12 Monkeys (2015): Katarina Jones (INTJ)

Ni:

“It wasn’t just the people. It was the ideas. The paintings. Rembrandt. Caravaggio. The books. Shakespeare. Tolstoy. The music. Oh, the music.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“Hope is the luxury of those who are unburdened by fate.”

Katarina Jones appears to be an Ni dominant. She is single-minded focused on correcting time so that the plague never happens, and refuses to let anything else get in the way. She is shown explaining that the need to prevent the plague goes far beyond just saving the people, but the ideas, and the culture, such as music. Of course, we find out later that her true intention is much more personal: to save her daughter. However, the way she chose to re-frame her intention is significant because it demonstrates an Ni way of thinking. Ni prefers to think and act on a grander scale, even when the motivation is deeply personal.

Katarina believes that nothing is impossible, and is intent on breaking all the standard laws of nature to do what she thinks must be done. Yet, she sees herself as limited by fate, since time has trapped her into certain actions in order for it not to unravel. She believes they can change the past and thus the future, but at the same time, she doesn’t present the “endless possibilities” style of thinking that one sees in Ne users. She tends to feel more trapped in causality, and fate, which a way of thinking that Ni users are more prone to falling into. (Granted, there’s a very literal time factor going on here.) This type of thinking is echoed in other instances, like when she tells her father that researching how to heal the body is a pointless waste of time, because their bodies were designed to die.

Others ways Katarina demonstrates Ni use is in her lack of desire to explain when it’s unnecessary. When she first meets Cole, she shows him the recording and tells him that it’s his destiny to help her. He asks how she knows that recording is about him. Katarina says, “I know. …Just know I do as I knew that someday I would find you.”

Te:

“The mission is everything.”

“Clear the room.”

Katarina’s Te shows up most in the way that she manages her team and problem solves. She has a very ‘mission first’ focus, accepting that there will be casualties in order to complete their goal. She tends to consider losses in a more logistical sense rather than an emotional one. Similarly, she often sees people for their utility. She focuses heavily on Cole, due to knowing the past dictated that he would play major role in her mission. She gets briefly frustrated with him when he questions her authority, proclaiming that she “made” him. Later, she starts to find usefulness in Cassie and Ramse, for varying reasons, and doesn’t shy away from using them.

She focuses on controlling the most important aspects of the operation and doesn’t look to assert her authority in all cases, instead taking a more passive approach in certain matters. She openly admits to Ramse that she cannot keep Deacon from killing him, and it doesn’t seem to bother her. At the time, Ramse’s life was the logical sacrifice since she needed Deacon. She seemed mostly apathetic to the fact that she couldn’t control Deacon, because she still had enough control to keep her mission on point.

Fi:

“What is the lives of a few people compared to the whole of human history?”

Katarina shows mostly low Fi behavior throughout the show, due to a general lack of standards. However, her behavior/standards remain fairly consistent through the series. She uses time travel and altering the past as a justification for sacrificing people in the name of completing their goal. She rationalizes that, if they can’t change the past, they are all dead anyways, and that those who died would not stay dead if they were successful.

Her level of security in herself and her image seems more in line with tertiary Fi, rather than inferior. When Cole openly defies her in front of everyone, Katarina calmly orders everyone to leave, rather than feeling the need to reassert her authority in front of everyone and publicly put Cole in his place. Once everyone has left, while she is clearly irritated, she doesn’t really try to strong arm him, but rather takes a more conversational approach, reasoning him back over to her side. This is all more indicative of auxiliary Te and tertiary Fi.

Se:

Katarina appears to demonstrate inferior Se. She shows some general Se impulse behavior such as tearing down papers from the wall in frustration and anger. She also demonstrates some general sensory indulgence behavior, like smoking and pulling out a bottle of whiskey that she had been saving and proclaiming “no time like the present.”

However, moving beyond the more anecdotal stuff, Katarina’s extreme tunnel vision is the result of inferior Se. She tends to place all her eggs in one basket, so to speak. She’ll choose a single solution, and focus all her efforts on that alone, even to the point that she’ll block other possible avenues. This shows an extremely low level of adaptability. For instance, she destroys the cure that had been invented rather than keeping it as a hidden alternative in case she failed her ultimate mission. In addition, she tends to lean heavily on Cole being successful, having many times throughout the series telling him prior to an important mission that everything is riding on him being successful.