Interview Alice

I interviewed Alice.

Please note that there is a technical problem resulting in a brief discontinuity at 58:15. A few moments of Alice's commentary was lost.

Observations:

• Relaxed posture, posture shows affirmation and attention to my questions, extensive gesturing. Head back in "thinking" pose while answering questions, you can see the thinking process in the face.
• In response to "How would you describe yourself?" questions of identity are particularly central. One of the first things dsescribed was "I'm a musician" which turned out to be a hobby. The vocation "I'm a barista" was thrown in at the end of the answer, almost a comparative afterthought.

Themes:

• Alice's work life is bothering her for several reasons, mainly:

1. Her work as a barista is not sufficiently stable in hours, and thus pay.
2. Her work involves too much standing and is physically difficult.
3. Perhaps the most pressing issue, her work involves a lot of superficial interaction with rude customers.

However she doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas about how to improve her work situation. To the extent that she does have ideas about how to improve her work situation, they are relatively inchoate and indecisive. For example, Alice muses that she might prefer to work in an office, where she does not have to interact with customers -- but that doesn't narrow it down a lot nor actually speak to the type of work being done or the skills necessary to do it. We spent large portions of this interview talking about work life and types of work, beginning around 19:30-33:00 and then again at 37:00-50:00.

It seems to me, that the type of work that Alice enjoys doing, is helping other people. She does actually say that in her experience, she enjoys "helping people help themselves" (see 45:00) but makes a distinction between helping people outright or helping people be "self-sufficient." But it seems interesting, that when she discusses her experience of taking care of other people, she seems to be talking about helping them manage their emotions and relationships, rather than their physical surroundings (see 12:30, debatable?)

• Alice has a certain aversion to conflict, and repeatedly discusses a preference to maintain a good natured relationship with nearly everyone around her -- rude customers, unfriendly colleagues, and people in general. If she doesn't like a person around her, she says that she doesn't let them know about it. (see 30:00-37:00 )
• Alice has a history of inactivity and depression. It seems that inactivity makes her unhappy. She has intentionally made moves to balance her natural proclivity for inertia with some other things in her life. 19:20 "My activity level right now is the highest it's ever been and probably at the peak of my capacity for activity, but I have pushed the boundaries for my limits many times." This is a common story for many introverts who tend towards depression, including LII, SEI, IEI, ILI, EII, but there is also an element in the narrative of how important it is to concomitantly have gradual self-improvement, and, perhaps, also a sense of self-blame -- which are less common stories.

My view is that Alice is the EII. There are a lot of themes that match my view of this type. Alice seems to express good faith judgment, characteristic of EIIs with introverted ethics and extroverted intuition, like above where she claims to avoid having negative relationships with other people in almost all circumstances. There are a number of other instances in the video where Alice consciously tries to maintain a tenatively positive view of other people (see, 36:30, although in fairness preceding this discussion is a brief overview of Alice's experience's in therapy).

Clearer is Alice's embodiment of a concept I call, perhaps inexactly, "noncommitment." Noncommitment means, viewing the world for its' potential features, and having a difficulty with committing oneself to a particular path or plan, instead preferring to be able to pursue a multiplicity of paths or plans that might potentially occur. All four Ne ego types in some way have a disposition towards living in a world of theory rather than a world of practice, but this is especially true of the EII type in particular. Alice seems to have difficulty with putting plans into action, and especially with, figuring out what are the best circumstances to put herself in. For example, Alice told us that she has often intended to move on from her job as a barista, but instead has stayed in that vocation for over five years, and has thought about certain features of the circumstances she would like to find herself in, but perhaps too vaguely, with few concrete objectives and certainly without a detailed plan to improve her circumstances. That's not necessarily unusual for young people to have no concrete plan about what to do, but this indecisiveness seems to have been a particular issue for a long time in Alice's life, both during her schooling and working life. Remember also -- another sliced example -- that Alice first described herself at the very beginning of the interview as a musician, but she is not a professional musician; despite her enjoyment of music, she has taken few steps to pursue it in a more serious way, and essentially views music as a rather solitary hobby.

This difficulty doesn't seem to extend to being organized and stable. It seems that Alice may not have always been stable, but seems to lead a relatively stable life now, but perhaps without much drive for career advancement or excitement.

Alice further mentions self-sufficiency, another concept of mine referring to delta types, but Alice's view of self-sufficiency seems to mostly refer to other people's emotional well being, rather than direct oversight of resources seen in the SLI and LSE types. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Alice does not mention use of resources (other than in passing, the need to get paid on a consistent basis) or nature, or any kind of physical surroundings at all any point in the interview.