o_19kdfsn0q18e31dfraas1esh19vta.pdf

• Was leader of the vampire hunting group (TJ leadership favored)
• Few friendships (INTJs favored most, alas) 140
"My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time for
friendships, but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John Seward I have
known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more than ever, and it has
grown with my advancing years, the loneliness of my life."
• An observer commented on Van Helsing's style of speech, "His reply was in a way
characteristic of him, for it was logical (T favored over F) and forceful (NTJ favored over
NTP) and mysterious (I favored over E)." (This description fits INTJ best.)
• Described as solemn, grave, stern, grim (INTJ favored) 141
Van Helsing was one of the "soft" INTJs, and like Hercule Poirot (a detective who we will meet
later), he had a knack for drawing people out. For instance, one young woman was worried about
her husband's vampire-horror-induced mental problems, but was initially reluctant to confide them
to Van Helsing. She quickly changed her mind, however: "But he was so sweet and kind, and he
had promised to help, and I trusted him." She also recalled about him, "I feel from having seen him
that he is good and kind and of a noble nature." At other points in the book, Van Helsing was
described as tender, earnest, pitying and gentle. One might be tempted to explain these traits by
suggesting that he was a Feeler. However, as we have noted, Van Helsing fits many Rational traits
and was metaphorically compared on various occasions to marble, iron and ice—frozen, hard, and
unyielding substances. No, Van Helsing is no Feeler, but rather a nice Thinker. This sort of thing
tends to fly in the face of the INTJ stereotype that floats around on the web, but it is fairly typical.
Vampire Hunting Style
Van Helsing unique INTJ traits made him well suited to killing vampires. His specialized
knowledge and open-mindedness made him the first person to recognize the symptoms of vampiric
feeding; he also equipped, organized, and directed the team effort to kill Dracula. Let's look at
some of the skills that INTJs bring to the projects they take part in, as applied to the context of
vampire hunting.
First to Believe the Impossible
One distinctive trait that characterized Van Helsing was open mindedness. He did not shrink from
entertaining unlikely hypotheses just because they were widely considered impossible. Rationals
have an instinctive understanding that just because everyone agrees unanimously on a fact doesn't
make it true. However, this NT skepticism usually takes the form of refusing to buy into mass
superstitions. This was reversed in Van Helsing's case; he refused to buy into the scientific
community's unanimous insistence that if something couldn't be positively proved—such as a
superstition—then it must not be true at all. We cannot prove that either aliens or God exist, but
neither can we prove they don't; Van Helsing reasoned that vampires might exist for much the same
reasons. He explained his position as follows, "I heard once of an American who so defined faith,
'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that
man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the
big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him,
and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe."
This is more of an INTP position than an INTJ position, but there are plenty of INTJ agnostics.
140 Myers, McCaulley, Quenk & Hammer, 1998
141 Thorne & Gough, 1991