Ayn Rand (LIE): Personality Type Analysis

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) was a Russian-American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, newspaper columnist, and philosopher, best known for her two bestselling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), and for the philosophical system she developed, called Objectivism. The Fountainhead gave her widespread "mainstream" success and even acclaim, but Atlas Shrugged and her non-fiction writings on Objectivism made her a polarising political and cultural figure, even after her death at 77 in 1982. To some extent that remains true to this day - at least in the United States, where she remains a household name. Her cultural impact in other countries seems to be negligible; on the other hand her two main novels remain in print in the UK and can be found even in smaller bookshops.

Life and work: Born in St Petersburg in 1905 in a Jewish family of upper-middle-class means - her father owned a small business - Rand's worldview was, by her own account, shaped by her experiences in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent communist, Bolshevik rule. Not only was her family's property confiscated, but she also faced on-off discrimination, both as a Jew and as of "bourgeois" origin, when trying to enroll at the State University. She also experienced the arbitrary and often chaotic Bolshevik government on a daily basis, as she described in her first, semi-autobiographical novel, We the Living. So in 1925, at 20, when she was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, she immediately took the opportunity. It is worth noting that at this point she had no real knowledge of English. After spending a few months with her relatives in Chicago, improving her English, she moved to Hollywood, following her dream of working in the film industry. Surviving with odd jobs, she eventually got her foot in the studio system, first as an extra, then as junior screenwriter, and later as head of the costume department of RKO Studios. During this period, she met and married a struggling actor, Frank O'Connor, who remained her husband until his death in 1979.

In 1934, Rand had her first break with a play, a courtroom drama, Night of January 16th, which opened in Los Angeles and then had a 7-month run on Broadway. Soon afterwards she published her first novel, We the Living. Partly autobiographical, the plot focused on the struggles of a young woman in Bolshevik Russia. It was not a success in the US but some of its European editions were more successful. Rand finally had a big commercial hit with The Fountainhead in 1943. After working for a few more years in Hollywood as a screenwriter, also on the 1949 film version of The Fountainhead, Rand and her husband Frank relocated to New York, where she devoted herself full-time to write her longest and most ambitious novel, Atlas Shrugged, which she published in 1957. Despite its huge commercial success, its critical reception was mostly negative.

One of Rand's purposes with Atlas Shrugged had been to reach out to people who would understand her ideas and heed her warnings as to where US society seemed to be heading. Deeply depressed by what she saw as the failure of the book in achieving that, she supported the initiatives of her close friend, "apprentice" and on-off lover, Nathaniel Branden (EIE), to whom she had originally dedicated Atlas Shrugged. Branden's concept was that they ought to focus on the spread of her ideas through more direct means than novels. Branden concluded that it was necessary to present Rand's ideas in the form of a fully consistent philosophical system - which they called Objectivism - and to present it to the public in the form of lectures and non-fiction articles and books. Although Rand endorsed Branden's efforts, that remained his own project rather than hers. He founded a company called NBI (Nathaniel Branden Institute) and was its main lecturer. Rand preferred to involve herself less directly, contributing articles and appearing at NBI's Q&A sessions on occasion. Branden, supported by his wife Barbara Branden (ESI), managed to turn Objectivism lectures into a business with a large number of  devoted "followers". That gave the Objectivist movement a reputation of being a "cult" around Rand that persists to this day. Ayn Rand's own personality, which became increasingly impatient with intellectual "inferiors" as she aged, contributed to that reputation. However, by all accounts, she herself had no interest in being any kind of cult leader.

That is confirmed by what happened after 1968, when Branden and Rand's messy personal relationship ended with her abruptly severing all ties with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. That included the dismantling of NBI (and the"revoking" of her dedication to him of Atlas Shrugged). Without the Brandens, Rand herself had next to no interest in keeping the Objectivist "movement" going. Withdrawing into solitude (especially after her husband Frank died in 1979), she still occasionally wrote articles and made personal appearances, and attempted to get a film or TV version of Atlas Shrugged done. Those efforts failed due to her insistence on having the final word on the script, which prospective producers were not willing to grant. She was halfway into writing her own script for a proposed mini-series version when she died in 1982 in her Manhattan apartment.

Socionics analysis:  the sources on Ayn Rand are vast: not only are her own writings and interviews extensive, but she also has been described in books of memoirs by both Brandens, and more recently in two more scholarly biographies. A collection of many interviews with individuals who had known her, at several stages in her life, has also been published and these provide insight on her consistent traits as a person.

Taking a look at her functional preferences, in perhaps counter-intuitive order:

L: Ayn Rand's development and promotion of what she saw as a fully consistent philosophy, or ideology, Objectivism, would seem at face value to point to L not only as a strong function but as a valued one, and so Rand's type would seem to be most obviously a L1 or L2.

The problem with that is that Ayn Rand herself had shown no interest at all in putting her ideas together as a consistent ideology - let alone giving it a name and presenting it as such - before she was 53. By all accounts, that was the initiative of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. Rand herself was little interested in the concept at first. Nathaniel Branden, aiming at presenting Rand's ideas to the world more persuasively than via novels, concluded that that could only be effective if presented as a consistent ideology. So, with Rand as the source of ideas and information, Branden put it all together in a way that seemed L consistent. That was done with Rand's approval, and she later embraced the name "Objectivism" and also called it a "consistent philosophy". But, she never showed any inclination to lecture on it as such, preferring to attend Q&A sessions where she would respond to questions on pretty much any subject. Revealingly, she took every question as such, in isolation, hardly ever responding with specific references to Objectivism and its stated principles, unless specifically asked about them. Finally, the concepts of Objectivism were later systematised by Ayn Rand's last remaining close associate, Leonard Peikoff, rather than by Rand herself, albeit with  her guidance and approval.

That suggests that L was something with which she was very much at ease but did not really value. Revealingly, those who sparred with her intellectually - such as Alan Greenspan -  found that she was more inclined to find flaws in their logical reasoning than push for her own. This also points to L as a strong but subdued function, likely L7 or L8.

R:  Throughout her life, Ayn Rand described herself primarily as a novelist of Romantic inclinations. Her often-stated goal with her novels was to "describe the ideal man (i.e. human being), man as he should and could be". She wrote novels centred around heroic individuals: Kira in We the Living; Howard Roark in The Fountainhead; John Galt, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged. Conversely, the antagonists in her books are what she saw as deeply flawed human beings, like Peter Keating in The Fountainhead and James Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. She consistently used her fictional characters as reference points to judge the worth of herself and others. When depressed, she would lament not being as perfect as John Galt, and she would admit that one of her less perfect characters, Dominique Francon of  The Fountainhead, was based on herself "in a bad mood". During her final "defenestration" of Nathaniel Branden, the worst put-down she could think of was to say he was no Howard Roark, but a Peter Keating or James Taggart.

This focus on qualities of individuals as reference points, rather than on impersonal principles, to judge people's worthiness or lack thereof, points to a preference of R over L - yet, at the same time, to a R that is weaker than L. It is a R that needs to he "helped" by the L of relatively well-defined traits present in her fictional characters, such as integrity, competence, creativity, and courage.

Ayn Rand's complicated personal life also shows evidence of valued but weak R. Her relationships with individuals were at the same time very cautious and conservative, as well as passive, and yet very intense. Her longest and most stable relationship was with her husband Frank O'Connor: they were married for 50 years and she remained, by all accounts, both devoted to, and emotionally dependent on him - yet, at the same time, very often oblivious to his inner feelings. She apparently took for granted that her R relationship with Frank was cast in stone and immutable - from both sides, no matter what the strains, without nuance. That is a trait of valued but very weak R.

As a person, by all accounts, Ayn Rand could be far more approachable and friendly to casual contacts than her public image might suggest. But she was extremely cautious as to whom she let into her inner circle, especially the group of intimates with whom she had weekly discussions about Atlas Shrugged while it was being written, a group she came to call "The Collective" as an inside joke. What is revealing is that the composition of that entire group stemmed from her initial, core friendship with the Brandens: "The Collective" consisted of relatives of the Brandens and their spouses/friends. Revealingly and maybe ironically, Ayn Rand's last loyal devotee, Leonard Peikoff, who became her sole heir, was introduced into her circle by Barbara Branden, Peikoff's cousin - even as Rand later severed all ties with the Brandens themselves. The impression is of a person who prefers to keep most people at a distance and relies on others' judgement as to whom to trust or not. According to Barbara Branden, Rand herself said later in life that her biggest weakness was that she never knew whom she could trust. That is a first-person account of one of the main traits of R5.

Arguably the strangest aspect of R in Ayn Rand is that she actually started a sexual relationship with her "apprentice" Nathaniel Branden, 25 years her junior -  with the full knowledge and "consent" of the spouses of both, Frank and Barbara - but not in the sense of "open marriages" or of her own relationship with Frank becoming exhausted. Rather, she saw her involvement with Brendan as the natural evolution of two minds as well-aligned as theirs were, also expecting Frank and Barbara to see it that way. In fact, according to Barbara Branden's account, Frank was deeply distressed by that situation but, being a naturally gentle man who by now had become totally dependent on Rand financially, found himself at a personal dead-end. Rand's obliviousness to the effect of her affair on Frank was not, by all accounts, due to cruelty or her not caring about him: it was rather that she took for granted that her relationship with Frank was solid as long as he did not say otherwise - which he hardly ever did. Perhaps the last word on Ayn Rand's R should be left to Frank, who one day exploded to her, referring to Nathaniel Branden: "That man's no good! Why can't you see it?"

F: Most obviously, all the "ideal human beings" in Ayn Rand's novels are strong-willed, tough, dynamic individuals who often come across as abrasive, even as lacking all personal warmth when in the pursuit of their goals. That makes F rather than S obvious as one of her quadra values. Throughout her life and in all her writings, Ayn Rand highly valued personal strength, independence, self-reliance, achievement, hard work, the accumulation of wealth. Also, in all her relationships - with her husband Frank, Branden, the other members of "The Collective" - she naturally was the dominant personality in terms of easy personal authority, and she seemed to find that natural, although not actively seeking it, except when defending her own interests. That also points to a person with valued and at least moderately strong F.

Yet, she also had some interesting, revealing traits. For instance, although keen on learning what she could about architecture while doing research for The Fountainhead, and even on how to conduct a train for Atlas Shrugged, she never felt the need to learn how to drive a car - even while living in the San Fernando Valley and working in Hollywood, needing to be driven there by Frank. Further, although living for decades in Manhattan, by all accounts she never came to feel at ease navigating its streets, more focused on her own inner thoughts than on her immediate surroundings. That would be very unusual for a person of F1 or F2, and pointing to Rand as having F6 or even F5. F as a valued yet not strong function. This is reinforced by the fact that Rand did not really feel she measured up to the strong will of her characters - revealingly, she said that she actually was more like Dominique Francon of The Fountainhead, a character with far weaker F than her heroes.

S: Rand lived the last thirty years of her life in two apartments in Manhattan's East Side (36 E 36th St and then 120 E 34th St). By all accounts, she spent most of her time inside them, working, reading, watching TV, or receiving people. The apartments were always rather modest, "spartan", even after the extra income from Atlas Shrugged and, especially after Frank's death, her last apartment increasingly became rather squalid and messy, with books and papers and cats' fur everywhere. All of that points to a person with very little concern for S. Further, although she preferred to live in Manhattan, what she liked was the concept of being there - she insisted that her apartments have a view of the Empire State Building, which she saw as a symbol of the US and of human achievement: that is a symbolic T motivation rather than an aesthetic, sensorial S motivation.

In the San Fernando Valley, Ayn and Frank had lived in a spacious art deco ranch, where she had a large office for her work and Frank could happily devote himself to growing flowers and vegetables. Yet, she found the idea of living in Manhattan in comparatively cramped quarters much more appealing, although she did not have any pressing need to move there.That again points to a very low focus on S, enough to rule it out as a quadra value.

Her other motivation for moving to New York was that Nathaniel and Barbara Branden had moved there in the meantime, and she wanted to be near them as they were the only individuals close to her besides Frank. That is, a R motivation.

What we have so far is a person with R and F quadra values rather than L and S, so a Gamma type. Due to her strong if subdued L and her weak albeit valued R, the types most likely on the evidence so far are already LIE or ILI.

T: Rand's mental focus was far more on her inner thoughts than on her immediate sensory environments: on the symbolic meaning of Manhattan and the Empire State Building rather than on the realities of the place itself; on her world of fiction, with her characters as real, in a sense, to her as real individuals, and on her perception of where the world was going. All of that points to far stronger T than S, and so clearly as to confirm it as an Ego function, T1 or T2, so again ILI or LIE. This trait of creating and maintaining a world in her head, which is also visible in Emily Brontë (ILI), made an impression on her recent biographer, Anne Heller, who chose the title of Ayn Rand and the World She Made for her biography for that reason.

More specifically, at least since the 1930s, Rand was very concerned that the kind of ideological premises she saw in Bolshevik Russia seemed to be gaining strength in the US. In her mind, she could see clearly the trends towards an increasing devaluation of individual rights in favour of collectivism, with an ever-growing presence of the state in the economy as well as the politicisation of business. That vision was actually the chief motivation for everything she wrote, certainly at least from the 1940s onward. Simplistically, having survived the Russian Revolution and fled Bolshevik rule, she was terrified of her vision whereby, however slowly, the US was moving towards the same kind of society. Her artistic motivation for writing The Fountainhead was to show how the creative individualists she saw as driving innovation and prosperity were being smothered by an increasingly prevailing collectivist mindset. With Atlas Shrugged, her purpose was to showcase how dependent modern technological society was on intellectual and creative efforts of a relatively small number of individuals.With both books, what she actually intended was that at least a significant minority of capable individuals would understand her warnings and start reacting to her vision - in order to prevent it from becoming reality. Her deep depression after the publication of Atlas Shrugged was due to her warnings not being heeded. She knew that many were buying the book, but she felt that not enough "real-life people like Howard Roark or Dagny Taggart" seemed to be "getting it". She maintained that conviction - that she could clearly see where the world was going, and that she didn't like it - to the end of her life. That is typical of T blocked with P, so again of LIEs and ILIs.

E: In all existing video interviews with Ayn Rand, she maintains the same kind of E stance: a generally friendly and polite but somewhat cold, dry, emotionally reserved attitude, slightly "eccentric" and punctuated by occasional amusement, irony and irritation. Almost never she makes any attempt at humour. Late in life she would on occasion react intensively if she felt she was being personally attacked.  She preferred a low-emotion atmosphere of matter-of-fact discussion of ideas. Those traits are consistent with someone who has a conventional, even "conservative" approach to E while preferring P.

There are also hints to her approach to E and P in her novels. One of the most noticeable, and criticised. aspects of Ayn Rand's novels is that her characters very often get into conversations - in social environments - that read like deep, long philosophical monologues rather than like attempts at realistic representations of how human beings interact socially. Notable examples are Francisco d'Anconia's speech on money in Atlas Shrugged (given "casually" at a party), Howard Roark and Gail Wynand's long conversations in The Fountainhead, and many of the dialogues between romantic partners in her novels. She was not incapable of writing more conventional dialogues, but those are seen mostly with her minor characters when advancing the plot. That again shows some awareness of E but one that is always overruled by P.

As another small bit of evidence, as far as her personal appearance and style were concerned. Throughout her entire life, Ayn Rand stuck to the same hairstyle she had adopted in the 1920s, when it was fashionable (as per actress Louise Brooks for instance). Rather than an affectation, I suggest that it points to extreme conservatism in such matters, basically an unwillingness to change what "seems to have worked so far" in terms of a look, image, style, that will be acceptable socially. This is a hint to weak E along with also weak S. Conservatism and cautiousness in E are most typical of E3 although not inconsistent with E4.

I: Although the common traits in all of Rand's ideal human beings is willpower and competence, the extra important trait in her truly important characters - Howard Roark, John Galt, and Hank Rearden - is creativity, inventiveness, independence of mind when developing new ideas. Personally, she was also most attracted to creative individuals, according to Nathaniel Branden, rather than powerful and successful ones. Actually she seemed to be skeptical of people who were successful without being creative and independent - that is indeed the main theme of The Fountainhead. In herself, she seemed to take her own creativity for granted, but she thought she fell short of her own heroes in terms of capacity for hard work and discipline. These are traits of a person with stronger I than F.

The group of friends that Ayn Rand jokingly named "The Collective" met at her apartment on Saturday evenings, mostly to discuss Atlas Shrugged as it was being written, but also, according to participants, to have free-flowing conversations on every possible subject, from art and philosophy to politics and current affairs, with Rand (and Frank) happily participating. A glimpse of that can also be seen in transcripts of her Q&A sessions, with subjects going in many directions. That makes Rand's relaxed Saturday evening meetings have an Alpha flavour as far as I is concerned, although it is clear that her single-minded focus on a vision of very few novels and characters she cared deeply about points to T as more valued than I - but a strong I, albeit subdued. That points most clearly to I8, I as a Background function.

P: Objectivism, as a system or "philosophy", seems to have eventually gained the reputation of a rigid dogma as to how to live one's life, parallel to Rand herself gaining the reputation of a cult leader. This development, I repeat, has far more to do with Nathaniel Branden's and later Leonard Peikoff's efforts in making Objectivism a "consistent philosophy" than what Rand herself thought was most important about it. Simplistically, that there was an objective reality independent of human's perceptions of it; that we can receive information about this reality through our senses and our reason; that emotions are not tools of cognition, but automated responses based on premises held consciously or unconsciously, so "having a feeling" about something, in itself, provided no reliable information. That is actually a good description of P. It is worth repeating that for most of her life Rand took that understanding for granted, not bothering to define it as a philosophy until she was in her fifties, through the initiative of Nathaniel Branden.

I have mentioned that her ideal human beings, in her novels, are all strong-willed and tough, and her main characters are creative people. However, the chief trait of her "ultimate" ideal person - John Galt in Atlas Shrugged - is the superhuman, thorough understanding of physics as a science, most specifically in the fields of electricity and electromagnetic waves. Also, if The Fountainhead's theme is the focus on the mind of independent creators, Atlas Shrugged - which she regarded as her magnum opus - can be seen as a description of how it is P knowledge and efficiency that sustains civilisation and even life itself, and most clearly when wielded by strong P individuals. After Atlas Shrugged, Rand felt she had concluded what she had to conclude and said what she had to say. While she touched on the importance of I in individuals in The Fountainhead, she clearly concluded that the ultimate value and reality was P. As a person, Ayn Rand herself was clearly more comfortable expressing herself in a dry P fashion rather via E, as noted above.

Ayn Rand's functional preferences clearly point to valued and strong P, valued and not so strong F, valued and weak R, strong T, little regard for S, subdued and weak E, strong but subdued L, and a strong I which is less valued than F. Those point very obviously to the Gamma quadra and to LIE or ILI in particular.

This analysis has already indicated that the evidence points to LIE rather than ILI. ILI is actually plausible as Ayn Rand's type at first glance. But Rand's R - the focus of the most bizarre and arguably central part of her life in the US - show signs of being one of her very weakest functions, so R5 rather than R6, and her approach to F was that of a person who felt she was "failing" at it - F6 - rather than of a person who accepted her own weak F and valued that mostly in others (F5).

The type that fits all the available information on Ayn Rand is LIE.

Sources: The main scholarly biography is Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns. Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller is also a serious and useful work, but it has more of a journalist's feel to it. Scott McConnel's 100 Voices: an Oral History of Ayn Rand is a collection of interviews with many people who knew Ayn Rand at several points of her life, and they provide evidence for her consistent personal traits (among the interviewees are writer Mickey Spillane, actress Raquel Welch and the former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser). Both Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden wrote memoirs of their time with Ayn Rand, Judgement Day and The Passion of Ayn Rand respectively. Pretty much all her interviews for TV or radio are now available on YouTube.

To learn more about LIE, click here.

If you are confused by our Socionics shorthand, click here.