Intuition and Seeing Patterns

On the Myers-Briggs personality test I am listed as an INTJ – introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. I have never varied every time I take the test.

One of the things that I do, and all INTJS do, is perceive patterns. I don’t even try. It’s as if I see them unconsciously, and then the answer pops into the head – that’s the intuitive part.

It’s not always such a pleasant thing.

I used to be the editor of a small weekly newspaper. At that time I didn’t know anything about the Myers-Briggs, which is based on Carl Jung’s work.

One day a young woman disappeared. Witnesses had seen her withdrawing money from her bank account after dark. That’s the last anyone saw of her.

I looked at the map on my left side, on the wall. I looked at the spot where she was last seen, and where her home was. The connecting line was a two-lane country highway.

Bam, just like that, I knew she was dead. I even knew where she was – on the right side of the highway, leading toward her house.

I mentioned this to the assistant editor, and told him if we drove along that highway we’d find her. I also told him it’d be a bad idea, because the police would have suspected us. So we didn’t go.

A few days later she was found exactly where I predicted.

It turned out a serial killer had murdered her. Bizarrely, he had graduated from the same university I graduated from, but had graduated about four years before I moved there. He had also killed perhaps four women before the one tossed on the side of the highway.

He was caught after he killed a reporter who worked for the daily newspaper which owned the weekly of which I was editor.

At that time I didn’t know enough about serial killers to know what was going on. I do now. Had I known at that time what I know now, I would have caught him before he murdered the reporter – and also a pregnant woman.

Sometimes the intuition is more pleasant. There have been times I’ve walked into people’s homes and could immediately feel the warmth and feeling of home in the place. How could I do that? I have no idea.