Lessons from Marvel's Kingpin: What Happens When INFJs Go Bad?
It’s not uncommon for INFJs to struggle with intense feelings or stay a little too long inside themselves. Those feelings can sometimes lean towards the darker side—think door slamming, existential crises and obsessive fixations (a tiny idea becomes something huge).
But what’s going on when an INFJ’s struggle becomes too dark? Can we say for certain what has happened to them? Maybe not, but we can take a good guess by examining their cognitive function stack and taking a disturbing stroll with one of my favorite INFJ supervillains—Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So get ready, because this is serious.
The Inner World of an INFJ
To understand Fisk, let’s look at the INFJ’s rich inner world. Filled with insights, dreams and plans, it’s facilitated by Introverted Intuition (Ni), the dominant function of every INFJ.
INFJs are known for diving deep inside themselves to focus on a single big-picture vision with a dedication that empowers them to bring it to fruition. When they take in information through their senses, they automatically transform it into their own grand vision. Think of someone picking flowers in a field. Many would enjoy each unique flower for its own beauty in the present moment, but an INFJ would rush home and arrange a bouquet. The bouquet is the goal, and fulfillment comes when all the flowers are pieced together and made into one big, beautiful gift—and then given to the world.
As for Fisk … well, what he brings together to give the world is not exactly a bouquet of flowers. Yet, he does have that singular vision, a big-picture goal to make New York City a better place, and he believes that his vision will benefit everyone. He says to Daredevil, "I want to save this city, like you, only on a scale that matters." His grand INFJ vision is “to make this city something better than it is.”
And I might believe him, except for all the dead bodies. Or the guy that had a fling with Fisk’s wife and is now caged in the basement. Or how he brought the Police Commissioner to a room lined in plastic, Dexter style, but I’ll spare you the details since I don’t know the constitution of your stomach. There are countless examples of how Fisk went bonkers and lost the empathy that existed in him as a child (we see it with how tender he was toward his mother).
On that note…
When Fe Goes Wrong
The auxiliary (second favorite) function for INFJs is Extraverted Feeling (Fe). Fe balances their dominant function, Ni, by bringing the INFJ out of their intense inner world long enough to focus on other people. At the heart of Fe is empathy. This gives INFJs the superpower to nurture others in a way that the world needs. If grounded in high self-esteem, empathy is the crown jewel of the INFJ and the force that keeps this introverted type interdependently connected to humanity.
But when Fe is damaged and loses the stabilizing effect it has on Ni, the INFJ’s well of imagination loses its light. It grows darker the longer we are there. The problem is that an INFJ can stay there pretty much all the time, and may even start neglecting their own physical needs when their Fe is damaged. Without Fe to bring us into social connections, we can let the laundry pile up for months while the fridge grows science experiments. Our physical world could crash down around us and we may not even blink. This is a very bad thing.
Now, I’m no shrink, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that something goes wrong with the cognitive function Fe in Wilson Fisk. His made-up story is textbook Fe damage. As a child, his capacity for empathy was destroyed by the brutality of his father, and so the ability to connect with other people’s feelings is out of reach. You can tell that when he chops someone up. Tearing someone’s jaw off with an empty gaze is a good sign that he’s been down in that dark hole a bit too long and has no Fe to save him.
The Soul Mate Connection
One really interesting thing about Fisk is that he’s capable of insight amid his wickedness. “Rage cannot stay inside, it needs to go somewhere, or it becomes a poison, and it will kill you from within, he says.” Wow! You didn’t find that level of insight in Ted Bundy. Fisk is extremely self-aware.
Unlike most murderous villains, he also seems to understand the life-saving graces of human connection: “I spent much of my life alone. For many years, I pretended that this was the source of my strength. I told myself I had free will, and in that time I achieved a great deal. But I was not fulfilled. I was longing for a connection that I could imagine but I could not achieve. Searching and not finding. Until Vanessa.”
Vanessa is Fisk’s woman. He would do anything for her, even sacrifice his own life. So, if we are honest, my Marvel Universe-loving friends, the Kingpin of New York is not completely devoid of empathy because he has an unselfish love for the woman who completes him. “But love... love is the perfect prison, inescapable. So you see, agent Nadeem, I am always in prison wherever I go. And if these things [his handcuffs] help me protect Vanessa, then they're nothing to me.”
Now that’s some INFJ, Wuthering Heights kind of love-sick drama, because Fisk knows that the one chance he has at being human lies in his connection with another person.
But alas, there's no happily ever after here. Even with Vanessa at his side, the pull of Fisk’s warped vision is too strong, and he keeps sinking deeper into that black abyss that is his own mind. Early on, he endured the brutal abuse of his father and ultimately killed him. I guess it was the Fisk version of the INFJ door slam. He doesn’t shut you out, he shuts you up.
Fisk’s Special Demons
And here’s the clincher. There’s something sadder, darker and even more bone chilling than a broken Fe in the INFJ whose path takes the ultimate evil turn. That’s not possible, you say. What could be worse than being stuck in Ni, down in the blackness of your own mind without the social connections that make you human?
The answer is perseveration, the “stuck in a loop” persistent repetition of a behavior, thought or feeling beyond its relevance or appropriateness. We call it the demon function of the INFJ.
As for Fisk, it looks like he not only skipped over his Fe function, but oops, he bypassed all the others to boot and landed on that last function in eighth place in our function stack, Introverted Sensing (Si), our very least preferred. Therein lies those special demons and they are oh-so evil. They have superpowers of their own and render us numb with a robotic focus on the specific details of the very thing that broke us.
Think of it this way ... it’s like an old, black and white movie that keeps playing over and over again, rehashing old footage, old nightmares, old pain, with no color, no light at the end of the tunnel, and no “The End.” It’s the darkest of pits and there is no light there. Unless you count the flicker that comes from hell fire.
So what does Si look like for Wilson Fisk? It’s in his sinister silence as he gets lost in the painting “Rabbit in a Snowstorm.” Except you can’t see the rabbit. Or the snowstorm. It’s just a white canvas with some obscure impressions on it that are barely perceptible. Yet it draws Fisk in and keeps him mesmerized and helpless from the moment he first sees it. He says, “It makes me feel alone.”
Then you realize it looks like the wall from his childhood bedroom. He used to stare at it while listening to his father abusing his mother and he felt powerless to help her. Yikes. That's the clever Si demon in all its glory. Because for the INFJ, it's never about the art itself, but the place that it takes you.
Of course, Fisk didn’t stay powerless. Nope. He ended up making a bloody mess by whacking dad in the head with a hammer, and the Kingpin was born.
The Not So Good Samaritan
Ultimately, and with another display of self-awareness, Fisk tells the story of The Good Samaritan and admits that he used to think he was the good guy: “I always thought I was the Samaritan in that story. It’s funny, isn’t it? How even the best of men can be deceived by their true nature.”
For me, Fisk has enough insight and regard for love to make his variety of evil more intriguing. And yes, I know he is just a comic-book villain, but doesn’t a little bit of darkness live in every INFJ? And isn’t it a bit like going to the edge of a cliff and looking down into a vast, black canyon with a curiosity about what could be living there, and what could be learned by getting closer?
Any way you look at it, Fisk’s INFJ bouquet looks more like a pile of limbs on a battlefield as he gathers his own anger, self-hatred, hopelessness and fear and offers it to New York City, in the form of malevolence. But the self-revelation is so very INFJ: “I'm not the Samaritan... I'm not the priest, or the Levite... I am the ill intent."
