INFP 4w5 Characters
Dominant Introverted Feeling – a self-knowledge and a desire to live in accordance with one’s personal values: Lydia is highly emotional but not ready to share it with anyone, which makes her committed to dwelling inside of her mind and being present to all of her emotions. Even as an adult, she doesn’t want to talk about the loss of her husband in the Amazon, though Astrid needs to talk her way through it. It’s enough that Lydia can’t reach him in the Netherworld. Her teenage self takes a strong liking to the ghost house as it is, for its gothic undertone, and doesn’t want Delia to change it, even though expressing her views conflicts with Delia’s “vision” for their home. It’s obvious to everyone that she doesn’t like her shallow stepmother’s interpretation of reality and has no desire to participate in her goofy ideas. Lydia has no interest in what others think of her, or in appealing to them by appeasing them, but prefers her own hobbies (taking pictures, melancholy musings, writing a suicidal letter, etc.) instead. In the second film, she has made a career out of her psychic abilities, but feels uncomfortable in the spotlight and doesn’t like Rory to heavily politicize her “gifts.” It is important to her that she thinks he believes her, because her gifts are real and painful experiences for her. She also has an instant contempt for Beetlejuice.
Auxiliary Extroverted Intuition – an idealistic nature devoted to interpreting what inspires personal meaning: It delights Lydia to discover life after death is real, because that seems far more interesting and full of potential to her than the boring reality, which she prefers to see through the lens of her camera. She spends a lot of time daydreaming, contemplating the afterlife, and writing moody poetry, when she is not trying to help others communicate with and reconcile their problems with their dead loved ones, as an adult. Lydia is somewhat naive about Rory’s intentions, and hopes that he is a better person than he seems to be. To be honest, Lydia doesn’t have a well-developed Ne within the narrative; but she also lacks any Se bodily awareness, and shows a great deal of…
Tertiary Introverted Sensing – a preference for a lack of change and attention to select details: Lydia loves the house the way it is, because it’s moody and has a sense of mystery and wonder to it (Ne/Si). She likes it when the ghosts renovate it back to the way it was when she first saw it (Si) and fully supports them in this decision. She likes to take snapshots of things to remember them by, rather than embodying them in the present moment; and that is how she realizes ghosts even exist (because the two floating sheets had no feet!). Lydia becomes progressively more paranoid about her past as an adult, and has recurring nightmares and anxiety about Beetlejuice. It frustrates her that Astrid won’t believe her own personal experiences, or accept that ghosts are real, but she’s willing to make a deal with him (the same one as before, marry him and rescue him from the afterlife) to save her daughter from being stuck in the Netherworld. Unlike the ghosts, she also sits down and reads the entire handbook and finds it useful when looking for loopholes to exploit so they can be at peace (and she won’t have to marry Beetlejuice!).
Inferior Extroverted Thinking – blunt and irritated by incompetence when under stress or overly focused on “the facts”: Lydia can be quite frank in asserting her opinions and conflicting with her stepmother, but she doesn’t show much rational thinking other than to make deals with Beetlejuice on two separate occasions to save the lives of people she cares about (the Maitlands, and then her daughter). Since she has no real head for business, she lets Rory manage most of her career and goes along with him, but finds it difficult to continue talking to ghosts without self-medicating (and she bargains with him for a pill to help her “get through today”).
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Enneagram: 4w5
Enneagram 4 – an elitist, who feels alienated but seeks refinement to compensate for their longing for all the things they lack: “I myself am strange and unusual,” Lydia says at one point in the first film, and it’s true. She is a full-blown image type in that everything about her is personally selected and styled to reflect her self-image as someone who is “strange” and “unknown,” from her all-black ensemble to her morbid fascination with death. Her stepmother says Lydia was miserable in the big city; now she can just be miserable in the country in her new life, which implies Lydia is never satisfied with anything (as a frustration type). She contemplates suicide, she finds the ghosts fascinating rather than terrifying, and she yearns to be dead just to escape the mundane of her existence. As an adult, she continues to wear black, and feels alienated and misunderstood because no one can understand what it’s like to experience constant interruptions by ghosts. She emotionally is so raw and real that she leaves most of her business decisions up to Rory, and even walks out in the middle of one session after she hallucinates Beetlejuice. (She can’t work if she isn’t “feeling like it.”)
5 wing brings in a desire to discover something no one else has for its own sake: Rather than be horrified by the grotesque, she becomes obsessed with it and intrigued in the afterlife. Her own personal aesthetic is bleak, melancholy, and morbid. Lydia doesn’t seek to make friends in her community, but prefers her own company and/or that of “dead people” because they are more interesting. She takes pride in not being as shallow or as theatrical as her stepmother, whom Lydia finds to be trite. Lydia becomes fascinated with the Netherworld, and wants to know all about it and even to go there, abdicating her “real” life in the process, until she realizes the horrors it contains.
