Arthur Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Idea (1814), said that our will dominates our intellect. William James, in The Principles o f Psy chology (1890), and Leon Festinger, in A Theory o f Cognitive Dissonance (1957), followed suit, thus advising us that our values dominate our thoughts. Now this may or may not be true of Artisans, Guardians, and Rationals, but it is certainly true of Idealists. Let me put it this way: Idealists are more prone to wishful thinking or value judgment than the other types, and they make no bones about it. Indeed, they are glad to let their heart rule their head, telling all of us that this is the wise thing to do, for the heart, they believe, is the soul of humanity.
How different they are from the other temperaments. How different especially from their opposites, the Artisans. Where Artisans value excite ment (from without) Idealists value enthusiasm (from within); where Arti sans value their impulses, Idealists value their intuition; where Artisans value impact on others, Idealists value romance with others. And so it goes, Idealists valuing identity over stimulation, recognition over generosity, and the sage over the virtuoso.
Generally speaking, we can differ in our preferred being, in what we put our trust in, in what we yearn for, in what we seek, in what we prize, and in what we aspire to. It is perhaps in this, the domain of values, that the four types of personality display discernible patterns most clearly, far more clearly, certainly, than in domains such as the self-image or the forms of intelligence.
We are wise to pay attention to how the Idealists’ values differ from ours lest we be caught off guard in our natural assumption that they value what we do, and so question why they seem less calm or less authoritarian than we, or less reasonable or less impulsive than expected. To make these comparisons let us study the following chart:
Value Idealists Artisans Guardians Rationals
Being Enthusiastic Excited Concerned Calm
Trusting Intuition Impulse Authority Reason
Yearning Romance Impact Belonging Achievement
Seeking Identity Stimulation Security Knowledge Prizing Recognition Generosity Gratitude Deference
The Values o f Idealists 141
Being Enthusiastic
Idealists are highly emotional people, in the sense that their emotions are both easily aroused and quickly discharged. Fortunately, NFs tend to be positive types, and so their emotional intensity is usually expressed as unbounded enthusiasm. Particularly when discussing ideas, or sharing per sonal insights, their display of enthusiasm can be both delightful and conta gious, often making them inspiring figures in their groups. But this sort of exuberance also has a darker side. NFs, young or old, male or female, cannot shake off their intuitive understanding that existence is bittersweet, with defeat the other side of triumph—that, in the midst of happiness, sadness but awaits its turn.
Moreover, when frustrated in their idealism, or when treated unjustly, NFs can become quickly irritated—Galen, remember, called them “Choler ics”—and they will respond furiously, the fire of their enthusiasm suddenly flaring out in anger. Edith Wharton was well-known for her moods of light and dark. Not only did her friend and fellow-novelist Henry James tease her about her “ravaging, burning and destroying energy,” but her biographer R.W.B. Lewis notes the contradictions in her character:
Externally, she was a creature of gaiety, given to bursts of enthusiasm, to harmless vanities and constant physical activity. She also experienced chills of embarrassment and self-doubt. But all the time her inner life was burgeoning; beautiful objects made her senses race, and great poetry set her aglow. Almost by the same token, she was overcome at times by the mysterious and dreadful sadness of life. She took nothing calmly.
Trusting Intuition
While Rationals trust their reasoning powers, Idealists trust their intuitive powers, their feelings or first impressions about people, not needing to wait for a rationale, or even wanting one, for what they believe. The Rational’s logic is acceptable for some conclusions—so is the Guardian’s authority, by the way—but to be really sure, Idealists wait for their intuition to show them the way.
Perhaps Idealists trust their intuition about people so unreservedly be cause of their extraordinary ability to identify with others, to put themselves in the other’s place. As the saying goes, NFs will “crawl into another’s skin,” or they will “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” which means they will unconsciously take into themselves another’s desires and emo tions—or what they believe these to be. Such identification can be so close that Idealists will even find themselves beginning to talk or laugh or gesture like the other person. This mimicry is unconscious and usually unwanted by Idealists, but their ability to introject does give them the belief (rightly or wrongly) that they have accurate insight into others, that they know what’s going on inside the other person’s head and heart. NFs have to be particularly careful in this regard, because as much as they introject the
traits of others, they also tend to project their own attitudes onto those around them, investing others with their own idealistic view of life.
Yearning for Romance
The most important thing to remember about Idealists is this: one and all, they are incurable romantics. Each type has an abiding hunger, some restless longing that needs to be satisfied each and every day. Artisans hunger for social impact, Guardians for belonging, Rationals for achieve ment. Idealists are not without these other yearnings, but they have much less hold on them than their hunger for romance. Romance—in the sense of idealized love—is not something which NFs can take or leave; it is vital to their growth and happiness, a nourishment they cannot live without, just as its opposite, the uninspiring, commonplace relationship, is flat and stale and lifeless.
In all areas of life, Idealists are concerned not so much with practical realities as with meaningful possibilities, with romantic ideals. But partic ularly in their love relationships, NFs have a keen appetite for romance—if any type can be said to be “in love with love,” it is the NF. And yet, while they fall in love easily, Idealists have little interest in shallow or insignificant relationships. On the contrary, they want their relationships to be deep and meaningful, full of beauty, poetry, and sensitivity.
If their love life lacks this romance, Idealists have been known to romanticize their relationships, infusing them with a glow of perfection that can rarely be sustained in the harsher light of reality. All too often the NF falls into this pattern of romantic projection, accompanied by a consid erable investment of effort and emotion, ending in a painful disillusionment. Such disparity between what is and what might have been is the theme of countless novels and plays. Leo Tolstoy, an Idealist himself, describes in Anna Karenina a moment he had experienced in his own marriage:
Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not in the way he had expected. At every step he was disappointed in his former dreams....Levin was happy, but having embarked on married life, he saw at every step that it was not at all what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man experiences when, after admiring the smooth, happy motion of a boat on a lake, he finds himself sitting in it himself.
This kind of sobering reality check confronts Idealists sooner or later in all of their romantic relationships, and how they deal with it—whether they choose to develop what they have, or move on to other dreams—de termines to a great extent the course of their personal lives.
Seeking Identity
Idealists devote much of their time to pursuing their own identity, their personal meaning, what they signify—their true Self. It is not, mind you,
The Values of Idealists 143 that they are self-centered, self-serving, or selfish; they focus on the Self of others as surely as on their own. But whether their own or another’s, NFs are centered on the Self, concentrated on it, committed to it. And the Self upon which they focus is not the self that the other types think of when they use the word. To the SPs, SJs, and NTs, the word ‘self’ (when they bother to think about it) simply indicates their separateness from other people, or, at most, their individual actions or point of view. To the Idealists, however, Self has a capital “S” and is a special part of the person—a kind of personal essence or core of being, the vital seed of their nature, not unlike the Soul or Spirit of religious thought. NFs are passionate about finding this true Self, about becoming who they are, or self-actualized. Thus Gandhi wrote that “What I want to achieve—what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years,—is self-realization.” To be sure, NFs are so intent on self-realization that they may be called the “Identity Seeking Personality,” the type of person so often written about by humanistic psychologists. For instance, Carl Rogers, in his book, On Becoming a Person, describes the Idealist’s search for Self with remarkable insight:
Becoming a Person means that the individual moves toward being, know ingly and acceptingly, the process which he inwardly and actually is. He moves away from being what he is not, from being a facade. He is not trying to be more than he is, with the attendant feelings of insecurity or bombastic defensiveness. He is not trying to be less than he is, with the attendant feelings of guilt or self-depreciation. He is increasingly listening to the deepest recesses of his psychological and emotional being, and finds himself increasingly willing to be, with greater accuracy and depth, that self which he most truly is.
Idealists often dedicate their lives to this kind of self-realization—seeking to become realized, trying to get in touch with the person they were meant to be, and to have an identity which is truly theirs. “How can I become the person I really am?” they ask. And so, like Hermann Hesse’s character Siddhartha, they wander, sometimes intellectually, sometimes spiritually, sometimes physically, looking to actualize all their inborn possibilities, and so become completely themselves, even though the paths in search of identity are never clearly marked. As Siddhartha wonders,
But where was this Self, this innermost? It was not flesh and bone; it was not thought or consciousness. That was what the wise men taught. Where, then, was it? To press towards the Self—was there another way that was worth seeking? Nobody showed the way, nobody knew it—neither his father, nor the teachers and wise men, nor the holy songs....They knew a tremendous number of things—but was it worthwhile knowing all these things if they did not know the one important thing, the only important thing?
Idealists regard this search for identity as the most important enterprise in their lives, and with their gift for language they can be powerful advocates for it being a necessary pilgrimage for all people. Very often the other types, the SJs, NTs, and SPs, are troubled by the thought that they ought to be pursuing this goal, even if the search for Self does not beckon them. The reluctance of over ninety percent of humanity to join the search for self-actualization is a great source of mystification to the Idealists.
But even more mystifying is the paradox coiled at the very center of this search, namely, that the search for Self is fundamentally incompatible with the achievement of finding the Self. For many NFs the search for Self is a quest which becomes very much an end in itself, and which can come to dominate their lives. Thus, the Idealists’ truest Self comes to be the Self in search of itself, or, in other words, their purpose in life becomes to have a purpose in life. But how can one achieve a goal when that goal is to have a goal? Intent on becoming themselves, Idealists can never truly be them selves, since the very act of reaching for the Self immediately puts it out of reach. In their enthusiasm for self-discovery, then, Idealists can become trapped in paradox: they are themselves only if they are searching for themselves, and they would cease being themselves if they ever found themselves.
Late in his life Siddhartha tries to explain this contradiction between seeking and finding to his friend Govinda, a Buddhist monk who has spent his life searching for himself. It might be, Siddhartha tells him, that
‘you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot And.’ ‘How is that?’ asked Govinda.
‘When someone is seeking,’ said Siddhartha, ‘it happens quite easily...that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.’
The seeking impedes the finding; the search for identity is its own obstacle. Some Idealists no doubt reach Siddhartha’s perspective and find their true Self, which means that they finally give up struggling to become some perfected idea of themselves, and simply accept themselves as they are, somewhat short of ideal. But for many NFs, the search for identity only winds them more deeply in the complexities of inner division and self-contradiction: the more they seek their ideal Self, the more frustrated they are in their search.
Prizing Recognition
The way to the Idealists’ heart is to show them that we know their inner person, the Being behind the social role that must be played, behind the public mask that must be worn. In other words, to make them feel