Introduction
In part I of this series on music and personality, I introduced readers to the Jungian MBTI system of classifying personality types and the theory underlying it. Today, we will go through a rather morbid topic, that is nonetheless highly illuminating about personality and music.
In my reading on the Third Empire for my critique of Joachim Köhler, I found myself forced to read a great deal around the subject. I obtained copies of the main three Hitler biographies by Ian Kershaw, John Toland and Joachim Fest. The creepy thing is that the more I seemed to get to know the man, certain aspects of his personality reminded me increasingly of myself. I felt eerily linked to Hitler like Harry Potter to Lord Voldemort.
I know that Jung would say that I am projecting my shadow self onto the historical figure of Hitler, given the archetypal role of Dark Lord and Evil Wizard in my unconscious mind. We even have the same like for the music of Beethoven and Wagner, though I care little for Franz Lehár, whom Hitler regarded as the equal of any composer. I also like Bruckner a great deal more than him, as Zalampas tells us that his enthusiasm was always only lukewarm. I should mention that although it is sometimes stated as though it were a given fact that Hitler's favourite composer was Wagner, there is absolutely nothing to actually corroborate this.
Ian Kershaw tells us that the whole of National Socialist Germany was built upon Hitler's charismatic leadership. This means that the political structure of the regime became inseparable from Hitler's personality structure, to the point that it is impossible to truly understand the National Socialist political structure independent of his personality. Ian Kershaw goes so far as to tell us that the strength of Hitler’s regime resulted, not from the administrative rigour of its ruthlessly imposed institutional organisation, but in Hitler’s charismatic leadership style:
Hitler’s power was of an extraordinary kind. He did not base his claim to power (except in a most formal sense) on his position as a party leader, or on any functional position. He derived it from what he saw as his historic mission to save Germany. His power, in other words, was ‘charismatic’, not institutional. It depended upon the readiness of others to see ‘heroic’ qualities in him.
Kershaw: Introduction Hitler Vol I—Nemesis.Kershaw elsewhere even goes so far as to say:
The notion of power of will [Macht des Willens] to overcome difficulties, central to the operation of 'charismatic authority' throughout the system, ran in its essence completely counter to impersonal bureaucratic administration—the basis of all modern states. The Party had always distinguished between the positive, desirable qualities of 'leadership of people' (Menschenführung) and the negative, arid attributes of mere 'administration'.
Kershaw: The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45. Kindle loc 2931.
Unfortunately, due to a past proliferation of dubiously reductive psychological accounts of Hitler that mostly just dismissed him as a "madman", an alleged tertiary syphilis sufferer, or a mental cripple with only one testicle with which to think, psychological accounts of the Third Empire are generally held in low esteem by historians such as Kershaw, who understandably prefer to stick to objective facts in a "structural" framework. In the words of Hitler's personal valet, Heinz Linge, who was made personally responsible for burning his body:
A theory has been cultivated in certain circles...that in the final phase of his life the Führer [Leader] was no longer master of his senses—that this is the only way by which the catastrophic end of the Third Reich [Empire] can be explained. This is a fable. Up to that final moment when he took his pistol, held it to his right temple and pulled the trigger, he was Adolf Hitler, one hundred percent compos mentis. Thus all references to the contrary which have appeared since then are superfluous.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p186.Most modern historians have come to agree with him.
However, I believe that the Jungian MBTI system does provide for precisely the sort of coherent structural framework that is well validated in the psychology literature and that allows for deep insight that can be subjected to critical analysis. In particular, it avoids reductionistic analysis of the sort that simplifies things down to speculations about "sexual perversions" and missing testicles. In fact, precisely because Ian Kershaw lacks a sound psychological structural framework by which to examine Hitler, even he very occasionally lapses into exactly the sort of reductive and wildly speculative psychological analysis of the kind that he rightly condemns. For example:
[Hitler] needed the orgasmic excitement which only the ecstatic masses could give him.
Kershaw: Hitler Vol. 1 Kindle Loc 3312I will show a way of approaching Hitler psychologically that obviates the need for this sort of thing while gaining us profound insight into his personality.
What Jungian Personality Type was Hitler?
For a start I thought I would make an attempt at typing Hitler's Jungian MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality based upon Kershaw, Toland, Fest as well as Richard J. Evans, but drawing most from immediate accounts from people close to him such as his secretary Traudl Junge, and his valet, Heinz Linge. Other books I have drawn from include Kershaw's Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution and The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45, Thomas Weber's Hitler's First War and Christopher Browning's The Origins of the Final Solution. All of these sources are written by highly respected historians, and I have systematically ignored the endless lurid and sensationalist speculations, like those by Joachim Köhler, which continue to enthral the general public.
I vs E (Introversion vs Extroversion)
Kershaw tells us about how profoundly secretive Hitler was. Historians like Kershaw and Browning, amongst many others, all tell us that it is this that makes reconstructing the details of the exact orders from Hitler that fatally initiated the Final Solution so difficult. For a summary of the debate between intentionalists and structuralists, see Kershaw's essay Hitler's Role in the Final Solution in Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution.
Hitler never trusted anyone other than a tiny group of intimate confidantes. This is typical of an introverted type. In Ian Kershaw's words Hitler was “unapproachable and impenetrable even for those in his close company, incapable it seems of genuine friendship” (Kershaw Hitler Vol 1 Kindle loc 410). Churchill called Hitler “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” He has even been called an “unperson”. In Ian Kershaw's words: “Hitler was highly secretive—not least about his personal life, his background, and his family”. In his years of war service, he was known amongst his colleagues for keeping to himself and for spending time reading. Heinz Linge, his personal valet, tells us that “Hitler had no real friend in the traditional sense of the word”. His secretary Traudl Junge said that "the Führer [Leader] spoke in a quiet, soft voice" (Junge, p53).
Toland also states that:
By his own admission, Hitler was a recluse in his youth, and had little need of society...
Toland Adolf Hitler p134The only possible conclusion is that Hitler exhibited a marked tendency towards Introversion. As with most things, the degree of introversion-extroversion probably follows a bell shaped curve. On this curve, Hitler is definitely on the extreme end of the introversion scale.
The commonest misconception is that, because he tended to rant and rave in his public speeches, he therefore must have been an extrovert. The opposite is actually true. To quote Carl Jung:
The introvert, on the other hand, who reacts almost entirely within, cannot as a rule discharge his reactions except in explosions of affect.
Jung: Psychological Types (Vol 6 Complete Works), p325. My emphasis.It is precisely these "explosions of affect" that we see in the public Hitler. In private and social situations he was softly spoken, bookish, and reclusive.
The point here is that, although undoubtedly valuable, the modern MBTI system—perhaps necessarily—oversimplifies the complexity of personality down to a simple four letter code. In particular, the type really is only valid for the person in average everyday social interactions. It represents something like an average baseline. However, in certain circumstances, something of an enantiodromia can occur, when the personality structure can completely invert. Jung illustrates this well in his essay, The Psychology of the Unconscious:
Let us suppose two youths rambling in the country. They come to a fine castle; both want to see inside it. The introvert says "I'd like to know what it's like inside." The extravert answers, 'Right, let's go in," and makes for the gateway. The introvert draws back—"Perhaps we aren't allowed in," says he, with visions of policemen, fines, and fierce dogs in the background. Whereupon the extravert answers, "Well, we can ask. They'll let us in all right"—with visions of kindly old watchmen, hospitable signeurs, and the possibility of romantic adventures. On the strength of the extraverted optimism they at length find themselves in the castle. But now comes the dénouement The castle has been rebuilt inside, and contains nothing but a couple of rooms with a collection of old manuscripts. As it happens, old manuscripts are the chief joy of the introverted youth. Hardly has he caught sight of them when he becomes as one transformed...His shyness has vanished, objects have taken on a seductive glamour, and the world wears a new face. But meanwhile the spirits of the extraverted youth are ebbing lower and lower. His face grows longer and he begins to yawn.
What has happened? ...At this point the types invert themselves: the introvert, who at first resisted the idea of going in, cannot now be induced to go out, and the extravert curses the moment when he set foot inside the castle....The introvert became extravert, the extravert introverted. But the extraversion of the introvert is different from the extraversion of the extravert and vice versa.
Jung: The Psychology of the Unconscious from Two Essays in Analytical Psychology, p55-57; Vol 7 Complete Works. Routledge (my emphasis)
I must also confess that as someone who is an introvert on any personality test I ever do, usually scoring on the extreme end of the introversion-extroversion scale, that I too can actually be an extremely effective public speaker. The reason is that I am also a capable writer of public speeches and presentations. So when I read about Hitler the introvert becoming a demonic speaker, it does remind me of myself. If anyone invited me to give a public talk critiquing Joachim Köhler, I would deliver quite an impassioned talk characterised by a barely contained sense of outrage at a deep injustice done. For I know that if I am driven by a sense of values, then I totally lose all of my usual social inhibitions. I lose all fear in these circumstances of speaking in front of large audiences. On the other hand, I have often noticed that colleagues who are normally bubbly socialites are frequently reduced in the same situation to a stammering nervous wreck—in short the enantiodromia occurs, where the psychological types invert. Part of the reason for this is that the sense of impassioned idealism overrides my usually quite extreme natural social introversion, but also because formal speeches before big audiences are curiously impersonal environments.
Interestingly, some people advise that public speakers pick out a member of an audience and speak as though talking to this one person. This technique really only works for extroverts. For an introvert this is actually the worst possible advice, as it would turn the speech delivered in an impersonal auditorium into an intimate social interaction—exactly the situation where their shyness returns. It is precisely the impression of monologuing abstractly from the heart to the stars about something near and dear to them, that so completely brings the introvert out of their shells.
The following insight from Ian Kershaw further confirms this to be the case with Hitler as well:
According to Heinrich Hoffmann, when asked to give a short speech at Hermann Esser’s wedding party in the early 1920s, he refused. ‘I must have a crowd when I speak,’ he explained. ‘In a small intimate circle I never know what to say. I should only disappoint you all, and that is a thing I should hate to do. As a speaker either at a family gathering or a funeral, I’m no use at all.’ Hitler’s frequently demonstrated diffidence and unease in dealings with individuals contrasted diametrically with his self-confident masterly in exploiting the emotions of his listeners in the theatrical setting of a major speech.
Kershaw: Hitler Vol 1 Kindle Loc 3311 (my emphasis)
In the rather more intimate social setting of a wedding, the introvert's natural shyness and reserve returns in full force. In the paradoxically impersonal setting of a massive public rally, the fanatical intensity of his idealogical drive overcomes all shyness, and the angry propagandist demagogue comes exploding in full fury out of his introverted shell. The sheer violence of the pent up emotions in this circumstance makes the bubbliest of extroverts look like shrinking violets.
N vs S (iNtuition vs Sensing)
In the introduction to his biography Ian Kershaw says:
Despite the skin-deep "coherency" of his Weltanschauung, it is well known that there are innumerable illogical knight's moves within the ideology. In other words, within his ideological thrust there is a marked tendency to jump to far fetched conclusions typical of an iNtuitive type. This example comes from Mein Kampf (My Struggle):Hitler was not just a propagandist, a manipulator, a mobilizer. He was all those. But he was also an ideologue of unshakeable convictions—the most radical of the radicals as exponent of an internally coherent (however repellant to us) ‘world-view’ [Weltanschauung], acquiring its thrust and potency from its combination of a very few basic ideas….It amounted to a Utopian vision of national redemption…(my emphasis)
If the Jew gains victory over the people of this world with the help of his Marxist Confession of Faith, then his crown will become the Dance of Death (Totentanz) over the human race . . . That is why I believe that I am acting as the agent of the Almighty Creator. In that I am warding off the Jews, I am fighting to do the Lord's work.
The notion of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to achieve world-domination contains multiple complex knight’s moves implicit within its twisted logic:Siegt der Jude mit Hilfe seines marxistischen Glaubens-bekenntnisses über die Völker dieser Welt, dann wird seine Krone der Totentanz der Menschheit sein . . . So glaube ich heute im Sinne des allmächtigen Schöpfers zu handeln: Indem ich mich des Juden erwehre, kämpfe ich für das Werk des Herrn.
- Left-wing ideology comes from Jews
- The Jews are plotting to dominate the world with their left-wing ideology
- All left-wingers are Jewish conspirators and their collaborators
- To eliminate the communist threat, left-wing thinking must be eliminated at its source: Jewry
- To exterminate Judeo-Bolshevism is therefore Hitler’s “Divine Mission”.
F vs T (Feeling vs Thinking)
Joseph Goebbels summed Hitler up rather well when he wrote in his diary on 23rd July 1944:
It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see reason.Ever since the crushing defeat at Stalingrad, Goebbels had unsuccessfully tried to reason with Hitler for the need to institute a radical mobilisation of the war machine towards "total war" if catastrophic defeat were to be avoided. It seems Hitler had stubbornly refused to see reason, preferring to live under the romantic delusion of National Socialist German invincibility, and insisting on proceeding along "evolutionary and not revolutionary lines" (Kershaw: The End: Hitler's Germany 1944-45, p23). The statement by Goebbels decisively demonstrates that Hitler was as far as you could get from being a Thinking dominated NT-Rationalist personality type.
Examination of examples from Hitler's writings and speeches further confirm a strong Feeling orientation. For example, in a speech given on 12 April 1922, Hitler extensively uses emotionally charged words, and like much of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), typically contains strongly emotive language:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognised these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942 (my emphasis)
Taken together with the previous discussion on the intuitive nature of his thinking, these quotations show the typical characteristics of an iNtuitive-Feeling type of NF-Idealist personality. The wildness of the intuitive knight’s moves in logical moves is buttressed by frenzied emotions, rather than being supported by rational argument. Toland quotes the historian Karl Alexander von Müller whose impression of seeing Hitler was that of a "fanatically hysteric romanticism with a brutal will" (Toland p133). Such "hysterically romantic" ideology could only possibly be the product of a NF-Idealist personality type.
There are endless more examples to corroborate this conclusion. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler writes on p45, in the section entitled The Tactics of the Social Democrats (Taktik der Sozialdemokratie):
After only two years had passed, both the principles and the technical apparatus of social democracy were clear to me.
I grasped the infamous spiritual terror, which this movement exercises especially in such attacks on a bourgeoisie neither morally or spiritually developed, whereby at a given signal there rattles away a machine-gun barrage of lying and slander against their seemingly most dangerous opponents, so long as to wreak the nerves of those attacked so that they will sacrifice the object of hate just to have peace again.
Ehe nur zwei Jahre vergangen waren, war mir sowohl die Lehre als auch das technische Werkzeug der Sozial-demokratie klar.
Ich begriff den infamen geistigen Terror, den diese Bewegung vor allem auf das solchen Angriffen weder moralisch noch seelisch gewachsene Bürgertum ausübt, indem sie auf ein gegebenes Zeichen immer ein förmliches Trommelfeuer von Lügen und Verleumdungen gegen den ihr am gefährlichsten erscheinenden Gegner losprasseln läßt, so lange, bis die Nerven der Angegriffenen brechen und sie, um nur wieder Ruhe zu haben, den Verhaßten opfern.
The emphases are mineThe word "hate" occurs seemingly innumerable times throughout this book. I performed a count of the word Haß ("hate") and its derivatives such as verhaßen, gehaßt in a PDF formatted version of the original edition of Mein Kampf from Eher-Verlag, 1943, and I managed to count around 89 occurrences in the entire book. It is decisive proof that his language is consistently angry and explosively emotive rather than rational and logical.
Once again in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), p99 in the section entitled Jewish Democracy vs Germanic Democracy (Jüdische Demokratie vs Germanische Demokratie):
Thereby this kind of democracy has also become the instrument of that race, which by its inner goals shies away from the sun, for now and all future times. Only the Jew can praise an institution which is dirty and false as he himself.
In other words, he is denouncing his Social Democrat political enemies as being Jewish conspirators and collaborators. The implication is that the democratic Weimar Republic, founded largely thanks to the Social Democrats during the German Revolution, was a "Jewish Republic" whose democratic institutes deserved pitiless annihilation. The argument is just emotive propaganda full of intuitive-irrational, and hence convoluted, conspiracy theories rather than hard logical argument.Daher ist diese Art von Demokratie auch das Instrument derjenigen Rasse geworden, die ihren inneren Zielen nach die Sonne zu scheuen hat, jetzt und in allen Zeiten der Zukunft. Nur der Jude kann eine Einrichtung preisen, die schmutzig und unwahr ist wie er selber.
In Mein Kampf (My Struggle) there is little rational, deductive thinking in meticulously analytical and logically stepwise fashion. The thinking is thoroughly emotional and intuitive in the way it rapidly jumps to sweeping foregone conclusions. This mode of thinking is far from the cooly intellectual and analytic thinking found in Rational NT types. It is abundantly clear that Hitler can only be a NF type driven by a "fanatically hysteric romanticism with a brutal will".
Even when Hitler tries to cloak his blatantly emotive propaganda in a pseudo-scientific language, it barely conceals the underlying irrationality. For example, he claimed to be the Robert Koch (the microbiology pioneer) of politics:
I feel like the Robert Koch of politics. He found the bacillus of tuberculosis and through that showed medical scholarship new ways. I discovered the Jews as the bacillus and ferment of all social decomposition. Their ferment. And I have proved one thing: that a state can live without Jews; that the economy, culture, art, etc. etc. can exist without Jews and indeed better. That is the worst blow I have dealt the Jews.
From Kershaw: Hitler Vol 2 Kindle Loc 11080It is hardly as though Hitler had published his finding in a reputable peer reviewed scientific journal, and it would be scarcely conceivable to take such emotive propagandist thinking as evidence for him having the analytic mind of a NT-Rationalist personality type with a strongly "rational-scientific" bent. No presentation of some sort of logical argument is even so much as attempted.
Another example where Hitler cloaks his demonic vision in a bizarre pseudo-scientific language can be seen in his reaction to Alfred Rosenberg's book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century:
He dismissed it as the product of a “narrow-minded Balt who thinks in horribly complicated terms." According to Hitler, even the title was wrong. The Nazi movement was based on modern science, not a “myth." As a National Socialist, Rosenberg should have known better. He should have called his book Knowledge of the Twentieth Century a title that would have underscored the empirical advancements of human understanding in the twentieth century. Further, Hitler hardly knew a Nazi leader who had read the book, let alone understood it.
Timothy Ryback: Hitler's Private Library, p 113
The "science" mentioned is, of course, the hysterical racial theories held by the National Socialists. Nor does extensive analysis of the pseudo-scientific racial theories ever make prominent appearance in his writings or speeches, suggesting that his thinking was emotive and propagandistically orientated, rather than being rational or analytical. It is similar to the emotive claims made by climate change skeptics who likewise like to make propagandist assertions that their ideas are "scientifically valid", though at least they try to produce dubious looking graphs and analyses. With Hitler, you see nothing other than fanatical "knock-down" arguments, supported by little more than emotional outbursts of hate. The ridiculous appeal to "science" is the worst sort of attempt at superficial rationalisation.
On this subject Kershaw further says:
On this subject Kershaw further says:
Hitler’s very first and last recorded political statements concerned the “Jewish Question.” In a letter written as early as September 1919, using biological terminology he would frequently deploy, he spoke of the activities of jews producing “a racial tuberculosis among nations.” ... Antisemitism as a political movement, he declared, should be based on “reason,” not emotion, and must lead to the systematic removal of the rights of jews. However, he concluded, the “final aim,” which could only be attained in a “government of national strength,” had to be the “removal of the jews altogether!"
Kershaw: Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution, Kindle loc 1314. My emphasis
Notice how Kershaw places quotation marks around the word "reason", since it is all too obvious that not a shred of rational argument has been presented in reaching his hysterical conclusion.
Since we have already clearly established that he was a strongly introverted personality, at this point we can clearly conclude that he was an INF personality type, and the only variable that remains outstanding is whether he was an INFP or INFJ.J vs P (Judging vs Perceiving)
The decision as to whether Hitler was a Judging or Perceiving type is the most difficult personality variable of them all. We have so far seen that he was an INF type, but the final question is whether is was an INFJ or an INFP. Whereas there are marked differences in personality type between an ESFJ and ESFP, the INFP and INFJ personality types are somewhat more similar with the differences between them being more subtle.
Firstly, let's explore possible arguments for Hitler being a Judging type (INFJ):
Hitler was certainly not unintelligent, and possessed a sharp mind which could draw on his formidably retentive memory. He was able to impress not only, as might be expected, his sycophantic entourage but also cool, critical, seasoned statesmen and diplomat with his rapid grasp of issues.
Kershaw: Introduction to Vol 1 HitlerThe rapid grasp of issues and the sharp mind might suggest a strongly developed Judgement function. It should be mentioned, however, that prior to going into meetings, politicians have lengthy pre-meeting discussions with an extensive body of advisers, and so often go into the actual meeting with opponents, already having been given the time to fully make up their minds on issues. This is what often leads to "political gridlock", of a sort that says more about group psychology than individual psychology.
However, Hitler's personal valet of ten years, Heinz Linge tell us:
The ability to intuitively grasp what people around him were thinking is typical of an intuitive type, and the way he would use his intuition to make decisive judgements and remarks could be considered typical of an INFJ personality type. On the other hand, it seems that this sort of immovability mainly came out of Hitler on issues related to his core Weltanschauung (world-view) and sense of fanatical messianic ideological mission for 'God and the World' of the sort more typical of an INFP personality type.If somebody had the idea of putting a counter-argument when Hitler spoke about ‘God and the World’, for example, in one of his much-quoted ‘table talks’, almost without exception the would-be protester never got any further. Hitler usually sensed exactly what everybody around him was thinking, and he would crush the proposed objection by referring to it as an absurdity in his opening sentences. Linge p8
Hitler's physician, Giesing is quoted by Linge p167:
He had this simple belief that he understood most things, and could do things better, than most people.This may further suggest a tendency to make decisive judgement calls. This sort of stubborn dogmatism could be consistent with an INFJ personality type.
Next, let's examine the argument for Hitler being a Perceiving type (INFP). Here we see a typical feature of the less schematic way of judging situations, more typical of a INFP:
Hitler did not lead and govern as the people thought. To a great extent he gave ministers, Reichleiters, Gauleiters and governor-generals a free hand, and not seldom they turned on each other tooth and nail.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p180
In other words, the National Socialist regime was a more of a "charismatic leadership", as opposed to one of a rigorously organised imposed structure, built around a defined schedule and a definitive Judgement imposed from above. Hitler tended to be severely indecisive at certain moments when it really mattered.
Hitler always knew, at least in outline, what he intended, but he gave himself time to make his decisions even when they were urgent…He ignored the occasional cautious pressure by the military commanders…
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p183
During the war much would have advanced faster and turned out better if somebody knowledgeable and decisive whom he respected had constantly urged Hitler to act now rather than delay his decision until it was really too late. Hitler—contrary to all opposing assertions—knew his weaknesses as a leader—changed nothing in this respect and limited himself to retrospective admissions: 'If only I had done that sooner…’ …[M]ilitary men in commanding positions…often…criticised the ‘irresoluteness of the Führer’ [Leader]…
Linge: With Hitler to the End,, p184 (my emphasis)
The open brutality of the November Pogrom, the round-up and incarceration of some 30,000 Jews that followed it, and the draconian measures to force Jews out of the economy had, Goebbels’s diary entries make plain, all been explicitly approved by Hitler even if the initiatives had come from others, above all from the Propaganda Minister himself. To those who saw him late on the evening of 9 November, Hitler had appeared to be shocked and angry at the reports reaching him of what was happening. Himmler, highly critical of Goebbels, was given the impression that Hitler was surprised by what he was hearing when Himmler’s chief adjutant Karl Wolff informed them of the burning of the Munich synagogue... Speer was told by a seemingly regretful and embarrassed Hitler that he had not wanted the 'excesses'. Speer thought that Goebbels had pushed him into it.
... like many other instances of blanket verbal authorization given in the unstructured and un-formalized style of reaching decisions in the Third Reich [Empire], probably left intentions open to interpretation.
Kershaw: Hitler Vol II Kindle Loc 4002
In other words, Hitler was far from being a decisively Judgement orientated personality. He lead purely by "charismatic leadership" that left precise judgement open to the interpretation of those whom he delegated to.
Even the precise details of if, when, and how Hitler delegated the orders to institute the Final Solution remain spectacularly unclear to historians (see Browning: The Origins of the Final Solution). The way Ian Kershaw sums up is with a phrase used by one National Socialist official who talked about "working towards the Führer [Leader] along his lines and towards his aim" (Kershaw Hitler Vol 2 Kindle Loc 823). In other words, the political nature of charismatic leadership involved those within its structure second guessing what their Leader might want, rather than it being a systematic imposition of meticulously defined organisation from the top. There are those who argue that the Final Solution was inadvertently implemented by overzealous apparatchiks instituting genocide by second guessing that this was what Hitler wanted in a particular set of extreme circumstances—the so-called structuralist theory. In other words, the Third Empire as a whole bears the hallmarks of Hitler's style of unstructured and un-formalised 'charismatic leadership'.
All of this lack of directional clarity, and the woolliness of charismatic leadership, suggests that the whole of the Third Empire was stamped with the imprint of Hitler's indecisive personality, resulting in murky decision making processes throughout the entire structure of the Third Empire as a whole. It is the definitive imprint of a dreamily idealistic INFP personality rather than a more clear and decisive INFJ personality. What we see within the Third Empire is a far cry from what one would expect from an INFJ personality type, where the strongly developed Judgement function imposes a rapidly decisive and meticulous order:
INFJs place great importance on havings things orderly and systematic in their outer world. They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done... PersonalitypageAgain:
INFJs are also natural leaders. This is quite unlike Hitler, who exhibited little to no leadership ability during his years of war service, and nor does Kubizek once suggest that he showed such tendencies at a young age. Hitler's sense of the "fanatically hysteric romanticism" of his messianic "mission" only exploded out of him after the catastrophic defeat of Germany in WWI and the Treaty of Versailles. This description of an INFP fits absolutely perfectly:Decisive. This is one of the most important strengths of any INFJ. Their imagination, combined with decisiveness, usually allows INFJs to achieve incredible things – not only they can come up with interesting and unusual ideas, they also have the willpower and planning skills necessary to implement those ideas.
This fits exactly with Kershaw's description of Hitler:INFPs are flexible and laid-back, until one of their values is violated. In the face of their value system being threatened, INFPs can become aggressive defenders, fighting passionately for their cause. When an INFP has adopted a project or job which they're interested in, it usually becomes a "cause" for them. Although they are not detail-oriented individuals, they will cover every possible detail with determination and vigor when working for their "cause". (My emphasis)
He had identified his personal fate wholly with that of the German Reich [Empire]. An acute sense of national humiliation now merged with his own misery. His searing bitterness and visceral hatred, of a rare intensity, reflected this identification, and was now directed at perceived enemies he had begun to identify years before, scapegoats first for his own ills, now responsible for those of the nation. He could not accept the failure of the army in which he himself had fought. Dark forces of Sedition at home had to be responsible. Revenge, ... gripped him with the power of an obsession. Those who had undermined Germany’s national prestige, had reduced her to this shame, would have to pay for it. This was the personal fire within him that was never extinguished.
Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution, Kindle loc 1336.
Another thing that Linge tells us is that:
It was difficult to understand him. On the one hand he pandered even to the most unimportant things, while on the other he was excessive and unfeeling. He might show the most fatherly concern for a female secretary who had stubbed her toe but be utterly ice-cold when issuing orders which sent thousands to their deaths.
This sort of inconsistent and lob sided pandering to small things while at other times being blind to larger things is typical of an INFP. This is due to the judgement function being less developed, resulting in a tendency towards greater disorganisation.
Heinz Linge, who served Hitler for ten years, further tells us that:
This hardy points to a decisively judgement making type of mind at all. Far from issuing "terse and clear orders" he was convoluted and all over the place. Even after enduring a two hour lecture from Hitler, people remained just as unclear as before as to exactly what he wanted. This forced those in the Third Empire into second guessing him and "working towards the Führer [Leader] along his lines and towards his aim".
In short, the following description by Keirsey of an INFP personality type sums up Hitler perfectly:
Heinz Linge, who served Hitler for ten years, further tells us that:
When in Hitler's presence it was of great importance to anticipate his needs. This could not always be inferred from his instructions and orders. 'Thinking aloud' he would bring to light individual problems from all directions and make simple procedures into the most insoluble problems. He presented everything in so convoluted a manner that somebody unfamiliar with his methods would be unable to sort out what he was driving at. He would wander off the subject, talk about irrelevancies and confuse people who were following his explanations closely. Mostly he left it to his listener to put the right 'weight' on a thing and so understand what it was he had been talking about. The military, for example, used to terse and clear orders, had to endure a discourse of one or two hours and they would still be uncertain what he really wanted.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p75. My emphases.
This hardy points to a decisively judgement making type of mind at all. Far from issuing "terse and clear orders" he was convoluted and all over the place. Even after enduring a two hour lecture from Hitler, people remained just as unclear as before as to exactly what he wanted. This forced those in the Third Empire into second guessing him and "working towards the Führer [Leader] along his lines and towards his aim".
In short, the following description by Keirsey of an INFP personality type sums up Hitler perfectly:
To understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of the fairytale, the King's Champion or Defender of the Faith.
(quoted from here—possibly an older version of the Keirsey website, but showing similarities in wording to Please Understand Me II by Keirsey)
Hitler's anti-Semitism is even described by historians such as Saul Friedländer as a "redemptive anti-Semitism" to bring healing to a Germany wounded by the Great War.
Traudl Junge further sums him up when she tells us that:
Traudl Junge further sums him up when she tells us that:
Personally modest and kindly, but as Führer [Leader] a harsh megalomaniac, he lived for his ‘mission’. He sometimes said that it demanded endless sacrifices of him.
Junge: Until the Final Hour, p83. My emphasis.The harshness of Hitler in fanatically defending his 'mission' is well summed up here:
INFPs are usually adaptable and congenial, unless one of their ruling principles has been violated, in which case they stop adapting and become staunch defenders of their values. They will be uncharacteristically harsh and rigid in such a situation.
Keirsey further perfectly sums up Hitler's "charismatic leadership" as described by Ian Kershaw:
Advocates [INFPs and ENFPs] are devoted to the spiritual journey and will take up romantic causes with passionate intensity, searching for the core of unity or integrity in themselves and their group, and hoping to nurture sympathy and understanding.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II; Kindle loc 6436It perfectly well summarises Hitler's "fanatically hysteric romanticism with a brutal will" described by Karl Alexander von Müller.
On the basis of this, I conclude that Hitler's personality type was most likely to be an INFP. Keirsey calls the INFP, the Healer personality type. It is precisely how Hitler is depicted in National Socialist propaganda—as the Messianic Saviour and Healer of a wounded nation brought to its knees by defeat in WWI and the Treaty of Versailles:
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| Hitler as the Saviour of Germany—he saw himself as being on a messianic ideological crusade |
'Linge, I am going to shoot myself now. You know what you have to do. I have given the orders for the break-out'...To my question what we should fight for now, he answered: 'For the Coming Man'. I saluted... Then for the last time in his life he raised his right arm in the Hitler salute. A ghostly scene.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p 199 (my emphasis)
Hitler believed that in the Second Coming of the idealogical Messiah after his death, God would send his angel of vengeance, and his divinely ordained messianic mission validated. It is this very same mystical belief in the divine providence of a higher mission, which she was willing to die for, that has lead some to suggest that Joan of Arc was also an INFP personality type.
No other personality type other than the Idealist could possibly be so committed to die fighting for his fanatical ideals to the point where he lived in a world of deluded fantasy—utterly divorced from all reality. A leader of the SP-Artisan or SJ-Guardian type is naturally inclined towards being concrete and realistic in their thinking, and the NT-Rationalist type would likewise be more pragmatic in accepting the inevitably of defeat and negotiate surrender. Only the blue blooded Idealist could ever take a whole world down fighting to the apocalyptic end for the sake of the "fanatically hysteric romanticism" of his deluded ideology.
The Myth of Hitler as an NT-Rationalist Leader
Finally, there has been much speculation on the internet about Hitler being an ENTJ—Commandant or Fieldmarshal type. In most films depictions, such as that by Bruno Ganz in the film Downfall, Hitler is stereotypically depicted as a "carpet biter", constantly blowing his short fused temper, and exploding at his staff. It is the sort of stereotypical behaviour that can be observed in leaders with the ENTJ personality type.
In fact, in stark contradiction to the usual media caricatures, Churchill was much more like the stereotypically harsh, bull-doggish, and decisive 'carpet biter' of a barking ENTJ personality than Hitler ever was:
Churchill, by contrast to Hitler, was a tough boss for whom to work. Very often he failed to display what he described in Savrola as 'That charm of manner of which few great men are destitute'. When it came to people management he could on occasion be rude and sarcastic. His secretaries had difficulty in interpreting what they described as his ‘inarticulate grunts or single words thrown out without explanation’, and he could often be wounding to those who failed to grasp his intentions. ‘Where on earth were you educated?’ he would growl. ‘Why don’t you read some books?’ Had Churchill exhibited the same kind of behaviour in today’s working environment he could have wound up in front of an industrial tribunal. He had a terrible temper, although his great charm usually allowed him to unruffle feathers afterwards. To his credit, he was just as bad with colleagues and superiors as with underlings.
When, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 19208, Churchill had a disagreement with the then Minister of Health, Neville Chamberlain, he was reported to have remonstrated with the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, by marching ‘about the room shouting and shaking his fist’ and launching into ‘a tremendous tirade’. Chamberlain thought Churchill’s temper ‘childish and contemptible’ and wrote to Baldwin: ‘Not for all the joys of Paradise would I be a member of his staff! Mercurial! A much abused word, but it is the literal description of his temperament’
Under the terrible strain of leading the country in the summer of 1940, Churchill received a letter from his wife that read: ‘There is a real danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough, sarcastic and overbearing manner’, and adding, ‘I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner... and you are not so kind as you used to be.’
Churchill even publicly acknowledged his rudeness in a speech in the House of Commons in June 1941, when he said:
"I do not think any expression of scorn or severity which I have heard used by our critics has come anywhere near the language I have been myself accustomed to use, not only orally, but in a stream of written minutes. In fact, I wonder that a great many of my colleagues are on speaking terms with me".
Roberts: Hitler and Churchill—Secrets of Leadership. Kindle loc 1660 (my emphases)
It is a great irony indeed that popular culture continues to portrait Churchill as a benevolent and grandfatherly figure, while Hitler is unfailingly portrayed as a barking and bull-doggish 'carpet biter'. In reality, their personalities were actually the complete reverse of popular media stereotypes. Andrew Roberts tells us that:
[Hitler] did look after his staff, who pretty uniformly adored him. When they fell ill, he visited them in hospital. He enjoyed giving presents on their birthdays, and at Christmas, and even paid personal attention to selecting appropriate gifts. ... Hitler's favourite secretary, Gerda Christian, retained fond memories of the man ... With him in the bunker until just before the end, she never afterwards had a bad word for her 'kind and fair' former boss.
Roberts: Hitler and Churchill—Secrets of Leadership. Kindle loc 1611.
An emphatic rebuttal of the stereotype of Hitler as a "carpet-biter" comes from Heinz Linge, his personal valet:
From the way I see it, an anecdote from a few months before Hitler’s suicide may provide an alternative assessment of his personality to the ‘carpet biter’ and hysterical psychopath often portrayed in the literature. A member of the SS bodyguard had to ring the squad paymaster. At the same time Hitler wanted to ring the squad paymaster. At the same time Hitler wanted to phone Speer. The SS man was to take his call in a cabin at the officer’s mess. Hitler waited for his connection to Speer in the barrack hut for situation conferences. The two incoming calls arrived at the same time, and the telephonist connected them to the wrong callers. The adjuvant handed Hitler the receiver, believing that Speer was on the line. When Hitler announced himself, ‘The Führer [Leader] speaking’, there was a bellow of laughter from the other end. This was the paymaster, still laughing, shouted into the receiver: ‘You’re crazy!’ I feared an outburst of rage with serious consequences, but Hitler merely returned the receiver with the observation: ‘Just someone else who thinks I’m mad.’ No outward annoyance and no negative consequences followed, which I found surprising since this episode occurred after the 20 July 1944 bomb plot.
Linge (p166) further provides us the testimony of Dr Ewin Giesing, who treated Hitler:
…My impression on meeting Hitler for the first time on 22 July 1944 was not a ‘powerful and feared man’ with ‘fascinating’ or even ‘hypnotic’ personality…I was not impressed very much by his allegedly ‘penetrating eyes’ or his predicted masterful or even tyrannical personality, which I had expected from the press, radio, personal accounts the reports of others. [My emphasis]
Linge repeatedly insists that the common stereotype of Hitler as the perpetually ranting "carpet biter" is a complete myth:
Despite all of the versions about him to the contrary, Hitler was for me an often indulgent, reasonable and adaptable Führer [Leader]...
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p154
Traudl Junge, another secretary present till the end in the Berlin bunker, also states that:
I can’t tell ... anything about Hitler’s famous fits of rage or his carpet-biting...
Junge p27
Junge only tells us that he was:
Personally modest and kindly, but as Führer [Leader] a harsh megalomaniac, he lived for his ‘mission’. He sometimes said that it demanded endless sacrifices of him.
Junge p83
In other words, far from being the overbearing and commanding personality type of the ENTJ, he was a quiet and introverted Idealist type driven out of his shell only by his fanatical idealogical ‘mission’. Hitler simply was never at any time in his life naturally the keenly domineering, yet perpetually abrasive and decisive ENTJ personality type like Churchill was. Films that portray Hitler in this sort of light as an unwaveringly harsh, short-fused ENTJ tyrant who was always explosively ranting and raving in private flagrantly contradict the testimony of those who belonged to his inner circle.
Nor are ENTJ personality types ever anywhere near as profoundly secretive as Hitler was. ENTJs are extroverts who cannot but help constantly externalise an unrelenting stream of terse and unambiguous orders barked decisively at their subordinates. Far from having a style of "charismatic leadership", they relentlessly impose their ruthlessly systematised efficiency on the system they are in charge of, without the slightest hint of any "hysterical romanticism". That means that the last thing an ENTJ would ever do is to deliberately set multiple state groups the same task, just to see who might do the best job, despite the hopeless inefficiencies and messy conflicts this gave rise to:
Hitler even used to encourage competition between different areas of the state apparatus, promoting a kind of neo-Darwinist contest between ministries and acolytes. In the very opposite of the ‘team-playing’ management technique, Hitler never minded if some parts of his Government were at the throats of others.
Roberts: Hitler and Churchill—Secrets of Leadership. Kindle loc 1810
This sort of messy inefficiency is the last thing an NT-Rationalist type of personality would ever waste their time encouraging.
The assumptions that Hitler was always an abrasive ENTJ Fieldmarshal personality type in private, and always as fiery as he was when delivering his angry political oratory, are therefore simply a complete myth. Linge plainly tell us:
To me he never postured, was never the ‘monument’, the statue, which he made himself from the beginning of his political activity. Linge p5Another person who observed the marked difference between the public and private Hitler was Helene Hanfstaengl, who also knew Hitler privately as a "warm man". Toland quotes her as saying that:
He was respectful, even diffident,... and very careful to adhere to the forms of address still de rigeur in Germany between people of lower rank when speaking to those of better education, title or academic attainment...He was at the time [1923] a slim, shy young man, with a far-away look in his very blue eyes... It seemed he enjoyed our home above all others to which he was invited, for with us he was not constantly bothered with curious questions and introduced to other guests as the 'coming saviour', but could if he wished sit quietly in a corner, reading or making notes. We didn't 'lionize' him.
Toland: Adolf Hitler p135-136Incidentally, note also the comment about the dreamy, "far-away" look in his eyes, typical of the INFP personality type. However, the Hofstaengls were alarmed at the rapid switch from the shy, introverted private man to the fiery public persona:
The lightening change from sentiment to ruthlessness was disconcerting to the Hanfstaengls and they discussed Hitler's private life at length.
Toland Adolf Hitler, p136Under immense stress, particularly as Hitler was losing the largest battle in human history, resulting in the death of untold millions, he certainly did go into fits of rage under the sheer weight of the unrelenting stress. Heinz Linge tells us:
In Russia, Hitler could not suppress his anger over such problems and could not wait until he was in private to explode: even before relative strangers he would speak out openly of his grievances and denounce the guilty parties.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p151.
In particular, Linge tells us that he tended to see military failure as a sign of a betrayal of his fanatical ideals and supreme idealogical mission. The angry explosions in private at his military staff are more typical characteristics of an INFP personality type unravelling under immense stress:
Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst.
He would explode into lectures about defeat being a result of cowardice and treason (Linge p190), for example, and irrationally rejected statements suggesting that the extreme cold of the Russian winter had caused catastrophic equipment failure, dismissing them off-hand with the statement that "technology defeats winters" (Linge p131).
Likewise, the idea that Hitler was a INTJ type of Mastermind personality is utterly untenable. The previously quoted passage from Linge makes total nonsense of that idea:
Keirsey says of the INTJ personality type as a leader:
Of the NT-Rational leader, Keirsey tells us that their problem is the opposite of Hitler's in that they tend to be too punchy and terse in the way they issue their unequivocally clear orders:
If, by comparison, Hitler took to rambling for two hours, at the end of which, military men, used to "terse and clear orders", were left even more confused about what he wanted, then it is simply totally and utterly impossible for him to have been a NT-Rationalist type of leader. Any suggestion that he could have possibly have been an NT-Rationalist type is therefore utterly absurd.
The final nail in the coffin for the theory that Hitler was an NT-Rationalist type of personality is the fact that he tended to blame others for his own strategic failures. This is what Keirsey says about the NT-Rationalist type of leader:
Even staring down the barrel of crushing defeat in 1945, Hitler retained his charismatic powers to instill fanatical ideological loyalty to the bitter end:
However, there is a good reason why Hitler is generally mistaken for an ENTJ in popular culture, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. At the start we looked at the passages from Jung's Personality Types where he said that under exceptional circumstances, the personality type can invert, when suddenly the introvert becomes extrovert. When this extraordinary inversion occurs with the INFP personality type, other variables also invert, and the outcome is a personality type very much like an ENTJ. Keirsey even argues that in personal relations (whether close friendships or romantic matches) it is this which can create a very special "chemistry" between the INFP and ENTJ personality types:Likewise, the idea that Hitler was a INTJ type of Mastermind personality is utterly untenable. The previously quoted passage from Linge makes total nonsense of that idea:
'Thinking aloud' he would bring to light individual problems from all directions and make simple procedures into the most insoluble problems. He presented everything in so convoluted a manner that somebody unfamiliar with his methods would be unable to sort out what he was driving at. He would wander off the subject, talk about irrelevancies and confuse people who were following his explanations closely. Mostly he left it to his listener to put the right 'weight' on a thing and so understand what it was he had been talking about. The military, for example, used to terse and clear orders, had to endure a discourse of one or two hours and they would still be uncertain what he really wanted.
Linge: With Hitler to the End, p75. My emphases.
Keirsey says of the INTJ personality type as a leader:
INTJs see the whole picture with eagle-eye clarity and when put in charge begin immediately formulating their strategies, arranging priorities, and making their flow charts in order to achieve their goals with a minimum waste of time and resources.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, Kindle loc 6586The interminably long-winded and hopelessly inefficient rambling that Linge describes, which habitually turned simple matters into "insoluble problems", is the absolute diametric opposite to the "eagle-eye clarity" of the INTJ-Mastermind, who, like their ENTJ-Fieldmarshal cousins, unfailingly issue equally "terse and clear orders" of the sort that Hitler miserably failed to do. Far from turning simple matters into insoluble conundrums, the analytical mind of the NT-Rationalist leader is adept at finding simple solutions to complex problem.
Of the NT-Rational leader, Keirsey tells us that their problem is the opposite of Hitler's in that they tend to be too punchy and terse in the way they issue their unequivocally clear orders:
they can have difficulty communicating their vision...because of the NT's tendency to avoid redundancy... Rationals prefer not to say anything twice and assume thorough understanding on minimal information; that is if something is only implied, that suffices. They do not believe it is necessary to verbalise implications.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, Kindle loc 6700Again, this describes Churchill infinitely better than it does Hitler:
[Churchill's] secretaries had difficulty in interpreting what they described as his ‘inarticulate grunts or single words thrown out without explanation’, and he could often be wounding to those who failed to grasp his intentions.
Robert: Hitler and Churchill—Secrets of Leadership. Kindle loc 1660.
If, by comparison, Hitler took to rambling for two hours, at the end of which, military men, used to "terse and clear orders", were left even more confused about what he wanted, then it is simply totally and utterly impossible for him to have been a NT-Rationalist type of leader. Any suggestion that he could have possibly have been an NT-Rationalist type is therefore utterly absurd.
The final nail in the coffin for the theory that Hitler was an NT-Rationalist type of personality is the fact that he tended to blame others for his own strategic failures. This is what Keirsey says about the NT-Rationalist type of leader:
They seldom blame others for this failure—only themselves.
Keirsey, Please Understand Me II, loc 6718By contrast, rather than taking clear and decisive responsibility for what happened under his watch, Hitler shifted the blame for his mounting failures on the Eastern Front onto others. He would immediately fire anyone who failed to achieve his absurdly unrealistic demands, while accusing them—not of tactical, strategic or logistical misjudgement—but of ideological failure: treason and cowardice.
Even staring down the barrel of crushing defeat in 1945, Hitler retained his charismatic powers to instill fanatical ideological loyalty to the bitter end:
Military officers arriving from the front angry, disappointed, aggressive and determined 'to finally put him straight and describe what it really looks like at the front' left his presence changed men. 'The Führer [Leader] has explained', they beamed without exception. The Führer [Leader] had put them straight. Only very few of them noticed how burned out the volcano was which forced their reorientation.
Linge, p 186There can be little doubt that this ability represents the unmistakable hallmark of the leadership style of a blue blooded Idealist personality type.
Keirsey describes Hitler's style of 'charismatic leadership' perfectly when he talks of the NF-Idealist personality type as 'catalyst leadership':
Catalysts are able to create a climate where people in their administrative unit have considerable autonomy.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, Kindle loc 6516
Catalyst leaders function best when they delegate judiciously. The problem on the Eastern front was that as things went from bad to worse, Hitler tended to have irrational melt-downs of the sort typical of an INFP under stress, and tended to fire competent staff for failing to achieve wildly unrealistic goals, and eventually started to micromanage things himself, rather than accepting that making sound and rapid Judgements was his Achilles heel. As Linge points out, things would have been better if he had delegated Judgement to appropriate subordinates. Here is a good example:
Hitler listened to Guderian with barely concealed contempt, then threw the report back at him. 'Who produced this rubbish?' he demanded before launching into his own his own analysis of the situation with its usual reliance on the coming secret weapons, the imminent collapse of the enemy alliance and other fantasies.
Rupert Matthews: Hitler: Military Commander, Kindle loc 3208.
... Finally, Hitler told Guderian that he was looking ill and should take six weeks leave...The two men never met again...With Guderian gone, Hitler's fragile grip on reality seemed to vanish completely. His maps were populated with German divisions which were not just below strength but entirely phantoms.
Hitler: Military Commander, Kindle loc 3266
What in the seclusive and probing Healer (INFP) seems to fit so well with the Fieldmarshal? First note their one point of similarity. In their questing phase, Healers also become leaders of armies (as did Joan of Arc), and launch their campaigns with missionary zeal. In their saintly, or monastic phase, however, Healers can offer their imperious Fieldmarshal mates a welcome respite from the wars, perhaps sharing with them their quiet spirituality, their desire for inner-harmony, and their personal selectivity.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, Kindle loc 5088.
In the case of the Healer, it is precisely that sense of violation of deep values that draws them out of their reclusive "monastic phase", and turns them into "leaders of armies" who "launch their campaigns with missionary zeal" in their "questing phase". Driven by a "personal fire within him that was never extinguished", the personality type inversion becomes complete. This description of the INFP personality fits Hitler absolutely perfectly.
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| Hitler portrayed as a Messianic Leader of Armies |
Another example of a quiet and soft spoken NF-Idealist introvert, who only felt driven to rise up as the leader of his nation by his sense of his core values being violated is, of course, Gandhi. As with Hitler, people were almost shocked that such a softly spoken and shy personality as Gandhi could suddenly rise up, driven out of his shell by a deep outrage at injustice, burning with a passionately idealistic belief in Satyagraha, to become the inspirational leader of a nation:
Gandhi's legal career in India was disappointing. He was too shy to open his mouth in court and had to give his first barrister's brief away to a colleague.
Parehk: Gandhi—a Very Short introduction; p8, Oxford Press.In both cases, with both Hitler and Gandhi, the essence lies in the idealistic and charismatic 'catalyst' leadership style typical of the INFP personality type. The INFP personality type is often feminine, shy and softly spoken on the outside, but of this personality type Jung tells us: "still waters run deep" (Complete Works Vol 6 p388). For when the time is ripe, driven by the inextinguishable "personal fire within", these deep feelings can explode onto the world stage with such elemental power as to forever change the course of history.
Some Further Myth Busting
There is plenty of more such wild speculation swimming around the internet about Hitler's personality type, most based upon common stereotypes about his personality in the popular media. Virtually none of it demonstrates even the slightest familiarity with the biographies written about him by the most respected historians, nor reference to accounts from people close to him, and certainly no familiarity with which historical sources are considered reliable, since much dubious nonsense is constantly written about this subject.
Here is an example off the internet that comes from this source:
Hitler doesn't seem like an NT at all. He didn't plan ahead much, had zero interest in science, technology or knowledge in general, never seems to judge people on competence, etc. SJ seems unlikely due to his rejection of his father's SJ-career and pursuit of drawing and painting. His devotion/dedication to Germany and traditional values can be seen as SJ-ism, but seems more Fi-like. I can see why people think him as an NF: the strong focus on values and feelings. However, his pragmatic outlook, crafts-orientation, impact-seeking nature points to SP as well. ENFP's and ISFP's usually appear as 'in between' SP's and NF's. However, most evidence points to ISFP. [my added links]
Much of this is nonsense spouted by someone who has utterly failed to study the most respected accounts of Hitler and National Socialism. As a result, not a single shred of evidence is presented to suggest that Hitler was an ISFP. Hitler actually took an active interest in the development of military technology e.g. the Messerschmidt jet fighter plane. He had practically memorised Jane’s, Weyer’s Flottenkalender, the Kriegsmarine yearbook according to Linge (p109). He even had his own battleship designs (Linge p108). He also took an active interest in grandiose architectural projects until war broke out. However, all of this can be seen as part and parcel of Hitler zealously partaking in his quasi-religious mission to rebuild a greater Germany, or to win the war.
Not a single scrap of evidence is presented to suggested that Hitler had a “craft orientation”. It is equally unclear what this allegedly “pragmatic outlook” is, or what evidence there is for this. As for his “impact seeking nature” no example is given of this. Hitler was principally driven by his emotive ideals about a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy for world take-over. The ISFP type usually never rises up to take on a leadership role as a fanatical ideological messiah seeking redemption for his nation.
As stated by Ian Kershaw, Hitler’s leadership was a “charismatic leadership” promising redemption for the German people, not a sensationalist impact-seeking leadership. Or to repeat what Kershaw says about Hitler: “he was also an ideologue of unshakeable convictions—the most radical of the radicals as exponent of an internally coherent … ‘world-view’”. In Hitler’s own words, as reported by his secretary:
We shall win this war because we are fighting for an ideal, and not for Jewish capitalism, which is what spurs on our enemies’ soldiers. Russia is dangerous, and only Russia, because Russia fights for its own idea of the world as fanatically as we do. But good will always be victorious, there are no two ways about that.
Traudl Junge: Until the Final Hour, Phoenix 2005, p83. My emphasis.
In My Struggle (Mein Kampf) he even uses the term "redemption" (Erlösung) to emphasise the messianic quality of his mission:
Because my heart was never for an Austrian monarchy, but always stood only for a German Empire, I could see the hour of the disintegration of this state as merely the beginning of the salvation of the German nation.
Da mein Herz niemals für eine österreichische Monarchie, sondern immer nur für ein Deutsches Reich schlug, konnte mir die Stunde des Zerfalls dieses Staates nur als der Beginn der Erlösung der deutschen Nation erscheinen.
Mein Kampf original German edition, p136 (my emphasis)Ian Kershaw says of the ferver with which he spoke of the revival of the German nation that "the effect was more that of a religious revivalist meeting than a normal political gathering" (Kershaw: Hitler Vol 1 Kindle Loc 3693).
Furthermore, Hitler virtually never talked about adherence to, and conservation of traditional values (like an SJ-Guardian type), or making a dramatic impact (like an SJ-Artisan type). Kershaw tells us that:
His dress sense was anything but stylish. ... During the heat of the summer, he would never be seen in in a bathing costume. Whereas Mussolini revelled in virile images of himself as a sportsman or athlete, Hitler had a deep aversion to being seen other than fully dressed.
Kershaw: Hitler Vol 1 Kindle Loc 6520Instead he talked about fighting fanatically to the death for his ideals like an NF-Idealist type. Far from presenting himself as a Guardian of the Old Order, he was highly dismissive of the aristocracy and often described the radicality of National Socialism in terms of a German “Revolution”:
It was not long before Goebbels and the other leading Nazis had renamed it a ‘government of the nationalist uprising’. By early March it had become simply a ‘national revolution’, emphasising the far more than the action of mere cabinet government was involved. Soon it was to be the ‘National Socialist Revolution’…
Evans: Coming of the Third Reich, Kindle loc 6474
The once-powerful German trade union movement had disappeared without trace virtually overnight. ‘The revolution goes on,’ trumpeted Goebbels in his diary on 3 May.
Evans: Coming of the Third Reich loc 6615
Let nobody say that this tendency of the National Socialists to present themselves as phoney “revolutionaries” is somehow restricted to Goebbels. Hitler himself states in Mein Kampf (My Struggle):
I became a political “revolutionary” early on—just as early as I became an artistic one.
War ich so frühzeitig zum politischen „Revolutionär“ geworden, so nicht minder früh auch zum künstlerischen.
Mein Kampf p15Note though, the claim that he was a "revolutionary artist" is every bit as phoney as the claim that he was a "political revolutionary".
Once again on Mein Kampf (My Struggle) p227:
Thus within our small circle, the formation of a new party was discussed. The basic idea, which hovered before us were the same, which later came to fruition in the “German Workers' Party”. The name of the newly founded movement had to, from the outset, offer the possibility of reaching out to the broad masses, for without this character all the work would seem pointless and superfluous. So we came up with the name "Social Revolutionary Party", this is because even the social outlook of the new establishment actually signified a revolution.
So wurde denn in unserem kleinen Kreise die Bildung einer neuen Partei erörtert. Die Grundgedanken, die uns dabei vorschwebten, waren dieselben, die dann später in der „Deutschen Arbeiterpartei“ zur Verwirklichung kamen. Der Name der neuzugründenden Bewegung mußte von Anfang an die Möglichkeit bieten, an die breite Masse heran-zukommen; denn ohne diese Eigenschaft schien die ganze Arbeit zwecklos und überflüssig. So kamen wir auf den Namen „Sozialrevolutionäre Partei“; dies deshalb, weil ja die sozialen Anschauungen der neuen Gründung tatsächlich eine Revolution bedeuteten.
Hitler was definitely not an SF-Guardian of the traditional order. Otherwise, he might have advocated a restoration of the monarchy.
Next the following citation from My Struggle (Mein Kampf) is given as evidence that Hitler was more of the sensing type rather than the intuitive type:
Once, as I went through the city, I suddenly came across an appearance in a long caftan with black side-locks.
My first thought was: Is this a Jew?
They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange face, and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this also a German?
Mein Kampf p59
Als ich einmal so durch die innere Stadt strich, stieß ich plötzlich auf eine Erscheinung in langem Kaftan mit schwarzen Locken.
Ist dies auch ein Jude? war mein erster Gedanke.
So sahen sie freilich in Linz nicht aus. Ich beobachtete den Mann verstohlen und vorsichtig, allein je länger ich in dieses fremde Gesicht starrte und forschend Zug um Zug prüfte, um so mehr wandelte sich in meinem Gehirn die erste Frage zu einer anderen Frage:
Ist dies auch ein Deutscher?
It has been alleged that this “sounds more like Se [extroverted Sensing] then Ne [extroverted iNtuition]”. The trouble is that the way Hitler recalls observing the Jew is not done in an ideological neutral manner of someone simply observing if some person were Jewish or German. Rather, the questions being asked are deeply rhetorical, and imply a certain horror that the supposedly alien-appearing Jew could actually be regarded as being German. The implication that he expects the reader to iNtuitively grasp is that the Jews were “contaminating” the racial purity of the “Aryan” race. The rhetoric is full to the brim with ideologically driven and violently emotive propaganda. Like the whole of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) from which this passage comes, it is immeasurably more than mere ideology-free pure sensing and neutral observation.
Next we are told that Hitler was allegedly a consumate athlete:
He was a runner, the most dangerous job on the Western Front, and was often exposed to enemy fire...However, because the regimental staff thought Hitler lacked leadership skills, he was never promoted to Unteroffizier...His duties at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Hitler time to pursue his artwork. He drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper.
INFP's are generally not so into at physical stuff. Lack of perceived leadership-skills is also more typical for ISFP's. Again, more drawing.
For a start private (he was never a corporal as propagandist later claimed) Hitler was a dispatch runner well behind enemy lines, and only rarely in any danger: see Weber's Hitler’s First War. The front line soldiers considered those, like Hitler, who took these sorts of roles as “rear end pigs” (Etappenschweine). The role of dispatch runner was a military position where the solider had to convey commands. Hitler was well behind the front line and any danger would have come from artillery fire rather than machine gun fire. I have never seen evidence that it was a job that required great athleticism as the writer suggests. And, not a shred of evidence exists that Hitler was assigned to become a dispatch runner due to his exceptional athletic abilities. While propagandists later greatly exaggerated the degree of danger Hitler faced, meaning that most of the hagiographic accounts of his "heroic" war years have to be taken with more than a grain of salt, not even the most wildly hagiographic of propagandists ever once made a claim about his supposedly exceptional athletic abilities. It is laughable to suggest he got assigned the job because he was somehow “into” physical exercise as a leisure activity. Max Amann called Hitler a “homely and pale soldier” (Weber p102)—there is no hint of any athleticism in that description.
All personality types can partake in exercise (although the reason may differ from health, to social participation, enjoyment or thrill seeking etc), but doing exercise alone is wholly insufficient to type a personality, least of all when it is done as part of military service in wartime. The fact that Hitler volunteered for service, shows that he discharged his military duty as a dispatch runner purely out of nationalistic idealism (NF type emotive idealism), rather than out of the sensuous enjoyment of his physicality and being "into" exercise (sensing dominated personality type). These dubious attempts to portray Hitler as an ISFP—a "great artist and consumate athlete", come across as being driven by some sort of attempt at blatant hagiography, one that exceeds even those of National Socialist propagandists from Hitler's day.
Furthermore, it is simply wrong to say that INFPs are natural leaders and that lack of leadership skills immediately means that Hitler has to be an ISFP. The INFP personality is by no means a natural born leader either, but rather only emerges as a leader when their system of values is challenged, whereupon their deep passion for their ideological cause totally overcomes any innately introverted reserve. This is why when Hitler speaks in public, he always sounds like he has been pushed to the point of exploding with rage—a consequence of the humiliation that defeat in war and the Treaty of Versailles brought to Germany, and the perceived role of the Jews who supposedly stabbed the armed forces in the back (Dolchstoßlegende). It is this sense of anger and outrage, full of emotionally charged propagandist thinking that drives him out of his introverted shell. Emotionally charged, often quite irrational-intuitive thinking that jumps to wild conclusions about Jews being responsible for Germany’s defeat can only be the worst excesses of an NF-Idealist personality type.
Thomas Weber further tells us about Hitler the soldier in WWI:
Even those closest to him would later describe him as reclusive at a time when they had no incentive to distance themselves from him. They also saw him as a bookworm who was not always very practical. As Alois Schnelldorfer later remembered, they joked that Hitler would starve to death in a canned food factory, as unlike them, he did not succeed in opening a can of food with a bayonet. Heinrich Lugauer, another dispatch runner, recalled Hitler in a report he gave to the Nazi Party central archive in 1940 as a man distanced from his peers: ‘Every free minute he used to read. Even in the forward position he sat in a corner, his cartridge pouch attached and his rifle in arm, and read. He borrowed some book from me once; it was Nietzsche, as far as I can remember'.
Weber: Hitler's First War, p104. My emphases.
Being a "bookworm" who read the philosopher Nietzsche (an explosively emotive-intuitive type of writer at that) hardly sounds like anything remotely like an ISFP personality type. It is also a false assumption that being interested in art is somehow unique to an ISFP either, as many other personality types can have an artistic bent. The INFP personality type has a particularly strongly artistic streak, as do all NF-Idealist types. Hitler’s art also hardly displays the delight in putting his own intimately Sensual touch to his subject matter as you get with an ISFP. His drawings seem almost too matter of fact, driven by a reactionary ideology, characterised by an arch-conservative representational style in an age of impressionism and expressionism. Indeed the only way we can understand Hitler's bizarre claims in Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to have been a "revolutionary artist" is if we understand "revolution" as a fanatic reaction against the increasing abstractionism of the art of his age—which he later denounced as "degenerate art" (entartete Kunst). Perhaps, if had Hitler indeed been an ISFP, he might have even been quietly accepted into art school, without ever becoming a "hysterically romantic" idealogical messiah with a mystical belief in his cause.
Next, we see this claim on the internet (as usual no source references given to check any claims made):
Drexler was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills... Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of large crowds... To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of party supporters to drive around with swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic. Hitler gained notoriety outside of the party for his rowdy, polemic [sic] speeches.
Over time Hitler perfected his delivery by rehearsing in front of mirrors and carefully choreographing his display of emotions. He was coached by a self-styled clairvoyant who focused on hand and arm gestures. Munitions minister and architect Albert Speer, who may have known Hitler as well as anyone, said that Hitler was above all else an actor.
For a start, the post-war testimony of Speer has to be take with a grain of salt, because he said many disparaging things to distance himself from Hitler—the main aim of which being to save himself from the hangman's noose!
Unlike most actors who deliver someone else’s words, Hitler wrote the words of his own speeches (Linge, p74). His speeches were less performances accompanied by pomp and pageantry to be enjoyed in their own right, like they were for Mussolini, as they were explosively emotional outlets for his messianic ideals. Furthermore, the ceremonial one armed fascist (“Roman”) salute was a wholesale imitation of Mussolini’s Italian fascism. By comparison to Mussolini, Hitler’s gesticulations in public speeches were awkward (Jung even called him "robotic") compared to a naturally ostentatious showman like Mussolini. Hitler was only driven to messianic and propagandist oratory by a sense of outrage at his core values being violated. It has nothing to do with delight in showing off, pure sensuous delight in ceremonious ostentation, or attention seeking theatrics of the sort typical of an ESFP type of personality like Mussolini. All of Hitler's theatrical antics were entirely in service of his fanatical ideological mission. Only when driven by the "fanatically hysteric romanticism" of his messianic mission, did the reclusive and bookish introvert violently explode out of his shell.A comment is added to this:There are reports of him disgusting his guests by giving them graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make them shun meat.[240] A fear of cancer (from which his mother died) is the most widely cited reason, though many authors also assert Hitler had a profound and deep love of animals.
Hitler's relationship with his dog is well known as well. ISFP's are animal lovers pur sang. Personalitypage.com mentions this aspect only for ISFP's.
Neither Toland, Fest, nor Kershaw mention anything about Hitler's taking up vegetarianism specifically due to a fear of cancer, which is pure speculation. Linge mentions that Hitler interminably lectured him on the subject believing that without meat people "would live to be 150 to 180 years of age, which had been the case in antiquity, as one could see from the sagas (Linge, p36)." His attitude to animals and his vegetarianism were hardly an ideology-free pur sang sensual delight in animals. In any case, all personality types can have pets. This alone fails to distinguish between personality types. Also Keirsey says that although SP types love animals they can be rough with their animals (Please Understand Me Kindle Loc 5281) rather than gentle and affectionate.
Hitler possibly partly got his vegetarianism off the Idealist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer as well as Richard Wagner. Although it is unclear to what extent this also motivated Hitler, in Schopenhauer and Wagner, the whole idea was related to the Buddhist ideal of compassion to all sentient beings. Hitler's love of animals is thus driven by emotive ideals typical of an NF idealist type, and some anti-vivisection laws certainly were passed. It is the same idealist compassion for sentient creatures held by Gandhi, another passionate vegetarian. The fact that Hitler tended to interminably lecture guests about this subject is testimony to the way this is driven by NF type emotive idealism. ISFP types are never so passionately ideologically driven as to interminably lecture others about their fanatically held core beliefs.
The creepy thing is that Hitler’s probable initiation of the Holocaust was likely to have been driven by his idealist belief that the Jews were the source of all human misery, and, that to make the world a better place, he had to eradicate the “Jewish disease” that afflicted mankind at its root, however terrible this might seem. In typical NF-Idealist manner, Hitler likely ordered that the killing of Jews be done as humanely as possible. He could have had all Jews murdered by machine gun or by the butcher’s knife, but this was highly traumatic for the perpetrators, and it was this “idealism” that lead to the idea of a “humane” killing in gas chambers (see Browning Origins of the Final Solution). Although there were undoubtably gruesome exceptions, many camp survivors recall generally being treated well by concentration camp guards, in keeping with the plans for a “humane” genocide out of misguided idealistic motives. Cruel treatment of prisoners was generally frowned upon. Only when genocide is given such a perversely idealistic rosy colouring does it even look remotely palatable to its perpetrators. All of this is clearly something that only a deeply misguided NF-Idealist personality type would even be capable of.
Finally, in the face of catastrophic defeat Hitler had only one thing to offer as a leader: powerful rhetoric and fanatical belief in his messianic mission to the death.
Numerous military commanders had ... contested Hitler's decisions to no avail. It was impossible to sustain a reasoned counter-argument in his domineering presence. As supreme leader, he would book no opposition.... But heady rhetoric, and sacking generals for failing to achieve the unachievable, hardly amounted to a strategy, let alone a clearly defined set of aims.
Kershaw: The End: Hilter's Germany, 1944-45; Kindle loc 688 (my emphasis)
Keirsey tells us (Please Understand Me II Chap 9 Leading and Intelligence, loc 5981) that in the leadership role, the SP-Artisan leader excels in "tactics", the NT-Rationalist leader excels in "strategy" (with a clearly defined set of aims), and SJ-Guardian leaders excel in "logistics". However, Hitler excelled in absolutely none of these areas, and in its place all he could offer was "heady rhetoric" and a demonic ability to infuse a fanatical ideological belief in those around him to die fighting to the bitterest end for his Messianic Mission even in the face of abject hopelessness. In this he succeeded only terrifying well, with German losses running at 350,000 men per month at the end of the war (Kershaw: The End: Hilter's Germany, 1944-45, Kindle loc 172).
With city after city falling to the Allies, the Red Army steam roller crushing the Wehrmacht, and the German war machine on the brink of collapse in November of 1944, Goebbels reveals in his diaries that Hitler lived in his fairy-tale ideological dream world. Kershaw tells us about this episode:
Even with the Red Army within an earshot of his bunker, increasingly out of touch with all reality, Hitler continued to fantasise virtually to the end of a miraculous turnaround delivered purely by the Power of the Will. Only a truly hysterically romantic NF-Idealist could ever do this. Hitler was—beyond all shadow of doubt—the perfect epitome of the mystical Idealist-Healer and Dreamer to the end, willing to martyr himself for his fanatical ideals, no matter how apocalyptic the cost of his Untergang in a "total war".
With city after city falling to the Allies, the Red Army steam roller crushing the Wehrmacht, and the German war machine on the brink of collapse in November of 1944, Goebbels reveals in his diaries that Hitler lived in his fairy-tale ideological dream world. Kershaw tells us about this episode:
Following a long talk with Hitler—lasting deep into the night—a few days later, when the embattled Führer [Leader] exuded confidence, expounded excitedly on the forthcoming offensive and envisioned a grandiose rebuilding of German cities and revitalisation of culture after the war, Goebbels was so excited that he could not sleep. He was still, as he always had been, in thrall of Hitler.
Kershaw: The End: Hilter's Germany, 1944-45, Kindle loc 2976.This fully confirms Hitler as being a hysterically romantic "catalyst leader" of the NF-Idealist personality type, about whom Keirsey writes:
they are always romantic about the future and the past, and always the cheerful dreamer in the public presentation of self...
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, loc 6496
The Idealist can be extraordinary as the head of an organization, the visible leader who speaks well for the organization itself and for the people in it.
Keirsey: Please Understand Me II, Kindle loc 6557
Even with the Red Army within an earshot of his bunker, increasingly out of touch with all reality, Hitler continued to fantasise virtually to the end of a miraculous turnaround delivered purely by the Power of the Will. Only a truly hysterically romantic NF-Idealist could ever do this. Hitler was—beyond all shadow of doubt—the perfect epitome of the mystical Idealist-Healer and Dreamer to the end, willing to martyr himself for his fanatical ideals, no matter how apocalyptic the cost of his Untergang in a "total war".
Conclusions
There is little doubt that Hitler was the epitome of the INFP personality type. The main reasons for this is that he is described as a reclusive and impractical bookworm who was highly introverted, dreamy, often indecisive with a tendency to turn simple matters into insoluble conundrums. He had an interest in art, common amongst INFP types, but he lacked the talent to be accepted into art school. He only became the historical figure we know him as only when he explosively came out of his reclusive shell, driven by a sense of rage at his deepest values being violated, following the defeat of Germany in WWI and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler functioned as redemptive Healer of a wounded nation. It is these demonically driven emotive ideals of the NF-Idealist personality type gone wrong, willing to die fighting to the bitter end for his twisted idealistic cause, that provide the personality basis for the “charismatic leadership” described by Ian Kershaw.
In many ways, I would be happy for a figure as horrifying as Hitler not to be an INFP type—just like me. However, I can see so many similarities to myself that it is rather creepy and deeply discomforting. I feel like Harry Potter discovering a deep and strange kinship between himself and Lord Voldemort. As a child I used to love to do lots of drawing and at one time dreamt as a child of becoming an artist. I also read about Hitler dreamily and romantically looking out of his window at the Bavarian Alpine countryside while listening to the Lohengrin Prelude, and it is exactly the sort of thing I sometimes do. I have even made the point of listening to the Lohengrin Prelude as I write these very words.
The INFP personality is characterised by introverted Feeling, but despite the depth and passion of these emotions, they are rarely obvious to the outsider. As Jung says of the feeling type: "still waters run deep". This is a good summary:
Music, especially music that is deeply passionate like Wagner, provides a cathartic outlet for the seething inner emotions that seem inexpressible in their profound, unfathomable depths. It was Schopenhauer who said that "music is the language of passion and emotion". This is the reason I suspect why Hitler likes many of the same composers that I do. Both Beethoven and Wagner were further likely to be kindred NF-Idealist personality types. Their music is profoundly searching, with grand sweeping ideals, with outbursts of profound passion. Indeed it was Beethoven (thought by some to be an INFP) who said that "music is a revelation higher than all of philosophy and wisdom".INFP personalities are usually perceived as calm, reserved or even shy. However, such an exterior can be deceptive – even though INFPs can be somewhat cautious, their inner flame and passion is not something to be taken lightly.
Like Hitler, I do not generally have such a profound affinity for Mozart, although Hitler apparently admired many of the concerti. I suspect Mozart’s music lacked the deeply searching, philosophic and idealistic qualities of Beethoven and Wagner. I personally find that Mozart seems way too sensualist with his childlike delight in the effortless beauty of the flow of delightfully sensuous musicality. Mozart is unlikely to have been an NF personality type, but rather a SP-Artisan type, as many artists are. After listening to Mozart, I feel like running off to clean my ears out with some Webern—probably another introverted NF-Idealist personality type, rather than the overtly sensuous SP-Artisan personality that we meet in Mozart’s music. To be honest, I find Mozart’s music somewhat lacking in much that is intellectually and spiritually challenging that I would probably not miss him terribly if I never heard another note of his music ever again. Once again, I feel a greater affinity for another great Wagner admirer—Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg was likely to have been an extrovert NF-Idealist personality type, possibly an ENFJ, sometimes called a Teacher personality type.
With this, I believe we can understand why we have a particular affinity for certain composers. This affinity may well be deeply ingrained into our personality structures. I have used Hitler as a case study, and I believe that his personality type explains some of his musical preferences. At the same time, while we can probe into his mind, his personality, and look at the great artists who deeply inspired the "fanatically hysteric romanticism" of his misguided Idealist mind—artists such as Shakespeare, Beethoven and Wagner—without blaming any of these great artists for producing Hitler. Certainly, we can hardly any more blame them for producing Hitler than one can blame Walt Disney for giving the world Hitler based on the fact that he loved Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
I'm not a psychologist but I believe I know where this sensation of creepiness and discomfort comes from...Ordinary people often like to dismiss Hitler as Satan's offspring, demon-possessed, monster, psychopath and such because it is a cheap, simplicistic and rationalizing way of coming to terms with his evil, far more easy then acknowledging that his personality was all to human in fact. (I'm not saying "it could have been anybody" but the expressions of his persona is nothing that hasn't been noted before, just not in one person at the same time and could not find a fertile ground to flourish as a mass movement.) As a result we find ourselves horrified at the fact we share personality traits with Hitler and at times even actively try to suppress that side of our being. When encountering the same others it leads to a priori antipathy to the person.
ReplyDeleteI can not recommend Kershaw's two-volume Hitler biography highly enough since it not only gives some new information about him but dispels many a myth about Hitler, the Reich and even outside forces(Neville Chamberlain, for example, does not come off as the craven appeaser he is believed to be).
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