Mr. Robot: Elliot Alderson [INTP]

SPOILERS. UNOFFICIAL RETYPING by indigo-intj

Introverted Thinking (Ti): First and foremost, Elliot is an information gatherer. He spends huge amounts of time on his computer only information gathering. He just likes… knowing stuff, basically. He researches everything he hears about, and he hacks everyone he meets or even hears about from others around him, no matter how brief their contact. Every once in a while, he does something with this knowledge, but the great majority of the time is spent just taking it in. He has to learn every tiny detail about everyone, whether it has a practical purpose or not. He’s a talented hacker, and is extremely gifted in working with computers. He works well with impersonal systems, and he can always determine all of the flaws in the system. Show him a hack or a plan, and he’ll sit quietly for a moment before pointing out exactly what to do. He’s a master at working out people’s passwords, able to figure them out quickly and logically. His logical abilities are a point of pride for him, to the point of sometimes feeling smarter than everyone else, underestimating others, or getting overly frustrated when his efforts aren’t working. Facts and logic are important to him; in episode 1, when he’s worried he may be schizophrenic, he grounds himself using “facts”.

Everyone around Elliot constantly talks about how he asks too many questions (it starts in episode 1 and it still happens in episode 9). In episode 1, he reveals to Ron that he hacked his connection because it was so fast it “scratched that part of his brain that doesn’t allow good things without conditions”, because the connection working well for him just wasn’t enough. Even as a young child (Episode 9), when his dad reveals he’s not in trouble for stealing, he has to ask why, even though pushing could hurt him in the end. He also has no interest in traditional staples of success, such as a good job or money. When Tyrell offers him a lucrative job deal in episode 2, he turns it down. In episode 1, when shown a hack by his boss, he initially reacts with, “This is awesome,” despite it being bad for business, because he’s impressed by the cleverness of it.

Elliot defines people by what information they provide. When Shayla says “You don’t know me,” he automatically jumps into internally retorting, “Yes I do. I hacked you.” It surprises him when she pulls out things that he knows nothing about. (Episode 3) In episode 8, he has a huge identity crisis when he can’t locate any digitized information about himself, feeling like it might as well mean he doesn’t even exist. On top of this, the way he words speaking about people in general is very machine-like. In episode 1, we get numerous examples of this: “I deleted him,” and, “Intensive self-reprogramming.” He also has a tendency to compare basically everything to hacking, coding, or computers in some way, shape, or form, which can be seen during his internal monologues in practically every episode. (“Daemons” in episode 4 is one example.)

Lastly, Elliot lives in his own head. He’s constantly thinking, thinking, and numerous people talk about how it’s obvious he’s thinking instead of listening to them. We even get to hear some of his thoughts through the internal monologues. He’s always questioning the world around him and working out things using his own sort of logic. In episode 1, he talks about how he’s found the “key to doing morphine”, by working out the “perfect” amount to take while taking it with Suboxone. In episode 9, he reveals that as a child he had internally calculated how safe each train in his area was, and that on his way into the city with his father he would take the safest, only to take the most dangerous on the way back.

Extroverted Intuition (Ne): For all intents and purposes, Elliot creates a whole “imaginary person” (the viewer) just to talk about his ideas with. During the monologues he frequently focuses on heavily symbolic language and over-arching ideas about society as a whole. He doesn’t strive for more or seem particularly future-focused unless he’s being pushed by others. Before the series starts, he’s content with doing what little he is doing. When it comes to ideas, Elliot seems to be influenced by external ones and to go through stages. When he meets someone who’s obsessed with time (episode 8), he temporarily becomes obsessed with time. Not only does he temporarily get obsessed with time, but his temporary obsession branches off into other symbolic realizations that aren’t really related (“We’re all living in each other’s paranoia.”). In episode 3, he goes through a “normal” stage where he gets super excited about doing things like drinking vanilla lattes and getting a girlfriend. While he does have one ending goal for the season, he goes through various stages of “should I or should I not” where he branches out and tries other stuff for a while. He also seems to see possibilities where others see inevitabilities. During episodes 6 and 2, he fights with Mr. Robot over whether there’s only one solution because he believes there are always options available. In episode 8, he talks about how he wishes he could just come to one easy solution instead of having a “cluttered mind”.

Elliot can read people well, but only with incredible accuracy after gathering information (Ti) and then making external connections (Ne). Otherwise, he can only make generalizations or just gets frustrated (such as when he can’t hack Michael Hansen in episode 1). He sometimes questions his assumptions. When he decides it’s dangerous to hack Tyrell, he questions what Tyrell wants and what he’s going to do. In episode 5, after running into Tyrell again, he asks a ton of internal questions before deciding that, “Shit, he’s gonna kill me.”, his Ne jumping to the worst possible conclusion without all the information. When there’s no Mr. Robot to hack, he finds him unpredictable and constantly asks him (Ti) about his motivations. In episode 1, when he’s reading people like Colby, he references knowing these things due to making connections between the fact that he uses a Blackberry and other external clues given by Colby’s appearance and behavior. His Ti fact gathers, his Si compares to others’ he’s known like this or methods of understanding that have proved reliable in the past, and his Ne makes the final connections. In episode 1, when his psychiatrist is upset over losing her boyfriend, he cites knowing due to clues such as her eyes on top of the fact that he was the one who asked the boyfriend to tell her.



Introverted Sensing (Si): Elliot does not view his past objectively. During the scene where he speaks to Mr. Robot about his father (Episode 2), he gives a version of the events that’s very focused on his interpretation and feelings on the what happened. When asked if he ever considered other perspectives, he’s taken aback. Even when we learn he has considered other perspectives, they are regretful, biased, and charged with emotion. He also tends to relive past experiences, rather than just remember them. He has “flashbacks” about his mother just about any time the subject comes up. And, while he’s not openly sentimental about the past, he has his few things that comfort him in their sameness. His favorite movie has been Back to the Future ever since he was a very young child. He finds comfort in his childhood friend. Apparently, before the events of the TV show threw his life into utter chaos, he would go to the same spot over and over again when seriously stressed. When he’s not going there, he’s going to other spots that relate to his past. According to Shayla, he keeps routines and it disturbs her when he begins trying to break them (Episode 2). (Part of this is related to his consumption of drugs, however, which is also related to his Ti, which has worked out the “perfect” way of taking them “without becoming an addict”.) A very obvious tie to this is his hoodie, which he wears constantly. Even when told to take it off just about every day at work, he still wears it. He’s not very worried about his appearance, nor does he engage in many physical gestures. All of his self-destructive behavior can be linked back to either his mental illness or his inferior Fe. He lashes out physically only during emotionally explosive episodes and only takes drugs to “numb the pain”.



Extroverted Feeling (Fe): All of Elliot’s weaknesses are either emotional or social. As is mentioned above, Elliot takes drugs only because he wants to dull his emotional pain. He doesn’t know how to talk to people, despite often expressing his desires to reach out to them. He deeply desires to be liked. He’s emotionally explosive, crying “every two weeks” (Episode 1) and often yelling at others when he is upset. It makes him uncomfortable to make huge external displays of emotions, but he has trouble controlling them. He is very unhappy not being able to reach out to others due to his social anxiety, sometimes making clumsy attempts to tell strangers, such as Ron from episode 1, about his emotions. He often tries to make others comfortable by not sharing thoughts he knows would upset them, though he does not always know how. On the other hand, this same tendency sometimes causes him to stifle his feelings (often hatred, such as for others, society, and his job) and his desire to do good, because he doesn’t want to tell others about negative thoughts he has. He also explicitly mentions seeing emotions as “weaknesses” and tries to figure them out to exploit or manipulate others around him. In episode 1, when he mentions that he’s “good at reading people” he follows it up with, “I look for the worst in them.”

Aside from the inferior aspect of the Fe, Elliot also has some perks of it. People, like his boss in episode 1, mention how Elliot is someone who they “feel like they can talk to” or who just puts them at ease. It’s another reason Elliot can read people well, even though he often uses it negatively. It also plays a role in his motivations. In episode 1, Elliot justifies his behaviors by saying he’s “protecting the innocence” of others around him. From then on, this shows up over and over again. He takes the dog from Michael Hansen because he can’t stand seeing it mistreated. He’s partially swayed to fsociety because of Angela’s debt. At the end of the day, when asked what his motivation is in working through fsociety (Episode 9), he replies, “To save the world.”

Note (SPOILERS): Elliot is severely mentally ill, and this needs to be taken into account when finding his cognitive functions. It seems to me that Elliot’s true or natural personality is what we see him actually doing as himself. The Mr. Robot persona is a function of his mental illness and is viewed basically as a completely separate personality. Because of this, I am not using Mr. Robot-specific behavior in this typing. After all, functions are only important insofar as they work internally, not through behaviors or the “reality” of what’s occurring outside Elliot’s head.

