Type Heroes: INFJ – The Paladin

INFJ
The Paladin

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship…but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!!”
Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Film

The INFJ Paladin is heroic to the core.  They have an incredible sense of scope and justice and desire above all to show others through example how to be heroic themselves (as quite aptly put here).  They go on their own unique quests through life, hoping to inspire others to do the same.  They long to be heroic, but usually don’t believe that they’re anything special, so they believe and preach that anyone can be heroic.

Ever since INFJ children play in the backyard or hear stories at night, they love archetype, meaning and the potential they see all around them.  It’s not until they’re a little older that Hercules Syndrome strikes and suddenly adults and peers around them say “who do you think you are?”  Our society doesn’t like meaning, but would rather run to anything else; from celebrity romances to keeping so busy we can’t hear ourselves think.  It’s all the grown-ups’ equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and singing.  So the little INFJ has a choice… they can keep seeing and enjoying meaning, patterns and finding higher purposes in the world and be ostracized for it, or they can cloak themselves from the world (as INFJ’s are the best at doing) and put on a mild-mannered face that doesn’t bother anyone.  When they choose to keep their head down they can be perfectly good at looking like everybody else.  When they choose to own who they are even if they think no one will ever truly know them and accept them, they become the quintessential “unlikely hero” protagonist.  This is the INFJ Paladin.

It would seem that the unlikely hero is perhaps not so unlikely considering how many epics have these creatures at their core.  Farm boy swept away on a world or galaxy-spanning adventure?  INFJ.  The young man accidentally chosen by the evil lord himself?  INFJ.  Disney princess who just wants to go out and see the world, but needs to learn to stand up for herself?  INFJ.  (Yes, I mock my INFJ about this brutally.)  Something about the combination of traits–the collectively focused and lonely introversion; the intuition to have enormous scope of view; a capacity to understand others’ feelings and the judgement to do something about it–makes the INFJ perfectly cast as the misunderstood young man or woman who still has a pure enough heart to do something about the sorry state of their world.

INFJ’s have a tendency to try and swoop in and save the day, even when the save-ees don’t want them to.  This isn’t out of a self-supposed superiority, as often suggested, but because the Paladin is afraid that if they don’t save the day no one else will care enough to do so.  This probably comes from their IJ tendency to make blanket character judgements, their introverted loneliness and their Hercules Syndrome suggesting to them that saving the day is strange so no one else would want to do it.  All the IJ’s have their own variation on “I have to do this because no one else will.”

The Paladin may feel like next to no one wants or understands them, but when they keep at their mission, which they’ll do whether or not anyone is following them, eventually people will see that the INFJ is good and their goals necessary; the other types like to rally around the Paladin as a figurehead of their cause…even though this usually makes an INFJ who hasn’t mastered their Hercules Syndrome feel terribly guilty.  They never wanted anyone to get hurt for them, they were just doing what they *knew* was right.  But as their friends have to remind them (often ENFJ’s, ENTP’s or ENFP’s), it’s not the INFJ they’re fighting for, it’s the good of all of them.

When turned to villainy, the INFJ is *creepy*!  There isn’t really any other word for it.  Dark Paladins are the best of manipulators because they are incredibly intuitive about people and can apply their mild-manneredness to going under the radar as long as they need to, manipulating others who would never suspect them.  Because they are so good at this and *know* it, pure-hearted INFJ’s often wonder if they are secretly evil and manipulative at heart, like one day they’ll wake up and realize they were bad all along.

But INFJ’s are masters of principle and can tell when their deeply-held values are incorrect.  Though they may make individual mistakes of especially character judgments, the INFJ Paladin wants to understand and course-correct to achieve their overwhelming goals more efficiently.  Even the Dark Paladin will want to hold to principles of good and right because INFJ’s know that applying correct principles *works*, even if the Dark Paladin wants to use it to their own selfish ends.

Paladin or Dark Paladin, a strong INFJ knows to trust their principles and rely on inner strength to achieve their world encompassing goals, whatever they may be.

Examples:
Male:  Harry Potter
Female:  Rapunzel, Disney’s Tangled
Villain:  Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars

Who are the Type Heroes?  Read the intro here, and stay tuned to meet them all!

Want more information on INFJ, the Paladin?  Read their Cognitive Orientation Guidebook here.