Gandhi, the ultimate INFJ
Gandhi is often typed as an INFJ, but usually there are no reasons cited – just a name and a category.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was a proponent of what he called Satyagraha ‘Clinging to the truth.’ That could, itself, be the motto of the INFJ. He took on the suffering of all of India, and tried to embody it in himself – when India was rioting, he stopped eating. When India was enslaved, he went to prison. He felt himself as a sort of an incarnation of the nation of India, but at the same time, he preached the universal truth of all religions, and the destruction of all divisions between people (race, religion, and caste, in particular).
Universal experience is a common theme with the discourse of Introverted Intuitives. They believe that their inner landscape embodies the universals of the human state. In the case of the INTJ, this usually manifests itself in terms of knowledge; their perception of their inner landscape gives them a perspective-less kind of universal knowledge. For example, an INTJ might say that, because of some particular characteristic of their Self, they can know some theory is right or wrong – and that it’s right or wrong universally. In contrast, the INFJ, who is an extraverted feeler rather than thinker, tends to bring out their universality in terms of morality. Through some inner path, they have arrived at an intuitive understanding of the underlying morality that drives all humans, and which all humans are called to adhere to, or perish.
In its worst cases, these kinds of traits surface as megalamania and controlling, aggressive behaviour. Even in Gandhi’s case, this was often apparent, as anyone can see in the first few pages of any of his books. However, when it is directed properly, it gives the INFJ an indomitable will (which Gandhi himself referred to often), bent on achieving the realization of Universal Truth on earth.
Ironically, it is this goal itself that typically is the INFJ’s undoing, as well as Gandhi’s. Politics, and the motivations of great masses of people, are not so easily simplified, and what works for an individual of Gandhi’s strength of character is often disastrous when applied to large groups of people. The INFJ can end up absorbed in power struggles and big-picture political debates and end up not fulfilling their purposes, dying frustrated, misunderstood, and even hated. Worse, because the INFJ refuses to submit to external circumstances, they can often become blind to the real consequences of their ideology, making ruthless decisions without considering the real human consequences of them. Another well-known INFJ, Adolf Hitler, is a good example of the INFJ gone far in this direction.
I think that the best way for an INFJ, like Gandhi, to realize their potential is to restrict themselves to realizing it for themselves, being mindful that people around them will be best influenced this way. Rather than forcing other people’s hands with power-plays and political games, or becoming submerged in objective, big-picture issues, the INFJ is most effective by living the life themselves. This is what Gandhi meant by Satyagraha: convincing others by employing the INFJ’s indomitable will on the Self.
