertaking. They want to have a purpose behind their paycheck, no matter how big the check. They are perfectionists whenever their feeling is engaged and are usually happiest at individual work.
The effectiveness of introverted feeling types depends on their finding a channel through which to give outward expression to their inner certainties and ideals. When this is possible, the inner certainties lend direction, power, and purpose to the introverted feeling types. Lacking such an outlet, the certainties make these people more sensitive and vulnerable when relationships fall short of their ideals. The result may be a sense of impotence and inferiority, with loss of confidence and distrust in life.
The contrast between the real and the ideal weighs more heavily upon the ISFPs, who are more sharply aware of the actual state of affairs, than upon the INFPs, whose intuition suggests hopeful avenues of improvement. The ISFPs are also more likely to suffer a consequent deficit of self-confidence. For both, the contrast offers a more acute problem than for the other types.
The solution comes with whole-hearted use of perception and understanding as a way of life. Because this is their destined mode of adaptation to the world, they must have proper faith in it, work at it, and be able to use it on both outer and inner difficulties. Relying on perception, they do not even try to bull their way through an obstacle; they “see” their way through. If they meet with distrust, indifference, or antagonism, which can block their outer endeavors or threaten their inner peace, they will often accomplish, by understanding, what could never be achieved by decisive frontal assault. Aesop told about a traveler who shed his cloak beneath the rays of the sun, after the wind’s fiercest efforts had failed to tear it from him. Most people do thaw in the warmth of genuine, uncritical understanding.
The confidence of the introverted feeling types in their way of life should not be diminished at all because it does not look as masterful as that of the opposite types, those who depend on extraversion instead of introversion, or thinking instead of feeling, or judgment instead of perception, or even those who combine all three, like the extraverted thinkers who outwardly appear to be the most self-confident of all the types.
The introverted feeling types have their own masteries. They can accomplish certain things which others cannot, and the value of their contributions is second to none. Realization of the diverse excellences of the various types, whereby the difference between one type and another type is seen as a virtue rather than a defect, should strengthen their trust in their own gifts. It should also partially relieve the conflict that they are likely to feel when they cannot agree with those whom they love or admire.
ISFPs see the realities—the needs of the moment—and try to meet them. ISFP is one of only two types, out of all sixteen, who strongly prefer general medical practice, which involves them with the widest variety of human ills. They may also find a satisfactory outlet in fields that value taste, discrimination, and a sense of beauty and proportion. They excel in craftsmanship. They seem to have a special love of nature and sympathy for animals. They are much less articulate than the INFPs, and the work of their hands is usually more eloquent than anything they say.
They may be particularly fitted for work that requires both devotion and a great adaptability, as is the case of visiting nurses, who can never count on standard conditions but must grasp each new situation and revise their instructions to fit the present circumstances.
They consistently tend to underestimate and understate themselves. Probably ISFP is the most modest type. Anything ISFPs do well, they take for granted as no great achievement. They do not need St. Paul’s injunction “not to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think.” In most cases, they ought to think more highly than they do.
INFPs excel in fields that deal with possibilities for people, such as counseling, teaching, literature, art, science, research, and psychology. The inclusion of science may be a surprise. It was to me. My father, Lyman J. Briggs, was director of the National Bureau of Standards, and we fully expected research scientists to be mainly INT like him, certainly not INF like my mother and myself. As it turned out, the INFs among the top researchers at the Bureau were indeed fewer than the INTs, but no less distinguished. Perhaps the enthusiasm generated by the feeling of an INF spurs intuition to reach a truth that analysis by thinking will confirm in due course.
INFPs usually have a gift for language. The high school senior class that was analyzed during the early validation of the Type Indicator included four INFP women. One was the editor of the school magazine and was voted by the class “most likely to succeed.” One was editor of the yearbook, literary editor of the magazine, and valedictorian. The third was the winner of a four-year open scholarship and became the editor of her college paper. The fourth, who had the same combination of imagination and language but less ability to use it in the outer world, wrote haunting poetry in which she spoke for the “dreamers” who “drift across the horizons of the living.”
The literary tendency evident in this type derives from the combination of intuition and feeling. Intuition supplies imagination and insight, feeling supplies the urge to communicate and share, and the command of language is apparently a joint product of intuition’s facility with symbols and feeling’s artistic discrimination and taste. Thus, all four NF types should have the aptitude. However, the extravert types, ENFP and ENFJ, and even the introverted intuitives who extravert with feeling, INFJ, are likely to take a shortcut and do their communicating by the spoken word, as teachers, clergy, psychologists, and so on. Introverted feeling in INFPs is so reserved that they often prefer the written word as the way to communicate what they feel without making personal contact.
Are realistic
Are matter-of-fact and practical
Are adaptable, usually easy-going, very much at home in the world, tolerant of others and of themselves
Are endowed with a great capacity for enjoying life and a zest for experience of all kinds
Are fond of concrete facts and good at details
Are apt to learn most and best from experience, making a better showing in life than in school.
Are usually conservative, valuing custom and convention, and liking things as they are
Are able to absorb an immense number of facts, like them, remember them, and profit by them
The greatest strength of the extraverted sensing types is their realism. They primarily rely on the testimony of their own senses—what they see and hear and know firsthand—and thus are always aware of the actual situation around them. Types with feeling dominant are often prone to see things as they “should” be; types with thinking dominant to see things as they logically “must” be; types with intuition dominant to see things as they can be made to be; but the extraverted sensing types, as far as the eye can reach, see things as they are. An effortless economy characterizes their approach to a situation. They never fight the facts; instead, they accept and use them. They do not uselessly buck the line. If what they have started to do is blocked, they do it another way. They will follow no plan that has ceased to fit the circumstances.
Frequently they do just as well without a plan. They enjoy dealing with a situation as it arises; they are confident that a solution will always be revealed by a complete grasp of the facts. Unhampered by “should” or “must,” they go after the facts and come up with an eminently practical solution.
As a result, people of this type may prove to be remarkably good at pulling conflicting factions together and making things run smoothly. Their harmonizing ability owes much to their awareness of all the factual and personal elements in the situations that confront them. They can accept and deal with people as they are, and not be fooled about their quality.
Their enjoyment and absorption of facts is an essential function of a vigorous curiosity. One extraverted sensing type wrote to me, “It is true that I have in the back of my head a tremendous volume of facts on wholly unrelated subjects, and I am always interested in more.” Like other ES types, the ESTPs and ESFPs are curious about anything new that is presented directly to their senses—new food, scenery, people, activities, objects, gadgets or contrivances. However, new things that cannot be grasped through the senses—abstract ideas, theories, and so on—seem less real and are much less acceptable: Anything mysterious is rather distasteful, as it undermines the security of a factual world. A new idea is never wholly liked or trusted until there has been time to master it and fix it firmly in a framework of solid fact.
Therefore extraverted sensing types are at their best in dealing with variations in the known and familiar rather than with what is entirely new. Their strong point is their flawless handling of things and situations, preferably spiced with some variety.
Often they have an instinctive affinity for machinery and a sure sense of what it can and cannot be made to do. Among the first twenty men whom we identified as extraverted sensing types, we found a top-notch mechanical engineer, a precision machinist, a very successful teacher of engineering shop, a Naval “crash officer,” and a government expert whose detailed study of the tangled wreckage of crashed planes has led to the detection of obscure but fatal flaws in airplane design.
On the personal side, these types are strong in the art of living. They value material possessions and take the time to acquire, care for, and enjoy them. They greatly value concrete enjoyment, from good food and good clothes to music, art, the beauties of nature, and all the products of the amusement industry. Even without these aids, they get a lot of fun out of life, which makes them fun company. They enjoy physical exercise and sports, and they are usually good at these; if not, they are good rooters for those who are.
In school, they have no great regard for books as a preparation for life or as a substitute for first-hand experience. Most of their studying is memory work; although that technique suffices in some courses, it is not enough in physics and math, in which principles must be understood. There is a story about a general, notable throughout his career for his skillful handling of troops in the field, who nevertheless had nearly flunked out of West Point when he tried to pass a course in tactics by remembering the lectures word for word.
Van der Hoop says of these people, “They are most impressed by facts, and their originality finds expression in a truer and less prejudiced view of these than others take.... They fight somewhat shy of ideals. They stick to experience, are empiricists par excellence, and are in general conservative in their practical life, if they see no prospect of advantage in change. They are pleasant people, good comrades, and jolly boon companions... frequently good storytellers.... They often make good observers, and they make good practical use of their observations.... There is great capacity for perception of details and for practical evaluations based on them; further, there is the power to make sound estimations in regard to usefulness and serviceability” (1939, p. 927).
These types naturally prefer the perceptive attitude, so their virtues tend to be open-mindedness, tolerance, and adaptability, rather than sustained effort, methodology, and decisiveness. The latter qualities appear only with a superior development of judgment to balance the sensing. It is extremely important for these people to cultivate enough thinking judgment or feeling judgment to give them continuity, purpose, and character. Otherwise, there will be danger of laziness, instability, and a generally shallow personality.
ESTPs make decisions with thinking rather than feeling and therefore are more aware of the logical consequences of an act or decision. Thinking gives ESTPs a better grasp of underlying principles, helps with math and theory, and makes it easier for them to get tough when the situation calls for toughness.
In dealing with mechanical and other concrete problems, they are solid and practical and avoid complexity. In straightforward matters, their judgment is accurate and reliable.
They tend to prefer action to conversation. The more directly a matter can be translated into action, the clearer and more effective they become. When they do sit around, it is in an attitude of friendly readiness to do almost any pleasurable thing.
ESFPs make decisions with feeling rather than thinking. Feeling tends to center interest and observation on people, which gives rise to a marked friendliness, tact, and ease in handling human contacts, as well as a sound and practical estimate of people. Among ESFPs are the students whose high school class voted them “the friendliest” or “the best sport.” Feeling also makes for artistic taste and judgment, but is no help with analysis. It may make this type too lenient as disciplinarians.
Are systematic, painstaking, and thorough
Carry responsibility especially well, but ISTJ generally likes it better than ISFJ
Are very hard working; they are the most practical of the introvert types
Are outwardly matter-of-fact, inwardly entertained by extremely individual reactions to their sense impressions
Are conspicuous for patient and willing application to detail
Make an excellent adaptation to routine
Absorb and enjoy using an immense number of facts
Introverted sensing types are made remarkably dependable by their combination of preferences. They use their favorite process, sensing, in their inner life, and they base their ideas on a deep, solid accumulation of stored impressions, which gives them some almost unshakable ideas. Then they use their preferred kind of judgment, thinking or feeling, to run their outer life. Thus, they have a complete, realistic, practical respect both for the facts and for whatever responsibilities these facts create. Sensing provides the facts, and after the introverts’ characteristic pause for reflection, their judgment accepts the responsibilities.
They look on tempests and are never shaken. The interaction of introversion, sensing, and the judging attitude gives them extreme stability. They do not enter into things impulsively, but once in, they are very hard to distract, discourage, or stop (unless events convince them that they are wrong). They lend stability to everything with which they are connected.
Their use of experience contributes to their stability. They habitually compare present and past situations. Used in an executive capacity, this quality makes for consistent policy and for care in the introduction of changes. Used in evaluating people or methods, it can marshal numerous incidents to support a conclusion.
They like everything kept factual and stated clearly and simply. In van der Hoop’s words, they “cannot take intuition seriously, and they regard its activity in others with misgiving” (1939, p. 33). They have “great capacity for perception of details and for practical evaluations based on them.... In their own field these people are usually very much at home, having a good mastery of the technical side of their calling, but without regarding this as any special merit. They accept both what they can and what they cannot do, as simple facts, but they tend on the whole to underestimate themselves” (1939, p. 32). Their success often comes by way of others who recognize and place a higher value on their good qualities and provide an environment in which they can be most productive.
Along with their solid and evident virtues, they have one odd and charming quality that may not be apparent until they are very well known. Their sense impressions cause a vivid private reaction to the essence of the thing sensed. The reaction is all their own and unpredictable. It is impossible to know what droll and unexpected associations of ideas take place behind their outer calm. Only when they are “off duty”—relaxing from extraversion, responsibility, and the judging attitude—will they sometimes give spontaneous expression to this inner perception. Then they may say what comes into their minds and give others a glimpse of their perceptions and associations, which may be absurd, irreverent, touching, or hilarious, but never predictable, because their way of sensing life is intensely individual.10
When they are “on duty” and dealing with the world, the personality they show reflects the judging processes they habitually use outwardly, that is, their auxiliary, either thinking or feeling.
ISTJs emphasize logic, analysis, and decisiveness. With enough extraversion, ISTJs make able executives. They also make exhaustively thorough lawyers who take nothing for granted and thus catch many slips and oversights that others make. All contracts should be cleared by ISTJs; they will overlook nothing that is in it and assume nothing that is not.
This is a fine type for accountants. It also appears to be ideal for dictating-machine transcribers. The head of a central transcription department selected three operators as having the perfect temperament for the work; they were chosen for their accuracy, continuity, concentration, and ability to be content without socializing at work. All three were well-marked ISTJ women, though apparently only about one woman in twenty-three belongs to this type.11
ISTJs will give any amount of help if they can see that it is needed, but their logic rebels against requirements or expectation to do anything that doesn’t make sense to them. Usually they have difficulty understanding needs that differ widely from their own. But once they are convinced that something matters a great deal to a given person, the need becomes a fact worthy of respect; they may go to generous lengths to help satisfy it, although they still hold that it doesn’t make sense. In fact, they may be sharply critical of the carelessness or lack of foresight by which some unfortunate has landed in trouble and, all the same, spend much time and energy to help.
Sometimes ISTJs carry their type development beyond their dominant and auxiliary processes and achieve a marked supplementary development of their third-best process, feeling, for use in human relationships, especially for appreciating their closest friends.
ISFJs emphasize loyalty, consideration, and the common welfare. This is a fine type for a family doctor. The use of feeling in contacts with patients supplies the warmth and reassurance they crave, and the highly-cultivated sensing neglects no symptom and is able to draw on an accurate and encyclopedic memory.
This is also a fine type for the nurses. In a sample of students I gathered from nursing schools from coast to coast, ISFJ showed the highest self-selection into the profession and the lowest drop-out rate during training. The low drop-out rate testifies to their motivation and follow-through.
One outstanding member of the type is a two-star general. His well-balanced type gives him three qualities said to have been recommended by diverse military authorities: the shock-absorbing mental robustness, which is the first requirement for a general according to General Sir Archibald Wavell; the painstaking attention to administration and supply, which Socrates puts first on his list; and the strict realism of sensing, which Napoleon preferred to its intuitive opposite in his dictum, “There are men who, by their…make-up, create for themselves a complete picture built upon a single detail. Whatever…other good qualities they may have, nature has not marked them for the command of armies.”
All three qualities are consistent with either thinking or feeling as auxiliary. The two-star general’s judging process, strongly developed feeling, is masked in practice by deep reserve. The feeling is expressed as loyalty to duty and scrupulous concern for the interests of his subordinates, which evokes affection and loyalty in return.
The outstanding merits of the type are also found in dissimilar occupations. The most careful worker I ever encountered, a floor-finisher in business for himself, showed the typical qualities. He was assisted by his son, an easy-going young extravert, who testified with rueful admiration that “the old man is particular as hell.”
Both ISTJ and ISFJ, of course, need to be balanced by a substantial development of either thinking or feeling. Judgment helps them deal with the world; it balances the introverted perception, which by itself is not interested in the outside world. If judgment is not developed, they largely ignore the outside world and become uncommunicative and incomprehensible, absorbed in subjective reactions to sensory impressions and lacking outlets for their qualities.
Well-balanced types have both judgment and perception well developed. Their problem is to use the right one at the right time. Like all the other judging types, ISTJ and ISFJ are more prone to use the judging attitude when perception would be more appropriate than to make the opposite mistake. Hence the question is: When should a judging type not use judgment? And the answer is: When dealing with other people.
Regardless of type, the proper use of judgment is on one’s own actions and problems. For use on other people, perception is fairer, kinder, and more productive.
Are alert to all the possibilities
Are original, individual, independent, but also extremely perceptive of the views of others
Are strong in initiative and creative impulse, but not so strong in completing projects
Have lives that are likely to be a succession of projects
Are stimulated by difficulties and most ingenious in solving them
Operate by impulsive energy rather than concentrated willpower
Are tireless at what interests them, but find it hard to get other things done
Hate routine
Value inspiration above everything else and follow it confidently into all manner of opportunities, enterprises, ventures and adventures, explorations, researches, mechanical inventions, promotions and projects
Are versatile, often startlingly clever, enthusiastic, easy with people, and full of ideas about everything under the sun
At their best, are gifted with insight amounting to wisdom and with the power to inspire
Extraverted intuitives are hard to describe because of their infinite variety. Their interest, enthusiasm, and energy pour suddenly into unforeseeable channels like a flash flood, sweeping everything along, overwhelming all obstacles, carving out a path which others will follow long after the force that made it has flowed on into other things.
The force that animates extraverted intuitives is not conscious willpower or even a planned purpose, as in the case of the judging types. It is a perceptive energy—an intuitive vision of some possibility in the external world, which they feel to be peculiarly their own because they “saw it first” in a very original and personal way. Aside from any practical consideration, they feel charged with a mission to realize that possibility. The possibility has an irresistible pull, an undeniable claim upon them. It becomes their master and in its service they may forget to eat or sleep. They cannot rest until they get the genie out of the bottle. As Jung says, “Emerging possibilities are compelling motives from which intuition cannot escape, and to which all else must be sacrificed” (1923, p. 464). However, once they get the genie out or even reach the point where everyone recognizes that it can be got out, it does not interest them anymore. The genie is no longer a possibility; it is a mere fact. Somebody else can take over from there.
To call this loss of interest fickle, as the judging types are apt to do, is to miss the point. The intuitives have an essential duty to perform in the world: They have to see to it that human inspirations are not wasted. They cannot tell in advance whether an inspiration is going to work out; they have to throw themselves into it, heart and soul—and see. When they have seen, they have to go on to new possibilities, armed with all they have learned from the old. The intuitives are as stubbornly loyal to their guiding principle, the inspiring possibility, as the sensing types are to the facts, or the feeling types to their hierarchy of values, or the thinkers to their thought out conclusions.
Thus intuitives’ lives tend to be a series of projects. If they are lucky enough to find their calling in a line of work that permits such a stream of projects, the successive enthusiasms build themselves into a coherent career. For writers, it may be a sequence of books, each presenting a different problem to be solved, written, and put on the shelf. For a person in business, it may be successive expansions of the business into new fields; for a salesperson, the conquest of new prospects; for a politician, a progression of campaigns for higher and higher offices; for a college professor, the renewed challenge of an entering class; and for a psychiatrist, the intricate mystery of each new patient’s mind.
If the intuitives’ pursuit of authentic inspirations is completely blocked, they will feel imprisoned, bored, and desperately discontent. These are external difficulties to which they are not likely to submit for long. Intuition will almost always find a way out.
There are, however, two internal dangers that are more serious. First, intuitives must not squander their energies. In a world full of possible projects, they must pick those that have potential value, either intrinsically or for the intuitives’ own development. Then, having started, they must not quit. They must persevere until they have established something—that the idea works or does not work, that they should or should not go on. It is not quitting if an intuitive woman writes one good mystery and stops because mystery writing is not what she wants to do the rest of her life; but it is quitting if she stops in the middle or finishes badly what she could finish well.
On both these counts, the choosing and the perseverance, intuitives need the stabilizing influence of well-developed thinking or feeling. Either can give them a standard for evaluating their inspirations and provide them with the strength of character and self-discipline for persevering through the duller stretches of work.
Intuitives without judgment do not finish things (this is particularly conspicuous because they start so many), are not stimulated by obstacles as the well-balanced intuitives are, and are unstable, undependable, easily discouraged, and, as many of them freely admit, do not do anything that they do not want to do.
Extraverted intuitives must, therefore, begin to develop their judgment as early as possible. The type can usually be recognized at a very early age. Van der Hoop notes that “children of this type are merry and full of the joy of life; but often extremely tiring. They are always thinking out something fresh, and their imagination continually suggests fresh possibilities. They have a finger in every pie, want to know everything…and at an early age want to be something special” (1939, p. 43). For example, they take far less interest in meeting basic school requirements than in doing something extra or out of the ordinary. For their own welfare, the spectacular and unexpected should not be accepted in lieu of the fundamentals.
Disciplining them is not easy, because they enjoy from the cradle a remarkable ability to get what they want from people. This gift is a combination of ingenuity, charm, and understanding the other person. It lets them proceed with great confidence. I once suggested to a three-year-old that his mother would probably spank him for what he was doing. “No,” he said serenely. “My mother doesn’t know the right things.”
In later life, that uncanny faculty of appraisal produces the teachers who can divine the unguessed potentials of a student, the psychologists who can accurately estimate an IQ on the basis of a brief interview, and the executives whose genius lies in their selection and use of subordinates.
Combined with compelling enthusiasm for their goals, this understanding of people may render the extraverted intuitives very effective leaders, able to persuade others of the worth of their own vision and to rally their support and cooperation.
ENTPs are somewhat more likely than ENFPs to take an executive direction. ENTPs tend to be independent, analytical, and impersonal in their relations with people, and they are more apt to consider how others may affect their projects than how their projects may affect others. They may be inventors, scientists, trouble-shooters, promoters, or almost anything that it interests them to be.
ENFPs are more enthusiastic than ENTPs and more concerned with people and skillful in handling them. ENFPs are drawn to counseling, where each new person presents a fresh problem to be solved and fresh possibilities to be communicated. They may be inspiring teachers, scientists, artists, advertising or salespeople, or almost anything they want to be.
Are driven by their inner vision of the possibilities
Are determined to the point of stubbornness
Are intensely individualistic, though this shows less in INFJs, who take more pains to harmonize their individualism with their environment
Are stimulated by difficulties, and most ingenious in solving them
Are willing to concede that the impossible takes a little longer—but not much
Are more interested in pioneering a new road than in anything to be found along the beaten path
Are motivated by inspiration, which they value above everything else and use confidently for their best achievements in any field they choose—science, engineering, invention, political or industrial empire-building, social reform, teaching, writing, psychology, philosophy, or religion
Are deeply discontented in a routine job that offers no scope for inspiration
Are gifted, at their best, with a fine insight into the deeper meanings of things and with a great deal of drive
As with all introverts, the outward personality of introverted intuitives is strongly influenced by their auxiliary process. For example, two of the most outstanding officer candidates in a Naval training unit were both introverted intuitives. The one whose auxiliary process was thinking (INTJ) was appointed battalion commander for three successive terms and made a crisp, efficient executive. The one whose auxiliary process was feeling (INFJ) was elected to the three highest offices the student body could bestow: president of student government, chairman of the executive committee, and president of his class. A woman who knew them both well summed up the contrast by saying that if both were aboard a ship that was torpedoed, the INTJ would be primarily interested in controlling the damage, but the INFJ’s primary concern would be the crew’s welfare. They agreed that she was right.
Among research scientists and design engineers, introverted intuitives stand at the top. INTJs are somewhat more likely than INFJs to be interested in scientific and technical matters, but when INFJs are interested, they appear to be just as good. In an academic setting, INFJs may be even better, probably because feeling is more eager to meet a teacher’s demands, whereas thinking is likely to criticize the way a course is conducted and refuse to bother with items it considers irrelevant.
Thinking or feeling judgment is vitally necessary, and introverted intuitives must develop it for themselves, because their utter conviction of their intuition’s validity makes them impervious to the influence of outside judgment. The importance to introverted intuitives of cultivating a judging process to balance and support their intuition cannot be overemphasized.
Their greatest gifts come directly from their intuition—the flashes of inspiration, the insight into relationships of ideas and meaning of symbols, the imagination, the originality, the access to resources of the unconscious, the ingenuity, and the visions of what could be. These are all inner gifts on the perceptive side. Without a developed auxiliary judging process, they will have little or no development of an outer personality and equally limited use of the gifts. However, a good judging process in support will shape the intuitive perceptions into conclusions or actions that will have a sound impact on the outer world.
Van der Hoop recognized this problem:
There is peculiar difficulty, where this inner knowledge is concerned, in finding even approximate expression for what is perceived. It is extremely important, therefore, for people of this type to attain through their education a technique of expression....
The development of this type is slower and more arduous than that of most other people.... Such children are not very amenable to influence from their environment. They may have periods of uncertainty and reserve, after which they suddenly become very determined, and if then they are opposed, they may manifest an astonishing self-will and obstinacy. As a result of the intensely spontaneous activity within, they are frequently moody, occasionally brilliant and original, then again reserved, stubborn and arrogant.
In later life, also, it is a persistent characteristic of people of this type, that while on the one hand they possess great determination, on the other hand they find it very difficult to express what they want. Although they may have only a vague feeling about the way they want to go, and of the meaning of their life, they will nevertheless reject with great stubbornness anything that does not fit in with this. They fear lest external influences or circumstances should drive them in a wrong direction, and they resist on principle. (1939, p. 48)
It follows that these people cannot be successfully coerced. They will not even be told anything without their permission, but they will accept an offer of facts, opinions, or theories, for free consideration; the excellence of their understanding must be trusted to recognize what is true.
INTJs are the most independent of all the sixteen types and take more or less conscious pride in that independence.
Whatever their field, they are likely to be innovators. In business, they are born reorganizers. Intuition gives them an iconoclastic imagination and an unhampered view of the possibilities; extraverted thinking supplies a keenly critical organizing faculty. “Whatever is, could doubtless be improved!” They are likely, however, to organize themselves out of a job. They cannot continually reorganize the same thing, and a finished product has no more interest. Thus, they need successive new assignments, with bigger and better problems, to stretch their powers.
With technical interests, they tend to be research scientists, inventors, and design engineers. They are likely to be very good at mathematics, especially problems, but not quite as adept at pure mathematical theory as INTPs. INTJs are fine at thinking things up, and definitely better at working things out than the INTPs. They can get things done, but they will be interested only when the problems involved are complicated enough to be challenging. Routine production would waste the intuition, and a purely theoretical research job would waste the extraverted thinking, which has a craving for practical applications of ideas.
Even when well-balanced, they have a tendency to ignore the views and feelings of other people. Use of the critical attitude in personal relations is a destructive luxury that can have a disintegrating effect upon their private lives. They would do well to make an effort to use their critical faculty on their impersonal problems and on themselves and to work for some development of appreciation (they need not call it feeling) to use on others.
INFJs naturally concern themselves with people, sometimes so much as to appear extraverted. It is actually the feeling process, not the individual, that is extraverted, although the very evident fellowship and harmony may appear to be the basis of their personalities.
The individualism of the INFJs is often less conspicuous, not because their inner vision is less clear and compelling, but because they care enough about harmony to try to win (rather than demand) acceptance of their purposes. By the time they have induced others to understand, approve, and cooperate toward a goal, they have fitted both the goal and themselves quite naturally into the community pattern.
They may also seem, especially to themselves, less original than the INTJs. When intuition is focused on people and their problems, it does not have as much opportunity to dwell on the unforeseen as scientific intuition does. A masterpiece of insight into human relations may not look original at all. It is so accurate that it looks obvious.
The visions of the INFJs tend to concern human welfare, and their contributions are likely to be made independent of a mass movement. Occasionally, the individual contribution starts a mass movement or a religion or a crusade.