MBTI Type: ENTP

Holden trusts his intuition entirely, and allows it to shape his decisions, suppositions, and his interest in serial killers—he wants to understand them, define them, learn from them, question them, and goes off book to do so. He easily improvises, takes questions in a new order, comes up with theories about why they are behaving as they are, and goes off of other people’s theories (using his girlfriend’s ideas to launch his own; Wendy even complains at one point to someone else that Holden seems just to be parroting her ideas back at her). He is extroverted, always talking to people or trying to engage them despite his social awkwardness, but is also detached, seeing people as objects to study rather than to be emotionally involved with. He isn’t respectful of their boundaries and uses his Fe very awkwardly; he wants people to be on the same emotional page, but doesn’t know how to make them like him, and winds up insulting them, creating enemies, using language they don’t like, or misinterpreting situations. His Si is rather poor in that he doesn’t really have a ton of sensory awareness, and he works/stresses himself into a nervous breakdown after a while.

Enneagram: 5w6

Holden is often convinced he is right, even when no one backs him up on this, and is very detached, analytical, and unable to access his emotions; when his girlfriend breaks up with him, Holden beats her to the punch by stating that she is doing so, simply brushing it aside rather than emotionally process it, and then saying he’ll come get his stuff next week and let her know in advance, in case she doesn’t want to see him. Then he turns around and leaves. He is similarly unaffected by the psychopaths he is talking to, and unorthodox in his interrogation methods; it takes an actual mental/physical breakdown at the end of the first season, after being threatened and then “hugged” by a serial killer, for him to access the emotions he has bypassed until now. Holden can be somewhat obnoxious, out of touch with other people’s thoughts, feelings, or reactions, and yet is occasionally affected by them in a 6 wing way; he admits to Bill he didn’t want to “do this alone” (question serial killers) and he would like some assistance. He sometimes tries to make nice with people, or avoid conflict with them, provided they aren’t seen as “in the wrong” by his competency core ego strategies. But he never doubts himself.

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