MBTI: Days of Our Lives 1998 and the Four Guardians of Salem

I.   Why Days of Our Lives? 

I first came across the 1998 episodes of Days of Our Lives after reading that Hunter Tylo, who had been playing Taylor Hayes on Bold and the Beautiful since 1990, was being replaced; Krista Allen, an actress who appeared on Days in the late 1990s would be stepping into the role. This news mattered a great deal to Bold fans; it signified that a major shake-up was underway. Because I had been watching Bold avidly for ten years, my spirits were lifted by the announcement, and I asked if the injection of new talent would help revive Bold's fortunes. Bold, my favourite soap, had been circling the drain since 2019, and perhaps, my reasoning went, the recast and a new direction would arrest the slide downward. 

Having pinned my hopes on Allen, I became curious to see her acting. In a Bold forum, YouTube clips featuring Allen on Days in 1998 had been posted, and in one, Billie Read confronts Hope Williams by the graveside of Billie's recently deceased baby daughter; appropriately enough, the confrontation takes place in Louisiana on a dark and stormy night. I quickly came to like the melodramatic and gothic atmosphere and wanted to explore further. The clips led me to a YouTube channel which comprised nearly all the episodes of the 1998 season. I watched all of these and then made my way through all the channel's episodes from the 1990s, a task which took much time but was well worth the trouble. 

Before, I had known a little of Days' history, and I had had always liked Days for its colourful and comic-book-ish qualities, but I had never sat down to make a study of it. For Days' size presented a formidable obstacle. Given that Days had been broadcast since 1965, a lot of catching up was required. With what year should the newcomer begin?

If one were to choose a starting point, one could do worse than with 1998. The series in that year was reaching the heights of success, artistic and commercial. Some highlights were: the dark and sensual soundtrack; the gothic atmosphere; and most important of all, the fulsome budget. Like all the soaps of the 1990s, Days was flush with cash, and we see in 1998 that the producers paid plenty for sets, costumes, extras, location footage. In retrospect, such extravagance seems poignant; the abundance of 1998 presents a sad contrast with the poverty of 2022; in the current year, Days, like the other big three daytime soaps, is starved of funds. 

So for the uninitiated, what is Days about? It began life as a medical drama like General Hospital, and like General Hospital it over time took on elements of the action-adventure, spy and even science-fiction genres. By the mid-1990s, it began to incorporate occult themes - but not nearly to the extent that the cult show Passions did. (In that connection, it should be noted that Passions was the creation of one of the mid-1990s Days head writers, James E. Reilly). 

As to when Days came into its own, that point is to be found in the mid-eighties. Days saw the debut of two actors who made the show a sensation: Drake Hogestyn, who played John Black, and Stephen Nichols, who played Steve 'Patch' Johnson. The distinct appearance of each made the two instantly recognisable; even the layman unfamiliar with soaps came to know them on sight. This was important. Any successful soap needs to fulfil two requirements, the first of which is to make its lead characters stand out so that the casual viewer can tell them apart, the second, to persuade that same viewer to care about what happens. For if that casual viewer becomes intrigued, he will tune in to the next episode and become a regular. Plenty such conversions were achieved in the mid to late eighties: in the Steve and John years, the two requirements were met and in spades, and ratings skyrocketed. 

In the 1980s, the performances of Hogestyn and Nichols, in combination with the soundtrack, helped give Days dramatic and operatic qualities; the emotional force of the stories could overwhelm a viewer. Days' strength and power in this period owed much to its music, which was nearly as prominent enough to turn the show from a soap opera to a real opera. It is no accident that longtime Days producer Ken Corday doubles as a composer: he understands the power of music.

The hyper-emotional and Wagnerian era came to an end with the death of Steve (in 1990, fittingly enough). After that, Days turned into a show which was more polished and more subdued, a show which had more money and less melodrama. It was still be enjoyed, but enjoyed for different reasons. 

Days changed over the course of the 1990s and 2000s. Something that did stay constant throughout the changes was this. Days, like any soap, is preoccupied with sexual reproduction and related matters marriage, adultery, fake pregnancy, real pregnancy, paternity tests, miscarriages, childbirth, and child-rearing. Unfortunately in Days the theme of sex, one theme beloved by soap writers, is tied to another, sexual violence. The small town of Salem, Illinois is filled with rapists. At the least, characters will be made to engage in sexual intercourse after being drugged or blackmailed or made amnesiac, and such tawdry incidents give rise to what we moderns call 'consent issues'. 

The theme of coercion seems to crop up more in Days than in any other soap. A lead character may suffer kidnapping and confinement for weeks, months, years, and if he is really unlucky, his personality and behaviour may be altered, sometimes permanently, through a combination of brainwashing and hypnosis. 
 
But one should not labour under the impression that Days is a grim and gritty show. It is mostly filled with humour and comedy, sunniness and wholesomeness; the warmth and light of the Horton and Brady families is set off against the cold and darkness of the DiMera and Kiriakis families. Evil does not lie inherent in Salem as it does in the town of Twin Peaks, it enters Salem through the agency of outsiders. 

II.   The Guardians of Salem

In my previous MBTI articles, the character's types are  grouped in Socionics Quadras, and in this one, Keirsey's Temperaments. I felt that Keirsey was appropriate than Socionics; as it so happens, each of the four Days leading men is what Keirsey calls a Guardian.

I have provided only one instance of each type for the reason that I did not want to double up. In Days, I find a profusion of characters who are all of the same type; in 1998 alone, I count four ESTJs, five ISTJs, and seven (!) ESFJs. 

Note that the three types mentioned - the ISTJ, the ESTJ and the ESFJ - are categorised as Guardians. This is no accident, seeing that the majority of types one  encounters in both art and life are Guardians. Days will give us no exception to the rule. 


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WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead

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III. The Guardians

John Black - ESTJ

Businessman, sexual athlete, loyal husband and devoted father, John Black, the alpha male of the show is to Days what Ridge is to Bold. Like Ridge, he is an ESTJ; unlike Ridge, he is an action hero. The creators of John, a former policeman, mercenary, and assassin, modelled him after Jason Bourne and James Bond. 

In keeping with the reputation of the stock ESTJ character, John is prone to bullying and outbursts of bad temper. These traits, typical of an ESTJ character, are linked to John's dark side. When we meet John, it is after the villain Stefano DiMera has held him in captivity for years. Stefano's brainwashing regimen had transformed John into a thief, mercenary and assassin. In 1998, the dark days are long behind him. But memories of them lie dormant and come to the surface at inconvenient times, and it is then that good John's personality is usurped by bad John's.

John's back story has been retconned at least half a dozen times, and even in 2022 we do not know who John's real parents are. Seeking to solve the mystery of his origins, John will often attempt to uncover his past. In doing so he takes after the stock INFP hero who is forever attempting to 'find himself'. 

The journeys of self-discovery are thwarted because of the writers' continual re-creation of John's backstory. Having said this, throughout all the rewrites John's personality stays the same; that is, his personality type stays the same. 

Beauregard 'Bo' Brady - ISFJ

One of the four children of Shawn and Caroline Brady, Bo joins the cast in the early eighties. Much of his back story sounds like his best friend Steve Johnson's: Bo is a loner and a drifter, he has spent his youth in the merchant marine, and he is alienated from his family. Over time, Bo does come good, like Steve, and like Steve, he takes up employment as a private investigator, police officer, and government spy.

In 1998, Bo is torn between two wives, two families (a recurring dilemma for Bo). This Bo differs from the Bo of seasons past. In keeping with the men's styles of the decade, Bo has changed his appearance. He is clean-shaven and his hair is short, and the new look makes him more presentable and handsome.

So why is Bo an ISFJ? His down to earth qualities, his phenomenal endurance and strength, his abilities at hand to hand combat - all these mark him out to be a Sensor. His lacking the ruthlessness and cruelty of his real father, the Greek shipping magnate and gangster Victor Kiriakis, shows us that he is a Feeler and not a Thinker. And most tellingly of all, nothing means more to Bo than the welfare of his wife and children, and it is his placing of his family's well-being above all that suggests an ISFJ personality type. 

The question is how Bo can be an ISFJ, which is an introverted type, if he so often behaves in an extraverted manner. The answer is that the impulsive and quick-tempered Bo fits the description of the Fe-dominant ISFJ subtype. 

To explain the theory of the subtype briefly. Two functions occupy the top two slots in each personality type's function stack, one of the functions extraverted, the other introverted, and a subtype leans towards one function more than the other. As the Fe-dominant subtype of the ISFJ, Bo is biased towards the extraverted of his top two functions; that is, when it comes to Introverted Sensing Si and Extraverted Feeling Fe, he is biased towards the latter more than the former. 

It is the pronounced extraversion in Bo's personality that explains why it is, for example, that Bo unconsciously assumes the leadership of the Bo and Steve pair when the duo embark on one of their escapades. 

Roman Brady - ESFJ

A warm and loving father, an authority figure, a man who is not afraid of using his fists, in the person of Roman we are presented with an example of the stock ESFJ I call the 'American Dad'. 

Like the character of John Black, the character of Roman Brady is burdened by a confusing history. Roman was recast twice. He was played by Wayne Northrop (regarded by fans as the definitive Roman) in the early eighties and Drake Hogestyn in the late eighties. Hogestyn is the same actor who plays John Black, and this disorients the uninitiated; the casual viewer watching from 1986 to 1991 asks why is it that Hogestyn's character is called 'John', then 'Roman', then 'John'. 

The third and final casting change - Josh Taylor debuted as Roman in 1997 - proved to be unpopular. Taylor, an actor who speaks with a Texan drawl, did not fit Roman, the son of Shawn Brady, an Irish-American who speaks with a thick brogue. Taylor does not look Irish, whereas Northrop does. Further, fans remembered Taylor from his earlier stint on Days. In the 1980s, Taylor played the popular supporting character Chris Kostachek and in the 1990s, a Roman Brady who looks, talks and walks exactly like Chris.  

When watching 1998 Days, I was unaware of the history of Roman, and I could view Taylor's Roman without prejudice. I came to like Taylor's Roman even though I found him something of a blowhard and a stickler for rules like so many Guardian characters. In summary, I liked him for his warmth, amiability and paternal nature, all of the typical personality traits of the ESFJ 'American Dad'. 

Abraham 'Abe' Carver - ISTJ

Abe first appeared in 1981, and the same actor (James Reynolds) has been playing him ever since. Reynolds has made Abe into an institution, which is fitting; the typical ISTJ character is an institution. A backbone of the Salem community, Abe is quiet, unobtrusive, dependable, stolid, and in short, a stock ISTJ. 

Throughout most of time in Salem, Abe is an authority figure, serving a police officer, then police commissioner, then mayor. Hero characters who bend the law often come to Abe to beg him to overlook an infringement 'just this once'. Abe will perform the favour and connive, but he does so with great reluctance as he is like Roman  a stickler for rules and regulations. 

Two habits of Abe's stand out. One is that he is given to chuckling softly, the other, to patting people on the arm. In the climax of the 1997 season, the wedding of John and Kristen is thwarted and Kristen's kidnapping of Marlena  is exposed. John is shattered. Abe gently sidles over to John and asks: 'You know what I have to do now, don't you, John?' (that is, Abe must arrest Kristen). John, in tears, nods his assent. Abe pats John's arm, shakes his head in pity and walks away to perform his duty. The scene stands out as one that captures the essence of Abe's character. 

IV.  The Artisans

I think the reader will agree that the Guardians are on the whole a dull bunch. Take Abe, for example: he is one the most respectable and at the same time one of the dullest men in Salem. 
        
The type Keirsey call the Artisan takes a different path from the Guardian: the Artisan is attracted to excitement and danger. As a consequence, Days storylines involving Artisans tend to generate more interest. For that reason, I will relate these in detail. 

Princess Gina Von Amberg - ISTP

The doppelganger and evil twin of heroine Hope Evans, Princess Gina worked for Stefano alongside John Black in the early 1980s. In order to build up Stefano's art collection, she stole priceless paintings and replaced these with forgeries that she had produced herself; a skilled painter, Gina churns out forgeries with ease.  

In the 1980s, Gina leads, like John, a double life. The world believes that John is a priest and that Gina is a socialite.  But these are poses: John and Gina are criminals working for Stefano. They keep the truth a secret, as they do their affair. They are romantically involved, and the implication is that 'Reverend' John is the father of Gina's daughter Greta. 

Confusingly, Hope and Gina will often swap identities. In 1990, Hope is missing, presumed dead, at the climax of the Cruise of Deception arc. In truth, she had been taken captive and hidden away, and we are to learn that Stefano was the culprit; in the years Hope was kept off the show, Hope had been kidnapped by Stefano and brainwashed  into thinking she was Princess Gina. In 1999, another switch is arranged, and the real Gina, who has reemerged, takes the place of Hope...

Princess Gina is cast in the mold of other ISTP bad girl characters, most notably Marvel's Black Widow. Gina can also be viewed as a James Bond, who is another ISTP. She shares with Bond a love of smoking, drinking, dining, and gambling. And as with Bond, pistols and knives are her weapons of choice. 

Introverted Thinking Ti, the dominant function of the ISTP, organises and understands. It does part of its labours 'By means of instinctive feelings of validity, symmetry, and even beauty'. Such 'Instinctive feelings' determine everything about the ISTP character, right down to the character's appearance. In that connection, ISTP bad girls such as the Black Widow, Modesty Blaise and Princess Gina always appear slinky and supple, trimmed and well-groomed, and as such they embody Ti. 

Samantha 'Sami' Brady - ESTP

The daughter of Roman Brady and Marlena Evans, Sami does the 'heel turn' in the early 1990s and becomes a villain.  She abducts her baby half-sister Belle and tries to sell her on the black market, and she does so to punish Marlena and remove Belle from Marlena's influence. 

Sami became a fan favourite because of her portrayal by Alison Sweeney. By virtue of her curvy figure and her long fine-spun golden hair (which made her look like a Viking princess), Sweeney incarnated the Midwestern girl. Her peculiar characteristics, among which were an adenoidal vocal delivery and a galumphing walk, distinguished her from other actresses, and the atypical qualities of her performance helped many a young female viewer see herself in Sami; voluptuous Sweeney was as healthy as a horse,  not a stick figure. 

Even though the females in the audience could see part of  themselves in Sami, they could not help but feel a sense of superiority to her. Sami is a tragic character, and as in all tragedies a gulf exists between the protagonist and the audience. Sami makes viewers experience contempt and pity. She always falls flat on her face, and unlike other ESTP bad girls (e.g. Steffi Forrester of Bold) she always ends up paying for her crimes. By 1998, she is shunned by most of Salem for her misdeeds.

In one 1990s storyline, Sami suffers from amnesia (a common soap malady). Her half-sister Carrie scoffs and declares that the amnesia is an act, and she begs her family not to believe Sami; she warns them that the amnesia is 'Another of Sami's tricks'. Carrie's scepticism is not unwarranted. Deception and disguise form the stock in trade of STP characters (ISTPs and ESTPs), especially when the character stands on the wrong side of the law, as Sami often does. Before abducting Belle, the teenage Sami teaches herself hematology and breaks into the hospital computer database of birth records, all in order to alter the results of Belle's paternity test. This is a prodigious feat for a teenage girl, one which the hospital staff were still talking about seven years later, and it shines a light on one aspect of the ESTP, the ESTP's secondary function Introverted Thinking Ti. The complex baby-stealing scheme of Sami's gives an instance of Ti, an analytical function, being put to work not for science but crime. 

Sami's tragedy is that she believes she can get she wants by resorting to lies and manipulation. This is tied to her being unlucky in love. In the mid-1990s, she attempts to steal Carrie's boyfriend Austin Reed; after drugging him and making him oblivious, she has sex with him. A few months later, Carrie is marrying Austin in a church; Sami crashes the wedding and announces that she is pregnant with Austin's child. And once again she is lying: the baby is not Austin's. 

Perhaps Sami's one redeeming feature is her love for the boy she gives birth to - Will Horton. Throughout the 1998 season, she is prone to waxing lyrical over her boy, calling him her 'Precious little boy', 'The most precious boy in the whole world', and weeping over him hysterically. I find her love for Will endearing, as do, I am sure, many of the mothers in the audience; and even though it does not absolve Sami of her sins, it does soften her. 

It is justice that in the 1998 season, the player gets played. Sami falls in love with a handsome Italian mafioso Franco Kelley. He wants to marry Sami in order to obtain a green card, and unbeknownst to Sami, he feels nothing but disdain for her; he refers to her behind her back as 'That beetch Sami'. Only after the wedding does Sami learn that Franco has deceived her. Fortunately for Sami, Franco is murdered on his wedding day; unfortunately for her, she is framed for the murder. It is at this juncture that a new epic Sami arc begins, one which would take up much of the season and drag in most of the characters of Salem. 

Lucas Roberts - ESFP

Being an Extraverted Sensor Se dominant makes a character a force of nature, and Lucas and Sami, both Se dominants, are no exceptions. Because both Lucas and Sami are different personality types, the laser-like focus and force of will of Se manifest themselves in different fields of endeavour: Sami, a typical ESTP, is a hustler and a trickster, and Lucas, a typical ESFP, is a hedonist and an exhibitionist. 

I compare Lucas to the drug-addled Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, another ESFP. Lucas is the Jesse Pinkman of daytime soaps. One can also draw a comparison between Lucas and Game of Thrones' Joffrey Baratheon; they share the same spoiled sense of entitlement.

One would expect that Lucas' storylines would revolve around the Hortons, Lucas being the son of Bill Horton (who is one of the five children of founding Days couple Alice and Tom Horton); but instead they relate more to his mother's side of the family. Lucas interacts most of all with his mother Kate Roberts and his half brother and sister Austin and Billie Reed. Lucas forms part of a romantic triangle with Sami and Austin, and in a symmetry of the sort that you only find in soaps, Lucas comes to despise Sami, Austin comes to adore her, Lucas is the real father of Sami's child, Austin the fake. 

In 1998, Lucas is faced with two challenges. The first is his alcoholism, the second, his battle with Sami for custody of his son Will. Sami will stop at nothing to take her son away from Lucas and even resorts to perjury, telling the lie in court that Lucas has physically abused their son. 

The conflict between the two entertains throughout the 1998 season. Both scowling, both snide, both obnoxious, both unpleasant, both Se dominants, Sami and Lucas meet each other on equal terms. They are evenly matched. 

Dr Marlena Evans - ISFP

A mainstay of the show, psychiatrist Dr Marlena Evans first appeared in 1976, which means that she is senior to Roman and Abe, both of whom were introduced in 1981. 

If we are to understand where Marlena is situated in the 1990s, we must look back to where she was in the 1980s. In 1983, she marries Roman Brady. She goes on to bear him two children, Eric and Sami, and at the same time acts as  step-mother to Roman's child Carrie. Marlena is widowed after Roman is killed (or so we think) in 1984. In 1986, she befriends a mysterious stranger who has recently arrived in Salem, the troubled soul John Black. Like Jason Bourne, possesses superhuman martial arts skills and suffers from amnesia. Marlena takes John under her wing and in order to restore his memory - and sanity - she gives him hypnotherapy. The task of helping John recover his memories will keep her busy for the next three decades.

In 1986, during one of his dissociative and psychotic episodes, John comes to believe that he is in actual fact Stefano DiMera, albeit a Stefano whose appearance has been altered by plastic surgery. (One of the reasons why John believes that he is Stefano is that the DiMera family crest - a phoenix - has been tattooed on the back of his shoulder). John becomes crazed. He kidnaps Marlena, but she manages to calm him and make him lucid; he then releases her. Afterwards the pair learn to their delight that John is not Stefano but - Roman! John's appearance may have been altered by plastic surgery, but he is still the Roman Brady who was thought to have died in 1984, and a DNA test proves it.  

Unfortunately, the reunion of Roman and Marlena is short-lived. In 1987, she is killed by supervillain Orpheus. In the years that follow, the grieving widower Roman takes up with three women in succession. 

In 1991, Marlena returns from the dead. We learn that her death had been faked and also that she has spent the last five years in a coma in a mysterious hospital on a Caribbean island. 

After waking up and finding her way back to Salem, Marlena reunites with Roman at Salem pier. The reunion counts as one of the great tear-jerkers of Days. 

But once again, disaster strikes. A man claiming to be the real Roman Brady surfaces. He testifies that his death was faked, and further, that he has been kept in captivity in a South American jail for the past seven years. All that time, John Black, a fake who is the 'pawn' of Stefano, had taken Roman's place. And indeed, it must be admitted that back from the dead Roman looks exactly like the Roman who died in 1984 (see the above photo - fake Roman is on the left of Marlena, real Roman on the right). 

Sadly for Marlena, the returned Roman's allegations turn out to be true. Roman denounces John for the imposter that he is and he demands the resumption of his marriage. But Marlena comes to dislike the real Roman, and why not; he is, compared to fake Roman, obnoxious and boorish. Marlena starts an affair with John - who is in a vulnerable state after having learned that he has been living a lie for the past six years - and soon John and Marlena's daughter Belle Brady is conceived.

After the inevitable exposure of the affair to all and sundry, Marlena breaks off relations with John and she lives the next few years as a single woman. It is at this point that Stefano returns. He becomes obsessed by her, an obsession which fits in with the Socionics theory of intertype relations: both Stefano and Marlena are Duals. 

Stefano stalks and kidnaps Marlena a few times and in this period (the mid-1990s) she is possessed by a demon. 

The producers and writers evidently decided by the late 1990s that the busy character of Marlena deserved a rest, and in 1998 Marlena plays more of a supporting role and less of a starring. She reconciles with her daughter Sami after Sami is framed for the shooting Franco Kelly, and she works to prove Sami's innocence. And once again, she becomes John's hypnotherapist; John's mental disturbances are returning; powerful and unwanted flashbacks to the Stefano years are beginning to intrude into John's consciousness; John is more and more passing into a dissociative state. During these fugue states of John's we are treated to flashbacks of a younger John donning combat fatigues and a beret, training on a South American beach; these imply that John has a mysterious past, the depths of which have not yet been fathomed. 

Psychiatry does seem compatible with Marlena's dominant function Introverted Feeling Fi; that is, a character with with Fi as a dominant function should go into psychiatry or something like it. But the same function can lead to negative consequences for herself and others. Introverted Feeling Fi means empathy and compassion, both of which can help psychiatrists and counselors in their work, and it also means reserve and coldness, both of which can distinguish the ISFP personality type from others not in a good way. By Jung's description, it is almost as if the Fi dominant type looks up at the world from underneath water and peers from behind an icy mask. This profile of Jung's does fit Marlena, for other characters often remark on her coldness and reserve. 

The same characters also notice her moralising. As a feeling function, Fi delivers value judgments, and these are founded upon strong feelings of attraction and repulsion. In the typical ISFP, it is the feelings of repulsion that predominate, and going by what we see of Marlena, she is a typical ISFP.

Extraverted Sensing Se occupies the secondary function slot of the ISFP, and in the ISFP Se manifests itself  as indomitable force of will. Marlena has that force of will in abundance. She could not have survived her years on the show otherwise - she has, to put it mildly, been through a lot. 

V. The Rationals

Keirsey calls the NT types - the Intuitives (N) and Thinkers (T) - 'Rationals'. The below two NT characters are villains - one of them the greatest soap villain of all time - and this is a pattern; more often than not NT characters turn up in movies, TV, comic books, as the bad guys. As to why, that is a matter of conjecture; Taylor gives his thoughts here. 

Stefano DiMera - ENTJ

Stefano first appears in Salem as a mafioso, albeit one who departs from the usual sort found on a show such as The Sopranos. Throughout his tenure, Stefano plays the part of Days' own DC or Marvel supervillain. Like Lex Luthor, Stefano hatches far-fetched schemes (his 'plans') and dabbles in a cutting-edge science. Stefano's explorations in the field of science always assist his dominant function Extraverted Thinking Te. Stefano's bizarre and cruel scientific experiments serve a single purpose: the control of others, most importantly Stefano's nemesis John Black, whom Stefano calls his 'pawn'.  
 
Stefano's Te differs from John's Te. Te can be defined as, among other things, the organisation of resources. Both men are businessmen - Te is logic and business logic at that - and both men use their Te in different ways; Stefano takes chances with his resources, John husbands them. John's Te is cautious and prudential, Stefano's is speculative and entrepreneurial. 

Part of the difference can be traced to Stefano's being an Intuitive, John's being a Sensor. Whereas John lives in the present, Stefano lives in the future; Stefano's secondary function Introverted Intuition Ni gives him the ability to live forward in time, an ability which allows him to predict the moves of his enemies. Related to his Ni is his peculiar worldview. Stefano views life as a game which is played with precision and forethought; the game is chess, which he loves. 

If you read a summary of all of Stefano's schemes, your head will hurt; you will find keeping track of all the twists and turns in Stefano's career a grinding and onerous task. In order to avoid the strain, then, we ought to confine ourselves to the events of a single season; what are these in 1998?  In that year, Stefano has given up on Marlena; he is no longer to attempting to kidnap and seduce her; he has instead turned all his energies towards the task of regaining his lost art treasures. In the previous season, his subordinate Jonesy has stolen all of Stefano's art collection before dying on a honeymoon. Jonesy bequeathed the collection to his wife Vivian Alamain, and with a view to regaining it, Stefano marries Vivian and comes up with a scheme to get rid of Vivian by driving her mad. Stefano has a chip implanted in one of her teeth, and the chip alters her moods dramatically once activated by a remote control device kept by Stefano in his pocket at all times. The chip puts Vivian in one of three moods: manic, normal and depressed. Hilarity - of the sadistic sort - ensues whenever Stefano changes Vivian's mood using his remote control, and Vivian usually ends up embarrassing herself in a public setting. 

Sadism is in keeping with Stefano's character, and it is not out of keeping with Stefano's personality type ENTJ. Given that, where does the ENTJ's inferior function, Introverted Feeling Fi (a highly ethical function) fit in? 

As an inferior function, Extraverted Feeling manifests itself in emotional explosions, Introverted Feeling in the opposite; that is, Extraverted Feeling explodes, Introverted Feeling implodes. The inferior function Fi, when it rises the surface of consciousness, collapses in on itself. It sucks everything into itself and transforms the Te dominant. Under the influence of an overpowering Fi, the ENTJ makes cold and calculated value judgments, and in these, justice - a cruel and merciless justice - becomes foremost. The ENTJ experiences no moral qualms in meting out a punishment which is cruel and harsh, for such a punishment he regards as supremely moral. Over the course of decades, we see Stefano and Victor - both ENTJs - dispense the ENTJ brand of justice, if justice it may be called, many times. 

Whenever Stefano is given the choice between doing good and doing evil, we can expect that he will choose the latter over the former; so what is it that accounts for his peculiar charm? The answer lies in the performance of Joe Mascolo. His gravitas and basso voice lent Stefano a real authority. And he conveyed warmth and a joie de vivre, both of which call back to Stefano's extraversion. In keeping with his personality type, Stefano demands your attention; he puts on a show for you; he wants you to look at him; he needs you to acknowledge his high status. 

An instance of Stefano's desire for respect and adulation is to be found in 1998: in that season, Stefano poses as an aristocrat, traveling through Europe under the name of Count Rudolfo Meradi, and because of his effrontery, suaveness, culture and confidence, he succeeds in hoodwinking European high society. But the imposture is not entirely an imposture. Taking all sides of Stefano's personality into consideration, we must admit that he has class. He wears immaculate Italian suits, he loves opera and fine wine, he is a connoisseur of fine art, and his musical tastes alone lend weight to the impression we  have of him as a sophisticated and refined Continental. 

Because of his extraversion, Stefano can at times express himself in a wild and eccentric manner. He likes to wear extravagant costumes, and one of the most impressive of these is the ensemble of opera cape, domino mask and matador's suit that he we wears when he pays nocturnal visits to Marlena in the 1995 season. Stefano has placed Marlena, his 'Queen of the Night', in a hypnotic trance which allows him to take her ballroom dancing. By doing so, he has unwittingly made her vulnerable to nebulous and occult influences. And so Days' demonic possession arc begins.  

Kristen Blake - INTJ

Jung's profile of the Introverted Intuitive (Ni) dominant makes the type sound one of the strangest, if not the strangest, of all the personality types. This opinion accords with what we know of Kristen from the beginning. In 1993, Kristen arrives at Salem a mysterious stranger. At once she becomes involved in philanthropy and social work, but most Salemites are suspicious of her, because even though she is a cultured and intelligent woman, and a woman of means whose money will be useful in helping Salem's needy children, she is standoffish and outlandish; she is not a good fit.  

John happens upon her after she is stabbed by muggers and left for dead on a Salem park bench. He carries her to Dr Tom Horton's house, and there the Hortons, after treating her, offer her free bed and board. During Kristen's stay, Dr Horton's wife Alice, one of the matriarchs of Days, becomes a mother figure to Kristen. Feeling sorry for the widowed John and wanting the best for her surrogate daughter Kristen, Alice decides to play matchmaker; she persuades John and then Kristen to take a vacation to the same travel spot - the Horton holiday home, which is a cabin on an island miles from the Salem pier. John and Kristen arrive at the island at the same time. Both believe that they will be alone for the duration of the visit, but after bumping into one other they realise to their chagrin that they will not be. Fate intervenes and a storm maroons them. John and Kristen, who disliked one another before arriving on the island, grow closer. Afterwards, a pattern ensues. John will rescue Kristen from falling off a cliff, drowning in a storm, etc., and after each rescue Kristen will allow John to make love to her in marathon sex sessions.  

Of all of John's romances, the John-Kristen pairing exhibits the most (what soap fans call) chemistry. But in soap world all good things must come to an end; no couple must be allowed to be happy for long. After their romantic interlude on Horton Island, John and Kristen find their world crashing down around them. They argue on what is (as could be expected) a stormy night, and at the argument's end, Kristen runs away from John and then returns, emerging from the darkness and pushing forward a shadowy figure in a wheelchair. She tells John that the man in the wheelchair is her father. And of course the man is revealed to be - his visage at that dramatic moment illuminated by a flash of lightning - Stefano!

John is, as we could expect, surprised and distraught. How can I know, he asks Kristen, that you haven't inherited Stefano's evil? After the confrontation, we learn that Stefano (who has fathered around a dozen children) is not the biological father of Kristen - he is her foster father. All the same, John wonders if her upbringing has led Kristen into evil ways. For we know that Kristen has kept some of the truth from John. She has shown some awareness of the connection between John and Stefano: after one of their lovemaking sessions, Kristen rubs John's Phoenix tattoo while John is asleep, an action that hints to us that she understands the tattoo's significance. But as it turns out, Kristen knows little of Stefano's past; she has been brought up an innocent. After her argument with John, she feels disturbed by John's allegations. She researches Stefano's history by going through newspaper clippings in the Salem library, and the record of Stefano's crimes convinces her of Stefano's untrustworthiness. Afterwards, she confronts Stefano with this evidence of his past misdeeds, and he of course denies. Kristen refuses to believe him and right up until the 1996 season, she remains sceptical of Stefano's good guy act. Kristen chooses to stay on the good girl path. By 1998 she along with her brother Peter Blake (a tall and handsome character who by then has become a fan favourite), has succumbed to temptation and turned to evil. She has done the heel turn; she has become a bad girl. 

Why is Kristen an INTJ? One way of determining a type is by an excursion through the MBTI letters. Kristen's solitariness and standoffishness make her an Introvert I; her cerebral qualities (Kristen reads Russian and French literature in the original) make her a Thinker T; and her respect for religion, the occult, the supernatural, make her an Intuitive N. 

We chance upon an example of Kristen's Ni in a conversation which she has with John at the onset of the demonic possession arc. Strange things are happening in Salem, and Kristen attempts to persuade John that these are supernatural in origin. The bull-necked John, a Sensor, refuses to believe in the existence of the supernatural and paranormal; he insists that truth is given to us by our senses. In the discussion, the pair engage in what is an age-old philosophical debate, one that gives a stark illustration of the difference between the Intuitive and the Sensor. 

We must ask, after 1996, why it is that Kristen turned to evil? Part of the answer must lie in Kristen's adoption of the maxim 'Nothing must stand in the way of my happiness'. At first sight, the ethic can be regarded as innocuous; but once it is taken to extremes, it can be used to justify any sort of immorality and criminality. And under its influence, a perversion happens; Kristen concentrates upon the pursuit of her own happiness to the exclusion of all, with the consequence that her sense of morality and decency fall by the wayside. It is at this crossroads one of the most famous of the Days arcs, the Secret Room Saga, begins. 

VI. The Idealists

The Idealist type takes after the Rational in being an Intuitive and differs in being a Feeler. 

In soaps, the NT character is usually the bad guy and the NF the good guy. In keeping with the rule, two of the three NFs below are heroines; only one of them is morally grey.  

Hope Williams - INFP

Hope is a member of the Horton family, a family that has been on the show since 1965 and the founding family of Days; she is the daughter of one of the five children of Tom and Alice Horton. The Hope played by Kristian Alfonso is unveiled in 1983 and is featured for the next four decades. In the eyes of many, she make Days what it is and Days does not feel quite like Days without her. 

The stock INFP is either a) ignorant of who his true parents are or b) an orphan or c) both, and he can even be - as in the case of two Marvel INFPs, the X-Men's Nightcrawler and the Avengers' Scarlet Witch - the child of gypsies. That cultural and ethnic background suits the INFP character; in European folklore, stories of children being stolen by gypsies and replaced by changelings abound. The children who have been raised by gypsies and kept in ignorance of who their true parents are hold much in common with the stock INFP. With that in mind, it is no coincidence that the dusky and Eastern European-looking Alfonso looks like Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. And the story of Hope's childhood is as unusual as Wanda's. As a child, Hope was half an orphan: when Hope was a baby, she lost her mother, who died after being hit by a car. Afterwards, Hope's father went on to marry Hope's half-sister in an odd twist that complicated the Horton family tree. 

In 1998, Hope has embarked on a quest to find out the truth of her lost years. In this journey, she follows the same course as the typical INFP who wants to uncover secrets of a lost past and move towards self-actualisation.

Hope possesses many talents - some of them would be considered super powers by the comic book reader - and the chief one of these is, I think, a talent for turning enemies into friends. Hope sees the potential in others (this is her Extraverted Intuition Ne at work) and in particular, she sees another's potential for change and a change from evil to good. The classic example is her befriending Steve 'Patch' Johnson. As Days fans know, the 'One-eyed Man' first appears in 1985 as a minor-league villain working for Hope's father-in-law Victor Kiriakis. Steve terrorises Hope, aiming to get back at her husband Bo, Bo being the man who cut out Steve's eye, but unexpectedly, Hope turns Steve to the light. She recruits him for a mission to clear Bo's name (Bo has been framed for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union). Steve helps her exonerate Bo and afterwards remains her loyal ally and confidant. Their relationship is without a hint of impropriety, something that Bo, despite his early jealousy and suspicion, comes to recognise.

Without the assistance of Hope's superpowers, Bo would still be rotting in prison. The powers of Hope's can be linked back to Hope's dominant function, Introverted Feeling Fi. 

This is an Fi which differs from the Fi that we saw in the ISFP and ENTJ types. Socionics calls the Fi of the ISFP type negative Fi or -Fi; it calls the Fi of the INFP type positive Fi or +Fi. 

We can find a summary of Hope's Fi here:

[Fi+] (Relationship Ethics of Forgiveness):
-trusting people, giving them the benefit of the doubt
-forgiving and pardoning
-keeping close psychological distance
-educational relations, how people can be kind and patient and tolerant with each other
-ethics of forgiveness, attraction, maximization of good
-[INFP] strengthens the positive side of relationships, forgives evil

Hope's type belongs to what Socionics calls the Delta Quadra, a group of types which comprises the INFP, ENFP, ESTJ, and ISTJ. John's type belongs to the same Quadra and is Hope's Dual, and that explains why it is that Hope works more efficiently and has more rapport with John than Bo. We see this side of the John and Hope relationship brought to the fore in the premier arc of the 1980s, the Stockholm Saga. In it the leading characters are Steve, Kayla, Hope, John. What is interesting from the perspective of Socionics is that the males and females of this foursome exist in what Socionics calls a Contrary relationship: Steve is the Contrary of John, Hope the contrary of Kayla. And the four characters can relate to one another as Duals: Kayla is Steve's Dual, Hope John's. This is all pleasingly symmetrical. The writers were of course unfamiliar with Socionics, but they did understand it instinctively. 

The fundamental incompatibility of Bo and Hope is important because Days relies heavily on the concept of the super-couple, and in the early eighties the writers and producers of Days went on overdrive in an attempt to make Bo and Hope the show's premier super-couple. This had negative consequences for Hope's character. The defining of Hope as being nothing more than one half of a super-couple compromised Hope's individuality (and for the INFP nothing is more important than the retention of one's individuality). All of Bo's many friends love Bo and the idea of Bo and Hope, and they work to bring Bo and Hope together whenever the two are split apart; but does Hope have an identity apart from Bo? If Hope leaves Bo, she flounders; she does not know what do with her life; she asks herself, as do we, who she really is. 

Bo and Hope may be a super-couple but they are not Duals, which is one reason why I never bought into the notion of Bo as Hope's soul mate. Another is that even during the best times of their marriage, Hope treats Bo with disrespect. I always found one habit of Hope's to be annoying: her bossing Bo about. Hope treats Bo condescendingly; she acts as if 'Brady' (her pet name for Bo) is her son, she a 'mama bear', he her little cub. 

Greta Von Amberg - INFJ

When Hope is discovered to be alive, the discovery takes place at Maison Blanche (the 'White House'), a gothic mansion in Louisiana which is owned by Stefano. He had kept Hope captive there during her missing years. It is there that he programmed Hope (by placing a chip in her brain) to be Princess Gina. The details of this period are rather hazy, we are shown only portions of it (in brief flashbacks), the writers retcon it over and over, and the the viewer will find it difficult to understand (I know I did). The summary I can make is that the woman known as Swamp Girl is employed by Stefano to impersonate Hope for Hope's faked death and is burned. In 1990, Hope was plunged into a bath of acid before her horrified friends and family, but at the last minute Swamp Girl was substituted for her. Swamp Girl survives but bears facial scars. 

After four years, Bo returns to Maison Blanche to uncover the secrets of Hope's past (and he does so alone; he is now estranged from Hope). Maison Blanche was burnt to the ground in a previous arc some years before. It is in the vicinity of the ruins of Maison Blanche that Bo happens upon Swamp Girl, who lives as a hermit in an abandoned bunker in the nearby bayou. She is treated as a sort of witch or deity by the hillbilly locals in the area. And indeed, she is a strange figure. Swamp Girl can barely speak; she is more or less an idiot; she smears mud on her face to conceal her scars. 

The sensitive and empathetic Bo succeeds in winning her trust and prying her out of her shell. After being cleaned up and given plastic surgery, she is revealed to be a beautiful young woman and, in a startling twist, Greta Von Amberg, the daughter of Princess Gina. Again Days takes liberties and never explains to our satisfaction how Greta wound up as Stefano's employee and a Louisiana cavewoman.

Greta shares with Kristen the leading function of Ni and Kristen's strangeness; but unlike Kristen, she is sweet, sympathetic, good-natured. Unlike Kristen, she is a Feeler; like Kristen, she is a Ni-dominant. That leading function makes her an oddly wispy and insubstantial figure; Ni-dominant characters always seem 'out of sync' with the material world. Further, like Kristen she is not a Judger, and that separates her type from her mother's - and Hope's.

Susan Banks - ENFP

A well-balanced show, Days decides every now and then to contrast a little whackiness and zaniness against the prevalent broodingness and seriousness. The reader will perhaps have noticed in the characters typed so far a tendency towards solemnity and gravity; certainly the writers in the late 1990s noticed it, which is why they introduced Susan Banks. 

Susan, a semi-moronic hillbilly and yokel, first appears in 1996. After being approached by Stefano and offered a large sum of money, she agrees to give birth to Stefano's baby and pass it off as Kristen's. One of the reasons why Susan goes along with Stefano's scheme is that she is suggestible. Dressing in Elvis garb, Stefano convinces Susan, an Elvis fan, that he is Elvis brought back to life. Susan is artificially inseminated in an operating room, and to give what we today call emotional support, Stefano looks on dressed in his Elvis outfit and his Elvis sunglasses (and no, I am not making any of this up). Susan gives birth to a son she names Elvis 'EJ' DiMera, who will return to Days as a villain many years later. 

In the years 1996 to 1998, Susan is employed as both the surrogate mother of Kristen's child and a doppelganger of Kristen. Susan and Kristen swap identities nearly as many times as Hope and Princess Gina. Even though Susan and Kristen are chalk and cheese - Kristen is Thinker, Susan a Feeler, Kristen an Introvert, Susan an Extravert - Kristen teaches Susan how to look, speak and walk like her. Kristen's tutoring is successful, so much so that Susan's imposture fools John.

But the servant revolts against the master. In 1997, a wedding between John and Kristen takes place, and unbeknownst to the attendees Susan is impersonating the bride. Before the wedding, Marlena has been imprisoned by Kristen in the secret room, a dungeon built by Stefano under Kristen's house. Kristen is hoist by her own petard after Susan shoves her into the secret room and there Kristen joins Marlena; Susan intends to take Kristen's place at the altar - and John for herself. Susan being Susan, changes are made to the wedding: it is to be a rockabilly wedding with an Elvis and Graceland theme. 

Of course Days does not let John marry Susan, and after a typical soap denouement, the substitution along with Kristen's imprisonment of Marlena is exposed. Kristen is arrested and Susan inexplicably gets off scott free. But Susan is tarnished; the events of the arc have served the purpose of showing us that she is not a good person. Indeed, 1998 suggests that she may even have sociopathic tendencies. 

To examine Susan's MBTI type: Susan's chameleon personality is linked to her dominant function, Extraverted Intuition Ne. That function sees potentiality. It looks beyond the world of the senses and into the essence of things, and it sees a thing's capability of turning into something else, of an x's turning into a y. 

The types without a strong Ne cannot detect that potentiality; they may even find a sudden and abrupt transition from an x to a y jarring and discordant. The disparity between types explains why it is that some types find Susan's as annoying as the sound of nails scraping a blackboard. 

Those familiar with 1980s Days will see in Susan an iteration of Calliope Jones, another annoying ENFP. Calliope was much used in the show (presumably because the writers and producers found her hilarious), perhaps over-used. 

In all fairness, Calliope did give colour and life to Days. She provided a counterpoint to the 1980s melodrama and seriousness. (Incidentally, Calliope served as the inspiration for another lively and colourful character - Batman villain Harley Quinn). Susan does the same in Days in 1998. She breaks up the monotony; too much of a gothic tone and texture can be overbearing. 

VII. Missing types

In this essay, I wanted to give an instance of each of the 16 personality types. Now that I am reaching the end, the astute reader will have noticed that only 13 out of the 16 are profiled; where are the remaining three? 

None of the remaining three are to be found in 1998. The missing types can only be found in the seasons before. To that end, let us look to characters from the 1980s.  

Shane Donovan - ENTP

The upper-class and gentlemanly Englishman Donovan is a secret agent working for the ISA (International Security Alliance). One could make the quick and easy comparison of Shane Donovan to James Bond, and indeed, in the Miami arc (which takes place in 1985) Donovan channels James Bond and Kostachek Sonny Crockett; Donovan wears a white tuxedo, Kostachek a pastel blazer with rolled-up sleeves. The crucial difference is that Bond is a Sensor, Donovan  an Intuitive. 

Donovan loves technology and he uses a seemingly endless supply of gadgets. In doing so he calls to mind the stock ENTP mad scientist and inventor. It is appropriate, then, to compare Shane not to Bond but to Tony Stark. 
 
The YouTuber Leon Tsao made a video in which he touches upon the stock ENTP character's love of scientific equipment. Tsao notes (and this has a bearing on ENTPs such as Shane) that the technology accompanies the ENTP wherever he goes. It need not even be sophisticated and it could be as simple as a slide rule or a piece of chalk. 

Throughout the eighties, Shane appeared constantly as a leading man, and he and his wife were relentlessly hyped as a super-couple (the other half of which is Kimberley Brady, Bo and Roman's sister) but he never did attract the same interest that Bo, Roman, Steve, and John did. It is only with the passing of time that Shane became a fan favourite. He departs in 1992, the actor playing Shane (Charles O'Shaughnessy) moving on to the greener pastures of The Nanny and General Hospital, but is not the last we have seen of him; Shane returns to the show sporadically, putting in a cameo now and then, and the return appearances are greeted with delight by longtime fans who remember him fondly from the eighties. 

Kayla Brady - ESFJ or ENFJ? 

Mary-Beth Evans' Kayla is introduced in 1986. Kayla works as a nurse in Cleveland and visits Salem to help steer her family through their latest crisis. She wants her brother Bo, who we by now know is Victor's son, to reconcile with her father Shawn. The pair have quarreled; Shawn is outraged to learn that he has been cuckolded by Victor. He suspects that Victor is the love of Caroline's life, and feeling hurt, he casts Bo out (Caroline is Shawn's wife and Bo's mother). Kayla believes that the strife is ugly and unnecessary, and she uses all her latent persuasive and demagogic power to restore family unity. 

Unfortunately, associates of Victor's require her (for a number of reasons) to live in Salem full-time, and so harmonica-playing hoodlum Steve 'Patch' Johnson is hired; he is given the job of forcing Kayla out of Cleveland. Using his trademark set of lockpicks, Steve breaks into her apartment while she is away and trashes it. He makes anonymous obscene phone calls to Kayla, who withers. She flees Cleveland and returns to Salem - permanently. 

The effervescent and upbeat Kayla is unscathed by Steve's harassment. She finds employment at the newly-opened Salem Riverside Emergency Medical Centre. There she once again encounters Steve. This time he has been hired by Victor himself: Steve is to spy on her; Victor, seeking as always to control his children, wants Steve to get information about Bo through Kayla. 

And thus Steve and Kayla's relationship begins, a relationship which is unconventional. In the first year of their acquaintance, Steve and Kayla can be described as neither lovers nor friends but as constant companions. Kayla keeps company with Steve and tags along with him on all his adventures but does not go on dates with him, and nor is she sexually intimate with him. 

During their lengthy dialogues, they exchange their philosophical views. From their interactions, we see that Steve is the opposite of Kayla. He is a male, she is a female, he is an Introvert, she an Extravert, he a Thinker, she a Feeler. 

The Steve-Kayla relationship recalls Jung's theory of the animus and the anima. In light of Jung's theory, we could posit that Steve is really Kayla's male self, and a male self which is a projection of Kayla's unconscious. Steve appears as a figment of Kayla's imagination; he is a phantasm, one which only Kayla herself sees. In support of this Jungian interpretation, it should be noted that Steve and Kayla's scenes together possess a surreal quality, and the uncanny effect of these scenes is heightened by Steve's outlandish appearance. 

A viewer familiar with MBTI can deduce from the early Kayla episodes that she is an Extravert, a Feeler and a Judger. She is an Extraverted Feeling-Fe dominant, and this entails she must be one of the two Fe dominant types; she must be either an ESFJ or an ENFJ. 

What distinguishes the ESFJ from the ENFJ is the perceiving function of each type: ENFJs are Intuitives, ESFJs Sensors. If Kayla is to be stood alongside her mother Caroline, the differences between the ENFJ and ESFJ become apparent. Caroline, a tough old bird, possesses a self-assertiveness which could be felt as aggression, and Kayla does not; Caroline, like all female ESFJ characters, is a domestic goddess, and Kayla is not. We should note that Kayla cannot cook - a fact which is established early on - and that she lets Steve do all her cooking for her. 

This trait of Kayla's is related to her lacking strong Introverted Sensing Si. The function of Si means comfort, domesticity, orderliness; and it means sensations of health and well-being. A type's having Si as a strong function does not entail that the type is healthy, for that type could be, for example, overweight; all the same, the type with a strong Si nearly always interprets pleasant physical sensations as signs of health and wellness. He trusts in the signals of his body. Kayla is the opposite. As the Kayla adventure stories unfold, we learn that an unsettled and disturbed Kayla ignores messages sent to her by her body; she neglects her physical well-being and comfort; she pays little attention to her hunger, cold, fatigue, exhaustion.  

After a little thought, then, we ought to conclude that Kayla is an Intuitive, not a Sensor. The classification is borne out by Kayla's unique abilities. Like Hope's type, the NF sister-type of Kayla's, Kayla can look through another's person's facade, peel away the outer layers of their personality, detect the potential within, and perceive any inner goodness. Characters such as Roman and Bo, who love her and want to protect her, chastise her for this trait; they tell her that she is naive. But Kayla is one of Keirsey's Idealists; she is blessed with a vision. She glimpses another world behind this one, and that world is an improvement on the one we all know. She paints pictures with words and dangles before her listeners the prospect of a better life, and it is the otherwordly, idealistic, visionary qualities of her personality type  - so typical of the ENFJ - that draw Steve to her. 

Like all ENFJ characters, Kayla possesses magnetic powers of persuasion, and unlike a good many ENFJ, she uses these in settings in which are small and down home. In doing so she diverges from other ENFJ heroes such as Wonder Woman and Jean-Luc Picard. Wonder Woman delivers speeches to the UN, Jean-Luc Picard to the crew of the Starship Enterprise, and Kayla to friends and family in Salem. Another ENFJ character - Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman - likewise operates at the same small level as Kayla: you will not find Sue practising ENFJ demagoguery before large audiences. 

Other points of resemblance between Kayla and Sue can be found. One of these is that both women are as ethereal, blithe, and spacey, as the other; the ENFJ type is not of this world. 

Like Steve, Kayla was suited more to the Days of the 1980s than the 1990s: hence her departure in 1992. After the writers had killed off one half of the Steve and Kayla supercouple, they found it increasingly hard to justify Kayla's existence. Appropriately enough, when she did return (in 2006), she brought her other half in tow: Steve, who had been brought back to life. 

VIII. Another missing type, and a conclusion

I have presented 15 of the 16 personality types. One is missing: which? The answer is the INTP. The type is conspicuous by his absence in 35 years of Days and Bold, and perhaps soap writers do not like him.  

To bring us from Days past to Days present: some time around 2019 or 2020, Days, like Bold, ceased being the show longtime fans knew and loved; Days stopped being Days, it continues as Days in name only. Those who are seeking Days greatness should look to seasons before 2019: in the Days past they will find at least three decades worth of good viewing. Days has a rich history, one that merits further MBTI articles, and I shall be publishing any here.