Why INTJs and INFJs Are Drawn to Religion

[00:00:00]I wanted to share some thoughts regarding INFJs and religion and INTJs and religion.

[00:00:07]Um, you might say I and I dominant religion cuz it's it's actually not that uh common that an NI dominant is completely indifferent to religious matters.

[00:00:19]And this deserves to be emphasized because um a lot of people [snorts] in our everyday life, what we might call normies, meaning is in a very kind-hearted way, um just are indifferent, you know? They're they neither practice a lot nor spend much time thinking whether they believe or not, you know, they just lead their life.

[00:00:42]Uh, someone who is deeply religious might describe them or experience them as atheists in practice, but they might not even conceive of themselves as atheists.

[00:00:55]But, in this um quite common notion of normie indifference, um there is not a lot of NI dominants, I think.

[00:01:06]It seems to me that the way that NI dominants relate to religion is quite a fascinating topic. It's quite a complicated topic. There's obviously different strands, different ways.

[00:01:17]Interacts a lot also with their cultural backgrounds, where they come from.

[00:01:23]Um, and it produces just uh quite quite interesting blends, blends that are worth exploring.

[00:01:32]Okay? Um, one particular trend that I have noticed now for many years is the trend of the radical religi- religious NI dominant.

[00:01:45]Uh, and by radical religious NI dominant, that means means something like um the religious position is not allowed to be soft, to be conciliatory, and to be pluralistic. It's almost like that this particular, you know, kind of an I dominant perceives this approach to religion as weak, perhaps shallow, perhaps pointless or meaningless.

[00:02:15]And that there is a need for the, you know, if there is a form of religious commitment, it has to have a kind of absoluteness to it.

[00:02:27]Uh I think absolute commitment and absolute set of beliefs is is more accurate in fact than radical. But there is this trend, you know, and I've seen this particularly in Christian and I dominance, sometimes converts, you know, maybe from atheism to Christianity.

[00:02:48]I've seen it also a little bit among Muslim and I dominance.

[00:02:52]Not as much perhaps, but I have seen it, too.

[00:02:55]Um and that, you know, I have a psychoanalytic interpretation for this, all right? And I'm going to share it with you in a second. Let me just mention that my book on NI, which is really the distillation of my latest thinking on personality types, because it talks about more than NI, but NI is the voice it speaks from, is the future, depth psychology of introverted intuition, a 250-page bible on NI. It's linked below, guys.

[00:03:20]It's I'm very proud of this book. It's my best book. I really believe that. I recommend you check it out if you want to the deepest understanding of this wonderful function and of the personalities. Okay?

[00:03:31]Uh there's also a link to my Patreon, guys. It's down below. Consider joining my Patreon if you like access to deep dive videos every one or two weeks, which are like longer format versions of what I discuss here. So, like as well as access to our Discord. There's also another tier where you can do a psychoanalysis with me. I'll let you check it out. It's linked below, and I benefit from that massively to be able to continue the work.

[00:03:52]There's also a link to my websites, which is linked I'll link it in the comments. Check out my website, you can learn more about my background, my credentials, and book a consultation with me. We'll have a conversation and we'll see where that leads. All right, so what is my psychoanalytic interpretation? Well, I think that the commitment to absolute belief and absolute religion in a way, uh which is not open to compromise, tends to be quite radical. It tends to be quite I would describe it as reactionary in terms of what it involves at the social level, right? Um regarding minority rights, regarding women's rights, regarding gender roles, and all that all the rest of it.

[00:04:35]Um but the this commitment uh the NI dominance is not actually that interested They espouse this for those who do. We're we're we're talking about a minority, but there are there are those that do and um what I would say is that there is the NI dominance sees in this sees in this in this religious position a way to reconcile their ego ideal with global repair.

[00:05:09]You know that this is a point that I make in this future, but I've also made it in many videos uh in the past in the recent past.

[00:05:18]When your ideal is one of global repair, you do two things. In the first place, you set yourself up as a functioning person as against the background of early misunderstandings in childhood.

[00:05:32]So, it's almost like um a protective defensive positioning.

[00:05:37]Global repair.

[00:05:40]Later in life, it becomes an issue because global repair is not an adaptive ideal for any person because it's a too ambitious because it's it's vastly too grandiose.

[00:05:52]Right?

[00:05:53]Um so the NI dominance in a from a historical point of view which you would rarely you would be introduced to rarely in in videos of this kind, a historical point of view, a dynamic point of view, the NI dominance sooner or later, you know, in their early adult adulthood or maybe sometimes in their 30s, but rarely later than this unless they're very immature, which is rarely the case, at least very immature.

[00:06:19]Um they're going to have to face some they're going to have to make a decision. They have They're going to have to face different choices.

[00:06:27]Do I persist with my ideal of global repair, my inflated ideal, or do I in essence individuate?

[00:06:38]Tame my ideal and through the same process tame my superego.

[00:06:43]Learn to value the local. Local healing, local repair. All right, I'll talk about this in the future a great deal. That's why it's called a suture. You start with a suture.

[00:06:53]Then perhaps you can heal more than that. It starts with a suture, which is the suture in your own NI self, in fact.

[00:07:00]For those who read the suture, you know why this is the case.

[00:07:03]So the NI dominant can defensively decide that they are not willing to let go of their NI ideal of global repair because there is a side of it that will always remain, even though it becomes more and more illusory, deeply protective. From an affective point of view, those early affects of childhood are still very very resonant in the self.

[00:07:26]And so some of them will refuse to let go of that ideal of global repair.

[00:07:33]One way of preserving it and giving oneself the sense that they can preserve it while not having to come to the conclusion that they are completely incapable of meeting those expectations.

[00:07:49]Which is the fate of a lot of solipsists, you know?

[00:07:52]Um they they refuse to let go of their ideal.

[00:07:57]And they act as if things are still going to operate as normal, even though reality is showing them more and more that they're not measuring up to that ideal. And that's not to be um that's to be expected. That's not to be surprising because that ideal was just too inflated to start with.

[00:08:17]They're withdrawn. Why are they withdrawn? They're withdrawn on face value because they don't want to hang out with other people. Think of that typical INTJ that you hear about. And some are a bit like that.

[00:08:31]Underneath that, analytically speaking, every person past a certain age becomes a reminder of the distance that we separates them from their ideal. And that is unbearable. That's why solipsism becomes an option. Solipsism is far more defensive than it appears.

[00:08:49]With religion, it becomes possible to continue holding on to global repair as an ideal, global healing, global transformation through belief in God and the if you like outsourcing the task to God.

[00:09:07]So, you're having a mediator and a an all powerful mediator to facilitate the vision of global repair. And then the task that becomes you know, um the task that behooves the Ni dominant INFJ or INTJ is to believe with all their might, is to practice with all their might, and to do that in the most absolute way possible.

[00:09:30]Again, in the notion of an absolute, you have very much the notion of a refusal to abandon the idea of whole of globality and the disgust the disgust and the idea that there's something repellent about the local.

[00:09:45]And interestingly that can happen with solipsist as I've just said, but it can also happen with compliance.

[00:09:53]Because the compliance is also in a way someone who refuses to let go of their ideal. On the face of it their ideal is very meek. It's almost invisible.

[00:10:01]They spend their time complying with others eagerly anticipating what others might want and sort of dissolving their self in the collective.

[00:10:10]But that is only a mask and underneath that there is the self that remains inflated with that high ideal and you can have examples of compliance that also embrace that this absolutism. It will just be um manifest differently. Of course with the solipsist they'll tend to be more individualistic about it. With the compliance maybe they'll be a bit more collectivistic about it. Particularly when it comes to pointing out those that do not fit uh that particular vision. Those that do not believe the particular faith that the anti-dominant has selected.

[00:10:42]So it could be something as basic as absolutist anti-dominant Christian saying everyone else going to hell.

[00:10:49]Absolutist anti-dominant Muslim saying everyone else is going to hell possibly brutally and being able to hold this view as compatible with the notion of repair because the global the repair is global.

[00:11:01]Since the repair is global there is no moment when the anti-dominant stops to see what this might do in terms of horrible consequences to each and every individual person. So the repair becomes impersonal. Whereas the key is in many ways to bring it back to the personal.

[00:11:17]I could have said more on this topic of religion, but this has been going on for a while. So I might pursue this thought in the future video. In the meantime give me a like guys cuz it helps a lot with referencing. Appreciate your time and talk to you soon.