Jesse Gerroir is contributing guest writer for CelebrityTypes. As always with guest writers on the site, Gerroir’s piece represents his own insights and type assessments and not necessarily those of the site. Still, we very much enjoy his work and are pleased to be able to share it with our visitors.
By Jesse Gerroir
Fe is often seen as an annoyance by Te types. Social gestures and the like can be observed and practiced with Te, but Te tends to lack an inherent warmth. As Marie-Louise von Franz said, only with Fe does warmth of Feeling flow towards outer objects and individuals. A Te type could learn to mimic the same gestures that tend to come more naturally to Fe, but to the man with any depth of Feeling, the gestures are not going to come across in the same way. Simply put, they will never have the warmth that Fe users so naturally have, and this can be a major hindrance at times. Even Fe users who don’t have good intentions can still come across with warmth and be well-liked.
However, Te can still be used to interact socially. One instance of such usage is when you see ENTJ business moguls who are good at making a social impression and getting what they want from people. They appear to be socially engaged, but they are ultimately following a script, so to speak, rather than feeling out the social situation organically. The giveaway is that they will lack spontaneity and their actions will invariably be somewhat stiff and formal, even in a casual setting.
In comparison with Fe types, Te types lack the mechanisms to connect with the other person’s mindset from unstated premises, using empathy alone. Where Te tends to naturally work on a basis where it pushes in order to see if the other party will push back, Fe users have a hard time understanding why all this pushing is necessary.
Fruitful Conflicts and Soothing Harmony
Every type who has Te must also have Fi in their function order. The two imply each other. Through the use of Fi, a person can look inwards and act in accordance with the wishes of the self, even if the people around them don’t like it. They must be genuine. In the same way as Te, then, when Fi users state an unpopular, but authentic idea or wish, it will invariably cause others to push back a bit, and then you have a clearly defined boundary, which is something that Fi can work with.
Because they lack the Fe type’s outer flair and feeling, both Te and Fi types need definite boundaries in order to quantify what the other person wants or needs.
Thus, Aristotle, the Te type, will say:
“How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms!”
Whereas, Goethe, the Fe type, would explain the breaking off of his friendship with Schopenhauer like this:
“We discussed a good many things in agreement; eventually, however, a certain separation proved unavoidable, as when two friends, having walked so far, shake hands, one wanting to go north and the other south, and very soon lose sight of one another.”
Thus, to the Fe type, conflict is seen as something to be avoided and downplayed, whereas to the Te type, conflict is not merely natural, but indeed necessary, as it is only through conflict and the whole push/push back interaction that definite boundaries are established and the needs of the other person are discovered and made known.