TYPING IN PRACTICE POST #15: ALICIA KEYS
I was actually going to post a different typing in practice first, but decided to go with this one first, since it's one where we can learn a lot of things about typing, so here goes
Alicia Keys was born Alicia Argello-Cook, and raised by a single mother in a rough neighborhood in New York City, called, "Hell's Kitchen". Her mother recognized Alicia's music talent early on, and enrolled her in piano lessons at age 6. She graduated as Valedictorian from her high school graduating class. She was offered a scholarship for Columbia University and a recording contract from Columbia Records at the same time. She chose the recording contract, and the rest is history.
I became interested in her after she had released 2 albums and this poetry book:
I read the book through many times, but this was the first time I read it through in relation to trying to type her. I have seen people type Alicia Keys as everything under the sun, but it was time to get down and dirty, and figure out Alicia's SOJT type, and what MBTI that goes with. So let's get started.
Step 1: I reread the book, looking for functions in the parts where Alicia talks about her own life, or the stories behind the poems. It seemed like I was seeing both extroverted and introverted versions of all the functions, and couldn't determine which judging function and perceiving function were conscious and which were unconscious. At that point, it became clear to me why everyone has such a hard time typing her- she Has an undifferentiated attitude . But I have learned, over the past year, the best practices for accurately typing an undifferentiated attitude, and I will be sharing them here. But let's take a little aside, and talk a little bit about Si.
Jung describes introverted sensing here, on page 363 of Psychological Types, like an interpretation of a painting. I like that description, because it has one be able to easily comprehend how an introverted sensor can actually internalize their experiences with objects
Here's a very obvious example of Si from Alicia's book:
So one function that stood out to me, as being part of Alicia's Jungian type was probably Si. So I went on to step 2.
Step 2: since I couldn't even tell the order of her functions from the book, or by means like the function related themes, I figured the next step to do with her would be to watch videos of interviews, and conduct a function analysis. As I explained in the Typing In Practice post on Madonna, a function analysis would be where I comb through the videos, looking for instances of thinking and deciding, and figure out what functions are present in the process. So I watched the videos a few times. I could definitely see Alicia's undifferentiated attitude. It was as clear as a bell. And I will add 2 of the 4 videos I watched at the end of this post, because they had other great examples of Si: Alicia sharing her experiences with songs, New York City, and the color purple, just to name a few. After I was done here, this was the function tally I had. Notice how close the numbers are for each attitude of the same function. This is pretty typical when typing undifferentiated attitude. At least I now have a dominant and auxiliary function for Alicia now , and can tell she's S-f in Jungian, or using the letters, SFP:
Step 3: I could just abandon the typing right here, and just call Alicia Keys an "A" SFP. But that would not be as specific as I have the potential to get. Really? I can get more specific than that? With the help of DISC, I can. With DISC, I can identify which attitude is the preferred one. I knew from my combined DISC and SOJT typings of dream people, that make up the True Types posts, that there are 2 "A" SFP slots on the DISC wheel. Slot 6 is in the Primary I profile, and prefers extroversion. Slot 132 is in the S/D profile and prefers introversion. So, I played the videos again, this time looking for characteristics of various DISC quadrants, and this was the end result:
So now we have a most resonant MBTI type for Alicia Keys, as we add the letter I as the first letter, with the letters.
In summary, Alicia Keys has an undifferentiated attitude and striking Si. She doesn't fit neatly into an MBTI type, but her best match for MBTI type is ISFP.
Here's the videos, where you can see great examples of Si in Alicia Keys. Note what she says about songs in the first one, and New York City and the color purple in the second:
If you would like more information about the SOJT type S-f preferring I>E, you can read the following True Types post, where I do a "mock interview" with my dream buddy, Dave: