ISTP 9w8 Characters

Benjamin is fairly logical and detached from what’s going on around him, and some of his moves may seem callous to non-thinker types, such as his decision to keep their son’s kidnapping from his wife until it’s more convenient, and until after he can convince her to take a pill so that she won’t be hysterical. He argues that she’s been upset, pacing, etc., but in reality, he just doesn’t want to deal with her intense feelings. He is also willing to overlook the immorality of the bad guys’ actions in order to get his son back, offering to tell no one anything and allow them to get away with a political assassination if they give him back his son. But he shows low Fe tendencies as well—he’s amiable, he over-shares on the bus and tells people information about himself, and he becomes angry and reactive under stress, losing his temper in public, accusing people of their involvement, etc. He shows a lot of sensory impulses as well, approaching a man who has been stabbed (and being taken into his confidence), setting out on his own to find those responsible in London, insisting upon investigating the chapel himself, attacking the bad guys in it (and being knocked out), then climbing out the chapel tower using the bell pull. At first, he rolls his eyes at his wife’s suspicious nature and theories, but then becomes fixated on the idea of getting their son back.

Enneagram: 9w8

Benjamin is easygoing in the first half of the story, before his family falls into a crisis being pleasant and rolling his eyes at his 6 wife’s paranoia about people knowing things about them. He thinks it’s silly that she suspects they are being followed, and that it doesn’t matter that the man on the bus knows everything about them now and he knows nothing about him in return. He also reacts instinctively, and sometimes without a sense of the risks involved, as he tracks down and tries to liberate their kidnapped son. Occasionally, he shows his line to 6 as he becomes suspicious and reactive, but more often, he shows an 8 wing tendency to be assertive, somewhat controlling (he insists on drugging his wife before he tells her about their son’s fate, because he doesn’t want to deal with her hysterics for long), and confrontational. When a man stands them up at dinner and it upsets his wife, he threatens to go tell him off (she talks him out of it). Elsewhere, he manhandles people, rushes in to see what’s happening, and threatens them, alternating between pleading and being aggressive on his family’s behalf.