Typing Doctor Who: Rose Tyler (ESFP)

ESFPs:

Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realistic approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people.

(N.B. If you’re confused about the odd MBTI terminology throughout this piece (“Extraverted Sensing”, “Fi”, etc.) this link explains it pretty clearly and succinctly. I’ve tried to make these posts as readable and comprehensible to those uninitiated with MBTI as I possibly can, but some use of theoretical terms and concepts is unavoidable. There’s no need to be intimidated, though, the concepts are actually really easy to understand, and the link above explains it all well.)

The first companion of the revived series of Doctor Who, the most beloved and arguably New Who’s archetypal companion is, to my mind, a classic ESFP. In my post on Clara Oswald (another ESFP), I characterised ESFPs as the adventurous, fun-loving thrill-seekers of the world. ESFPs are ruled by their need for sensory stimulation, which they seek out in the world of experiences, people and things. Unlike introverts and even many extroverted types, ESFPs are typically not drained by constant social interaction and activity—as SPs it’s what they thrive on, and much of an ESFP’s life is an unending search for novelty and stimulation. They’re always doing things, seeing things, experiencing things, having fun. ESFPs are the people who make life fun for everyone else. They also have a deeper, passionate side, and they feel very deeply and have a strong sense of who they are and how things should be. They’re very fluent with people, very warm, and sympathise with others easily.

Rose fits this characterisation quite well, I think. She decided to travel with the Doctor because she felt unsatisfied with her mundane, boring ordinary life and the mundane, boring trappings of that life: her job, her home life, her boyfriend, her future. Against this unsatisfying reality, she found irresistible the idea of leaving it all behind, relinquishing all her responsibilities and attachments, to travel in time and space with the Doctor, a free and unbound spirit. Nor can she keep away from it. Unlike some later companions, the Doctor isn’t her hobby, it’s her life, and a life of travel and adventure is just what every ESFP dreams of. It’s clear that Rose can’t stand the idea of leaving the Tardis behind and going back to her old, mundane life. She was thoroughly depressed when Nine sent her back home in The Parting of the Ways about having to return to her ordinary life of sleep, work and chips; and she couldn’t comprehend how others—Mickey and especially her mother, Jackie—neither wanted to join her in the Tardis nor felt happy for her travelling with the Doctor.

The above is basically a description of the way Rose’s Extraverted Sensing (Se) manifests, the dominant cognitive function of ESFPs. But more specifically, we see Rose’s Se in the way she likes to immerse herself in the new places she visits. Compare the way she reacted to visiting Satellite Five to the way Adam (probably an IxTP) did: Rose immediately took to interacting with her new, strange surroundings, buying a strange alien drink to share with Adam, while Adam felt overwhelmed by it all and needed to go clear his head and take it all in. See, too, how Rose loves to try on new pretty clothes to fit in with her surroundings: her pretty Victorian dress in The Unquiet Dead, her cute 1950s garb in The Idiot Lantern. She has a great dress sense in general, and, like Clara, her outfits are always distinctive and stylish. Rose also has a keen eye for a pretty face—although she’s theoretically tied down to a relationship with Mickey, she can’t help flirting and showing interest in every pretty boy who crosses her path: Adam, Captain Jack, and even the Doctor himself; and she doesn’t seem to feel very committed to Mickey. That’s a trait I’ve noticed in the ESFPs I’ve known, a manifestation of their dominant Se: they just can’t resist pretty things.

ESFPs also have auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi), which makes them deeply, internally sensitive about things. They have feelings, man. They have clear ideas about what’s good and bad, right and wrong, and a strong sense of who they are, or who they want to be. Rose’s Fi is illustrated perfectly by her famous, character-defining outburst at Jackie and Mickey in The Parting of the Ways when the Doctor sent her back in time to protect her from the Daleks. She was overcome by emotion because one of her strongly-held principles was being violated by her having to sit safely at home while her friends fought for their lives in the far future. You could practically feel the Fi spilling out of her. There are other instances of this in other episodes: the way she sympathised with the Dalek in Dalek in defiance of the Doctor, and the way she stood up for Gwyneth against the Doctor and the Gelth in The Unquiet Dead.

But I also see Rose’s Fi manifested in the way she treats Mickey. For example, in Boom Town, she returns to her own time and sees Mickey again, and expects Mickey to return to her side at her beck and call like a loyal lapdog, and even feels indignity and confusion when Mickey tells her he’s seeing someone else. She’s snarky and mean to Mickey about it before Mickey expresses how Rose made him feel betrayed and belittled, which snaps Rose into realising, finally, how badly she’s treated him and how she’s made him feel. Rose was totally oblivious to the way her lifestyle and her choices make Mickey feel, because she’s led by what feels right for her, not necessarily taking account of the needs and feelings of others. The same goes for the way Rose treats her mother Jackie, who worries deeply about her, although Rose is dismissive of the anxiety her lifestyle causes her mother, and rarely checks back in with Jackie to reassure her that she’s alive and safe.

Rose’s character arc in Series 2 was characterised by the under-the-surface romance between Rose and the Tenth Doctor. Rose grew to become deeply in love with the Doctor, and she came to see her future, the rest of her life, to be spent with the Doctor, as illustrated by the dialogue in the opening to Army of Ghosts (“How long are you going to stay with me?” “Forever.”) What I think is happening in MBTI terms here is that Rose’s auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi) and inferior Introverted Intuition (Ni) are working together. Rose has fallen hopelessly, romantically in love with the Doctor, and her Fi has idealised a life and a future with him. Her Fi has created a picture of what she wants her life to look like—a life with the Doctor. Her Ni has gone ahead and told her that the Doctor is her future, but her inferior Ni is weak and unreliable, and it doesn’t raise the warning signs that should tell her that this vision is never going to work out, and that holding to it will end in tears. She becomes upset and angry when the Doctor suggests that she can’t stay with him forever, or that she’s not necessarily special to him, as in School Reunion.

So that’s Rose. She’s not a character without her flaws and weaknesses, and no personality type is without its flaws and weaknesses, but she’s undoubtedly one of the best ESFP characters in television. Rose sort of set the template for modern Doctor Who companions, and as such the default archetype for a companion is an ESFP—Clara and arguably Donna were also ESFPs, and Bill looks like she’s going to fit into that general mould (although, from what we’ve seen, Bill looks like she might be an ENxP). Nevertheless, I like writing about ESFPs because they’re some of my favourite people. I’ve had the privilege of knowing some fabulous ESFPs in my time, and I think they make for great people, friends and characters.

Typing Doctor Who: Clara Oswald (ESFP)

ESFPs:

Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realistic approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people.

(What is this? Read my Typing Doctor Who introduction.)

Clara is an adventurous thrill-seeker who enthusiastically soaks up the novel and fantastic experiences and sensations that travelling in the Tardis affords her. More than just loving the Tardis life, it’s obvious that she’s positively addicted to the life of risk and adventure that she leads with the Doctor. For Clara, the Doctor and the Tardis are a drug. This is clear, for example, when Clara, in Mummy on the Orient Express, throws her doubts and uncertainties, and resentment, about the Twelfth Doctor to the wind — lying to both the Doctor and Danny in the process — because she can’t keep away from the Tardis life. The Doctor even becomes concerned about Clara’s reckless and thrill-seeking attitude, as we see in Under the Lake and The Girl Who Died. To me, this all points emphatically to the dominant Extraverted Sensing (Se) function of the ESFP.

Clara’s relationship with Danny Pink (INFJ?) is also strong evidence of dominant Se. Given their natural desire to explore and seek excitement and novelty, ESFPs can sometimes feel constrained by relationships, and are hesitant about seriously committing to a person. Clara was never as invested in her relationship with Danny as he was, despite being the one who instigated the relationship in the first place. She was constantly trying to balance her relationship with Danny with her much more exciting life of adventure with the Doctor, with the result being that she never fully invested herself in that relationship. Her relationship with Danny was just one more thing in her life, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say that, if she had been made to choose between Danny and the Doctor, she would choose the Doctor (and she kind of did, in Death in Heaven… “He is the closest person to me in this whole world. He is the man I will always forgive, always trust. The one man I would never, ever lie to.”) That said, I think she did really love Danny, but only realised the extent of her feelings for him after he died.

I wavered between ESFP and ESTP for Clara. Both are Se-dominant types, but the difference is in the auxiliary function: ESFPs have auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi), and ESTPs auxiliary Introverted Thinking (Ti). Clara often comes off as a Thinking type: she’s adept at working out solutions to problems that present themselves to her, and she’s particularly good at thinking on her feet. But there are other times she displays a lot of Introverted Feeling. I think this is where there is a lot of confusion about Clara’s type, and I think it’s because she isn’t an “archetypal” version of an ESFP or of any type. I think she’s an ESFP whose lower functions, Extraverted Thinking (Te) and Introverted Intuition (Ni) have undergone a great degree of development due to the influence of the (Twelfth) Doctor, whom I think is an INTJ, a type which uses all the four same cognitive functions as ESFPs, but in reverse order. Naturally, hanging around with a type who constantly uses your lower, weaker functions, and who has exercised as profound an influence over your personality as the Twelfth Doctor has over Clara’s, you’ll tend to experience a lot of development of those lower functions.*

So, in Series 9 we see Clara displaying a confident command of her tertiary Extraverted Thinking (Te), a function which seeks to impose order on the external world and figure out the most efficient, logical way of accomplishing goals and solving practical problems. In The Girl Who Died, she was the only one who thought to use the Vikings’ swords to attempt to jam the door on the Mire’s spaceship, and she deftly (and almost successfully, if it weren’t for some meddling kid) took to persuading the Mire to leave Earth in peace. In Before the Flood, she figured out that Lunn was able to bypass the ghosts to retrieve the phone, so they could talk to the Doctor. The show constantly makes it clear that Clara’s pragmatic, often cold logic is a product of the Doctor’s influence:

LUNN: “She said to ask you whether travelling with the Doctor changed you, or were you always happy to put other people’s lives at risk.”

CLARA: “He taught me to do what has to be done.”

In contrast, Clara’s auxiliary Introverted Feeling manifests itself more naturally and instinctively. Although she’s good with people and has fluent social skills (typical for an ESFP), she’s generally more attuned to her own feelings than those of others, and, especially in her relations with the Doctor, frequently elevates the importance of her own feelings. In her outburst at the Doctor in Kill the Moon, she didn’t even try to engage with the Doctor’s logic or perspective, insisting that her own feelings of abandonment were paramount. In Dark Water, she attempted to blackmail the Doctor into bringing Danny Pink back, contemptuously brushing aside the Doctor’s protestations about the laws of time, which paled in importance, in her view, before her feelings. She did something similar in Before the Flood when the Doctor decided he had to die because he saw his ghost (“Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me. You do not leave me.”) And I don’t see what Clara’s insistence that the Doctor not wipe her memory in Hell Bent, disregarding the Time Lords’ solemn warnings about the fracturing of time, is if not a manifestation of Introverted Feeling. On the other hand, Clara protested against the Doctor activating the Moment in The Day of the Doctor, despite seeing no other alternative, because she felt on a deep, personal level that what the Doctor was doing was wrong, logic and pragmatism be damned.**

In summary, Clara is an ESFP, an adventurous thrill-seeker, driven by exploration, who thrives on excitement and sensory stimulation, albeit, by Series 9, a more balanced, well-rounded one who has successfully developed the weaker sides of her personality through her association with the Twelfth Doctor. I should mention that one of my best friends is a female ESFP, and it was seeing such a striking resemblance between Clara and my friend that first made me see Clara as an ESFP. Both are passionate, excitable, energetic people who live for adventure and experience, and I adore them both.

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* It’s also, I think, because Clara’s personality has been something of an enigma over her time on the show. In Series 7 there wasn’t much to her character beyond the Impossible Girl arc, and what personality she had was a generic constellation of standard Moffat female character tropes. In Series 8 the writers gave her personality more substance, but I felt like they still only had a very general idea of what Clara’s character was supposed to be. Only by Series 9 did Clara feel like a realistic, convincing, fleshed-out character—and it’s on Clara’s character in Series 9 that I’m predominantly basing this personality analysis.

** I hope I haven’t come across as too disparaging of Fi here with my mostly “negative” examples of Clara’s use of Fi. I was just using the most overt examples of Clara’s Fi, and, also, because it’s not a function I have myself, I don’t thoroughly understand it except by description, and so I find I struggle to recognise it except by its more obvious manifestations. I assure Fi-users that I don’t have a negative view of Fi at all—in fact it’s probably one of the functions that most fascinates me.