To mold his adult personality, the [IFU] depends heavily upon the guidance and direction of external events. Initially, he resists authority and direction. However, if contact is made and the initial resistance mitigated, the [IFU] is potentially very creative and very productive. He is not imitative, nor does he assimilate and apply instructions in rote fashion.

Since social-interpersonal involvement is no problem for him, he expends little effort finding time for individual or personalized activity. Initially, he is in danger of becoming so autistic and nonresponsive that he risks never making contact with reality. The [IFU] is so obviously non-responsive that rarely does he escape pressure to develop responsiveness. Unlike the [IFA], it is very difficult for the [IFU] to cover his schizoid activity by superficial role playing ability, so the pressure tends to be unrelenting and consistent. The [IFU] rarely can make a superficial social-reality adjustment; he must constantly prove that he is perceptive, alert and responsive. Once the contact is established, the curiosity inherent in the [IF] adjustment will take over and the [IFU] will actually relate to reality eagerly and will find considerable psychological satisfaction in his versatility. Since a great deal of his energy is not dissipated in superficial social relationships and since he is fairly untroubled by absence of reciprocal emotional involvements, there is often an excellent chance that the [IFU] individual will develop extremely versatile and highly competent interests that have real social relevance. Depending upon his background and experience, these may be either mental-intellectual activities or manual-manipulative ones. In either case, the [IFU] is likely to excel because he has to prove his competence before he is let alone.

The [IRU] usually has to be taken step by step because he learns by imitation and rote, but the [IFU], once he gets started, is capable of considerable imagination and self-sustained inspiration. In other words, he is capable of learning by implication, principle and insight. In fact, one of the primary problems of the [IFU] is that he may become so involved in the implications and subtleties of his interests that he gets lost in his subject at the expense of other interests. This is not the same as the perseveration of the [IRU], but in many ways the effects are similar. It is often necessary to force the [IFU] to abandon one activity for another before he has a real sense of closure. As an adult, he is prone to become the highly specialized individual who finds great psychological satisfaction in exploring the nuances of his subject.

The maturation rate of the [IFU] is erratic. On the one hand, if his intellectual curiosity is stimulated, his intellectual maturation may be very rapid. On the other hand, social maturity for the [IFU] is probably the slowest of any group. The combination of the preoccupations of the [IFU], plus his own lack of need of social-interpersonal interaction, plus his relative lack of impressionistic attractiveness, results in only slight acquisition of social-interpersonal skills. To a certain extent, the inherent creativeness and imaginativeness of the productive [IFU] leaves his contemporaries and authority figures in awe of his intellectuality or performance, and they therefore tend to overlook his social-interpersonal immaturity. Many odd and unusual individuals come from this pattern, because the [IFU] generally is indifferent and insensitive to involvement with others. This is the pattern of the "absent-minded professor," and "the long-haired intellectual." He is unconventional, not because he is defensive, self-protective or negativistic, but because he is insulated against the need to be any different. However, it should also be emphasized that since the [IFU] is so indifferent to social convention, he sometimes encounters extreme pressure for modification. Consequently, some [IFU] s become extremely fastidious and exact in their social behavior. Some of the most vivid social stereotypes will also come from this group.

The [IFU] begins life as behaviorally a very passive but mentally a very active individual. He engages in considerable spontaneous ideational activity. His ultimate adjustment is a function of the extent this spontaneity is channeled and controlled. Although he has little real need to communicate in the [E] sense, he does have considerable need to symbolize or organize the chaos of his initial mental activity. Also, he has fundamental succor dependency needs that, initially at least, must be recognized and responded to. The "doll baby" quality of the [IFA] is not present in the [IFU]; thus, to a high degree, the care and treatment of the [IFU] comes from a sense of responsibility and duty, rather than from love and affection. He never receives the generalized pampering of the [IFA], but will frequently come in for a specific type of pampering.

The task-oriented individual will find the [IFU] very responsive to direction. The same is true of the [IRU], except that the spontaneity and creativity of the [IFU] not only embellish and color what he learns, but will also attract the attention and devotion of those who are interested in creative activity. The [IRU] tends to reflect faithfully the milieu from which he emerges; the [IFU] is less willing to mirror his experience and thus will show more mobility and more individual preference. For example, in learning languages, the [IFU] does not have a compelling need to communicate, but he does have a need to symbolize. If he grows up in an environment rich with vocabulary, he will acquire a rich vocabulary. If he grows up in a culture barren in language, he will not only learn the language required, but will also invent a language of his own to embody the nuances he feels a need to symbolize. As a very small child, there may be some delay in learning accepted language forms because his own inventiveness may satisfy his symbolizing need. If his mother can understand his private language and gives him the succor dependence he needs, he may be unusually slow in learning standard language forms. Later in life, the highly intelligent [IFU] may have considerable language or symbolic facility; this pattern produces such specialists as cryptographers and linguists. The symbolic language of mathematics and science are also of particular interest to this group. In more primitive societies, the "strange tongues" of religious ecstatics and mystics may come from [IFU]'s of lower intelligence.

One of the most dramatic examples of the difficulties in establishing communications with an [IFU] and an equally dramatic example of the potential for communicating, once effective contact is made, is to be found in the life of Helen Keller.