INFP 9w8 Characters
Dominant Introverted Feeling – a self-knowledge and a desire to live in accordance with one’s personal values: Auggie is very sensitive, but also private in his emotions. Rather than talk about his first day at school and being bullied, he simply sits at the dinner table inside of his astronaut helmet so nobody can see his face or ask him any questions. Whenever pushed to open up about his feelings, he clams up and/or becomes defensive. While a kind boy, he gets wrapped up in his own emotions and forgets to check in with anyone else, to ask how their life is going, what they are feeling, or what kind of a day they had. When he lashes out at his sister after they discover their dog is sick, she has to remind him, “Not everything is about YOU!” He cares a lot about what others think, and just wants to be normal, but also is able to ignore them and focus on his own feelings instead (he tells us that he got used to staring at people’s feet, and drawing judgments about them.
Auxiliary Extroverted Intuition – an idealistic nature devoted to interpreting what inspires personal meaning: He is a highly imaginative boy, who is always seeing things that aren’t there in reality and/or using his imagination to amuse himself with, from envisioning Chewbacca from Star Wars attending their high school, to pretending that he is skipping through the halls in an astronaut suit. Auggie is also naturally intuitive about science, and is a genius for figuring out unique, creative projects with which to get good grades. He learned rapidly from his mother, and does the same in middle school. One of the other boys admits that Auggie is smarter than him and better than him in almost every subject (“especially science”). He has a lot of interests and random thoughts that he shares with his friends. While he endures a lot of pain because of his appearance, Auggie remains optimistic and idealistic and good-natured.
Tertiary Introverted Sensing – a preference for a lack of change and attention to select details: “You can tell a lot about people by their shoes,” he says, as if he has gotten used to doing this, because he’s seen so many pairs of shoes. In his mind, wearing a particular kind of shoe makes you a certain kind of person (a jock, a jerk, or a self-absorbed “crazy”). Auggie is resistant at first to going to school because it will be so different from what he is used to, and he hides inside of his helmet on the first day walk. He easily falls into a routine, retains details for school, and bases a lot of his negative assumptions about the future or how kids will treat him on previous interactions (why would it be any different this time?).
Inferior Extroverted Thinking – blunt and irritated by incompetence when under stress or overly focused on “the facts”: Auggie lashes out at people a lot, whenever he gets upset. He storms off, slams doors, tells people to leave him alone, or just plain ignores them for months after feeling hurt about what they said. But he is a good student and able to memorize lots of factual pieces of information, which he uses in his science projects or to impress others with his extensive knowledge.
Enneagram: 9w8
Enneagram 9 – desires freedom from others’ influences, by going along with them and being tolerant, until it matters not to: Auggie ignores what he does not want to deal with, and does not easily overreact when he’s around strangers, because he doesn’t want to cause trouble, assert himself too much unless it’s necessary, or to alienate his peers. He has gotten used to being (and prefers to stay) invisible, by hiding, not going out in public, and avoiding people, even though he later thanks his mother for encouraging him to go to school, where he could make friends. He ghosts his best friend after feeling offended by him, rather than to directly confront him or talk about what happened. Auggie ignores a lot of abuse and negative things said about him by going into his imagination or self-numbing, but…
8 wing brings in a tendency to assert oneself with strong but infrequent bouts of anger: … at home, he has a loud temper that often lashes out at his family, with whom he feels safe. He shouts at them, he tells them to leave him alone, he demands they stop asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer, he slams doors. Auggie will apologize later if he upset those he cares about, but in the heat of the moment it’s easy for him to boil over and explode. This leads to him later punching a much larger boy, to protect one of his friends, and almost getting beat up until others step in on his behalf.
