Interviews -- Susan Harris-Gamard

Susan's interview is unlisted but is embedded below with permission:

In addition, here is another older typing video answering the same questions which I found interesting.

Unfortunately this video is lost - 2020


Susan tells us a great deal and shows us very little. Most of my observations of Susan have to do with her words and not with her demeanor at all:

• Has somewhat limited emotionality. Chuckles a lot, has limited voice modulation.
• Constantly describes herself as assiduous, driven, motivated, "always working", busy, but also as indecisive, poor at getting what she wants and accomplishing things, etc. These contradictions in terms are a common theme in Susan's self-descriptions.
• Very focused on career. Yet has a scattered approach to her own education. Describes herself as obsessed with her own self-directed work; quit stable job as a hospital technician because the work was not sufficiently self-directed.
• Highly organized, structured lifestyle. This organization comes across clearly in Susan's speech. Even in the second video linked where less preparation was done (presumably intentionally), there were little notes made to remember things.
• Describes preferring to work alone.
• Describes herself as sensitive, passionate, chameleon, patient, and accommodating. Yet also "sees other people as objects," and describes herself as simultaneously private and individualistic.
• Describes missing the "energy" of city cafes.
• Occasionally uses sappy, emotional language ("I love my mom")

In addition, here are two extended quotes, from the end of the first and second videos, respectively.

I am not that hopeful anymore to be honest. The only thing I am seeing these days is too much power in too few hands, corruption, dishonesty, people not speaking out enough, people too willing to follow the trends, the crowd, others' ideas. This I find to be the most dangerous. Maybe it is because everything is too open these days, so now we see it with the internet and everything. But really it just depresses me the state that society is in. I'm tired of the sheep mentality; people don't realize that they are being manipulated and controlled by the media and pop culture; people not willing to hear and to listen to what is not being said. I feel that many people are sleeping even when they are in fact speaking out on issues, they don't realize that issues are brought to the forefront that don't actually matter in the wider scope of things. People in power [unintelligible] the media and information generation and dissemination, and no piece of information should ever be trusted at face value. There is always a motive behind everything. I would just like to just go around and wake everyone up out of their trance. I'm hoping that maybe by being a writer and/or educator I might play some sort of a role in this, so I do see a of glimmer of hope; I always see a glimmer of hope that I could play a role in making that a little bit.

I am hot and cold with friends. A lot of times, some people want to get really close to me, and I'm more of when I'm with friends I want to do something, I want to have fun. I don't want to sit and have intimate conversations, if I'm going to have a conversation it's going to be an intellectual conversation, and some people don't enjoy those, they would rather talk about their relationships and things like that and just I will talk, I will listen, but I would rather talk about things that are important that can be changed, something important in the world, and my husband and I do a lot of talking like that, and that's what really keeps us together, keeps us a good couple, because we share that.

[...]

My ideal place is somewhere where I can be honest, I can be open, and I trust everyone. People are not afraid to put things on the table; to argue, to really get down to agreement and understanding each other. I have trouble when people refuse to agree and refuse to see things from another person's perspective. [The place that makes me feel insecure], I figured it out, for me it is when someone is judgmental. And I grew up with a very judgmental father who judged everyone, who was very racially judgmental, everything was a judgment, and it was very stressful for me, made me who I am I know that, but it's one environment I can't be in and if I find myself anywhere like that I will either lash out or I will leave.

[...]

I think for me it was a combination of my dad and the fact that I've never been someone who fits in. So I've always been subject to people's negative judgments of me, that I am different, that I can't conform, that I don't think like everybody else, that I don't act like everybody else and I refuse to act like everybody else to fit in, so when I hear a judgment it brings up all these bad past experience of mine, of the judging eye on me all the time, my clothes, my dress. I was always a little different, always rebellious, always, I liked to make a statement in everything, whether my appearance, how I act, what I say, I want to get things out and get them out in the open, and if someone comes along and blasts me with a judgment, I'm like "Okay so what am I supposed to do with that?" They're not giving me a chance to interact and get a dialogue going, and that's problematic for me. When people put up a wall, you know you need that dialogue to keep going, you need to create harmony and get people to work together, because if we don't work together, we can't do anything, we can't do anything as individuals, we have to do things as a group, as humans, as people who have common interests, common needs, this common drive to survive and be happy and love each other. It comes right down to that.

These quotes are without a doubt cherry-picked portions of her videos, and I recommend watching the full videos. However broadly I do not feel that they are taken out of context.

Of course, themes from these quotes include more contradictory ideas: while describing herself as individualistic and highly oriented only towards her own work, Susan also describes here this highly collectivistic imagery, with a preference for freely expressive (nonjudgmental) environments in which she can "make a statement" and express herself without restriction.

And additionally, she speaks about the importance of being present, of detecting "hidden motivations" in the way people act, and of "waking people up" from the sheep mentality and of discussing weighty subjects of societal importance and which can be changed and improved.



I am caught between two types to describe these observations of Susan: LIE and EIE. Of these, I think EIE is more likely, but LIE is not necessarily a bad typing (and especially Susan's enigmatic self-presentation and perhaps lack of awareness of what is inside her leaves some ambiguity in how to interpret the observations).

Susan's use of extroverted ethics is not overt in her behavior. She is not overly emotional, does not talk a great deal about her emotions or about situations involving other people. Instead she talks a lot more about her career and career history. However, in my opinion her use of extroverted logic is not particularly overt either -- she is an extremely structured, organized person who is very focused on career topics but does not overly emphasize her productive work in doing so (at several points in the first video, the interviewer emphasizes her organization as reflecting a "need for efficiency" for her, to which she assents, but this is not generally reflected in her own words).

Although it is not at all unreasonable for LIEs, an Fi suggestive type, to be "sensitive" as Susan describes and also as unable to see what is inside themselves or how they relate to others. But some of Susan's other descriptions, such as needing to preserve harmony among people, seem a bit out of place for LIEs who have the harsh judgment of gamma types.

By contrast in some of the extended quotes picked out, the Fe+Ni attitudes of the beta quadra seem to stand out quite a bit more clearly. It is telling that Susan sees other people as having the "sheep mentality" and who are "blind to the unstated motivations of others" and that "no information should ever be taken at face value." At face value (no pun intended), this is clearly opposed to the attitude of Te dominant types who value unadulterated information from trustworthy sources.

Moreover the attitudes of rebelliousness, of needing to express oneself in environments of nonjudgment, the collectivistic mentality of people working together, and of "hope" for the future world which, while being emotionally blackened in some ways, can be changed via supra-worldly alterations, are all characteristic of the beta quadra.


From Susan's comments, what is most clear is that she should be an Se-valuing extrovert. The most obvious qualities of Susan are her ambition, drive, and organized lifestyle. Another somewhat present quality is her somewhat "scattered" character, of doing and keeping track of many things vocationally and describing herself as a chameleon that behaves in many contradictory ways. This often underlies a somewhat limited capacity to introspect and notice what is inside herself (a problem which all of the Se-valuing extroverts -- who collectively lack Ti, Fi, and Ni -- can have, as well as some other extroverts such as ESEs).

But beyond the assessment of an Se-valuing extrovert it is somewhat difficult for me to make clear distinctions, about whether Te or Fe is valued -- my certainty of my typing of Susan as EIE compared to especially LIE is probably lower than all of the other interviews I have yet analyzed. To be more confident of my typing I would like to see more clear expressions of emotionality, or know Susan more fully to understand the specific way in which her emotionality is translated into focusing on her career. But based on the evidence and interviews available, I would assess that Fe dominants (who can be quite oriented towards their careers) is the most likely of these suggestions and that many of Susan's comments about collectivism, free expression, and the importance of detecting hidden motivations would be quite odd for gamma extroverts.





(The interviewer mentions that Susan's self-typing is ILI. To me this typing seems highly unrealistic for Susan. To be brief -- as this blog is intended to be didactic and I think most readers will not find very didactic an exposition of possibilities that seem clearly wrong -- I agree with the interviewer's reasons for disagreeing with this typing; ILIs are extremely less driven and organized than Susan appears to be.)