TYPING IN PRACTICE POST #8: LADY GAGA
Hello, everyone, I sat down in my easy chair this evening, and I was going to finish up two typings, which will likely be posts 9 and 10. But I also dug out biographies and autobiographies of other people I have I'm planning to type. I just got sucked into my Lady Gaga biography, and knew some stuff already from a previous attempt to type her using the biography, and was able to finish typing her in this sitting.
Disclaimer: I know Lady Gaga has a persona that certainly belongs in the EF camp, but I'm going to be bold, and not type her persona, but rather, the person behind it.
Lady Gaga, who's real name is Stefani Germanotta, was brought up in an affluent neighborhood in New York City. She learned early that she had musical skills and theater skills. She studied both music and theater diligently, using traditional tried and true methodologies. Lady Gaga was quoted in the biography, stating that that's a unique thing that sets her apart from her musical competition- her tried and true traditional music and theater education. She also said being as educated as she is, in general, sets her apart. Yet, at the same time, she likes to put fresh and new twists on the tried and true old school stuff she likes. Without further ado, I will tell the process I went through to type Lady Gaga.
Step 1: Last summer (2021), when I read through the biography, I was just starting to learn Jung's definitions of the functions. I saw both D (Dominance) traits in Lady Gaga, in that she kept on plugging away, being determined, and being persistent; and S (Steadiness) traits such as self knowledge, liking routine, and maintaining the status quo. So from that, I was able to conclude that Lady Gaga was on the D-S axis of DISC, or the Te-Fi axis of Jung. I let the typing sit there, and I worked on other typings.
Step 2: A few days ago, I was talking to someone on discord about typings I had yet to finish for typing in practice. I mentioned that I still had to complete Lady Gaga, and that the next step was to determine whether Lady Gaga was D or S. So the first thing I did tonight, when I opened the book, was to look for instances of D and S. I found overwhelming amounts of S and significant amounts of D, and was able to determine that both letters are above 50/50 for her. And with no significant I or C traits present, I was able to assign Lady Gaga to the DISC profile S/D, which is the only DISC profile with only S and D above 50/50. At this point , we know IxFx so far, for letters
Step 3: There are 2 MBTI types that can get S/D results in DISC. S/D is actually the home profile for the fully differentiated Si-f (ISFP), and contains all the ISFP variants. S/D also contains 2 of the variants of Fi-n (INFJ). So, you guessed it, the next step was to identify Lady Gaga's perceiving axis. As I mentioned in the summary of Lady Gaga, she exhibits both sensation and intuition in the following ways: her object focus (sensation) is very old school and traditional. She likes to use her objects in the tried and true, archetypal way. On the other hand , her ideas focus (intuition) is new and fresh. If you've studied Jung's functions long enough, you learn that Lady Gaga's archetypal emphasis on sensation is found in people with Si. Therefore the intuition, to be the pole, must be Ne. Therefore Lady Gaga's perceiving function axis is Si-Ne. At this point, we know ISFx for the letters.
Step 4: So now that we know Lady Gaga's perceiving axis is Si-Ne, let's take a look back at the types I said get S/D results: we have ISFP and INFJ. INFJ has a Ni-Se perceiving axis, the opposite of Lady Gaga's. So we have a type identification...
Lady Gaga, the person (not the persona), is an ISFP