MBTI Type: ISFJ
Dominant Introverted Sensing – a strong emphasis on memories holding personal significance, meticulous, and detailed: Charles is full of information about… well, everything. How old the redwood trees are, what was going on in San Francisco 150 years ago, the various types of stone used to build arches. He will talk people’s ears off about architecture, his area of expertise, and inundate them with a thousand various details on things, to the extent that his friend calls him a “boring tour guide” (the same complaint his wife gave). Charles is always referencing things back to his own experiences; he knows Gladys is getting dementia because of comparisons to his wife, and he solves the case of the missing necklace based on comparing to his own experiences. He often brings up his past history and his life stories as a way to connect to other people (FeSi) and is curious to learn the details of their life, and all about their passions and interests. He firmly believes that taking Gladys to a production of Guys & Dolls will jog her memory and help her stay more present. He is also quite sensible, down to earth, and pragmatic, wanting to find solutions to problems and to be proactive in achieving them.
Auxiliary Extroverted Feeling – ease of emotional expression and shaping their actions around how their decisions affect others: Charles doesn’t talk about things with his daughter because in his words, “I don’t want my sad things to affect your life.” He deliberately withholds things to avoid upsetting other people, even if he needs to talk about them to cope with them, such as packing up his wife to send her to an assisted living center, but not telling Emily about it for a year after her death. He is warm, generous, and good-natured, easily making friends while undercover and becoming emotionally invested in their lives. His boss has to remind him multiple times that he’s not there to get emotionally attached or to remain friends, but needs to remember that these people are “suspects.” Charles several times substitutes what others want from him for his own desires, including going to a baseball game with his new friend even though he’d rather be showing him all the sights in San Francisco. He is so extroverted, people often complain about him talking constantly. And after he retires, he continues to guest-speak as a professor just for something to do and a way to connect to people. He wants to get Didi to go back to her job, after she quits, and talks her into it by reminding her of what a good overseer she is, and how smart she was to expose him as a fraud.
Tertiary Introverted Thinking – desires to understand how systems and people work so they can better communicate or figure out how a hack that works: It’s hard for him not to be involved with the people around him, and not to see being distant or detached as callousness. It particularly disturbs him to find out that when people get dementia in the home, others move away from them instead of toward them; Charles reads this as abandonment. He loves to cut various articles out of the newspaper and save them, particularly those that teach him how to do something, or how it works, or the history behind an object or a place. Charles doesn’t know what information is important and what isn’t, so he includes it all in his daily analysis and report, including the weather forecast.
Inferior Extroverted Intuition – curious about the future and in different possibilities, but skeptical of “unrealistic” ideas and allows others to lead the way there: Charles doesn’t show a lot of Ne except in that he isn’t sure who is behind the thefts, and wants to keep all of his options open. He thinks various people did it, follows up on those leads, finds out he was wrong, and then switches to another suspect. He also enjoys opening up his experiences and learning and trying new things, taking a variety of classes while undercover, and meeting a bunch of new people. It pains him that he was considering putting his wife in a home at the end, because it seems like a betrayal of his promise that she could always be at home. Charles went with a practical solution (Si) that violated his idealism (Ne).
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Enneagram: 9w1
Enneagram 9 – desires freedom from others’ influences, by going along with them and being tolerant, until it matters not to: When the story opens, Charles is in inertia… his wife is dead, but he hasn’t moved on, met anyone, made any friends, and barely leaves the house. He takes pleasure in his quiet routine even though it’s boring and hasn’t done anything to shake up his existence. Once in the nursing home, he’s eager to connect and make friends but also shy and withdrawn, hiding away in his room and treating hostile looks from people as a reason to avoid engaging with them. Once he does, though, he’s warm and easily likable, going along with things and even getting drunk, smoking weed, and winding up with a hangover the next morning. Another resident punches him in the face, and Charles refuses to press charges. He likes to see the best in everyone and makes friends with them, rather than treats them as suspects. He actively avoids burdening others with his pain and avoids it whenever possible, going home to not be present on a day in which someone he cares about died, and refusing to talk about his feelings or his wife’s death.
1 wing brings in a desire for moral rightness and perfection: He wants to do the right thing by others, and feels an enormous amount of guilt for intending to put his wife in the nursing home, since he promised her she would be at home all her life. He is smartly dressed, meticulous in his housekeeping skills, and particular about his appearance.
Learn all about your Enneagram type in 9 Kinds of Quirky: The 9 Enneagram Types!
