(Ah, yes, type 7. Also known as the objectively correct way to design a head center dominant, complete with all the required secondary powers to ensure that it doesn’t actively hate existing. Ok, I get it, that’s the evil demons of jelly talking, I don’t mean to make light of you guyses characteristic struggles at all. But it’s like, you’re me if I actually had the energy to do stuff, haha. Still, I shall endeavour to put my bias aside as we take a look at how the 7 structure of defenses does its thing, because it’s imho a type that’s both underrated & underappreciated in its complexity, for good or ill.)

intellectualizing

The ‘primary’ one, by virtue of sort of being what makes the others possible.

As was already alluded to for the purpose of contrast in the 2 and 5 articles, intellectualization means to consider something in purely conceptual terms to take the edge off of it or keep it from fully ‘hitting’ or ‘landing’ on an emotional level.

Of course 7s just generally see most things through an abstract-conceptual lens, seeing as they are mental dominants. They see things as more than just what they are at face value and this allows them to do all their usual tricks of seeing the potential of things, resourceful cross-contextual thinking, looking at things from multiple angles, having visions for the future etc. especially when you have the fortune of meeting one of those peak specimens that just seem to have the intelligence & creativity pouring out of their ears. (* fans self *)

This, of course, makes it tempting and easy to also use this for the purposes of defense. It’s one thing to have your interpretations of & associations with everything as a kind of ‘augmented reality’, and another to fully substitute the map for the territory, especially when that is done to gloss over hardships and difficulties.

Again it bears in mind to consider what each type is defending against and absolutely doesn’t want, and for 7 that’s being bogged down in limitation.

Imagination is sort of the perfect antidote to that because it’s really easy to imagine something and then turn around and dis-imagine it again.

The implicit mind builds on ancient instincts and concrete tangible experience; The heart is worse still cause it involves the reactions of other people and those sometimes painful fee-fees that don’t change so quickly and sometimes just insist on fucking hurting for a good while.

But imagination, concepts abstractions? That doesn’t have limits, at least in theory.

By definition, you can imagine literally anything you can think of, and you needn’t even pick between the options, or wait for outside circumstances to align. Imagination doesn’t require patience, and it’s always available to you, and as detailed or simplified as you want it.

Most of all, thinking is flexible and malleable – especially if you have the sort of distractable, impressionable base temperament 7s tend to have.

In a sense all the other 7 defense mechanisms are subtle or not-so-subtle tweaks and edits made to that mostly conceptual representation of the world that are only possible and/or as effective as they are because you’re already sort of living in the matrix & interacting with you conceptual representation of the thing more than the things themselves.

(...i mean, all of us are, ultimately, but it is probably more pronounced for head types as we got more constant interpretation going all the time, and just plain less latent inhibition when it comes down to it.)

But even all on its own, the tendency to leave things on an idea level provides a certain buffering effect that allows you to discuss even fairly grim, upsetting events without being fully touched or impacted on a heart level.

As mentioned various times before before, individuals may vary in how much they rely on the various defenses – with 7s there’s always the ones that idealize more (& hence want to see everything as sunshine & rainbows) and the ones that intellectualize more, (there may be some correlate to TP vs FP, but only very rough imho) and the latter flavor can absolutely discuss all sorts of messed up dark stuff without fully ‘going into it’, treating it as wholly real or internalizing the implications.

And to some extent that may be an useful thing of the defense doing its job and allowing the person to discuss the subject at all rather than avoiding it wholesale or be defeated by it, and even allowing them to see opportunities and solutions & do quick resourceful thinking when others may be overcome by their reactions.

One the other hand, this can register to others as ‘not taking things seriously’, or as ‘thinking things will be much simpler than they are in reality’. Like in a get rich quick scheme – “I’ll do this, and then I’ll do that, and then step 3 is profit!” while glossing over all the hairy steps in-between.

And it’s true that 7s are often gifted at just improvising it along the way, talking ppl into participating etc. but other times it does end up a pie-in-the-sky daydream and lead others to see the 7 as ‘living in a fantasy world’.

Or, it may be noted that any time theconversation goes in a feelsy direction it gets diverted, brushed over or lifted back up to the clouds with jokes or wisecracking comments, sometimes to the extent that loved ones may perceive the 7 as emotionally unavailable or full on dismiss the entire person as wholly lacking depht.

(it may be helpful to contrast with a 5 and how they can be ‘unrealistic’ or ‘over-theoretical’ in a whole other way of lacking contact with the concrete and tangible. 7s don’t have that problem, they can often be wordly, street-smart, quick on the uptake and have well-developed instincts. (sensors more so than intuitives) Meanwhile 5s might be read as needing to go touch some grass, but they don’t usually register as cartoonish or over-simplifying – 5s have ‘gravitas’, most of the time. They know how to make something ‘land’.)

As usual, the level of self-awareness here may vary from the person having no idea that they’re doing it and blowing it off when confronted, to people who very much know they do it & may have moments of feeling guilty for it.

As with their fellow hysteric-expressive type 2, there are some immature individuals that manage to completely isolate their positive self-image from any kind of negative feedback – in the case of 7, because an intellectual self-concept is doing the job that the heart would usually be doing. They see themselves as being anything they can imagine themselves being. Which, in moderation, is a great self-motivation technique and a gift for brushing up the haters, unlike many people who get bogged down in inhibitions or limiting beliefs, agonize endlessly over what the neighbors will think.

But on the other end, with immature individuals, there’s no limit to the level delusional arrogance you can get, since all they need to be convinced that they’re the hottest thing since sliced bread is to believe it in their mind/imagination.

But there are also cases where the 7 themselves may experience a downside to this, for if you are aware of how you could be anything, do anything, experience anything, it can all start to feel samey, arbitrary and directionless. You could be or do anything, but there is no reason why you should pick any particular option, no reason to stick with it. A subjective sense of restless numbness or disconnection may be experienced.

Especially when you’re cut off from the quality of the heart that lets you fully be impacted by things, prefer some over others or invest stuff with personal significance. All that may have been discarded as a limiting liability, but its absense can also come with a cost.

As in that Doctor Who minisode where the main character says that ‘if you make all of space & time your backyard that’s what you have, a backyard’.

The character of Rick Sanchez who discovered a multiverse and as a result started seeing everything as meaningless and just doing whatever he wanted without any regard for consequences is another possible example of that – and of how a person with such a mindset may sometimes end up inconsiderate, irresponsible or even outright destructive toward themselves and others, because the full personal impact of things is not felt or considered – especially since the response to the experiences frustration & dissatisfaction is often just more planning. (and, depending on the wing, also more stressing or more stimulation.)

Useful Question:

Try to spot when you’re engaging something purely on an intellectual or imagination level, or having a reluctance to feel the full impact of something.

In the case of something positive that you’ve been looking forward to experiencing, you might want to notice when you’re too busy thinking about how the experience should be or going to the next bit to the point that you’re distracted from taking in & enjoying the cool stuff going on in the present. Simply direct your attention back there. (probably is going to take some practice/ learning curve at first)

When it comes to avoiding negative stuff, that’s harder because there are obviously situations where you can’t afford to fall to pieces. However, you might counteract your natural tendency to by making room for some dedicated ‘processing time’ when you’re going through some stuff. (some of you might have to mentally triangulate this at first if you’re very used to yeeting it from consciousness, for example from increased desire for distraction or bored or restless feelings) Best to make it time-limited & have some fun distraction of your choice scheduled afterwards so you don’t feel like you’re gonna get stuck. You might do something like meditate, discuss it with a trusted friend or family member, do a creative outlet, punch a sandbag, write in a diary etc. whatever gives you a sense of relief.

rationalizing

Like 8 and 3, 7 has an ego structure that is more aligned with the ‘id’, low in inhibitions and geared towards the direct gratification of desires. But unlike the adversarial attitude of 8 and the competitive tendencies of 3, 7 is a positive & non-hierarchical type. Which is to say they’d prefer to get along with everyone, have everything be chill, pleasant & ok between them, & have those others available for social interaction, distraction and attention-getting.

7s want pleasure, gratification and attention, but they still want to think of themselves in a positive light, to have all this in a still “good & wholesome” way. 7s can be very much aggressive, flashy or rebellious just as the other assertive types, but they’d prefer to see themselves as a heroic trickster standing up to the crusty repressive authorities or sending a wholesome ‘express yourself don’t repress yourself’ message, as using guile, cleverness and diplomacy rather than force.

As geneticist Craig Venter said when the media criticized him for his decision to patent genes to keep his company solvent, he ‘doesn’t mind being bad boy, but he doesn’t want to be evil boy’

This may be why many of them in the western sphere are attracted to the modern interpretation of Mary Magdalene as the redeemed prostitute turned jesus’ girlfriend, for example, or other spiritual belief that marry the divine & pure with the profane and dirty. They want the forgiving all-loving warm fuzzy feelings god, but they can’t vibe with him if he’s a sexless being & preaches asceticism.

So, the 7-flavour ego has the job of reconciling the desires for quick gratificitation and positive self-view, and one of the chief means by which it does this is rationalization.

In the general sense, rationalization means to come up with an ad-hoc reasonable sounding justification for a foregone conclusion which itself was not actually arrived at by or from a place of reason, sometimes for the purpose of obscuring the actual motivation or the self-interest and/or maintaining a certain self-image.

7s aren’t the only ones who do this; The next most common ‘offenders’ are types where the mental center is not usually a huge site of decisionmaking (such as 2, 1 or 3) as a means to sign off on or defend (to oneself or others) a decision that came from elsewhere – so usually just an afterthought tacked onto the main decisionmaking or reality interpretation process.

The case of 7 is very different, however: Here, rationalization is a huge systematic part of how the ego operates. Once a desire arises (say, you spot a delicious cake & get a craving to eat it), the thinky gears go brr and churn out reasons & justifications for why you can and should go grant the desire (ie. in this case go buy the cake.)

What you are ‘defending’ against is the possibility of not getting it: Limitation, frustration, missing out, deprivation, all that stuff that 7s don’t want.

You could see this represented by the lines of connection, what most gets repressed or thrown out. There is the line to 1, the voice of ‘you shouldn’t eat the cake’, and there is the line to 5, the voice of ‘you can’t have the cake’.

The function of rationalization is to make those voices shut up, to convince both the 7 themselves and any people around them who may object that they can & should have the cake.

Trying to cut down on sweets? But its just one slice! No money? Aww come on that small amount won’t make such a big dent. Besides maybe they will soon have another opportunity to earn more money, whereas you don’t know when the bakery will next sell this same kind of chocolate cake. Besides dark chocolate has some healthy chemicals in it doesn’t it…?

And you worked so hard, you can treat yourself just this once…

So, more often than not, the 7 would just buy the cake, even if they still feel a tad guilty about it (particularly if they have some token restraint from being w6).

And so it goes with many things that the 7 desires.

The 7 ego is a machine to come up with ‘good reasons’ for why you should do the things you want, and since you get so much practice convincing yourself naturally you often also get good at convincing & motivating others, or coming up with reasons for why it is in their interest to get on board with the 7s scheme.

Depending on the individual 7, that could make them great leaders, visionaries, innovators, educators & activists, but the exact same skills will also serve a swindler, charlatan or morally dubious oily salesman.

Even the most goody 2 shoes of 7s will reliably try anything they can get away with if they believe its no biggie/ can square it with their pleasant self-image.

Yours Truly’s mom is a w6 tripple positive and probably as pushovery as 7s get, but even she thinks nothing of casually breaking minor traffic laws or little cheats here & there. One time we arrived at a supermarket to find that due to corona they were only letting in groups of 2. One of the superego types in our group of 4 nobly volunteered to go back to the car, but mom promptly ruled that ‘we didn’t know, and besides we’re all from the same household’, and waltzed right on in, proclaiming that she would ‘talk to them’ if anyone called her out on bringing extra people. Nobody did.

Countless times one of us had some kind of issue, only for her to say she would ‘talk to the gentleman’ & make the problem go away, or even haggle out generous compensation.

My sisters and I used to call it her ‘Magic Extrovert Powers’.

But you have to be paying attention to notice just how much loophole abuse & fudging is going on because 7s are often pretty good at chatting you up, building rapport and esuring that you’re generally going to have a favorable disposition towards them.

Who doesn’t like the funny person who relates to you an equal basis and tells tons of interesting stories? You’re not going to be so strict with a likeable guy. If a super confident-acting lady with a clipboard is walking around here, many are going to assume that she’s probably supposed to be there. Or believe she must know what she’s talking about because she sounds very confident, uses complicated sounding words and radiates great enthusiasm about her pursuits…

See all these ‘bavarian fire drill’ type stories about how a confident dipshit with a clipboard and fancy clothes managed to waltz right into some important top secret places.

If someone asks them why they’re there, they can usually bullshit something on the spot, because in a sense, they’ve been doing it all their lives. Even a little deliberate fib or conscious cold calculation, deception, cheating, exploiting or scheming can easily be rationalized as well, especially if, thanks to intellectualization, the possible serious implications of the situation & the effect on people’s feelings isn’t going to be that prominent on their radar. They’ll just tell themselves that it’s no biggie, no real harm done, and besides its hilarious how dumb those suckers are.

(this is in contrast to 3s who much more often believe their own hype because of how identification works)

The Doctor, Mc Guiver, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Claude from Three Houses, a whole load of other action heroes whose thing mostly involves coming up with plans on the fly, talking people into going along with them and acting dazzingly cool & confident… all 7s. But so is Eleanor Shellstrop from the Bad Place and that guy from Wolf of Wallstreet.

Everything about how 7s act, talk & present might as well be algorithmically optimized to get away with shit, and it kind of is, a skill honed by trial and error from childhood. – but the first person they swindled or talked into an inadvisable scheme was usually themselves.

There is an easy opportunity for a vicious cycle feedback reaction between Rationalization and the phenomenon of Gluttony(TM) where everything in perception seems to curve and warp towards how they totally must have that one thing and that will finally be what will leave them satisfied and fulfilled and the distinction between want & need gets blurred. Rationalization justifies your desire for the thing, but in doing so also intensifies it by harping on its many pros & diminishing or explaining away its cons.

Useful Question:

Is this counterargument actually no big deal, or are you explaining it away?

Is this thing you want actually a net win for everybody involved, or would that just be convenient for you?

Do you actually need this thing, or do you simply want it?

idealization

Idealization, sometimes colloquially known as „rose tinted spectacles“, is the tendency to see a given object (such as a posession, a person or an idea) in an exessively positive way, exaggerating its positive qualities and glossing over negatives.

This is different from simply having a positivity bias (more easily noticing & emphasizing the positive sides of what’s actually there), but positivity bias makes it easy for a distortion in the positive direction to ‚sneak in‘.

7s can idealize just about anything: Their job, their lifestyle, relationships, activities people in their lives, their possessions, and, two points o especial saliency, their future and their self-concept.

The main purpose of idealization is to defend against frustration – the sense that you missed out, can’t get what you want, will go dissapointed or unfulfilled etc. 7s don’t always seem so obviously ‚picky‘ or constantly dissatisfied as 4s or 1s, but it’s a big issue for them as well.

Idealization guards against that in two ways: The first is being a way to convince yourself that what you currently have is The Shit(TM), and the second is that even if some frustration seeps through, you can always comfort yourself with the idea that there is more available elsewhere, and ‚elsewhere‘, on account of not being in front of you right now and being seen mostly through your imagination, has no limits and can be pictured as fulfilling even your wildest dreams. This can be elsewhere in space – as in new, foreign places – or elsewhere in time, meaning the future. Maybe it’s a bit dissapointing right now, but Future You is going to have even cooller adventures and have an even greater life and learn even more skills. Future You is going to do complete these great intellectual and creative pursuits. There is also a more ‚meta‘ kind of elsewhere represented by having other options and alternatives, even other ways of seeing your life an ‚elsewhere‘ in possibility space. The 7 personality generally comes with a tendency to romanticize ‚elsewhere‘ – many are avid travelers, futurists and neophiles, always the first to embrace whats new & unusual.

One may compare or contrast it both with the 2‘s psychological anesthetic where the positive distortion is accomplished via focussing on relational feelings instead of via thoughts, but there is a similar effect of cultivating a positive attitude towards both self and others, but also with the 4‘s internalization in that there is a similar aim to make one’s life feel more significant, unique and interesting. Both are intensity-seeking types that seek the exceptional, avoid what’s boring & ordinary and would like to think of themselves as significant and individual, so a sense that they themselves or their lives are too boring would be something to defend against.

If 4 does this by heightening the negative as well as the personally relevant component of everyhing, how it personally touches them, 7 instead does it by heightening the positive & emphasizing the potential and possibility of everything.

It lets the 7 think they’re living the coolest life with the most exiting activities, the awesomest, most interesting people, and that they themselves are cool, interesting and awesome as well.

That’s easy for 7s to do as they tend to have impressionable, excitable dispositions to start with. (though the tendency to see things through imagination and rationalize away potential catches sure adds to it as well) – and within moderation, there’s certainly no harm in getting excited about your own life. A positive attitude keeps your stress low, makes you popular, helps your confidence etc. and with no shortage of discouraging messages coming our way every day we can use the friendly neighborhood 7 telling us good & nice things about ourselves & the world.

However, if overdone, this can create problems in two ways:

The first is what happens if the 7 just plain refuses to see anything but that which they want to see. This can lead them to be naive, get taken advantage of, or stay in shitty situations way longer than anyone else would, because they assume the best of, or try to see the good in people way past the point where it gets desperate. Accepting that the person, job or pursuit isn’t so great after all entails some measure of pain, grief, anxiety or feelings of inferiority/insecuritiy: After all it means you made a mistake, which may not fit your idealized view of yourself. You have to face that your dream didn’t work out and the pain of separation. You’re losing what could have been & the potential future, too, which to a 7 is very real (all the more if they’re an iNtuitive) – and if this isn’t the great ideal spouse/job/hobby you thought it was, then what is it? Will you find it? Have you missed out on the chance to find it? - Fear. Deprivation. Limitation. Grief. A sense of being aimless or lost. It’s just all the awful stuff you don’t want coming to the surface at once.

So, rather than to stay with those feelings long enough to connect the dots on a recurring pattern, the 7 might just cling even harder to their idealizations.

On the other hand, clinging to idealizations and refusing to see anything but the positive is just as likely to result in unempathetic or downright callous reactions towards anyone that dares to ‚kill their vibe‘ such as loved one who needs their support with a problem. If you think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and there are lots of other fish in the sea and more interesting stuff elsewhere, you might not particularly value or fight especially hard for that one relationship, especially when the idealizations are guarded by the other defence mechanisms at play.

But the second big issue is that all these idealizations create high expectations that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy effect wherein a defense against frustration ultimately leads to more frustration when you set your expectations so high that reality must inevitably fall show.

Even the seemingly inexhaustible comfort of ‚elsewhere‘ has its limits because once you get there, it’s always just more boring old ‚here‘ – you wind up chasing a mirage that you can never seem to reach, always being dissapointed, always noticing what’s not like you imagined it, and feeling the terror creeping up on you with every dissapointment that there’s nothing out there that can truly satisfy you and that you’ll be left without & never find your happiness.

This is just as true for self-idealization. Particularly the middle of the range 7s with non-zero self-awareness may sometimes notice how they aren’t living up to their ideal idea of how they ought to be, how the great Future Self isn’t exactly manifesting, feel rather discouraged, and then abandon projects halfway through to escape those feelings of inferiority.

While their eye for potential is one of 7s greatest strengths it can have an insidious dark side when the person fails to distinguish between the actual thing & its hypothetical imagined potential – which may lead to exaggerated confidence in oneself, one’s projects or other people (not every new startup is gonna be the next apple), but also a lack of perseverance when the potential doesn’t immediately materialize… even if it was totally real! As when someone gives up a new skill, self-developement tool or project at the first real hurdle or even just a plateau before they had the chance to get good at it.

And when the idealization collapses, the person can be hit with all the negative stuff that the dazzling mirage had been staving off which they have very little ways to actually cope with because of how they always avoided it – worst case it becomes another of those super sudden suicides that nobody saw coming. ‘but they always seemed so happy!‘ - or they escape into drugs, booze, gambling or some other addiction that temporary blunts the harshness of reality once copium alone won’t keep it at bay. If you’ve been living on clouds, it’s a long way down when you crash.

Useful Question:

Think of something in your life that you are currently very excited about, or looking forward in the near future.

Can you think of one or two things about it that are not so great?

Can you think of one or two things about youself that are not so great, or situations where you messed up?

And if the answer is no: Are you having unrealistic ideas that may be setting you up for dissapointment?

If you do find yourself disappointed and spiraling – first, maybe take a deep breath anxiety or restlessness dissipate a bit – but then you might remember to have a little reality check & ask yourself if you’re generally speaking in a state of well-being right now. Is the situation in general more bad or more good?

If it’s more bad, resist the urge to bolt to the nearest shiny distraction just for a moment (get a clock and aim for 5 minutes or something) to pause & consider if it’s a pattern & if you should do something about it.

If it’s more good, however, consider if it’s an unrealistic expectations thing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, & try to make an active joy to enjoy & fully experience what is good right now.

[continued below]