First overview
While not as common as extraverted sensors and feelers, extraverted intuitives are not rare at all. It is a little difficult to describe Ne because it appears rather ordinary at the surface. The most obvious thing about it is an undirected curiosity, an open-mindedness spontaneously involved in conversations and the next thing to come, unselectively but with a strong sense of engagement not restrained by the subject.
A paradoxical function
Giving an explanation of Ne is kind of tricky. N is inner vision no matter if introverted or extraverted. How can inner vision be into the external world (the object)?
As extraverted, Ne is more involved in the external world (the object), the subject being secondary. Like Ni, Ne is focussed on what is intangible and conceptual, a set of inner representations coming from the unconscious. What Ne sees is not really the external world; it can only be an internal perception. But it is not so visible as such, not as much as for Ni.
If Ne was to be thought as an expectation to discover something, it feeds effortlessly on the information available in the environment of anything possible, but also leads to go towards the object spontaneously to alter it and be influenced by it. Like the introverted intuitive, the extraverted intuitive lives to see the potentiality realized and uncovered, and soon loses interest when things are before his eyes, the mind jumping to a new potentiality. Unlike Ni, it happens without shielding from the world. The understanding of reality is in a constant flux of adaptation to the object, so that the potentiality itself evolves when in touch with the world.
True extraverts
Extraverted intuitives are very accessible persons (compared to Ni,Fi,Ti and even Si). Their easy presence and connection to the world make them quite straightforward to relate to, sharing whatever idea is in the air. As Jung noticed, this abstraction appears little different from tangible facts. As a first impression, most extraverted intuitives appear to be quite in tune with outer reality, open and fluid in response to external situations, embracing the diversity of mindsets with unforced agility. They are often at ease navigating the world without the uneasy peculiarity of introverts. The “wall” that protects introverts from the object is not there.
Sure, they are not as realistic and grounded in concrete realities as extraverted sensors, the inner landscape being somewhat an abstraction of reality, but it is not noticeable directly as “strange” or very personal. Their vision of the world is witty like introverted intuitives, but has a more basic vibe of common knowledge, seeing through surface reality in a way that feels essentially expectable and relatable. Ne is not a special personal vision like Ni, more like a mix of common ideas, each a bit limited in scope, selecting the most promising of them.
Floating above reality
The French expression people use spontaneously about Ne-doms I know is “il plane” (literally “he is gliding/flying”), which could be translated roughly by “: “he’s floating above reality”. It reminds of type 7 but it has nothing to do with it. Common English expressions I could find do not reflect appropriately Ne and apply instead to introverts: “zoned out”, ”a bit out of touch”, “his head’s in the clouds”, “living in a bubble”, “lost in fantasyland”…
It’s not this vibe you get from Ne-dom, just someone whose mind is floating in potentiality and goes a little far from the present case, links to generality quickly, unfocussed and somehow unproductive for the immediate concrete situation, but not strange, dreamy, remote or peculiar. Not even very personal. However, while they easily connect through conversations, more than Ni-doms, Ne-doms are absent minded, unaware of the concrete world around them perceived by the senses directly and do not notice it very much.
Imagine having a walk with an extraverted intuitive. He barely knows where he is walking towards and he does not care. There’s just a vague potentiality out there at the end of the road, not even worth focussing on, many interesting things can come along.
Yet, the conversation is quite accessible and makes sense easily; the picture of reality (not what is around but what is beyond concrete perception at the present moment) feels rather unsurprising. An Ne-dom seems to notice the hidden generalities you could also notice or anyone else could notice. It is not so personal (subjective). Moreover, it gives a sense of easy presence in the world.
An Ne-dom is naturally gifted to take your own views in his mind and create connections effortlessly. He can rephrase your own point of view in a way that feels better than yours, or at least more general, more applicable and more relatable by the average man. Ne takes the peculiarity of others, what is new or what stands out, and reconnects it to a broader abstract landscape that, unlike the introverted intuitive, is not meant to become a special personal map (a grand personal vision) but links humbly and openly to the world out there.
Description
The first part of this text describes N. Let’s just invert what is specific to Ni to highlight Ne.
Broadness and divergence
Ne digs into the unknown just like Ni, but instead of narrowing to one path, it explodes into multiple coexisting paths. It preserves multiple possibilities at once:
- To allow any of them to pop up and interact with the world when possible, without dismissing the other possibilities
- To acknowledge the sense of uncertainty of what is intangible, multiple pictures are safer than one
- To allow the unconscious to treat information without the interference of the subject
Ne is like a stable storage of multiple possibilities. Each of them needs to be partly forgotten (sink deeper than consciousness) but they remain accessible and could be continued at any time when an external requirement shows up.
Similarity any production of an abstract meaning (by a symbol or a metaphor) splits into several possibilities: it could be this, it could be that, or that, or also this.. The function is not bent by an impetus to choose, the subject experiences no entitlement (or even ability) to express a non-rational personal preference. A preference can only come from outside, which by no means dismisses the other possibilities that could be preferred in another situation.
However, all high Ne-users use an introverted rational function. This function chooses and since introverted, it is not externally very visible how. The whole difficulty to tell Ne from Ni is to see Ne in combination of a rational function (esp. T) as opposed to the convergence of Ni.
Note: an attention disorder can produce something similar but it’s not the same. An attention disorder interrupts thoughts when they require concentration. Thoughts dissolve and vanish without completion. Ni combined with an attention disorder converges shortly, dissolves repeatedly and looks superficially like Ne. For Ni, even an attention disorder does not prevent a long term intimate convergence of the vision. Of course, Ne-users can have an attention disorder like anyone else, it is unrelated. Beware of a simplistic catch of Ne as a “monkey mind”.
Common abstraction
Like Fe adjusts to external contemporary values in order to play an impacting role, Ne tends to rally to normative abstraction. Ne rarely ventures very far from a conceptual vision that binds us to the surrounding culture and involves the stream of information we perceive from our daily interactions with the world through people, work, school, higher education, media…
Just like Fe is (normally) not a passive form of compliant conformity, Ne is never an inactive mirror of mainstream ideas. It creates dynamic associations and these associations trigger an insight of what was not previously in the surrounding culture, at least not at the surface.
What differs from Ni is that little role is played by the subject, in the sense that no existential personal requirement (like identification to something, a very personal creation, a selective choice of a vision to serve one chosen path) tends to shield the mind from its permeability to shared ideas.
Thus, you will find that Ne-users have the same understanding of words as people with a similar education and environment, including for any advanced concepts they can grasp. While ideas floating around are often dead ends, Ne is not rebuffed by it. It is at ease getting into many usual ordinary perceptions as an exploration. In a way, Ne needs to first take the temperature of the abstract surrounding, to get infused by it, connect to what’s already in the air, unconsciously trusting its insight will bring something new and meaningful at some point. It does not need to create a wall too early between the subject and the word to explore.
For an Ne-user, a shield, like a radical disagreement, can only be produced by the rational function. Typically, in INTP: “all possibilities considered, only this one happens to be correct. My mind will not change any time soon”.
Resources
A possible starting point:
- Personality Junkie: Extraverted Intuition (Ne): An Inside Look
Better:
- Van Der Hoop: Extraverted intuition
- Alexis Kingsley: What is Extraverted Intuition
- Juan E Sandoval: Ne: Behavior & Mythology
Enneagram Elements 