The gentle-natured, yet explosively powerful, half-Saiyan is a perfect symbol of the INTP Jungian personality type. Here’s why:
INTPs are intelligent, gentle, and reserved.
Gohan is known for his intelligence and nerdy demeanor. He is gentle, fairly shy, and a little awkward. Despite being raised by barbaric warriors, he grows up to become a scholar.
INTPs are known for their cerebral nature and logical inclination. They tend to be described as pure-hearted, gentle, and childlike.
INTPs tend to be nerdy.
Gohan is super nerdy and (endearingly) corny with his whole Saiyaman thing. He has real-life superpowers and still somehow turns it into a cheesy cosplay thing. Pure INTP. Enough said.
INTPs have very intense emotions on the inside. These can result in emotional outbursts, the other side of the INTP’s gentleness.
In DBZ, Gohan is a very emotional child. He is deeply moved by the suffering of others. After witnessing the death of Android #16 at the hands of Cell, Gohan finally snapped and all of the emotions broiling inside of him came flooding out. This resulted in Gohan experiencing a huge power boost which made him strong enough to defeat Cell.
Due to their Inferior Feeling (Fe) function, INTPs tend to have very strong emotions, almost childlike in their unrefined purity and intensity. These emotions are not outwardly expressed most of the time. However, when they do come out, INTPs’ emotions tend to be very raw and intense, whether the emotion is love or anger.
As the saying goes, “beware the fury of a patient man.”
INTPs have vast potential but are often uninterested in putting it to use or reluctant to do so.
Gohan is famous for his incredible hidden potential for combat. However, he doesn’t enjoy fighting and, as a kid, forced himself to do it purely out of necessity. He was so uninterested in fighting that he eventually fell out of practice completely and devoted his attention to studying and becoming a scholar instead. When he has to fight, he’s still pretty strong despite not training consistently or really having any dedication to martial arts.
The INTP personality type is famous for having incredible learning ability coupled with formidable powers of logic and analysis — giving members of this personality type the potential to solve complex problems, understand complex systems, and, honestly, potentially figure out how to do just about anything.
But here’s the catch: the INTP is also infamous for struggling to muster the motivation to actually do any of these things if they don’t find the topic inherently interesting. The way INTPs could be great at so many things but can’t get into them because they just aren’t interested is perfectly analogous with Gohan’s fighting potential, which is underutilized because he just isn’t interested in fighting.
What do you think, anime-watching INTPs (aka all INTPs)? This you?
