The Best Part of Me

Feeling is my hero. I show feeling - it's best side and it's worst. I walk into a room and feel everyone's mood, I know how to make people feel welcome and comfortable, I feel the impact of harsh treatment on any I consider mine. I am compelled to do what I can to make life better for those around me, and cannot function in critical surroundings. Of all of my personality preferences, the one that I am most directed by, good and bad, is feeling.

Of all of your preferences, one is the hero. This is called your dominant. It is the first function to develop, the strongest function throughout your life, and the key to feeling and acting like you.

Your dominant will be one of the two center letters of your 4 letter type, which are the letters that indicate your mental functions.  The mental functions describe how you gather information (S or N) and how you make decisions (T or F). So the mental functions are Sensing, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling - two of these will be in your 4 letter type, and one of those will be your dominant.

The dominant function is the driver of your type and the side of you that feels most safe and most right. It is also the function that you have the most control over and the one that you run to when stressed or uncertain. Although the ideal is to develop all of the mental functions over the course of life, your dominant will always be your favourite.

If you are an extravert, the dominant function will be extraverted, so you use it on the outside to deal with people and the world, and people see it.  If you are an introvert then the dominant function is introverted, so you use it on the inside to deal with your thoughts and ideas, so people do not see it. This why it takes longer to get to know an introvert - the side they show you is not their most important or well developed side, they display their auxiliary function to the world - their back up side.

Just to complicate things, any function that is extraverted, typically looks and acts different from the same function that is introverted. So your feeling, may 'look' different to mine (if your feeling is introverted) and also may not be as strong as mine if your feeling is not your dominant - and of course this relates to each of the other mental functions as well.

It is important to know the dominant function of those close to you or those you deal with regularly, as the dominant function is their most trusted function and the one that is the key to their type.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps — Jacques-Louis David