Itachi Uchiha personality type: INFJ

For most of the series, Itachi Uchiha is the monster under the bed. He murdered his clan in a single night, joined the Akatsuki, and broke his little brother with a genjutsu for good measure. Then Shippuden pulls back the curtain, and the monster turns out to be the most self-sacrificing person in the story. Plenty of fans type him INTJ, since he is cool-headed, strategic and almost unreadable. Still, an INTJ plans to make a system work. Itachi’s plans are about people, specifically about shielding them from pain, and he is willing to be hated so they never learn what it cost him. That is extraverted feeling working underground, and it is why he is an INFJ for me.

The long view is introverted intuition. He saw the Uchiha coup coming, saw it ending in a civil war that would invite other nations to invade, and chose the one path that prevented it, even though that path ran straight through his own family. Nearly everything he does is aimed at other people’s wellbeing: the village, the peace, and above all Sasuke. Where his body is concerned, extraverted sensing, his weakest function, shows in the illness he ignores. He spends himself like a resource to be used up for the plan.

Behind the calm is a One with a 9 wing. Ones live by an inner standard of right and wrong, and they carry the guilt when reality falls short. Itachi follows an ethic of duty so strict that it brings him to kill his own parents. He never asks for forgiveness, because by his own standard he does not deserve it. The 9 wing is his pacifist core: he saw war as a small child and spent the rest of his life trying to stop the next one.

Strangely, his growth comes after death. Reanimated during the war, he admits his biggest mistake: he decided everything for Sasuke instead of trusting him. While the brothers take down Kabuto together, Itachi finally stops lying. Before he fades, he tells Sasuke he will love him always, whatever path he chooses. For a One, that is the hardest lesson there is. You cannot carry everyone alone.