Ten-Finger Exercises

Snobbery

A patient I saw last week who is very ill made a funny comment. When the social worker remarked on the pretty print flannel sheets on her bed, she said, "I've become a sheet snob." She only buys her sheets from a particular television show. This woman is definitely not a person of means, but she obviously considers the place she now spends all her time to be worth decking out comfortably and attractively. Three cheers for her!

I thought of her today in the context of snobbery, because I was thinking of my own forms. I'm an intellectual snob. No, I'm not an intellectual, so maybe that's the wrong word. Intelligence may be better. I grew up with a prejudice for smarties and against dummies. I'm not proud of it, and I have learned to grow beyond it most of the time. Like all prejudice, sometimes it grabs me, and I am appalled at my own attitude. More often I'm aware of the different ways there are to be smart. For instance, I thought the woman I mentioned above to be quite clever.

The supply priest who was here Sunday is a very intelligent man, and I enjoy him. (Last year he came to a dinner party where he was an unknown, and he introduced himself as a "card-carrying liberal." The host didn't miss a beat. He smiled back and said, "Well then, we'll just have to shoot you.") He thinks interesting thoughts, ponders the unponderable.
In terms of Jungian typology, he is definitely a P rather than a J.

(This will be a very simplistic description of Jung's typology. Even though I'm very familiar with it, I haven't studied it for a long time.)

Carl Jung suggested that people have certain preferences that define aspects of their personality. He describes them in pairs. The first pair is Introvert or Extrovert, I or E.

An introvert is one who thinks best within himself, gets something all figured out, and then writes or talks about it. Being in the company of others is draining. He needs some space and solitude.

An extrovert, on the other hand, thinks best when talking to others. The interplay of his thoughts and those of others is stimulating and exciting, and it gives him energy.

The next pair is Intuitive or Sensing, N or S. Where does a person prefer to get her information about a place or situation she finds herself in? Through her senses or her intuition? Does she like to analyze the data, or get a feel for it? Is she more interested in how things are, or how they could become? (This is the most difficult pair for me to conceptualize.)

The third pair is Thinking or Feeling, T or F. How does he process the information he receives from the world, through thinking about it or how it makes him feel? (I get this a little confused with Intuitive.) Is he more drawn to the rational or the emotional?

The fourth pair is Judging or Perceiving, J or P. These words are not very good descriptions of the concepts here. A person whose preference is J is more concerned about the end result, the final conclusion, the goal. One who operates more out of the P part of his nature is concerned more about the journey, the content, the experience.

I will write more about this tomorrow. The book by Kearsey and Bates, Please Understand Me, was extremely influential in my life.

To connect this up a little with where I began this blog, the supply priest is definitely an extrovert, who thought things through while talking. He is also a P, one who doesn't keep track of time well, or pay as much attention to the beginnings and endings of things as he does to the middles.

Judging people, the J's, are the ones you want in charge to organize things and get them rolling, and to get them finished well and on time. J's have a certain snobbery to them: they tend to think people are better if they're early instead of late, if they're efficient, etc. I can't blame them. Those are such commendable traits. Unfortunately, they aren't mine. I'm a P, through and through. And Sunday I was having to use my lame J side to get things going right.

In case you want to read more about this, I've listed a short test and a few other resources below.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
http://www.advisorteam.com/temperament_sorter/register.asp?partid=1
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Jung/typology.html
http://www.friesian.com/types.htm