George Karim’s MBTI type is one of the most debated among fans of Lockwood & Co. In the Netflix adaptation, portrayed by Ali Hadji-Heshmati, George shows strong traits of an INTP personality type and aligns closely with Enneagram 6w5. His analytical mindset, constant skepticism, and need to understand how things work (especially when lives are at risk) make him a compelling example of an INTP 6w5 in modern television.
INTP 6w5 Characters
Why is George Karim from Lockwood & Co. an INTP? Continue reading for my argument using cognitive functions! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Introverted Thinking
George Karim is the brains of Lockwood & Co., and the member most interested in obtaining a complete and thorough understanding of any situation and its particular ghosts before he wants to engage with it. That’s why he spends so much time reading, researching, and learning to distinguish between the various levels of ghosts. He wants to find out who they were and how to get rid of them. He breaks ghosts down into types, sources, and behaviors, since he wants a clear internal map of how they operate and how to deal with them successfully.
When Anthony Lockwood jumps to conclusions, George pushes back with “we don’t have enough evidence,” or “that doesn’t add up,” because theories are not proof. He becomes obsessed with the Bone Glass, because he wants to know more about it; where it came from, what its purpose is, whether he can successfully use it, and how it works, which makes him vulnerable to another scientist’s immoral intention of using him as a guinea pig in her experiment.
When Lucy Carlyle first arrives at the house, Lockwood takes her into the basement and shows her all of George’s inventions. He mentions George is often “experimenting” and “making things.” He came up with ghost-proofing traps, steam-blowers that mimic their effects to help train new recruits, and frequently brings dangerous and illegal objects into the house to study them, rather than sending them to the incinerator. In his mind, the rules don’t apply to him if they make little sense; why would you give up the chance to learn something about your enemy?
His interactions with the ghost-jar are experimental; George likes to subject it to “torture” to learn more about it and to map out how the ghost reacts to stimulus. This leads up to the ghost building resentment toward him over time, because George does not believe that ghosts have feelings. Lucy learns how to talk to it, but George has been subjecting it to experiments, electric shocks, etc., so it refuses to interact with him.
Compared to Lucy’s emotional reactivity, he is also detached and blunt. When Lockwood asks him to make tea for Lucy, he says they should test her first, since it would be a “waste of a tea bag” if she’s like the rest of the girls they interviewed today.
Extraverted Intuition
Rather than get stuck on one explanation per case, George will generate multiple hypotheses and not hang on to any one in particular when he finds evidence that counters it. He considers less obvious angles than his two friends, such as hidden sources, unusual behaviors, alternative timelines of events, and what could motivate a ghost to behave differently from what they expect. He will take scattered clues and act as if they could be connected, whereas Lucy merely says “this feels wrong” (Fe/Ne).
NPs are sometimes naïve, because they want to think the best of others and assume that they are as open-minded as the NP is. This is George’s mistake; when he finds a female scientist as invested in learning about the Bone Glass as he is, he assumes her motivations are pure, because his own would be. He just wants unlimited scientific exploration. Only when things get “weird” between them does George recognize her intentions are not as innocent as he thought; she intends to sacrifice his life for science!
When doing research, George does not just focus on one or two related incidents; he scours the library for anything that might be connected or shed light on the problem. That is partly why it takes him “so long” to get back to Lockwood and Lucy with usable information. Ne is very good at taking something from an unrelated situation and theorizing about how it might explain what is going on in the current one. He knows Lockwood has romantic feelings for Lucy, even if his friend is oblivious to them.
Introverted Sensing
George is meticulous in his research and detailed in his investigations; when Lucy and Lockwood first enter the resource library, they are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, but George goes off into the stacks and brings them back a ton of books to look through for information. He frequently remembers details from books, their former cases, and records that could be useful. George remembers all about the history of the first ghost outbreak and its escalation. He also keeps tons of case files and documentation downstairs, but Lucy notices that the kitchen where he cooks is “always a mess.” They scribble notes to one another on the tablecloth instead of having a better system.
He instantly makes an assumption about Lucy based on his previous experiences with other girls; he is skeptical of her, because “She looks like a bolter,” meaning he has met other girls who Lucy reminds him of, who seemed promising but upon seeing the ghost in the jar, ran out of the house. They have had negative experiences with interviewees all day, so why should Lucy be anything but a disappointment to them?
Extrovarted Feeling
This is George’s weakest point. He does not do feelings and is oblivious to social cues, which shows up in his overall behavior. He states things in a way that insults Lucy and doesn’t notice that she is upset about it, because the same thing said to him would not irritate him. He runs around the house half-naked; Lockwood says that one time he found George exercising “while naked” and that it’s in Lucy’s “best interests” not to share a bathroom with him. When Lucy is curious about the locked door on the landing, George bluntly tells her she ought to ask Lockwood about it, because Lockwood doesn’t have to pee as badly as he does right now.
His idea of “fairness” is to make a rule that they only get one biscuit (cookie) at a time, and in turn, so nobody eats all the food. George also tries to connect with his friends, but walks away from emotional moments or doesn’t react strongly to them. He likes to bond through the things he has in common with others, such as with the River Rat and their shared interest in ghost-touched objects. When she invites him to chuck the Bone Glass over the side and come away with her, George considers it because they’re having such a good time together, and he likes to feel like he belongs.
The Enneagram 6
George is pugnacious and willing to push back against Lockwood on everything, but also is more bluster than follow-up; when he insults Lucy and she tells him to stand up and repeat that, George says he will, but then doesn’t move; it’s a deep armchair, and it takes him “some time” to get out of it. He “reacted” and then withdrew.
He questions other people’s plans, demands that Lucy give him logical explanations for her theories, tells Lockwood off for being stupid and for forgetting to pack the ghost chains (which almost got him and Lucy killed in the house). In the book, he angrily says he was doing a bunch of research in the library and if Lockwood could have waited ten minutes, he would have been home and could have advised them about the dangers involved in that assignment. He believes he can arm them with knowledge, and that will help keep them safe. Them doing foolish things, unprepared, upsets him, because they could die, and he wants to be ready for anything, to feel secure, and to know how to deal with problems in advance.
When Lucy wakes up to a vengeful ghost in their room, and runs downstairs for help, George says in twenty seconds he will be ready—and walks out of his room, armed to the teeth with weapons, salt cannisters, fire bomb flares, and a rapier to deal with the problem, showing that he is always “prepared for anything” even when asleep. (When Lucy asks him why he isn’t wearing pants, he responds pants are for wimps.) George was ready for trouble, unlike his two house companions; Lucy had left her rapier downstairs, and Lockwood had little in the way of weapons in his room.
Even their “one biscuit (cookie) rule” is to establish a sense of “fairness” in the house about who gets to eat what, and all of them having their fair share of the goodies.
The 5 Wing
George can be arrogant about his experiments. He sees things through a detached academic lens, so he is tolerant of questionable methods forbidden by the police, such as keeping a high-level ghost inside a jar within the house so he can study it. Because of his fascination with magical objects, he gets sucked into a plan to use the ghost mirror and is shocked to find out the woman he trusted intends to kill him for “scientific understanding.” She wants him to look into the mirror and tell her what she sees, which would cause him to become ghost-locked or die.
6w5s also believe that knowledge = safety, which is where is need to do intense research comes from. George wants time to dig deep, to unearth things no one else has found, and to bring them to the table, because his “usefulness” to his friends is in his levels of competency. If they are going to ignore him and do stupid things, that devalues what he offers and irritates him.
