From “Please Understand me II” by David Keirsey.

The Values of Idealists

Arthur Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Idea (1814), said that our will dominates our intellect. William James, in The Principles of Psychology (1890), and Leon Festinger, in A Theory of 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 judgments than 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 excitement (from without) Idealists value enthusiasm (from within); where Artisans 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 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 assumptions 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
Aspiring	Sage	Virtuoso	Executive	Wizard

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 expresses as unbounded enthusiasm. Particularly when discussing ideas, or sharing personal insights, their display of enthusiasm can be both delightful and contagious, 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 tat 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 “Cholerics” - 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 contradiction 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 sense 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.

(INFP specific passage that applies to this topic)

INFPs present a calm, pleasant face to the world and are seen as reticent and even shy. Although they demonstrate a cool reserve toward others, inside they are anything but distant.

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 because 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 that they will unconsciously take into themselves another’s desires and emotions - 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 achievement, 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 particularly 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. Any 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 considerable investment of effort and emotion, ending in 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 experiences 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 expected what a man experiences when, after admiring the smooth, happy motion of a boat on the lake, he finds himself sitting it in 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 – determines to a great extent the course of their personal lives.

The Idealist Soulmate

Idealists approach mating quite differently from the other three temperaments. In their own ways the other types tend to be realistic about mating, which is to say that Artisans, Guardians and Rationals assume their mates to be fallible, and they will go along with a good deal of compromise in making their marriages work. Idealists on the other hand, are singularly idealistic about choosing a mate, and most often take up the romantic task of seeking the perfect mate and the ideal relationship, what they call “the love of their life” or their “one true love,” joined with them in a match made in heaven and creating a love timeless and eternal. In other words, NFs are looking for more than life partners in their mates – they want soul partners, persons with whom they can bond in some special spiritual sense, sharing their complex inner lives and communicating intimately about what most concerns them: their feelings and their causes, their romantic fantasies and their ethical dilemmas, their inner division and their search for wholeness, Idealists firmly believe in such deep and meaningful relationships – they will settle for nothing less – and in some cases they try to create them where they don’t exist.

Idealist Courtship

The Idealists’ desire that their relationships be deep and meaningful (that is, intense, enduring, and all-important in their lives) is very much in evidence in the way they go about dating. NFs do not usually choose to play the field to any great extent, but prefer to go out with one person at a time and to explore the potential for special closeness in each relationship. Never casual or occasional about dating, NFs typically look past surface relations to more deeply-felt connections, and they loose interest rather quickly with dates that center around social events or physical activities. Idealists can enjoy this skin-deep sort of date for a while, of course, but they usually try to find their own kind of enjoyment as the evening wears on. At parties for example, NFs will often look for a quiet corner where they can talk with their date (or someone else) on a more personal, intimate level. And at an amusement park or sporting events, Idealists will eventually separate themselves mentally from the rides, the sights, and the action and begin to observe the people around them wondering about their personalities and fantasizing about their personal lives.

Indeed (and this surprises Artisans and Guardians), Idealists would usually rather talk with their dates than do things or go places, although chatting about concrete, literal, or factual things doesn’t particularly interest them either. Idealists want to talk about abstract matters – ideas, insights, personal philosophies, spiritual beliefs, dreams, goals, family relationships, altruistic causes, and the like – inwardly-felt topics that break through social surfaces and connect two people heart-to-heart. NFs love to talk about movies or novels that have touched them deeply, but they don’t want to describe the plot so much as discuss what the story suggests between the lines, the aesthetic or moral issues involved, and how the characters’ lives symbolize their own experience or the wiser experience of mankind. And NFs will talk enthusiastically about art, music, and poetry, particularly about what a work of art signifies to them. The ability to communicate comfortably with their dates in this imaginative, meaningful way most often determines whether or not the Idealist can become serious in a given relationship.

Finding the rare person with whom they can share their inner world is difficult for Idealists, a painful process of trial and error, and often they vow not to date at all for periods of time rather than go through the search. For NFs, dating means more than physical fun or social experience; it is an opening of their heart and mind to the other person, in some cases a baring of the soul, and carries with it both a promise and expectation of deep regard and mutual understanding. And because they are offering so much of themselves to the other, and expecting so much in return, NFs are highly sensitive to rejection, and can be deeply hurt when spurned by another, or when having to break off a relationship themselves. The trauma of breaking up can be so difficult for Idealists that at times they will avoid getting involved with others for fear of things not working out, or, at the other extreme, they will remain in a relationship longer than they should just to put off the soul-hurting scene of rejection.

However, once the special person comes their way, (the man or woman of their dreams), Idealists can be carried away with their feelings, and give almost all their attention to pursuing the relationship, For the NF, not just a compatible marriage but an all-consuming, undying passion is in the offing, and so the courtship becomes the center of his or her world. Just as the possible rather than the actual lures NFs in other parts of their lives m so do the possibilities in relationships inspire them, and they see in each new relationship the potential for bringing them the perfect love that will fulfill them completely. Idealists have a flair for dramatizing their courtships, and they spare no effort or flight of imagination to win the heart of their loved one. Often a story book flavor permeates their courtship behavior, and NFs are not afraid of using imaginative language, even poetry and quotations, to give voice to their feelings. NFs can also be romantic when expressing love through gifts, though they are likely to present the gift in private, and to select with extraordinary care something with special or even symbolic meaning – a beloved piece of music, a favorite book of fiction or poetry, a treasured picture. In a sense, Idealists go about turning their courtships into works of art, which is not surprising, since one of the arts at which they are most skilled is that of creating the romantic relationship.

Idealist courtships are marked not only by romantic gestures, but also by idealization of the relationship, In the early stages of a romance, both NF males and females are likely to be blind to the flaws in their beloved, and to believe in the illusion that life together will proceed happily ever after (although the details of this happily ever after are rarely explored in depth). Idealists hold dear a compelling though often vague inner-vision of what their ideal mate will be like, and they tend to project this vision of perfection into their all-too-human loved ones. Thus, at the slightest suggestion, NFs will see soulfulness and poetic sensitivity in the people they’ve fallen in love with – whether or not they are indeed soulful or poetic. At the same time, NFs believe that everyone has the potential for spiritual growth, and in many cases they intend to use their love to develop this latent mystical side of their mates. Needless to say, most human beings cannot live upto such romantic ideals, nor will they often sit still to have their spirituality nurtured in such a way, Many Artisans react with good natured sarcasm , many Guardians seem impatient with such foolishness, and the Rational view of this attribution of soulfulness is often skeptical at best. Idealists who attempt to make their loved ones live up to their ideals are sooner or later faced with disillusionment in their relationships.

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, 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 Self upon which they focus is not the self that 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 the 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 psychologist, 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, knowingly and acceptingly, the process which he inwardly and actually is. He moves away from being what he is not, from being a façade. 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 the flesh and bone; it was not thought or consciousness. That was what the wise men taught. Where, then, was it? To press toward the Self – was ther another way that was worth seeking? Nobody showed the way, nobody knew it – neither his father, not 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 eht 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 themselves, 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 a 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 find’

‘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 this 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 on struggling to become some perfect idea of themselves, and to 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 appreciated we must encounter them “meet them at their view of the world,” as they put it. This is not an easy thing to do, and so it happens only rarely , and they, more than others, go through life feeling misunderstood, unknown, mistaken for the roles they are forced to play by social reality. You see, Idealists believe that each of us is a unique and special person. So it makes sense they would feel prized by having their person known by another, if only on rare occasions. Idealists idealize themselves, and, as mentioned above, continue searching for their true self or real self. They are devoted to bringing the true self more and more into being, so that recognition by someone they care about is very important to them and very gratifying when it comes.

Aspiring to be a sage

The sage is the most revered role model for the Idealists – that man or woman who strives to overcome the worldly, temporal concerns, and who aspires to the philosophic view of life. Plato, perhaps the greatest of all Idealist philosophers, characterized the sage by saying that the “true lover of wisdom” is on a metaphysical journey,

is always striving after being – that is his nature; he will not rest in…appearance only, but will go on - the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul, and by that power drawing near and mingling and becoming incorporate with very being, [he will] live and grow truly, and then, and not till then, will he cease from his travail.

To transcend the material world (and thus gain insight into the essence of things), to transcend the senses (and thus gain knowledge of the soul), to transcend the ego (and thus feel united with creation), to transcend even time (and thus feel the force of past lives and prophecies): these are the lofty goals of the sage, and in their heart of hearts all Idealists honor this quest.