In the Grip
While I was hanging around in the Student Development office on Friday, I happened to notice that their lending library included Quenk's Beside Ourselves. Naturally, I pounced upon this book with an enthusiasm usually only seen in starving tigers.
The book is basically an expanded description of the concept that under stress, a person will fall into a negative form of their inferior function. You see this concept touched on in a number of type profiles out there, but often they don't go into any great detail about how or why this thing manifests -- for example, it's commonly mentioned that because INTPs have inferior Fe, they have a tendency to atypical emotional outbursts.
This is, as a broad description, true. (Dear gods, says the INTP, it is hideously, embarrassingly, flagrantly true.) But it rather lacks in regard to the details. There's actually a specific pattern to the emotional outbursts that we tend to have that is distinct from how, for instance, extroverted thinkers tend to crack up, and this can be discerned based on the subtle characteristics of the function we're having the FAIL with.
So let's look at my ever-so-favorite function, Extraverted Feeling: CognitiveProcesses describes it as being basically concerned with connecting to other people. Quenk goes on to describe the positive use of Fe as including the qualities of "comfortable inattention to logic", "sensitivity to the welfare of others", and "sharing of emotions". When used negatively, the qualities of Fe are "logic emphasized to an extreme", "hypersensitivity to relationships", and "emotionalism".
What are the implications of this? In contrast to people who are naturally good users of Fe (and indeed, in contrast to their own good use of Fe), stressed INTPs are characterized by clear but narrow and subtly warped logic, a tendency to interpret subtle cues as signs of rejection, and a loss of control over emotional expression. From my experience, this is startlingly correct -- in fact, several of the phrases that Quenk uses to describe the situation are things that I've said about myself before learning about this phenomenon.
Of these three manifestations, "loss of control over emotional expression" is the one that I'm most familiar with -- it's been a theme with me since childhood. I'd probably describe it as "loss of control over emotions and/or their expression", because for me this concept has two different modes: I can be distraught in a way that is massively disproportionate to the situation (and often may not show clear signs of this), or I can appear so emotionally unhinged that I'm unable to speak (yet my internal state is not significantly disrupted). This is a source of immense frustration for me, as it amounts to something resembling Cassandra's curse regarding my experience of Feeling -- I can speak with considerable accuracy on matters of significant importance to me, but will not be taken seriously.
Regarding the matter of "sensitivity to relationships", I am somewhat unclear as to whether my experience of it stems from my nature as an INTP or from childhood schemas that ultimately have their cause in... huzzah, having once been a young INTP! Chickens, eggs, it doesn't really matter -- the experience exists. The part of it that may be more "schema" is that I fear being called to account for missing signs of disinterest that I should have picked up on . But it's also true that because I am for better or (mostly) worse a Fe-user, I do form strong emotional attachments to those few people in my life -- which, with negative use of Fe, seems likely to be perceived as disproportionate and inviting of rejection.
Which brings me to the matter that I have a hard time separating from the above -- "twisted logic". "It makes no sense," says Mind, "to have a strong emotional attachment to this person, this place, or this object." To which the truly rational response would be "Congratulations, Mind! You successfully identify 'emotion'!" Not so much in the case of negative mode -- what comes from there is something more like "And therefore, I am clearly erroneous, acting improperly, or defective for persisting in having said emotional attachment despite the (irrationally rational) reasons why not to."
One thing that Quenk doesn't describe explicitly very well is how these states get triggered -- she mentions the classic generic things like "stress", "fatigue", and "illness". These are true -- I'd also add "that one damn day a month" to the list, but that's something of a technicality. Although she does mention type-specific triggering events, she doesn't explicitly explain how she comes by them. As far as I can see, based on what she mentions and from my own experience, the "triggering events" seem to be when the inferior function is called on either from external (for me, being around someone who is experiencing strong emotion) or internal (for me, experiencing strong attachment to a person, place or thing) sources, and where the person fails or intentionally neglects to engage the positive expression of the inferior function.
That, and also "reading a book about the phenomenon". Still, despite the complete and utter trampling of me that resulted, I think this is a thoroughly useful book and I'm about inclined to hand a copy of the "INTP" section and a sign language quick reference to everyone I deal with on a personal level.
The book is basically an expanded description of the concept that under stress, a person will fall into a negative form of their inferior function. You see this concept touched on in a number of type profiles out there, but often they don't go into any great detail about how or why this thing manifests -- for example, it's commonly mentioned that because INTPs have inferior Fe, they have a tendency to atypical emotional outbursts.
This is, as a broad description, true. (Dear gods, says the INTP, it is hideously, embarrassingly, flagrantly true.) But it rather lacks in regard to the details. There's actually a specific pattern to the emotional outbursts that we tend to have that is distinct from how, for instance, extroverted thinkers tend to crack up, and this can be discerned based on the subtle characteristics of the function we're having the FAIL with.
So let's look at my ever-so-favorite function, Extraverted Feeling: CognitiveProcesses describes it as being basically concerned with connecting to other people. Quenk goes on to describe the positive use of Fe as including the qualities of "comfortable inattention to logic", "sensitivity to the welfare of others", and "sharing of emotions". When used negatively, the qualities of Fe are "logic emphasized to an extreme", "hypersensitivity to relationships", and "emotionalism".
What are the implications of this? In contrast to people who are naturally good users of Fe (and indeed, in contrast to their own good use of Fe), stressed INTPs are characterized by clear but narrow and subtly warped logic, a tendency to interpret subtle cues as signs of rejection, and a loss of control over emotional expression. From my experience, this is startlingly correct -- in fact, several of the phrases that Quenk uses to describe the situation are things that I've said about myself before learning about this phenomenon.
Of these three manifestations, "loss of control over emotional expression" is the one that I'm most familiar with -- it's been a theme with me since childhood. I'd probably describe it as "loss of control over emotions and/or their expression", because for me this concept has two different modes: I can be distraught in a way that is massively disproportionate to the situation (and often may not show clear signs of this), or I can appear so emotionally unhinged that I'm unable to speak (yet my internal state is not significantly disrupted). This is a source of immense frustration for me, as it amounts to something resembling Cassandra's curse regarding my experience of Feeling -- I can speak with considerable accuracy on matters of significant importance to me, but will not be taken seriously.
Regarding the matter of "sensitivity to relationships", I am somewhat unclear as to whether my experience of it stems from my nature as an INTP or from childhood schemas that ultimately have their cause in... huzzah, having once been a young INTP! Chickens, eggs, it doesn't really matter -- the experience exists. The part of it that may be more "schema" is that I fear being called to account for missing signs of disinterest that I should have picked up on . But it's also true that because I am for better or (mostly) worse a Fe-user, I do form strong emotional attachments to those few people in my life -- which, with negative use of Fe, seems likely to be perceived as disproportionate and inviting of rejection.
Which brings me to the matter that I have a hard time separating from the above -- "twisted logic". "It makes no sense," says Mind, "to have a strong emotional attachment to this person, this place, or this object." To which the truly rational response would be "Congratulations, Mind! You successfully identify 'emotion'!" Not so much in the case of negative mode -- what comes from there is something more like "And therefore, I am clearly erroneous, acting improperly, or defective for persisting in having said emotional attachment despite the (irrationally rational) reasons why not to."
One thing that Quenk doesn't describe explicitly very well is how these states get triggered -- she mentions the classic generic things like "stress", "fatigue", and "illness". These are true -- I'd also add "that one damn day a month" to the list, but that's something of a technicality. Although she does mention type-specific triggering events, she doesn't explicitly explain how she comes by them. As far as I can see, based on what she mentions and from my own experience, the "triggering events" seem to be when the inferior function is called on either from external (for me, being around someone who is experiencing strong emotion) or internal (for me, experiencing strong attachment to a person, place or thing) sources, and where the person fails or intentionally neglects to engage the positive expression of the inferior function.
That, and also "reading a book about the phenomenon". Still, despite the complete and utter trampling of me that resulted, I think this is a thoroughly useful book and I'm about inclined to hand a copy of the "INTP" section and a sign language quick reference to everyone I deal with on a personal level.