MBTI Type: ISTP

ISTPs are really good at adapting quickly to a new environment, and making rational decisions under pressure, but they suck at being emotionally available to their kids. This is central to the conflict that starts off the story, with Jane expecting her daughter to make more rational decisions, and not fully understanding her Fi-dom decision-making (Jane thinks her daughter should get a job that pays; her daughter wants to “become an artist”). When Jane’s identity gets revealed on public television, she immediately starts doing rational things – without thinking about how to explain them to Andy. She pushes her away to keep her safe, but doesn’t give her any explanations – just tells her to get out, I’m tired of you being here. She botches a lot of her emotional interactions with her daughter, all along the way, by focusing on doing what’s most rational, rather than catering to Andy’s emotional needs (to know who she is, to be comforted after finding out her entire life is a lie, to connect to her family members, etc), which shows off her inferior Fe function. She also withdraws to deal with things on her own terms, and is rude to a fellow cancer patient – whom later, she goes to see when she’s dying and spills all her secrets to, because she can’t contain her emotions any longer. They’re either all off, or all on, there’s no middle ground. She does have some Fe abilities, though – she convinces another woman to murder her father by telling her about being pregnant, and how her father has tried to “hurt the baby… and he will try again.” She emotionally manipulated her into ridding her of a “problem” in her life. Jane is quick-thinking and reactive; as a young woman, she is a consummate pianist with a natural knack for music, who decides she doesn’t want to do it anymore and slams her hand in a car door to ruin her fingers so she can no longer perform. She then runs off with her boyfriend, whom she started seeing in her father’s house (and he is much older) and joins his cult. She got into witness protection and changed her entire lifestyle, abandoning everything from her old life. When a gunman opens fire in a restaurant, her first thought is to protect her daughter—she flies across the room, lands on top of her, then confronts the gunman and kills him with the knife he stabs through her injured hand. She shows low Ni both in planning for the eventuality of needing to escape (she has everything she could ever need or want in a car, stashed in a rental unit miles away – various new identities, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and a gun for protection), and in her being completely wrong in her intuitive assumptions. She assumes her daughter’s husband is dead, because she hasn’t heard anything about him lately – and she’s wrong, a fact that almost gets them both killed.

Enneagram: 5w6 sp/sx

Enneagram 5s are withdrawn types, which means under stress, they rely on their own logic, analytical ability, and pull away from people. This is exactly what Jane does when her life goes to hell—she bottles up, refuses to answer any of her daughter’s questions, and emotionally detaches, not realizing the impact it will have on her relationship. She expects her daughter to do what she says, be smart, and be careful, and can’t understand her reckless decision-making. (Why does she need to find out who she is? Why would she contact my brother? Why didn’t she just do what I told her to, which would have kept her safe?) In this way, she shows the alienation from others that is central to the 5 – her logic is exact and makes sense to herself, is aimed at being safe, but she doesn’t share it with others easily. She has lived a life of lies, of secrets, and of not opening up or telling her daughter anything, even though she could have. It takes her exiting witness protection to open up, and begin to share a few things with her daughter that are real (like how she hated moving to the beach house, but then ran into the ocean, and thought it would be okay after all). She also makes firm decisions about what she wants, including leaving witness protection, even when others tell her that’s a stupid thing to do (they haven’t caught her psycho terrorist boyfriend yet). Here 6 wing is distrustful, cautious, and others-reliant up to a point… (she relies on her friends to help her out) but then she gets rid of witness protection, and decides to do things her own way.

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