INTJ 5w4 Characters
Victor Frankenstein’s MBTI and Enneagram typing in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025), starring Oscar Isaac, reveals the tortured mind of one of literature’s most iconic figures reimagined through a visionary lens. Del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein delves into the psychological depth of Victor as an INTJ 5w4, blending Introverted Intuition and Extraverted Thinking with the detached curiosity and brooding melancholy of the Enneagram Five. In this interpretation, Isaac’s Victor becomes both scientist and monster—driven by a prophetic vision to conquer death, yet destroyed by his inability to accept imperfection. Fans of personality psychology, MBTI typing, and gothic storytelling will find this exploration of Victor Frankenstein’s inner world a masterclass in how del Toro fuses horror, intellect, and humanity into a single tragic genius.
Introverted Intuition
Victor as a child knows he wants to become a doctor, but also that he intends to conquer death; the loss of his mother creates in him a desire to reverse death and bring about ‘life,’ which fuels his new direction toward science and innovation. He intends to reanimate a corpse made from the pieces of battlefield soldiers, but is refused backing by the medical establishment due to (in his mind) the ‘backward’ superstitions of its members, who object to him using electrical currents to stimulate movement in a corpse as ‘ungodly.’ Their objections never changed his mind; and when given the chance to work on his Creature in a laboratory funded by a rich philanthropist, Victor leaps at the chance. He devotes himself tirelessly to this cause for months, until he brings his Creature to life… and then he admits that he never thought about what his life would be like after doing so. Without a grand vision, his world becomes ‘monotonous,’ because it’s like caring for a child; the Creature has to be taken care of, taught, and … he isn’t what Victor thought he would be. He’s not intelligent, he doesn’t learn fast, and Victor feels disgusted by his ‘failure.’ This is a problem with driven Ni-doms, in that if reality does not match up to their idealized vision, they can easily become disenchanted with it. They also do not know what to do with themselves when they’ve achieved their vision, because… what lies on the other side? In his discussions with Elizabeth, he often frames things in terms of lofty ideals, whereas she pulls him back to earth by criticizing them as unrealistic or dangerous.
Extraverted Thinking
Initially, Victor attempts to ‘prove’ that he can reanimate a corpse by giving the other doctors and scientists a practical demonstration in a college setting; he runs a current through a half-man and shows them that not only can this Creature cry out and move around, it can catch a ball; that there is a ‘connection between one man’s eyes and another man’s arm.’ When that fails, Victor finds another man to finance his experiments. His rationality comes across as cold to people like Elizabeth, who focus on the moral implications of his actions as a feeling type; but all of Victor’s judgments and decisions come from a place of logic or rationality. When he finds out his financier wants his brain put into the Creature’s body to escape his syphilis, Victor refuses—not on moral grounds, but because ‘that disease has affected every piece of you; it’s in your blood, your brain, your organs.’ It would destroy the Creature. He collects body parts off the battlefield and stitches them together, seeing them merely as pieces of meat to blend into his new ‘creation.’ Victor makes several initial attempts, but only figures out how to jumpstart the nervous system with an intuitive sudden flash of understanding, which he then instantly puts into operation. Once done with his Creature, unaware that it can self-heal and survive, he destroys his laboratory and all evidence of his ‘crime.’ When the Creature asks him to create a mate, Victor instantly thinks about whether they could procreate, and start creating a family of ‘monsters’ with which to populate the earth.
Introverted Feeling
Unfortunately, Victor passes on the hurt his father inflicted on him to the Creature, by becoming a ‘poor father.’ Because his own father taught him with abuse, he abuses the Creature when it doesn’t learn fast enough. He becomes impatient with its stupidity, and feels oppressed by its constant need for him. In this way, Victor is so caught up in his own feelings of frustration, annoyance, disappointment, and self-condemnation, he doesn’t have a good sense of what the Creature feels, what it needs from him, or how to care for it as a human being. He refuses to create another one, focusing only on his own horror of what he has done, rather than the Creature’s need for a life companion. His self-absorption causes him to want to tell Elizabeth about his true feelings for her on the day of her wedding, and only her sharp reprimand and slap sends him out of her presence. Victor spends much of his later years trying to hunt down and kill the Creature, so that he can end his own pain. On his deathbed, he finally comes to see the pain he has inflicted upon the Creature, having heard his side of the story; it opens him up to empathy in death, and he asks the Creature’s forgiveness before he passes away.
Extraverted Sensing
Though not an impulsive man in general, Victor does like to get bodily involved in the process of selecting corpses, sawing them to pieces, putting them together into a single Creature, and he even risks his life to rig up the electrical machine in a lightening storm to bring his ‘monstrosity’ to life. But he decides to kill the Creature and destroy all of his work on impulse, dumping tons of kerosine all over the laboratory and setting it alight, only to hear his ‘child’ screaming for him and want to rescue him. Victor, without thinking, rushes headlong back into the inferno and is thrown thirty feet, severing his leg and incapacitating him in the process.
The Enneagram 5
Victor is single-minded and arrogant; he assumes that because he ‘can,’ he ‘should’ and ‘will.’ Even when others caution him against his intentions, and say that he will come to regret it, or it’s not smart to play God, he sneers at them, mocks their concept of a divine force, and continues to experiment. This kind of contempt for ‘old-fashioned’ thoughts and even for divinity is characteristic of a lot of scientific-minded 5s, since they trust their own logic and understanding over other people’s, and won’t listen to anyone they consider to be an intellectual inferior. He often wrestles with Elizabeth, because she is an intelligent and attractive woman in his eyes, but she also believes in God, which he finds hard to reconcile; how can a smart woman still have such outdated beliefs? Like a lot of 5s, Victor puts his entire focus into his one concept, and then when it doesn’t play out as he envisioned it, he becomes frustrated, impatient, and even violent toward his Creation. He initially refuses all help, and only accepts it when it comes in the form of financial backing (“I work alone”). He chains up his Creation in the basement, just to get rid of it and not have to be around it all the time; and calls it an “it,” much to Elizabeth’s horror. 5s are objective, detached, and do not want to be emotionally involved; and they hate sharing their space with anyone, so they try to carve out a place away from everyone else. In the end, this detachment winds up being his undoing, since he can’t step outside his objectivity and see that the Creature needs a loving companion rather than a cold and distant ‘father.’
The 4 Wing
Victor has a lot of internal angst and dwells in his hatred, his envy, and his regret. His brother is the devoted ‘son’ his father always wanted, an idealistic, naïve and sweet boy, so Victor feels a little jealous of the attention he receives. He also covets his brother’s fiancé enough to finally approach her, when he knows it is too late to have her (on the day of her wedding). Rather than forgive and forget the Creature’s offenses against him, he makes it his mission to ‘destroy’ it. And most of all, Victor comes to instantly hate what he has created; it’s not living up to his ideal. A lot of 4s experience a sense of longing and chronic dissatisfaction with life; it is never what they hoped it would be, so they dwell in those feelings of irritation and allow them to create division between themselves and their creation—in his case, his literal Creature.
Victor the Monster
I think this is the best adaptation of Frankenstein I have ever seen, although it’s only partially like the novel. But it does take us from Victor as a victim of his father’s callous, detached abuse (he says his son will be a surgeon, so he will not strike his hands again; but the face is “vanity,” and hits him hard), to being an abusive “father” in his own right, and finally needing to ask forgiveness of his “son” on his deathbed. Del Toro is showing how abuse keeps going, since it’s all that someone might know from their own childhood; but it’s huge for Victor to hear from his brother, “you are the monster,” even if he refuses to internalize it until he has heard the entirety of the Creature’s sad story. Overall, a masterpiece.
