Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky? Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is an INFP personality type in MBTI, 4w3 - sx/so - 459 in Enneagram, RLUEI in Big 5, IEI in Socionics.
EDIT: I've changed my mind and decided that he is INFP after I wrote this comment. But I still stand by what I said when I wrote that there were no convincing arguments for INFP, so here's an argument for INFP - you can still read the INFJ argument if you scroll down. Fi: He was firm in his beliefs and very honest about his feelings and opinions. When making decisions, he usually relied on his own feelings and not others' opinions as I previously thought. What made me think of Fe at the time I wrote this comment was that he was very caring and tried to please others. However, all feelers (and thinkers too) can be very caring, and trying to please others came from the care Tchaik had for his relatives and friends, the 9 in his tritype, and perhaps shadow Fe? Ne: If you read the letters he wrote from before 1860, you'll see that they're full of Ne energy. He often had random thoughts and wrote down those thoughts in the spur of the moment. He was also accepting of others' viewpoints and still viewed them as friends despite disagreeing with their views. One example of this was when his patroness Nadezhda Von Meck stated that she didn't like Mozart, to which Tchaikovsky responded that he was tolerant of musical opinions but would be very happy if he could change her mind. Si tertiary: Tchaik was often very nostalgic at times and focuses on details that remind him of the past. For example, he once wrote to his brother Modest while visiting Clarens(? iirc) that it reminded him of the previous year when he had stayed in the same place with Modest and his pupil Kolya. Furthermore, he also liked routine and several times wrote in his letters about his daily routine. However, he was sometimes quite careless and a bit forgetful Te inferior: He has always struggled with taking criticism, and since he was very young, he has been described as extremely sensitive by people around him. Also, sometimes he tends to be quite impulsive. END OF EDIT - the original comment is below Has anyone considered INFJ? I think Fe > Fi because although he was aware of his own emotions, he relied heavily on the advice of others when making big decisions. He also said something like 'I cannot be truly happy when I know that you are moping ' once in a letter to his brother. Not that Fi doms can't say that, but it's far more common for Fe users for their emotions to be affected by others. Also, his decision to marry his wife wasn't because he wanted to, but for the good of his brothers and to please his father. His father wanted him to get married early on, and after Tchaikovsky found out that his brother Modest was also homosexual, he wanted to 'set a good example' for him by marrying a women. And that's another thing: he felt like his homosexuality had to be validated and wasn't comfortable being himself. Again, not that Fi users can't do that, but it makes more sense that for Fe to feel the need to fit in. It wasn't until after his failed marraige that he learned to accept himself. In the biography in the Tchaikovsky Research website he is also mentioned to be 'an impressionable child, which points more towards Fe than Fi. And I don't really see Ne in him? I think Tchaikovsky's an Ni user. He often talks in metaphors in his letters, which seems like an Ni thing. He also liked to encode hidden meanings into his pieces (6th symphony, 4th symphony). Ne users can do that too, but meaning, patterns, and connections are more often associated with Ni. He liked to work on on composition at a time, which would not be typical of a Ne user. So with those two functions, he could either be INFJ or ENFJ. He was definitely a social introvert, and while that may not matter in MBTI, I still think he was INFJ, because Ti inferior is extremely unlikely. He, in my observations, was quite logical, didn't have much trouble saying 'no', and Ti just didn't seem like a thing he struggled with. I think Se inferior shows in this example when he was in Paris in January 1879, and read the date for a music festival wrong ('jeudi, 9 de janvier' as 'jeudi, 2 de janvier). Perhaps a stretch, but still shows that he wasn't paying much attention to details. So yeah, I think he might be INFJ. I might be wrong about this though because he does seem to have very high Fi, but I still think INFJ fits better. EDIT 2 - I still stand by my point here: Also why sx/so? I'm not too familiar with instinctual variants, but where does the so come from? He seems more like sx/sp to me, because he spent a great amount of his life traveling around europe by himself, to escape the business of Moscow and St. Petersburg, away from social contact. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Biography
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( IL-yitch chy-KOF-skee; Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский; 25 April/7 May 1840 – 25 October/6 November 1893), often anglicized as Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, was a Russian composer of the romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension.
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