Alexander Grothendieck (ENTJ)
Not gonna lie – this was simultaneously the most frustrating and the most interesting character typing we have ever done. In my opinion anyway. I’m not sure if Ryan feels the same, ha ha. I learned something though – always go straight for the quotes and then read biographical information. Much simpler. Although, note that all of the direct quotes from his guy are technically not direct since he spoke another language. I was referencing translations, essentially. Anyway, on to the article…
Te:
“Grothendieck lived only for his math, and conducted himself in an aggressive, condescending manner that was quite simply mean. He was domineering, bossy, a know-it-all, and moreover unpractical” – cousin Hannelore
“…he has become used to treating me like a dependent child, or a feeble-minded old lady, who has to be interrupted whenever she starts speaking unsuitably, and whose life and doings must (of course, in her “best interests”) be decided for her. My cousin has seen this frequently, and has been quite annoyed by it…”
“My energy was sufficiently absorbed in winning the bet I had made with myself: to develop a theory which satisfied me completely.There was never any doubt for me that I would succeed, that I would discover the final word, as long as I took the trouble to examine things closely and to note down black on white what they said to me, as I went along. The intuition of volume, for example,was undeniable. It could only be the reflection of a reality which remained elusive for the moment, but was perfectly reliable. It was that reality which I wanted to seize, quite simply…”
Alexander Grothendieck appears to be a Te dominant. He was a rather bold individual, known for treating and speaking to everyone as equals no matter what their rank. He was described as the type to argue with his professor in the middle of class from the back of the classroom. He desired to be treated with respect and kindness, as an equal. He took constructive criticism well, and cast aside any failed project with ease. However, he felt as if he was a slave to his need to terminate tasks, which would be a Te impulse. In his mind, this compulsion prevented him from fulfilling his desire to explore the unknown. Alexander generally appeared to be ambitious and goal-oriented, even to the point of making bets with himself.
At a certain point, Alexander began to live only for his math. At that point in Alexander’s life, his cousin Hannelore described him as aggressive, bossy, domineering, and etc. His mother also describes him as treating her like a dependent child. He was also incredibly stubborn. He lived his life on a strange food and sleep schedule, and refused to alter in anyway. Relatives and friends found it incredibly difficult to coordinate a time to invite him over for a meal. He also would also rebuke his hosts for the types of food they ate or were serving, or might outright declare that he only ate certain things, afterwards seeming content to ignore their carefully prepared meal while continuing to socialize. Alexander seemed to be unaware that his actions or words might be considered rude, which demonstrates a complete lack of Fe and suggests Te. One of the sources I referenced notes that Alexander was prone to irritating people even when they were receptive to his ideas, suggesting that he was an abrasive person in general.
Ni:
“But as its very name suggests, a “point of view” in itself is limited. It reveals to us only one view of a landscape or a panorama, among a multiplicity of others that are equally valid and real. “It is when these complementary points of view of the same reality are combined, when our ability to view things is enhanced, that the view can provide us with a more complete access to the knowledge of things.”
“And it happens sometimes that a beam of convergent views on the same vast landscape enables us to grasp the One through its multiplicity, gives birth to something new: a whole that surpasses each partial perspective…We can simply refer to this new thing as vision. Vision unites the already known points of view that embody it as well as revealing others that were previously ignored, just like a groundbreaking perspective enables us to understand and discover that a multiplicity of issues, concepts and new formal elaborations are in fact a part of the same whole.”
Alexander Grothendieck was known for extreme generalization. His colleagues frequently noted it and occasionally rebuked him for it. He would take the broadest approach possible. One of the sources I referenced said this: “What he perceived himself as doing was simplifying situations and objects, by extracting the fundamental essence of their structure. “ This is Ni. He was also described as lacking a fear of the unknown.
For a while, I considered the prospect of him having Ne, but that before I had looked up direct quotes. If you read the quotes I listed at the top of this section, note the terminology he used. He focuses on points of view and perspectives. He focuses on uniting and combining these points of view in order to essentially derive the big picture. Ne is divergent, while Ni is convergent… and Alexander focused on convergence.
The rest of this is anecdotal, but Alexander was known to be eccentric and minimalistic. He didn’t appear to seek out personal comfort, and ate certain foods based on necessity and efficiency, which overall suggests a detachment from the sensory world.
Se:
“I saw Mr. Grothendieck again today, and he tells me that he has been ejected from Sevres and that to his and my regret, he will not be able to return there.”
Alexander was very brash, which is what ruled out inferior Se for me. He was known for yielding to violent impulses and got in fights on several occasions, including attacking the police. He sometimes would react to a simple insult in a physically violent way. He was once even brought to the police station after smacking a boy. In general, Alexander didn’t appear to have issues leaping into action on impulse. He also, for some vague reason, managed to get himself kicked out of his lodging as a college student. His struggle with rules can be seen as Te being backed by a higher Se.
Lastly, that desire to explore mentioned in the Te section can also being attributed to his tertiary Se. Of course, since Te was in the lead, he was allowing it to get snuffed out, although the impulse was strong enough in him for it to be a source of frustration.
Fi:
“My vision of my own person did not change a bit during this intense period of my life. That is not when I started to get to know myself. It is only six years later that for the first time in my life I freed myself of a persistent illusion, an illusion that wasn’t about others or the surrounding world but that was related to myself. It was another awakening, with an impact even greater than the one from which it arose. It was one of the first of many successive awakenings, and I hope more will come in the years that I have left.”
“It took a powerful shock to tear me away from a community that I was deeply rooted in, and from a clearly-defined career path. The shock resulted from my confrontation with a certain type of institutional corruption in an environment that I closely identified with. I chose to close my eyes to this corruption (by simply abstaining myself from not participating in it). Looking back, I realize that beyond the specific circumstances of the event, deeper forces were at work within me. It was an intense need for inner renewal.”
Alexander’s Fi oftentimes took a back seat to his goal. He felt as if he didn’t get to know himself until later, when he broke away from his ‘clearly-defined career path’ in search of inner renewal. Note in the first quote that at a later point in his life he saw himself as having finally been freed from an illusion that he had about self. In addition, one of the documents I referenced spoke of his desire to abolish all sense of ego and self for the sake of creativity. He believed that a fear of tarnishing one’s self image was the ultimate prevention of true creativity. Here’s a quote from the document: “the role of the ego is to avoid any appearance of failure in the eyes of the individual himself, and the fear of failure is above all the fear of tarnishing the self-image, and thereby losing control over the perception of the self.”
This demonstrates a very anti-Fi perspective, but not in the sense that he has no Fi, but rather that he’s battling against the pull of his inferior function. People have a tendency to dismiss their inferior function, or view it with a certain degree of hate, and that’s what you see Alexander doing. In fact, he appears to fear his Fi. He fears to build up an image that may, due to external forces or discoveries, be shattered later. I also read quotes directly from him that expressed a fascination with the inner child, and desire to return to that level of innocence, where one no longer has to be “afraid to be wrong, to look silly, to not be serious, and to act differently from everyone else.”
External Sources
- Alexander Grothendieck, the secret genius of mathematics
- Who Is Alexandre Grothendieck? Anarchy, Mathematics, Spirituality, Solitude
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Fascinating analysis, thank you for doing that. I suspect that his breakdown came after driving for so long with Te to manifest his Ni vision. Eventually his goal became too big for him to realize and he collapsed into his lower functions. He mentions his discovery of meditation as being a momentous occasion, which might be a settling into an Fi mode… and Se there makes sense as well. Thereafter, writing from his place of solitude, it was like he was trying to give some Te expression to the Fi that had been neglected for so many years as he struggled to make his way out of his chaotic upbringing and make sense of the world through mathematics. I’m glad you have found some insight through the analysis. Trying to figure him out has baffled me for years!
No problem! What you’re proposing could very well be true. Makes sense to me.
Honestly, what made this character fascinating was that depth of character and personality… You just don’t get that in fiction, not like you do with real people. I’ve had a theoretical understanding of inferior Fi for a while now, and I’ve made some general observations from daily life, but nothing up close and personal. When I was reading about Grothendieck, it just clicked that what I was reading was inferior Fi from the mind of an actual Te dominant, rather than just the more shallow, surface-level ways that I’ve seen it manifest through their actions. It was one of those moments where even though I hadn’t read anything like that before, it just fit so beautifully into my theoretical understanding that I knew exactly what it was. I ran off and showed an Fi dominant friend of mine, and she thought it was fascinating as well, lol.
Some of the nuances of his life are so peculiar that no fiction writer would ever conceive to put them in the story. Even thinking of the characters of Joyce or Tolstoy, how would you possibly come up with the aspects of Grothendieck’s life? Anarchist revolutionary parents – his father literally lost his arm escaping from prison in Russia. When he met Hanka, who was walking with her husband at the time, he greeted them by telling him “I am going to steal your wife.” Kinda sets the stage for the kind of life Alexander is going to live.
I suppose it is somewhat tough to witness inferior Fi through real life experiences. You are limited to ESTJs and ENTJs to study and the latter are so rare it’s unlikely you’ll find one anyway, notwithstanding giving yourself enough time to observe them before they are off doing one of the many things in their active lifestyle. I enjoy personality and especially studying particular figures because you can appreciate the spectrum of their dynamic over their life, from a range of perspectives, rather than the snapshot you might get meeting someone for a few moments. Although I expect meeting Grothendieck would be very indicative of his general temperament, considering the stories of those who have, particularly those after his retirement to solitude.
I imagine his whole dictum about his Yin-like creative process, letting the nut soak in the water, is a sort of auxiliary Ni function embodying the parent archetype. Compared to the action of dominant Te, which is so very Yang, Ni is quite the opposite modality – sit with it, let it stew, wait for the right time, don’t open the fruit until it is perfectly ripe, if the path you are following isn’t blatantly obvious then it is the wrong path – this seems to be the message he was trying to convey, to illuminate others on an efficacious creative style, albeit very much in his own style of generality and simplicity.
Ni seems to come into play with the resolution, or transcendence, of paradox. When presented with a seemingly insurmountable situation, shifting his perspective such that the very problem of the paradox is actually a solution to a more general situation is a fascinating resolution that permeates his whole style. I imagine that his continual perspective shifting and attempts to rationally understand those new perspectives eventually led to his crisis – his Fi anchor was deteriorating, his identity diffuse. However, it was still very much there, just not in his consciousness, until a few relatively innocuous triggers catapulted an eruption that led to a massive phase shift in his 40s.
Anyway, just a few more thoughts on the matter. I’ve thought about his character a lot over the years – it’s a fascinating study and I am glad you have found it so as well. Outside of mathematics circles he is quite unknown, despite being on par with Einstein for the quality of his genius and revolution of his field. Perhaps he is less congenial than Einstein, who you can relate to to a certain degree through his humanity, his expression of his thought processes and gedankenexperiments, maybe that auxiliary Ne is a bit more concrete and accessible. Einstein spawned a theory he disbelieved and everyone ran with it while Grothendieck struggled to expound his vision for a decade and when he left, the whole endeavor fell apart. Not trying to undermine algebraic geometry in the slightest here, just a subjective perception of the vibe each seemed to present. Where Grothendieck’s theory of Motives fell by the wayside, despite it being his ultimate objective, because he was no longer there to sustain the subjective Ni vision, quantum mechanics works so well, despite Einstein’s detestations, that it has become a fundamental aspect of physics. Perhaps on some level due to the nature and personality of the persons involved and the way they brought it to bear, which is precisely what we are all studying here.
One more thing I meant to include was a reference to Jung’s exposition of the extraverted thinking type in Psychological Types.
“The thought of the extraverted thinking type is positive, i.e. it produces. It either leads to new facts or to general conceptions of disparate experimental material. Its judgment is generally synthetic. Even when it analyses, it constructs, because it is always advancing beyond the analysis to a new combination, a further conception which reunites the analysed material in a new way or adds something further to the given material.”
This seems very much in line with Grothendieck’s life and work. Constantly advancing, producing, creating, synthesizing. It is often commented that he was incredibly adept at both naming his new discoveries and also assessing where and how they fit within the spectrum of other discoveries.
Isn’t this idea of convergence a heritage from his interests on spirituality? I’m probably a high Ne user and I see things in that way too (lol)
It’s possible. But as a whole, Ne users tend to be more interested in generating possibilities from the things they come across, versus the Ni users who want to condense everything down into a single principle or underlying truth. That’s why the high Ne users tend to look more sporadic and random, versus the Ni users who have an easier time focusing in on one thing.