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Capt. Picard Character Type (yes, mundane question)

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PRM

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Feb 10, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/10/98
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I have had some debate - and difficulty coming to grips with the
personality type of that much explored fictional character
your views are welcome.

peter....@s054.aone.net.au

Big Belly

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Feb 10, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/10/98
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PRM wrote:

> I have had some debate - and difficulty coming to grips with the
> personality type of that much explored fictional character
> your views are welcome.

One opinion I heard was ENTJ. Sounds right. I'd probably guess XNTJ,
or maybe eNTJ. Into order, a techie at heart, but also into managing
people, and a little single-minded, high-standards. Type-A personality,
but not obviously so, he's learned to temper it. A little restrained in
public. Likes intellectual stuff, has a good imagination, does his own
thing, according to his own instincts and sense of honor sometimes.
Yeah, I'd say ENTJ.

PRM

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Feb 11, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/11/98
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Doesn't he exhibit strong introverted tendencies.
He seems to draw his strength from private time.
I would have assumed a definite I character.

I thought about INTJ, but he's quite flexible, and
demonstrated no need for achievement. Although
we were told of his different personality as a youth!

Perhaps and INTP with a broken (con developed) J.

Although ENTJs apparently soften with age (after about 70 they're fairly
easy going!).

-Peter

Big Belly <bigb...@nospam.x.enteract.com> wrote in article
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Timothy Miller

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Feb 11, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/11/98
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My guess is ENTJ, but since the actor is not himself and ENTJ (or at
least not as a major element of his personality), his portrayal is not
very precise.

I have picked out a few other Trek character types that are particularly
obvious:

Data INTP
Neelix ESFJ
Troi INFJ
Spock ENTJ
Kirk ESTJ(ENFP) (in this case, the actor is actually the same type)


PRM (a...@fgd.vc) wrote:
: Doesn't he exhibit strong introverted tendencies.

: >
: >
: >

PRM

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98
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Kirk, I agree with, is an ESTJ, as is Riker.
Troi has the emotional intensity of an INFJ.

But FAIR DINKUM - Spock as an E. Is there such a thing as an extroverted
Vulcan?
His character is self powered, self contained, and introspective. I don't
see an
extroverted aspect at all, or any need to forcefully express himself in his
environment.

Neelix is spot on as an ESFJ -perfect!

Apart from the assumption that androids must be sensate, INTP seems
perfect again for Data.

I thought William Shatner was an ISFP - that seems to agree with what I
know
of his character.

La Forge - INTJ? (a soft one)

I was watching Star Trek last night I think you can say the following thing
about
his character.

1. He is intoverted, he is clearly a very private person. Importantly his
recreation time
is always private. If you think JLP is an extrovert - watch more Star
Trek.
2. He is extrordinarily ethical with a passionate commitment to the truth
(INTJ in this way).
3. He can act very INTP when it comes to private passions like archeology
(starts
to sound like Data).
4. He has nothing to prove - he is not a demonstrative character like
Riker or Kirk, and
he doesn't need to prove himself (INTJ) style, although he did in his
youth.
5. He doesn't externalise control or influence - I very much doubt he's an
ENTJ.
6. Now this is a curly - my ISFP girlfriend said - "he's nothing like you
(INTJ) look
how much attention he pays to people."

on that note...............

Peter.

Timothy Miller <tim@.techsource.com> wrote in article
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Timothy Miller

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98
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PRM (a...@fgd.vc) wrote:
:
: Kirk, I agree with, is an ESTJ, as is Riker.

: Troi has the emotional intensity of an INFJ.
:
: But FAIR DINKUM - Spock as an E. Is there such a thing as an extroverted
: Vulcan?
: His character is self powered, self contained, and introspective. I don't
: see an
: extroverted aspect at all, or any need to forcefully express himself in his
: environment.

He's a strong, confident leader who focuses more on his logic than his
intuitive ability to deal with abstract ideas. Spock is to us the example
of a Vulcan, and basically he defines it. He's a fictional character that
represents to us an alien race that thinks in a certain way, and that
archetype is ENTJ. He's definately NT, and he's definately J, but he's
NOT an INTJ, so I would infer ENTJ. Sure, it's not perfect... it's a
fictional character.

However, I think I would peg Tuvok as being an ISTJ. Yes, an intuitive
one, but definately a strong ISTJ character. Lots of sarcasm and distaste
for anyone who doesn't think in his pragmatic way.

:
: Neelix is spot on as an ESFJ -perfect!


:
: Apart from the assumption that androids must be sensate, INTP seems
: perfect again for Data.
:
: I thought William Shatner was an ISFP - that seems to agree with what I
: know
: of his character.

No way... I can recognize ESTJ/ENFP types on sight. I know four of them
personally, and a light goes off in my head when I see William Shatner or
Raymond Burr (Perry Mason). There are certain ESTJ mannerisms that you
just CANNOT fake.

Have you ever read a novel written by Shatner? The style is so thickly
ENFP that you can cut it with a knife, and he projects ENFP traits and
insights onto his characters.

:
: La Forge - INTJ? (a soft one)

Possibly...

:
: I was watching Star Trek last night I think you can say the following thing


: about
: his character.
:
: 1. He is intoverted, he is clearly a very private person. Importantly his
: recreation time
: is always private. If you think JLP is an extrovert - watch more Star
: Trek.
: 2. He is extrordinarily ethical with a passionate commitment to the truth
: (INTJ in this way).

Doesn't that sound a bit INFP?

: 3. He can act very INTP when it comes to private passions like archeology


: (starts
: to sound like Data).

But INTJ and INTP are VERY different.

: 4. He has nothing to prove - he is not a demonstrative character like


: Riker or Kirk, and
: he doesn't need to prove himself (INTJ) style, although he did in his
: youth.

Yeah, I guess INTJ's tend to have the attitude that since they understand
everything, they don't have to prove it to anyone else. :)

: 5. He doesn't externalise control or influence - I very much doubt he's an
: ENTJ.

Well, for him to be INTJ, he would have to have SOME Te behaviors.

: 6. Now this is a curly - my ISFP girlfriend said - "he's nothing like you


: (INTJ) look
: how much attention he pays to people."

INTJ's are also ISFP's, generally speaking.

PRM

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Feb 13, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/13/98
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No I didn't have any hypothesis I wanted to prove!
I simply wanted to raise the different factors which
confuse the issue. As if I wasn't already confused
enough as they are fictional to begin with.

I agree, I don't think Picard is INTJ, who knows.
Spock in Next Gen era does indeed appear ENTJ like.
Whereas in TOS he is more ISTJ - there is one particular
episode where he stuffs up his command by failing to
take into account human emotions and redeems
himself by acting iNtuitvely. Which is really crossed
moralising (imagine implying that emotional behaviour
was ethically superior - bleech).

Later on in TOS I do think he becomes INTJ - always
spouting on about the superiority of Vulcan logic,
demonstrating his superior powers by showing off
(i.e. the odds are 464664.949 to 1).

So I see a progession in his character from ISTJ to INTJ to ENTJ (these are
not real people
so the rational basis for this is irrelevant). Spock's father, Surak
appeared to clearly be ENTJ.
Much more control and influence focused.

Your thoughts?

Peter


Timothy Miller <tim@.techsource.com> wrote in article

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Tom Sawyer

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Feb 14, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/14/98
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In article <01bd35d7$7eadc4c0$28bb...@ca114265.au.eyi.com>, "PRM"
<a...@fgd.vc> wrote:

> I have had some debate - and difficulty coming to grips with the
> personality type of that much explored fictional character
> your views are welcome.
>

> peter....@s054.aone.net.au

Hello, Peter.

Picard is a great character because he represents such a rare, noble bird
in our culture. America is virtually unable to produce a Picard in the
flesh, which does much to explain the trouble you are having in
identifying his subspecies. There are too few walking around to provide
adequate sample data, sort of like Bigfoot, if you will. How, by analogy,
would you go about nailing Bigfoot's personality type? How many have YOU
played poker with? (I'll trust the data from a poker game over
Myers-Briggs any day) But there is a straight answer to your question, and
there are data sources available to allow you to cross-check the grounds
and accuracy of this answer.

The personality type you are looking for is the Explorer, or Enneagram
Type Seven, at the topmost level of ego development. The fully developed
ego begins to feel that ego issues are resolved well enough that it stops
monitoring and reinforcing itself. Ego issues feel irrelevant all of a
sudden, and a world much larger than oneself opens itself up to one's
relatively cleared mental environment. This is a big step from a lifetime
context of swashbuckling anxiety, searching the world intensely and
hacking unsatisfying things to bits without a clear idea why. Suddenly
there is room in one's heart and one's life for more significant pursuits
in the name of better things than self-preservation, aggrandisement,
thrills, and self-righteous brawling. There is the opportunity to prevent
others from making the same gullible errors one has made in life's
travels, and of preventing the suffering one has known from being
experienced by others. This state only occurs as the result of not only
surviving a huge range of "unsurviveable" circumstances, but surviving
them with a clean conscience, making a deep self-confidence really
unavoidable.

A "Picard" is an Explorer who (miraculously) never strayed from
conscience, even in battle situations that required him/her to accept an
extraordinary likelihood of death in order to avoid playing any part in
activities that seemed wrong. "Battle" may be a metaphor for office
politics, here on the streets. That's why I love Next Generation. The
metaphors focus on significant stuff, and the characters are refreshingly
mature, yet true-to-life, accessible, and similar to us.

Picard is not rare because he is an Explorer. There are millions of
Explorers. What makes Picard rare is his level of maturity as an
Explorer. Life simply offers too many attractive distractions and shallow
dalliances for most Explorers to get beyond their egos to move toward
anything significant--EVER. Many Explorers simply drink or drug
themselves to death like the late Explorer comedian Chris Farley and his
earlier Explorer counterpart John Belushi. Picard no doubt had his own
Farley period in his young buck years, and probably earned a hell of a lot
of pain and disruption from it. He shared the dead comedian's passionate
need to fill an unidentified Void. Explorers rush into the void, looking
for its core, seeking the elusive button that's supposed to turn the void
off. This void starts with a loss of faith in the nurturing figures
considered most significant to the Explorer. Nurturing figures include
social authorities of one's own sex as well as opposite-sex relatives and
potential lovers. In each case, the nurturing figure has relatively easy
ability to render sacred support or profane betrayal, and one's experience
with these figures will affect the witness's perception of God. A void
can really suck. Yet you can choose the direction in which it will suck
you. Picard steered just enough so that the void sucked him forward
through a worthy career. In the end, you can tell by his occasional cagey
expressions that Picard believes in God again, and keeps his evidence to
himself because it stands no chance of being believeable or useful to
others. Chris Farley made the mistake of letting go of the wheel entirely
and just letting the void suck him around in frustrated circles until he
anesthetized himself to death to escape all that anxiety. Farley was
never able to choose the general basis for a direction in his velocity
because he apparently never slowed down long enough to notice that certain
pursuits feel significant and sacred enough to be a great temporary
substitute for nurturance from others. From that comes the basis for a
chosen road. But we have to sit still for awhile and force the
overstimulating white noise of our thoughts to take a break--so that the
outragious spam of our self-dialogue no longer drowns out our core
desires, values and purposes. Underneath a whirlwind of Inner Spam, our
consistent sacred values whisper quietly all the while. Somehow, Picard
found himself in the position to hear the whisper without the noise, and
our dead friends didn't. Internally-centered Explorers eventually develop
a palpable nobility and trustworthiness, as in the cases of Winston
Churchill and the historical "Schindler" who inspired Schindler's List,
Raoul Wallenberg. Externally-centered Explorers just create a lot of
wreckage with a desperately boisterous "happy" flare. Devil-may-care
characters are haunted by the need to respond somehow to a feeling of
certainty that their social environment is uncaring to deadly lengths.
You will only see nobility very infrequently among these folk, and ONLY
when they slow down and focus with care. There's Farley, Belushi, Evil
Kneivel, Sean Connery (a potential tragedy or triumph, depending on
booze), Jim Morrison, and Lancelot during his youngest years of violently
orphaned, emotionally wounded, berserk, aimless butchery. A void can
really suck. Good thing for Lancelot somebody turned him on to the search
for a convenient symbol of a sacred internal light. The grail gag
worked. That was great. The result: A Lancelot who discovered himself
by mistake and found his path to well-founded nobility. I would expect a
similar history in the life of Captain Picard.

I promised reference sources to do the cross-checking you might want to do
on Picard. Do an AltaVista search on the word: Enneagram. Several sites
offer decent material on this system. The Type Seven is the one to
watch. Most descriptions of the Seven focus on the less mature qualities
because most living examples of the Seven tend to cling to immaturity.
America is kind of a shallowness factory, it seems, with little else to
teach or sell, so the descriptions of the average to unhealthy Sevens will
remind you most vividly of people you grew up with or grew out of.

The Worldwide Enneagram Institute site is staffed and lurked by Don
Richard Riso, one of the longest students of the the system on the
continent. Buy his book, *Personality Types*. On page 294 you will see a
profile of "The Seven with an Eight wing: The Realist." This is paydirt
for Picard-watchers; it shows the mature levels in full detail.

I will be mounting my own website within the week, which will deal with
the Enneagram types. Gradually, this will expand to include useful tools
to help members of each type to find better relationships, occupations,
hobbies and political roles from the living room. The key is to make the
most of one's brightest hidden internal tools, in the environments most
open to one's offerings. Keep running the "Enneagram" keyword at
AltaVista periodically, and my site will turn up soon enough. I'll call
it "The Free Download Sex Fast New Easy Home Business Beauty Contest
Investment Institute of Christ's Top Ten Singles," just for that warm,
spammy feeling when I think about search engines. If I make it bad
enough, they might think it's *art* in Seattle. I'll dress badly, pretend
I'm a rebel, and make millions or something. Damn, look at Andy Warhol
and that stupid friggin' soup can.

Thanks for the excuse to wiz away some time and wind down from the week's
labors.

Tom Sawyer
djb...@whidbey.net

Eliot Wiseman

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Feb 18, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/18/98
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Let's make it simple.
Patrick Steward is an ENFP.

Timothy Miller

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Feb 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/19/98
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Eliot Wiseman (ewis...@worldnet.att.net) wrote:
: Let's make it simple.

: Patrick Steward is an ENFP.

Are you sure?


PRM

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Feb 20, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/20/98
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I just haven't found a clear view here of JLP!
He is a fictional character but a extremely
powerful personality. I thibk it is necessary
to assume that he has broken many of his
personality limitations so that , for example,
when exercising command he comes
across as an ENTJ. He may well be P, but
has development J like skills to fulfil the
demands of a command role.

That's why I think it is a true test of typing.


-Peter

Timothy Miller <tim@.techsource.com> wrote in article

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