Can you "train" a child to become a certain Type?
Whenever we can, my husband and I take walks along the river. It's a great way to get 10,000 steps in, talking about difficult things while moving side by side, or just enjoying people-watching (me, ENFJ) and thinking (him, INTP) in companionable silence.
During one of our last outings, he had a couple of questions about my newsletter and as I started answering, he suggested to record our chat. So that's what we did! You can listen to the slightly out of breath audio here
(spot the pickle ballers and helicopters in the background...), and read a slightly cleaned up transcript below.
Hint: I answer the title question towards the end, look for the indented block quotes.
How does type develop, can you train a child, and can you develop as an adult - chat transcript
So you had explained to me a while ago that introversion, or some studies suggest, that introversion is built in, like you're born with it. How about the other letters? How do you develop those? Do you learn them as you grow?
That's a really good question. Jung says we come into the world with a predisposition to use our brain in a certain way. And the predisposition then needs certain experiences in order to develop into a preference.
This has recently been echoed by Lisa Feldman Barrett, who said that anatomically speaking, our brain wires itself to the world around us. Now, that is not to say that we come into the world and that we're born as a blank slate, so to speak, and that it's all nurture, that it's all our environment, that it's all our education and upbringing.
She also says there is a predisposition to become more easily wired in a certain way, but also that the brain at birth is not as differentiated as it is later on. The examples that she cites are for language learning. When you expose children to different languages during the first six months or so, the infant's brain is able to process all the different sounds.
And then over time, as it gets exposed to, say, German or English or French, over and over again, over time, repetitive exposure to one particular kind of sound, prunes the neurons away that don't use the other sound, and tunes those neural pathways so that the thing that is most common is most easily accessed.
Right. So, and how does that map with type?
To answer the first part of your question, the introversion and extraversion piece is not just a cognitive preference. It's not just how you get your energy or how much you're likely to initiate conversations and enjoy gatherings of multiple people or not.
Extraversion and introversion also actually has a biological component in that dopamine receptors in extraverts are longer than in introverts, which means that the threshold of activation for the brain for something to register as, "oh, this is exciting", or, "oh, this is fun" is higher. The extraverted brain literally needs more interaction, more stimulus, more variation for the lights to go on, so to speak.
The introverted receptors for dopamine are a little shorter, and in fact, there's another neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, the receptors for those are more developed in introverts. And acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that literally stimulates and encourages the calmness and going inward, as opposed to seeking outside stimulation.
So, when it comes to the information processing functions like sensing or intuiting, or "sensation and intuition", as Jung called it, those are the things that, I'm not sure there is an explanation for it yet.
Jung described it through empirical observation, that some people just seem to be more oriented to external facts, that's the sensation type, or to ideas and patterns and thoughts and primordial kind of collective unconscious images, and those are the intuiting types.
But if we look to Lisa Feldman Barrett again, she isn't differentiating how the information of the external world is processed to that level. She's talking about research showing that the brain predicts what it expects to see based on past experiences.
And this is where it gets a little bit tricky, because the Jungian analyst and the neurologist use the same word with slightly different interpretations. So for the neuroscientist, a sensation is a piece of information or a signal that has been transmitted by a sensory organ, like your eye, your ear, your nose, or your skin.
Whereas Jung uses the word sensation in the sense of an attention to detail, to external facts, or to internal memories. And that makes it a little bit more difficult to compare, because the language isn't quite nuanced enough.
So, based on that, if you understood what are the inputs that eventually develop a person into a certain type, does that mean you could one, train a kid to be a certain type and, and two, when you're older, you can be more intentional in developing more broadly your other types?
That's a very interesting question, and I always think knowing about type is helpful, because then you have an awareness, and then you can intentionally do something with it.
So "training a child to be something particular", what I've seen with my clients is once they have a type verification, once they land on what is actually their best-fit type, something that happens a lot is that people really have a sense of relief and of acceptance, because who they naturally are at their core was not celebrated in their home and was not encouraged in their home.
So a lot of that "can you raise someone to be a certain type" I would say it's happening already in the way that parents are trying to make their children into something in particular, and if that child does have the natural inclination and the natural predisposition to develop those particular preferences, then that is all in alignment and probably makes for a happy childhood.
But there are just as many people whose parents try to make them into something they're not. So I would say it depends on the natural preferences in terms of how well it works.
And we don't know what the natural preferences are because there isn't really a test (from birth). Dario Nardi has been putting EEG caps on people and you can notice the different wirings, but he also says that the brain wirings very much depend upon those things that you do repetitively. So like your job, your hobbies.
And also, Lisa Feldman Barrett says the best thing for your nervous system is another person and the worst thing for your nervous system is another person. You're also wiring yourself because your brain is social. You're wiring yourself to the people that are around you.
So to answer the question, I think parents try and make their children into something, and if the children have that natural predisposition, then that's great. But many, many children don't. And then later on, when they come to this realization of "wait a second, yes, I can do it, I can be the way that people expect me to be because I've learned it, but it has such a high energy cost that I'm so tired at the end of the day that I'm not as creative as I could be, that I'm not enjoying the job as much as I could, and that, you know, as a result, my happiness levels are not where they could be" - to answer your second part, yes, people who find type whenever, wherever they are in life, and this is (again) speaking from personal (and client) experience, they love it and embrace it.
Because with that realization and awareness of who you actually are at your core comes a new sense of freedom and the ability to mindfully create and consciously, literally consciously wake up to the life that you want to lead. And then you have a framework and knowledge that can help you make that a reality.
And that’s where we stopped the conversation. ☺️
As always, I'm here if you'd like to chat about how any of this applies to your particular relationships. ❤️
Book a sliding-scale coaching session here.
ICYMI - Recently published videos on my YouTube Channel
Dating a "Marketer": What analytic extraverted Intuition looks like in Relationships (ENFP, ENTP)
Dating Intellectuals: holistic introverted Thinking in Relationships (INTP, ISTP)
The Love Quest: analytic introverted Feeling in Relationships (INFP, ISFP)
Unlocking Harmony: the power of holistic extraverted Feeling (ENFJ, ESFJ)
These four are examples from the series of 16 videos I did throughout December, where I explicitly go into how Type might show up in the bedroom. I would love to start a research project into Type and sexual preferences, so if you're open to an interview (guaranteeing your personal anonymity for data analysis, of course), please let me know.
