Guest Post (Re-typing) by E. J., INTJ

Inception

Dominant Intuition (Ne): Eames thinks of himself as a creative person, and he provides many of the ideas that allow Cobb’s team eventually uses in their mission. His flexibility is important as the plan goes forward. Although he does not usually allow himself to become angry with others, Eames finds less creative people difficult to understand. As a result, he tends to introduce ideas in his preferred way–leaving the details to the imagination–despite the confusion this sometimes causes in other people.

Auxiliary Thinking (Ti): Eames does not often explain his reasoning, even when he does have some idea of the details. Arthur, being a Te-user, interprets this tendency as Eames’ failure to fully think out his plans. Eames does prefer to think more widely than deeply, due to his Ne, but he also uses a highly personal system of logic that does not easily translate into words. Eames makes no attempt to reason based on any concept of efficiency: he believes that if something makes sense to him in theory, the details will work out in the real world.

Tertiary Feeling (Fe): Eames pays close attention to others’ behavior and has a relatively good understanding of what motivates his fellow team members. Unfortunately for them––particular Arthur––Eames’ most obvious use of this knowledge is to intentionally get under their skin. More subtly, however, Eames uses his awareness of how the team members think to understand how the team is likely to function as a whole. While Arthur’s criticisms irritate him, Eames recognizes Arthur’s value to their mission and does not attack his competence.

Inferior Sensing (Si): As Arthur points out, specificity can be a weakness for Eames. He has a tendency to introduce new ideas without fully considering the details necessary to carry them out. Eames prefers to think in terms of future possibilities, but he is willing to learn from his mistakes. His earlier attempt at inception did not dissuade him from believing that inception was possible. He did, however, carefully consider what happened, how it went wrong, and how to prevent a similar occurrence. Eames uses his experience to help Cobb from making the same errors.