Introverted Thinkers are self-starters who love to take ideas and turn them into something new. They see ideas everywhere, and are endlessly curious. Always learning, often self-taught, they're constantly looking for new ways to understand something, or new ways to implement an idea. IT's are independent thinkers, geared to think outside the box.
Introverted Thinkers don't naturally understand social norms (that's the realm of Extraverted Thinkers and Feelers) and don't feel any need to adhere to them. In some cases this can be extreme, if the IT has gone so far into their own heads as to become antisocial. The majority of ITs will rest somewhere along the scale of libertarian, egalitarian, independent thinking.
Introverted Thinkers are more capable than any other type of creating a new theory or a new application from an idea. They can be extremely valuable to organizations, or society at large, through their creations, but they're very likely to work for themselves, and therefore may have a problem getting their work widely known. If they do work for an organization, they will need to be given a lot of freedom and personal space to be content.
Introverted Thinkers are influenced predominantly by ideas, and not by people or feelings. They tend to hold others at bay, except for a small handful of family and friends, who will mean the world to the IT. Those who know the Introverted Thinker well will value their intimacy very highly, while others might find them prickly, antisocial and domineering. The IT is not interested in people in general—only those in their innermost circle.
All ITs are to some degree at odds with their own feelings, and often distrustful of them. They might ignore their own negative reaction to a situation or conversation, because they don't understand it. Sometimes this can turn into a kind of childish naivety, where the person who is upset with the IT becomes increasingly angry and abusive, while the IT just ignores it, and indeed many an Introverted Thinker has gotten involved in a bad relationship and been taken advantage of. But as with any type, Introverted Thinkers crave the intimacy of partnership, and they seek to form long-term relationships. It's important for the IT to choose a partner with a comparable level of intelligence to their own, who understands the IT's lack of a nuanced understanding of feelings, as any successful relationship for the IT will start from the head.
Jung's Introverted Thinking type was divided into two MBTI types by Isabel Briggs Myers:
INTP - the Thinker, and ISTP - the Mechanic.
Check out the other Jungian types
