Leonard Shelby MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Leonard Shelby? Leonard Shelby is an ISTJ personality type in MBTI, 6w5 - sx/sp - 614 in Enneagram, RCOEI in Big 5, LSI in Socionics.
INTJ is more plausible than INFJ, but ISTJ fits even better. As far as Te goes, Shelby's conclusions arise directly from the facts and are tailored toward a specific real-world goal. He tends toward inductive reasoning, moving forward with a decision if there is a high probability that he's right. 'Maybes' and 'what ifs' tend to fall by the wayside. This is all Te. It's objective and assertive. Ti is far more universal in scope in the sense that Ti users seek solutions in which the conclusions that can be drawn can be applied to all things in all situations. It is far more idea-oriented than solution-oriented. Shelby's ability for observing small details about people (even before his memory loss) points to Si, not Ni. When he remembers his wife - regardless of whether he is accurate or not - his memories are specific, impressionistic and sensory. His focused, single-minded approach to gathering evidence could be Ni, but he is also extremely methodical and exhaustive, building from the ground up (Si), not starting from the larger vague idea (Ni). In the end (or...in the beginning?), he doesn't get tripped up by ignoring obvious facts (repressed Se) as an IN-J might do, but rather by NOT realizing that there could be multiple ways to interpret the same facts (repressed Ne) as an IS-J might do. Finally, a bit about tertiary Fi: Any function in the tertiary position is usually semi-conscious (I'm drawing from IDRLabs here). When it does pop into the consciousness, it's more crafty and less awkward than the inferior function, but not as 'regularized' as the primary or secondary functions. It's puerile, like a little kid that says, "look what I can do!" It does its job and then disappears. For better or worse, this is exactly how Fi manifests in Shelby's consciousness.
Biography
Leonard Shelby was an insurance investigator who, after being attacked by a burglar, suffered from anterograde amnesia. Shelby was from San Francisco, and married Catherine Shelby. The two lived together, and he would often tease her about re-reading her favourite novel. In the course of his job, Leonard was called out to investigate Sammy Jankis, who had developed short-term memory loss due to a car accident. He suspected something strange about Jankis, so ordered a doctor to carry out some conditioning tests. When these did not produce results, Leonard ruled that Jankis's condition was mental, not physical, and he was not eligible for an insurance payout. Leonard got a promotion, but Sammy's wife came to his office distraught, asking if there was a chance Sammy could regain his memories. Leonard told her he thought that Sammy should be physically capable of doing so - he found out later this caused Mrs Jankis to go home and trick Sammy into killing her.
