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Life As a Male ENFP

MBTI Criticised and Demystified

As much critique and disapproval the MBTI test has gotten by psychologists and the general cognitive science community, it still definitely tells somewhat the patterns of how we react to conflict, joy, relationships, certain types of careers, etc. The key words in the MBTI nomenclature are cognitive functions. One of the reasons to why the MBTI has been criticised so much is, among other, is because of the difficulty of classifying individuals strictly into categories and the extent to which a subject can be one or the other. The reason why that is assumed mostly, is because the fact that we all have 8 cognitive functions is ignored when reading about this test. What that means is that we all use all cognitive functions in Jung's theory of archetypes. The thing is that we all also, prefer 4 out of the 8.

Four dimensions of MBTI
Four dimensions of MBTI

The ENFP and Functions

The ENFP also known as The Champion, the Campaigner or as we in the ENFP group on Facebook call ourselves: the Unicorns, as we like to wear bright colours and flashy shiny stuff. The functions the ENFP prefers to use are the following:

Ne - Extraverted Intuition

This cognitive function is our primary function, which makes us good at brainstorming, envisioning ideas, abstract thinking, seeing the big picture and being creative. It also makes us be able to see multiple perspectives at a time, often making us contradict ourselves in debates, it's what makes us us. It's what makes us like to envision long term ideas but suck at short term planning and basically just using the pressure of deadlines to get homework, studying, etc done. This makes us always look towards what could be and not really give a sh*t about what actually is. It's what makes us idealists. It's what makes us balance out the world of Sensors.

What makes it weird, difficult, interesting to be a male, according to this cognitive function? From my experience it's the fact that Ne requires sensitivity to the abstract. Modern society teaches us that the stereotypical male is more of a "thing" -person and less of a "person"- person. Males are traditionally seen as the ones that focus on cars, video games (the remote is tangible), among other things that are tangible. As an ENFP male, I must say, I surprise some people when I feel like talking about philosophy and not football.

Abstract, depth, big picture, imagine, dream.
Abstract, depth, big picture, imagine, dream.

Fi -Introverted Feeling

This is our crutch, our primary functions companion. Whatever new brilliant idea Ne comes up with while in a daydream, the Fi has to evaluate and consult to its "constitution" to see if the idea can pass in its parliament and carry through to putting into practise. This is where our values form. These values aren't what we consider ego, because deep down, we don't want to boss people around with that our values are the only valuable ones but that we want to keep our values to leave something good, something loving, a seed of hope for this world. This is why we have mood swings, this is why we'll come in swinging when something is said against our values. Introverted Feeling is why we're the most introverted extraverts, for we need our very valuable alone time. This is why we need purpose, a real, bigger purpose in everything we do. This is why we feel misunderstood many times. This is why we protect our friends, family and lovers to the end.

It's more obvious why it's difficult to see why this function is somewhat weird to have as a guy in modern society. It's of course more accepted to be a sensitive male, a male with feelings. The only thing is that getting girlfriends is difficult in a sense. Before you say "I'm an exception!", which do exist of course, I'll say that women like confident men. Me as an ENFP male have especially always confused being and looking confident and looking or being arrogant and assertive. I've discovered recently that it's exactly the healthy ENFP with a healthy Fi that is assertive but not arrogant, by having well kept boundaries, values and staying true. However sometimes it can get very difficult to find a woman that will look for the sensitive-soft and gentle guy opposed to the macho-alpha male. That's why if we discover the way to keep our boundaries healthy and our values clear, we can be the combination for success with women, in my opinion: confidence, assertiveness but sensitivity as well.

Life As a Male ENFP

Te -Extraverted Thinking

This is the cognitive function that takes the ideas and new concepts Ne found and Fi filtered through the value system to find a way to put it into practise. Te is the function that makes us ressourceful. We are good at improvising in the field. We find ways of solving problems off the bat in the moment of pressure. It's also the cognitive function we use as our ego-trip vehicle. This is why we get extremely arrogant when we argue about something we know about and are interested in and disagree. That's why we are experts at bullshitting that we have things under control. It's why we're good at manipulating. This is also why we easily get addicted to immediate gratification.

Life As a Male ENFP

Make your dreams MATTER (pun intended).

Si - Introverted Sensing

This function is the one that we have as fourth in line. This means we have this cognitive oppressed, ignored so to speak. We mistreat it. When we're anxious and want to make an improvement and are impatient to see the results of this improvement in our lives, we tend to go to the extreme of things and become maniacs of structure, pretending we have Si as our primary function. When in a good state of mind and emotion, we have this function thrown away, virtually. This is why we're disorganised and have chaotic ideas. We have a lot of ideas from Ne but we have them in no order whatsoever. This is why it takes us a long time growing up to get a sense of what our physical reality is about. Things like hygiene, cleanliness in our room, spacial orientation of furniture in our apartment are things that take us time to learn to appreciate and care about.

A typical sentence corresponding to this cognitive function in the ENFP is:

A woman has a purse and looks in, looking for her keys:

- Wait one second... I know it's all here, just in a soup of things

This is why we're known to like REBELLION, REVOLUTION.

Life As a Male ENFP

So why is this personality type so weird when being a male?

ENFPs among the world population 7%
ENFP Males 6%
ENFP Females 8%

ENFPs are sensitive, people-people, like subtility, talk about ideas rather tan things. We tend to be disorganised, which tends to be a trait of women, traditionally. Traditionally the man wears the shoes in the household. Of course, luckily, modern society has made these norms less strict and less solid. However, our society still has a lot of evolution to make and still carries around many hidden patterns of that paradigm from the traditional era. As gender roles still apply in flirting, pick-up, scoring and all that game, I as a male ENFP feel like a tiny bit out of place when I have to act all confident and masculine to attract a woman. Maybe that's just me but I got a feeling it's a male XNFP thing.

Life As a Male ENFP
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