INFP
Portrait of the Healer (iNFp)
Copyrighted © 1996 Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.

Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech,
cooperative in striving for their ends, and informative and introverted in their
interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably
pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem
reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a
capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed,
passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent
aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.
Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a
strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical,
honorable place. Indeed, to understand iNFps, we must understand their idealism
as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary
sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The iNFp is the Prince or
Princess of fairytale, the King's Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir
Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general
population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more
isolated from the rest of humanity.
Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and
mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of
inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often
unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which,
unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a
practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and
industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform
to these parental expectations, iNFps come to see themselves as ugly ducklings.
Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but
not the iNFps. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing
quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad
to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder,
some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite
OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of
ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply
committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in
them, iNFps can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good
and evil, sacred and profane. Tutors are drawn toward purity, but can become
engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that
lurks within them. Then, when iNFps believe thay have yielded to an impure
temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others
seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and
evil is within the iNFp, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.
Full descriptions of the Healer(INFP) and Idealists are in
Please Understand Me or Please Understand Me II