The Defense Mechanisms of Type 3

(I regret to say that Mr. Orange did you guys dirty, only came up with 2 unique assignments & generally had the least elaborate entry for yall, but fortunately Condon picked up the slack somewhat.)

identification

The one that’s usually listed and I think justly regarded as the ‘main’ one.

So, to ‘identify’ with something is to relate to it, to resonate with it, to have an affinity or to recognize oneself in something. You can identify with a culture, a gender, a struggle, your favorite TV character, an aesthetic or fashion style… even a favorite animal. In essence, it is to rule something that you see in the world to be ‘self’ rather than ‘not self’ and attach it to your self-concept. You look at it and say ‘it me’.

Most of us are familiar with this process, some more than others.

This is exactly what’s meant by the process of ‘identification’, precisely the same as the colloquial use of the word.

Some noteworthy features about the process of identification (as it occurs in most people) are that it can be temporary and transient – today you’re all about Anime Hero A, next year you’ll be really into TV Protag B. Another one is that people can identify with multiple labels some of which are more or less salient in different contexts. At home you are mostly The Strict Parent whereas at work you mostly think of yourself as One Of Them Put Upon Office Workers.

(In this it is different from the 4’s introjection where rather than momentarily attaching, the thing is permanently incorporated into your self-concept and persists independent of situations. Its not a phase mom.)

They can also be perceived to be in conflict or disagreement. (‘as a mother I can understand X but as patriot I feel strongly about Y’)

Identification can also be aspirational – maybe your favorite animal is a lion because lions are connected with courage and you value and admire courage and wish you were more courageous. If you get lion-themed decorations you are in a way bringing this symbol of courage with you to prime yourself to be courageous. Having the lion paraphernalia feels validating because it reinforces you feeling of being ‘brave like a lion’. Copying a celebrity works the same way, as does ‘What would Jesus do?’

Indeed it has been shown that thinking of yourself as embodying some identity (or even play-acting as it) can serve as situational priming to promote certain kinds of behavior.

Grab yourself a bunch of north american test subjects, make them do some bogus psychological test, half of them you tell its a empathy test, part that it’s something unrelated. In the ‘empathy test’ condition, women performed slightly better on average, but without this priming, both responded the same. Saying it’s an empathy test made the women aware of social expectations while picking their answers (without necessarily knowing its affecting them – so it works on an emotional or implicit more than deliberate/rational level.)

The effect is stronger yet if you make them tick a box stating their gender.

They could even get a bunch of dudes that were split in two groups randomly to do either worse or better at a literature-related test by remind them either of their gender (& the stereotype that women are better at language stuff) or their ethnicity (european) – probably because thinking of the respective identity either boosted or diminished their confidence.

This confidence effect only makes sense if the person, a least on an emotional level, takes the statement about the group they identify with to be speaking about themselves, to pertain to ‘self’.

Your ancestors coming from the same place as Goethe and Shakespeare doesn’t make you a paragon of high culture. Though, if the identification is strong and persistent and reads you to consume classic literature or research the history of your ancestors, it might…

One might wonder how much the functioning of the ego (in all types, not just 3) is basically a loop of constant self-priming.

So, how does the 3 flavor of ego turn this ubiquitous psychic mechanism into a defense, that is, a means to ward off distress?

I don’t think I could put it better than this one individual in a ‘type me’ thread who said something like this: ‘People will put you in a box anyways so you better show them where to sort you’.

In which you see the proactive, initiative-taking assetive-triad nature of 3, rather than just walking around and going ‘same hat!’ when something resonates, the 3 actively picks (or even constructs) a category preemptively, identifies with it (in real time), and then performs it.

To see how this is a defense it bears thinking about what 3s find distressing. What is it that 3s do not want? For starters, that which they fear: to be a failure, worthless, a nobody, ineffectual, incompetent, a dissapointment etc.

If you come waltzing in like prince charming, dazzling people with your pristine megawatt smile, that is less likely to happen.

Hence, this ‘defensive identification’ is likely to involve labels, associations and identities that are the opposite of those fears. Labels of high value, worth and status, however that is defined where one lives.

This is why 3s often desire status symbols: Like in the favorite animal themed paraphernalia example above, they identify with that. The concern is not just to have a fancy car (as it might be for a 7) but to be “a person who drives a fancy car” and thereby acquire the characteristic and prestige of fancy car ownership. If you praise the car, they’ll take it as praise of themselves.

Identifying with archievements, accomplishments and tangible, externally visible proof of your deeds is especially useful as a defense against shame – like in the story of a businessman who is asked what he thinks about his critics and just points out the window at the headquarters of his company. He’d think, ‘I’m the guy who built all this’ and then he would sleep easy.

Identification is also used to sustain/ support the passion of vanity (repeating what is praised) by impromptu identifying with the praised characteristic. ‘oh, everyone is praising me for my good grades? I guess I’m The Smart One now.’ or The Athletic One, the Pretty One… what precisely is picked is going to depend on the overlap of the values in the environment & that particular 3s talents. (and, in healthier individuals, also their own preferences & values.)

As with all types it varies how conscious this it. Some don’t really realize they’re ‘shifting’ unless a situation requires a particularly big stretch, others are aware that they can just pick up what the people expect and can tell you about how they choose or don’t choose to act. (to some extent this might itself be an identification with being ‘charismatic’ or someone who can efficiently wrangle people and see what they want to ward off accusations of fakery – ‘no no, I am being a badass, I am wrapping them around my finger’)

Among those who are more cognizant of what they’re doing you might begin to see some insecurity or fear that it’s all an act & they don’t have a real identity outside of putting on masks, or that people only like them for their riches & accomplishments but nobody actually wants them… though often the response is to double down and strive harder to outrun the lingering insecurity. (more on that later)

But even if the ensuing performance is calculated, deliberate and ‘prodedural’ as you’d expect from a competency type, the identification itself happens on an emotional level, there really is that feeling of ‘this is me’ or ‘this is what I aspire to be’. The function of it is not just to convince others (certainly nice if they are & give you validation) but to actually have the experience of feeling worthy, valuable and that you are one of the cool kids.

It’s a holistic process involving the person’s perception/filtering/organizing of reality, ‘doing/striving to become’, on an existential level, not just ‘I will dupe people into thinking im cool because I kiss my reflection every morning’.

There’s a simulacrum-like quality. The classic example of a simulacrum (as defined by the philosopher Baudrillard) is a person who believes they have a magic pendant that brings luck.

Such a person is mentally simulating the experience of having an actual magic pendant, like feeling more confident or attributing good things that happen to the pendant.

Likewise, by trying to stick to the ‘millionaire mindset’, one is ‘simulating’ the whole experience of being a future millionaire, acting and presenting as one would, having the likes and dislikes of one, planning the future as a future millionaire would, relating to others like a future millionaire, even performing and acting out the feelings that a future millionaire would have.

There is a reason, however, that they teach non-3s to visualize the future & feel the associated feelings as a self-motivation technique. ‘what is not yet may still come to be’ as we say in my country. This can actually be an adaptive response because it motivates the person to ‘fake it till they make it’.

You might also recognize feelings, preferences, presentation, relating, etc. as things the heart/ mammalian brain does, so in this it’s revealed how 3 is fundamentally a heart based type. The 3 ego is, in some ways, a machine for generating motivation using feelings in order to grant id desires.

You might then leave it to the rational and implicit minds to use & apply it in a ‘procedural’ way but the energy comes from the feeling aspect.

Note also that once you have ‘made it’, this would have the effect of making your experience more congruent and requiring less ‘defense’ – once you have the first 500k, people will indeed treat you like you could become a millionaire.

So from this pov the specific reaction of trying harder & striving further does indeed look like the ‘obvious’ way to reduce incongruence, insecurity and distress.

The problem with simulacrums, however, is that a likeness of a thing can be confused with the thing itself.

So you can get a house with a picket fence because that “means” a happy family but you are working so much you hardly see them. Or you go through the motions and rituals in your romantic relationship, getting flowers, expensive gifts, picturesque vacations etc but there is a lack of actual connection. You are more focussed on taking pictures of your food for instagram than on actually enjoying it.

The “trap” is that you can end up chasing the appearance of the thing without attaining the thing iself.

As as it’s often the case, sometimes others can tell and see what the 3 themselves does not.

See all those jokes about “does this hipster think having the newest gadgets will make him a sophisticate” or eyes-rolling about “buzzwords”.

Sometimes people see all the way down to the chimpanzee underneath, like in the common joke that the fancy car must be a standin for the owners dick, calling competition ‘dick measuring contests’ or as an intellectual might say, phallic-agressive tendencies.

The motivation comes from the id, in this case the basic animal drive for status, popularity, power – to be top chicken or alpha monkey, which is probably constitutionally strong in 3s.

Since status-seeking behavior is mediated by testosterone (in both sexes) it may well be that competitive guys have more stereotypically ‘manly’ features.

But since Freud’s time we’ve realized that competitive behavior in women isn’t an anomaly. (you might call this clitoral-aggressive, if you wish) – there are unique forms of status competition that are culturally gendered as feminine like trying to be the prettiest, and popularity contests have always been unisex.

When it comes to hormone effect on behavior it’s more about relative changes than absolute values so while men have a higher baseline that maintains the masculine traits, the spikes in response to status threats works the same way in guys & girls.

Also, it’s worth noting that it’s effects are much more complex than the popular conception is. Ppl often associate testosterone with aggression. But the latest science has found that it’s function is more to ‘start behaviors that maintain status, when status is challenged’.

Withhout the stimulus of a status challenge, no effect. As for the status maintaining behavior, what it is depends on the species and, when applicable, social learning.

In most primates status is not only maintained by aggression but, depending on the situation, also by forming alliances and prosocial behavior, or even knowing when to keep a cool head and ignore a provocation.

But while these animal drives might be going on ‘underneath’, this isn’t the subjective experience. 3s aren’t identified with the “lizard part” but the mammalian part and their conscious experience is dominated by the mammal.

An 8 might outright tell you ‘I want influence and money’ and they would mean it & find them to be their own reward, because it brings pleasure and helps avoid the pain of being at the mercy of others.

The 3, however – well. They might also say they want money & power if this particular 3 thinks that’s what makes a person worthy, but they want people to recognize that worth, to feel like they are special & significant and have made something of their lives, they want someone to say they did a good job.

Like when in the last Rebuild of Evangelion film, Asuka (a character who was always something on a hyper-competitive glory hound) says something like, ‘all I really wanted is for someone to pat me on the head and say that I’m ok the way I am’ – that.

Useful Question:

Maybe do an exercise of asking yourself at random times during the day,

‘is this really what I’m feeling and what my likes & dislikes are, or is that what I think a [insert desirable trait] person would feel’.

It’s also probably good to consider this and ‚feel into it’

You could also do the reverse: Try to notice the bits of you that stay the same between different roles and environments.

Some new posters arrive here with a question like ‚I can‘t find my type because I am different at home vs at work’ or during different parts of their lives and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that this means they are always adaptable. So, you’re always a 3, that’s a start, but also very broad, there’s probably a billion 3s, so maybe you can spot some more you-specific stuff that always stays the same.

emotional dissociation

I don’t think Tom Condon was the first one to describe this process at work and associate it with 3 but he really fleshed it out and gave it a name.

So, a general issue with the competency types – which I think should really be called ‘procedural’ types, because what they do, instead of trying to keep things positive or reacting off the cuff, is to try and apply the best procedure to solve the situation.

This, however, can create a gap between the person’s actions and their personal feelings, opinions and desires. Maybe you are angry and want to tell the person to get lost, but you know if you do that personal insults will escalate the situation now and probably shouldn’t be used here.

There is the procedure itself, the part of you that’s carrying out the method and hence gets seen by others, and finally the part of you that picked the method and is kind of watching as you do it, deciding to adjust as needed.

So, which of these parts is ‘you’?

For 1, you are the procedure itself: Your principles make you who you are. For 5, you’re the one sitting back and watching. For 3, “you” are the one who is doing the talking, the part that people can see – due to the indentification defense, you might not even experience yourself as doing a ploy, you’re just the kinda person who uses the best method naturally. This is more common with 3w2 as they might also have a bitty bit of repression going there, delete the ploy from consciousness.

In other cases, there is there is some conscious calculation (more common with w4 because there is more introspection so you can’t remain unaware that you’re doing ploys), but it’s a ploy-ception:

You’re doing the ploy of being ‘a person who does ploys (because this makes you smart, dominant charismatic etc. - you just do a reactive ‘owning the negative’ thing about it and ‘make’ your ployery an edgy unique trait)’ doing a ploy.

The end result is that the 3 psyche ends up some disconnection or ‘out of sync’-ness between one’s inner feelings and the ‘social emotions’ on the surface. Social emotions are those expressions which are performed for others, like smiling to show friendly intentions or showing a reaction to someone else’s story. 3s can be quite expressive with and permeable to social emotions, but the inner ones work more like the other competency types – they tend to be contained and slower in building up and ebbing away.

Both can be doing separate things: For example someone might act charming and personable on the outside while underneath they’re actually impatient for you to finally sign the damn contract.

This may also lead to a ‘peach’ (as opposed to coconut) temperement of being easy to get to know on a surface level but its harder to really get into the inner circle. - though this is probably less true for introverted 3s.

So how does this ‘gap’ lend itself to a defense?

Well, since the “central” sense of self is more located in the surface part that does the performing, it becomes possible to push the ‘inner’ part out of awareness alltogether.

Understand how blocking feelings out of awareness is different from suppressing them (as an 1 might) - it’s done by focussing on something else, typically the task/plan at hand. Hence that behavior you sometimes see where a person just keeps and keeps working because if they stopped, everything would come back up.

Some have described it as being so focussed on what they should be feeling that they don’t register what is actually there. (Example)

In another book an individual likened it to the feelings always sort of being there but like the water is only ankle-deep, since it’s only the situational surface stuff. When this guy’s mother died that was more than his defenses could handle, so he likened it to the kiddie pool suddenly turning into a deep, fathomless ocean under his feet. (I presume that’s what broke the poor guy enough to go see a life coach and end up in a book anecdote.)

Many 3s plan their entire days full of activities without significant gaps and make even their hobbies into ‘something productive’, so there is little time to sit and contemplate your feelings.

And since this mechanisms is attention-based, a person can really snap into ‘crisis mode’ from one moment to the next, like flipping a switch. “To lose all my senses is just so typically me.” “I take one look at you and I grow cold”

Here it should be appreciated how identification and emotional dissociation feed into each other.

The ‘simulacrum performance’ of the current ‘role’ gives you something to focus on instead of the inner feelings, and emotional dissociation is handy for making feelings and preferences dissapear that are incongruent with your persona – like in the case of a famous sports player who admitted many years into his career that he actually hated tennis, but blocked that out because playing tennis was the one way to get his father’s praise. Other common candidates are exhaustion and frustration. Can’t afford those, gotta be Better Faster Harder Stronger, “a real future millionaire wouldn’t quit or slack off”.…

It’s not for nothing that metaphorical comparisons to industrial robots, high-performance vehicles or racehorses come up pretty often.

The magnitude here depends on the individual and their situation.

For a fairly well-adjusted 3 this is an useful feature that comes in handy in crisis situations and allows you to wrangle social situations without ‘taking them personally’ and to do what’s most efficient regardless of your likes and dislikes.

In this case the person would eventually have their reaction, just with some delay after the crisis or social situation is over, and maybe even some close confidantes who know them on a more emotionally intimate level.

If there’s been significant trauma or pressure, however, a person might end up pretty shut down & numbed out for the long-term, and if there was poor attunement to begin with the individual might not really have learned to label & process their feelings.

This too is something that people can sometimes kind of pick up upon and perceive as superficial, fake or dangerously ruthless. You know how the horror movie American Psycho was essentially inspired by the writer thinking Tom Cruise seemed fake in an interview? Like being struck by how he seemed friendly and personable but ‘there’s nothing behind the eyes’.

It also shows when you see people slipping into describing themselves in the third person because they’re already looking at themselves with regard to what they look like for others, thinking of themselves more like a character, brand name or product. In some there’s no self-awareness but others might be quite tormented. Which always strikes me as making the bias obvious because, if you really are nothing more than an empty shell… then who is getting upset over that right now? Who is asking that question?

When people start working on themselves & reestablish contact with their authentic feelings, likes & dislikes, it can feel to some like a robotic doppelganger has been living their life for a while and now they are suddenly dropped back into it – who picked this job? This spouse? These hobbies?

They don’t actually like any of that, yet now they’re stuck with it! Realigning your life so that your feelings also get a seat at the discussion table can feel daunting.

Useful Question:

If you haven’t already: Besides ‚am I good at it‘ and ‚is it popular/prestigeous‘, also add ‚does it make me happy?‘ to your list of priorities and decision criteria. You’re probably going to thrive the most & get satisfaction out of your life if you can find the venn diagram overlap of all three.

Also, assess if you fall into the subset that can’t seem to locate the box with the feelings, I’ve heard journaling, letter writing and meditation (start with short sessions) helps.

negation

This one’s Naranjo’s second contribution, and in part something of a consequence of the 3s vigilance about how others might perceive them.

Negation as a defense mechanism means that when you think someone might get an undesired impression from what you are saying or doing, you preempt this by stating it’s opposite.

As with a lot of what 3s do, this serves to convince both the audience and the self.

Of course, when someone talks all too much about what they ‘definitely didn’t do’, an onlooker might begin to think that ‘the lady doth protest too much’.

Some common flavors include ‘I don’t really care what anyone says, though’, need nobody tough talk – at least in the USA.

When we have a type me thread by a non-westerner there’s often a variant of ‘...I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging…’ followed by something about how sucessful and/or well-respected they are.

And let’s not forget the classic ‘I know this might sound like I am a 3, but I am totally not a 3’

My friend, my buddy, mi amigo, you just 3’d again.

It’s important to note (to avoid kafka trapping) that whatmakes this a defense mechanism is not the disagreeing part, but the anticipation part, the ‘I know this might sound like…’, ‘Don’t think that I...’the trying to stop an impression from occurring in both your mind and theirs by denying it.

Useful Question:

If you find yourself over and over stating that something is not the case, wonder why that is.

It’s not always that the thing is true – it might just be a scary thought or insecurity.

compensation

I don’t think Condon used the word, but he described quite empathetically what I’d consider an underappreciated aspect of a type that already tends to get its complexity flattened into a pancake.

It’s probably the 3 version of ‘counter-attachment’ (like 6s rebelling and 9s disengaging to avoid merging) and also the cause of 90% of the 4 mistypes.

So how does this work? We mentioned earlier that 3s can tend to (or at least feel a temptation) to repeat what is praised and live up to expectations. But what if somebody slaps a decidedly unpleasant, negative label on you, or expresses that they have low expectations?

Like being told you’re average, won’t amount to anything, aren’t very impressive…

For example, someone says you’re not very athletic. If you have athletic accomplishments you can point at you shelf of trophies (that would be identification), if you can plausibly deny it, you might do that (that would be negation) but what if your lack of athleticism is plain to see?

In this situation you probably can’t ward off feeling at least some shame. Compensation is a way to deal with it by making up (that is ‘compensating’) for the perceived flaw and correcting it, by the 3s usual method of striving and doing.

In the athleticism example, the once wimpy 3 could get buff to show everyone that they can do it and tell the success story of how they didn’t let anything stop them through frit or hard work.

In a way, they are still ‘attaching’ to the negative label, because there is an immediate defensive reaction against it.

I recall one user on here expressing that if someone says ‘you’re not very X’ some part of them tends to take that as a sign that they need to be more X.

In some cases it can ‘stick’ to them for a long time, especially if they’re w4 and also internalized it.

There can be a duality between the confident sucessful person on the surface and the hidden insecurity being carried inside – like someone who came from a poor background and continuously feels the need to prove he fits in with the other rich people and broasdcast their wealth because despite being rich now they still feel insecure about when they used to be poor.

‘stuckness’ in general is often a sign of incompletely processed feelings so perhaps one might ascribe this to not fully feeling the pain of the initial rejection in the moment but focussing on how you’ll win and prove yourself etc. as if your flawed younger self was discarded & rejected in favor of the much cooler person you hoped to be in the future and is still lingering there, holding its pain.

Besides overdoing it or being too willing to change yourself in response to criticism, another possible pitfall can be ‘trying harder’ where that isn’t the solution. (like continuieing to try to impress a parent who plainly doesn’t care) or expecting the same of others – like telling your girlfriend she should change her fashion style because someone made a small comment, or calling a less ambitious family member a ‘quitter’ when they feel that the effort needed to overcome a limitation just isn’t worth the results for them personally.

Useful Question:

If you got negative or underwhelming feedback and are considering changing something about yourself or your work in response, consider if a) maybe that’s just that person’s subjective opinion, not a judgement on your worth b) if the change would involve giving up something important to you. It’s not that responding to feedback is bad: Hanging an unimportant thing to ‘reach a bigger audience’ is often simply pragmatism, but don’t feel like you (or your loved ones) immediately have to change something any time someone says something.