[rappf]

For one—are there any adoptees on here besides me? (Same race or transracial) I'm thinking 'yes,' but...

Well, either way, this is something I'm curious about. While in no way is MBTI absolute—it doesn't define people's dispositions and cognition as much as it draws up a framework that systematically encases the diversity of affect and mind—I was wondering if people of similar types deal with being adopted in similar ways.

I was prefacing a paper the other day with a note on social cognition, put into the context of adoption. I'm not putting this excerpt up here to exhibit "The INTP View" of being adopted—but rather, to share my own view, as a person who is both adopted and an INTP.

"It was around the end of second grade when it struck me that I indeed functioned within a social context. I hadn’t given it much thought beforehand; I was fine living subjectively—almost in the way of postmodernism, if you could ever ascribe that to a child—and I didn’t need to know where I fell within the social strata. It was just me, the bits of information I picked up here and there, and the express pleasure or displeasure of the experience. But when that awareness hit me, it hit me. It took me by the horns and would never let go after that.

That I was different from most people was a pretty powerful revelation. My skin is darker. I have a very different nose and eyes. I didn’t look like my parents like the other kids in my class did. My parents are “white,” and I’m “Vietnamese” and “adopted,” apparently—or at least that’s what I was told. And suddenly, in intermediate school, those silly picture books my parents had given me about adoption became a lot less abstract.

As I became more and more socially cognizant, living became more difficult. I was a super-minority in a very homogenous [Caucasian] town, and it would be a lie of courtesy to say it wasn’t isolating and somewhat degrading. It was hard to relate to people; experience was not a common ground I could share, not even with the few other Asian kids in my school. I got along, though. I got along reasonably—I’d been a fairly solitary, self-satisfied person from the get-go. And despite my implicit second-class citizen status and the strange, societal expectation that I should be ‘grateful’ for being adopted, I maintained my self-respect. I didn’t take it personally.

But I knew. I knew that I was living in an unusual circumstance."​

Does anyone identify with this? Other adoptees? Other INTPs? Other adopted INTPs? Other types? Non-adoptees?

If anyone does, do you think there's a qualifiable (or even MBTI-related) commonality?

 

[Socrates]

I was adopted by my would-be grandparents on my mother's side. Mom's an ESFJ and dad's an ESFP. My biological parents are ESFJ and INTP, respectively.

It was disappointing to the ESFs that I was not the sports star they always wanted...

 

[honestfi]

I can understand a kid going all introspective if they are told they are adopted - there may be some correlation. However, I doubt that someone would become INTP solely because of it, but maybe somewhat moreso than genetics.

I am sure that I was not adopted - but if I were told, tomorrow, that I was, I don't think it would change my outlook or feelings towards the people I called parents all these years.

Anyway - I know the article is INTP and adopted, not INTP because adopted. I think other types might go barmy in different ways if they found out/were told. Somehow I think an INTP might be interested in just who their parents were, maybe think they could perhaps fill in some gaps, maybe even curious as to why. But would they, in general, want a deep, meaningful relationship with someone that did not bring them up? Think not.

Sometimes an INTP wants to find a reason why they don't fit in. It somehow helps us justify our position for being somewhat antisocial. I'm not saying that you or the person that wrote the article think like that, but before I got to the "f-it" age I am now, I was always thinking up excuses of why I always felt like a square peg in a round hole.