MBTI: Days of Our Lives rogues gallery

 

I.  The Days rogues gallery

 

A distinct genre unto themselves, soaps borrow from other genres: the spy genre, the action-adventure, the science fiction, and so on. In the main, soaps aim to provide conflict and excitement, and that does mean on occasion fisticuffs, gun battles, car chases, and explosions, and it also means a stark contrast between hero and villain, good and evil. This moral absolutism, as I call it, evokes the comic book and one genre of comic books, the superhero; the affinity between soaps and comic books is one of the main reasons why I like soaps, silly and ridiculous as they may be.

 

But I must separate the two. The chief difference between the superhero comic book and the daytime TV soap is that soaps are written for women of all ages, and comic books (at least up until the 2000s) for children, particularly boys. This is why most men who are normally fans of American popular culture shrink from embracing the daytime soap. I am here to tell them that soaps do not differ overly much from preferred genres such as the superhero comic book; soaps are meant for females but can be enjoyed by males.

 

Like any DC or Marvel series, Days has a rogues gallery. Like most soaps, it makes a clean divide between heroes and villains, and in doing this, it is as cartoonish, viewing the worlds in terms of black and white, as a DC or Marvel comic book.

 

On an intuitive level, we all understood the gulf between good and evil characters, but explaining it takes work. When I am settling down to write on this subject, I am confronted by a question which is this: in soapland, what makes a hero, and makes a villain?

 

II.  Defining villainy and evil

 

In Days, a rough working definition of a villain is: a Days villain breaks the law consistently and he does so for selfish purposes, whereas while a Days hero does break the law now and then, but he does so always in the interests of a justice higher than the law. Most of the Days lawbreakers belong in the former group, and Salem is filled with career criminals, many of them thieves, blackmailers, drug dealers, pimps, rapists, murderers, and all of them qualifying as villains.

 

On occasion, a morally grey or neutral character will engage in criminal conduct, and in Days this is nearly always because the character has come under the influence of a more dominant personality who is a villain. Gray characters include Lucas Horton (influenced by Kate Roberts); Mimi Lockhart (influenced by Jan Spears); Lexi Carver (influenced by Stefano DiMera); and Nick Fallon (influenced by Willow Stark). They may be either swayed, coerced, bullied, blackmailed, into going along with the villain's plan. They usually think that by co-operating they are taking the easy way out, but they soon regret their decision, and they usually end up in court and then jail.

 

In Days, the worst crime a villain can commit is murder or rape, and either of these crimes distinguish the evil villain from the merely bad; in Days, a murderer or rapist is always a monster. This is not to say that a good character never kills. Heroes do take lives on Days, but extenuating circumstances always exist. For example, a heroine may commit manslaughter (see Isabella Toscano) or justifiable homicide (see Adrienne Johnson), and the good people of Salem forgive them for it, recognising that the character's actions were out of character. And sometimes heroes, especially action heroes, are given a licence to kill. In one episode in the late eighties, Shane Donovan and Steve Johnson gun down, quite casually, an armed hostage taker at Salem University hospital; in other episode from the same era, Roman Brady orders a police sniper to kill a gang member who is holding Steve at gunpoint. In both instances, a villain was killed, and the audience's sense of justice is not offended, and indeed, in the audience's view, the villain got what he deserved. This is especially true in the former case: a two-bit hood had been stalking heroine Eve Donovan (Shane's daughter) for six months and trying to extract the location of buried treasure from her; at the time of his death, the audience had grown heartily sick of the man and was glad to see him go.

 

An act of evil makes a character a monster, and the monster who the audience finds particularly repulsive is the one who takes life with his own two hands; Victor Kiriakis and Stefano DiMera, both master villains, rarely if ever get their hands dirty and neither man usually carry out an act of murder themselves - they let their minions do the killing for them. (One exception I can think of is when Stefano, in a fit of anger, kills Curtis Reed, a thug who had held Stefano hostage and humiliated him, taking advantage of an illness that had made Stefano confined to a wheelchair).

 

The villain who kills with his own hands is seen by the residents of Salem as particularly dangerous, and this leads to another standard Days theme: the villain as menace terrorising the good folk of Salem. The Menace is regarded with fear and contempt, and in the eyes of others possesses a power that is almost supernatural, and the heroes spend a great deal of time trying to divine his intentions, anticipating his next move. At the beginning of the 1986 season, three villains - Victor Kiriakis, his employee Steve 'Patch' Johnson (working most of the time independently of Victor), and the Salem Hospital rapist serve as the Menace. By the middle of the year, the lineup of Menaces has changed slightly: Kiriakis and his employee Orpheus (who like Steve Johnson is a wayward henchman of Kiriakis’) are terrorising Salem, and Steve, now a more neutral character, is their victim.

 

Every season after the eighties relies heavily on the plot device of the Menace; to take one season at random - the 2003 season (a mostly forgettable one) - two master villains Tony DiMera and Larry Welch, and one minor villain, drug dealer and murderer Vin Ramsell, do duty as the Menace in the first half of year, and the Salem Slasher in the second.

 

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the most frequently used Menace is of course Stefano DiMera, and because the DiMeras are such powerful pieces on the chessboard, they must be used judiciously. A writer deploying a DiMera follow certain rules, and the first of these is: only one DiMera master villain at a time. In the 2006 and 2007 seasons, EJ Wells (who is revealed to be EJ DiMera, Stefano's son) is the Menace causing havoc. By mid-2007, we learn that EJ was only holding the fort and was awaiting Stefano's return, and after Stefano does return, Stefano takes up the mantle of Menace once again; EJ is downgraded to flunky and then Stefano's conscience. For the rest of the decade, EJ fulfils the same function as Tony DiMera did in the 1980s: he is the good DiMera, forever remonstrating with his father Stefano and trying to persuade Stefano to refrain from carrying out evil acts.

 

III. Can a villain become a hero?

 

Villains can turn into heroes and romantic leads; this happens all the time in soaps. But converting a villain into a hero proceeds according to a set of rules. The first rule is that change must happen naturally and organically, that it cannot be forced, and the same applies to forgiveness and acceptance. Further, the reformed villain must do good deeds and do them selflessly, without thought of reward, i.e., without one eye on the approbation of the other characters; it helps if the good deeds receive no recognition from the other characters and that it is only we in the audience who see them. And lastly, the villain must undergo some form of punishment.

 

Accompanying the change from villain to hero is a change in the villain's view of himself. One defining characteristic of a villain is a lack of self-awareness. A wealthy and powerful man, and a man of culture and refinement, Stefano ought to see himself as belonging to the upper class, the elite, the aristocracy of Salem, but throughout his time in Salem he sees himself, as most criminals in real life do, as a poor picked-upon fellow who has been wronged. Stefano claims that he has been targeted by what he calls the 'Brady justice system' and that he has been unfairly persecuted by those in authority in Salem. This is rich, given that all the misery he has visited on Salem and the Brady family. If he is to reform, then, the villain must right his warped world view; the first step on the road to redeeming the villain is the villain's reassessing himself; he must begin to hold a low opinion of himself as opposed to a high.

 

To see how soap writers manage to bring a bad, even evil, character over to the side of good, we can think of two classic cases: the brothers Johnson - Steve 'Patch' Johnson and Jack Deveraux. The writers faced a great challenge in the task of redeeming Jack Deveraux; for whereas Steve is bad, Jack is evil. A snide, well-heeled yuppie, the mincing, effeminate Jack appears to be somewhat unusual and disturbing; perhaps this effect is enhanced by his habit of wearing mascara (never trust a man who wearing mascara). He commits rape, which is worse than murder on soaps, and after it, the industry journal Soap Opera Digest put him on the cover with the caption 'The Most Hated Man on TV!'. He is shunned by Salem, but nevertheless he becomes engaged to a member of the Horton family, heroine Melissa Horton, who is blind to his faults. Her family reluctantly attends the wedding. It is here that she comes to her senses, finally recognising Jack for what he is, and jilts him at the altar; her father Mickey chortles in delight. After this social humiliation, he continues to be a villain, but his acts of villainy are to be characterised more as acts of mischief more than anything else (Jack is an ENTJ like Loki, the god of mischief). And then, to our surprise, he does something an evil character rarely does: he develops self-awareness. He begins to view himself with contempt. Around this time, he meets the ingenue Jennifer Horton (Melissa's cousin) who takes a job as a reporter at the newspaper Jack owns. The pair's relationship is a strange one, close but adversarial. Jennifer hectors and berates him, and by this method, encourages him to better himself. Slowly, he is gradually transformed into a comic buffoon, and then a romantic lead, and then a hero. And then, much like Steve, he is punished. Lawrence Alamain, an INTJ, visits the same misery on Jack and Jennifer that Jack, an ENTJ, visited on Steve and Kayla. Thus, we are given another example of symmetry in soaps. Clearly, the writers wanted to punish Jack and not let him get off easily. Overall, their treatment of Jack and his redemption worked, and worked spectacularly; Jack went from being the most hated man on TV to being one of the most loved. He moved from being a villain into a hero, one half of a supercouple, and a fan favourite, and all this was done easily and seamlessly. For this we have to than the writers and the actor portraying Jack, Matthew Ashford.

 

The rule then is do not tell us that an evil character now regrets being evil, show it; do not tell us that he is now a character who does good deeds, show it. 

 

The below selection ranges from 1985 to 2008, a twenty-five-year period that encapsulates the best of Days. To help ground the reader in the history of Days, I have presented the villains in order of their appearance.

 

IV.   The Eighties

André DiMera - INTJ (first appears 1983)

 

A loyal 'soldier' or minion of the master villain Stefano, the character of André functions in two modes. When Stefano is around, André serves as a 'soldier' and does Stefano's bidding. He kills for Stefano but sometimes ends up going out of control, and he either kills too many people or kills the wrong sort of people (one of his victims is Stefano's daughter Renee DuMonde). After one of André's excesses, Stefano typically tries to reel André in. He will contemplate punishing André and then decide against it: André has a monopoly on Stefano's affections, and Stefano regards him as his finest and most loyal soldier.

 

When Stefano is not around, and Stefano is missing from the canvas for substantial amounts of time, André will substitute for him. He plays the master villain, taking up the mantle of Days' Palpatine (another INTJ villain) throughout the years 2002 to 2005, a period in which Stefano was absent.

 

What is confusing is that André is the evil twin of Stefano's son Tony, the good Dimera who is forever hectoring Stefano and demanding that Stefano renounce his evil ways. André, who is the exact duplicate of Tony, steals the identify of Tony in 1983. As the years roll by, André seems to be convinced that he is Tony, but André's true personality breaks through, and we see the subtle transforming of connoisseur and bon vivant and playboy Tony into the dark and brooding schemer André. Longtime fans of Days know the subtle visual tics that distinguish Tony from André, and we these in what is one of the great Days storylines, Aremid. In Aremid, André / Tony, who is terminally ill, commits suicide and frames John Black for murder. It is the perfect scheme, and in this instance, André lives up to the INTJ's reputation as a master planner.

 

Some of the most representative André scenes can be found in the 1984 season. After his latest scheme - which involves impersonating Tony and living Tony's life - goes awry and his imposture is revealed, he flees to London and becomes a Shakespearean actor in a run-down theatre. Wearing a series of costumes and masks backstage, he deteriorates mentally; he descends into the brooding, paranoia, and obsessiveness that the INTJ villain is famous for. In these scenes, he reminds me, oddly enough, of Bruce Wayne, another INTJ.

 

Victor Kiriakis - ENTJ (first appears 1985)

 

A ruthless Greek shipping magnate modelled after Aristotle Onassis, the character of Victor first appears in 1985 months after the exit of Stefano from the series; the writers felt Stefano's absence keenly and evidently thought that another ENTJ mastermind was needed. Although not as flamboyant as Stefano, the smartly dressed and high-living Victor shares his sense of style, and like Stefano, he embarks on a series of far-fetched escapades that are marked by international mystery and intrigue. The DaysWiki entry summarises the first phase of Victor's career thus: 'Victor's organization engaged in many schemes and plots all over the world during the late 80s and early 90s, including selling military secrets to the Soviets, hiding stolen Treasury bonds in Stockholm, Sweden, and stealing a computer disk from the U.S. government that turned out to be made of an indestructible material with various potential military applications'.

 

Women, children, and family play an outsized role in Victor's life. In 1986, it is revealed (and this was something suspected by us all along) that Victor is the real father of Days' leading man Bo Brady; it is explained that in his youth, Victor had an affair with Caroline Brady, the wife of Shawn Brady, who is an Irish American fisherman and the patriarch of the Brady family. Victor is also, for a time, considered to be the father of Andrew Donovan, the son of Caroline's daughter Kimberly, who was married to secret agent Shane Donovan; Kimberly consented to sex with Victor to distract him from Shane's burglary of Victor's mansion. As the series proceeds, we encounter more of Victor's progeny. In the late eighties, Victor is revealed to be the father of Isabella Toscano; Victor had a youthful affair with Isabella's mother, who was married to an ENTJ billionaire, the madman Ernesto Toscano. (We see a pattern here: Victor tends to cuckold other men). In the early nineties, Victor marries Kate Roberts and fathers a son, Philip. They get divorced, Kate tries to kill him, and he marries model and former pornographic actress Nicole Walker, and Nicole tries to kill him as well. It is in this period that Victor earns a reputation as a misogynist. He sours on women, and sadly reflects that the only woman he ever truly loved and respected was Caroline. But we cannot blame his wives for the breakdown of his marriages, because we quickly recognise that marriage to Victor is a miserable affair. Like the 'rich old man' in the Eagles song Lying Eyes (1975), Victor is 'a man with hands as cold as ice'.

 

Victor takes after Stefano in his frequent displays of coldness, vindictiveness, and cruelty. I attribute this trait to Stefano and Victor's sharing the same personality type; the inferior function of the ENTJ is Introverted Feeling Fi, which can manifest itself, as Jung observed, in great explosions, or rather in this case implosions, of vengefulness and malice. This is commensurate with the ENTJ villain's desire for control. Like any Extraverted Judging type, Victor habitually lectures people and instruct them in how to live their lives.

 

Something that I do enjoy in Victor, at least in his first twenty years on the show, is his courtesy. Even when he is expressing anger or disappointment or annoyance, this well-spoken man struggles against his inclinations to vent - we can see these bubble below the surface as his brow furrows - and he strives to express his feelings in the most polite and courteous way.

 

By the late eighties, Victor retires from the job of Menace and master-villain. He does remain a villain but refrains from terrorising the Salemites and embroiling himself in international intrigue. By the 2000s, he achieves a sort of self-awareness and comes to the realisation that life as a villain has made him lonely, isolated, and miserable. Such insight never comes to Stefano, who is the same boat as Victor; in the case of Stefano, there is no growth, no self-awareness.

 

The secondary function of the ENTJ, Introverted Intuition Ni, can mean two things: firstly, a desire for continuity, for what lasts over the course of time, and secondly a desire for progress. We see Ni manifesting itself in two typically Victor character traits.

 

For most of Victor's time on the screen, Victor is obsessed by the need to find an heir to his empire. In his search, his attention is drawn to sons or substitutes for a son, and Victor attempts to mold them into copies of himself. In this pursuit, the young men he latches onto are his son Bo, his stepson Lucas, his son Philip, his grandson Brady, and his nephew Xander.

 

The other typically ENTJ Ni quality is this. Victor, in the first year of his arrival in Salem, champions progress. His company buys up all the businesses on the Salem riverfront, except for that of his old friend Shawn's; Shawn holds out. In a stormy meeting down at the docks, Victor implores Shawn to give in. Victor doesn't understand why it is that Shawn is resisting progress, growth, jobs, and all the good things that can come to Salem under Victor's wise leadership. Being a stubborn old Irish American mule, Shawn argues with Victor, digs in, and puts up a front; perhaps in his subconscious he suspects that Victor is the true father of Bo. The episode illustrates what Socionics calls the Conflict relation between two types: Victor is an ENTJ, and the Conflicting is Shawn's - Shawn is an ISFJ.

 

Orpheus - ISTP (first appears 1986)

 

Victor learns that a fortune in US government bonds is buried somewhere in 'Old Town', a district of Stockholm. The location of the bonds will be revealed if three tattoo designs are superimposed on a map of the Old Town district of Stockholm; the tattoos are of daggers whose blades point to the location of the bonds. The wearers of the tattoos are hero Bo Brady, his former friend Steve Johnson, and Britta Englund, a Soviet spy who has had affairs with both men. Why the three wear these tattoos is never fully explained, and neither is the part that Soviet spy agencies and the ISA (International Security Alliance), a shadowy secret service that possesses vast power, plays in the affair.

 

We learn that Salem superhero Roman Brady is involved. In 1979, Roman and an ISA agent who later becomes known as Orpheus are engaged in a gun battle with Russian spies in Stockholm's Old Town; Orpheus' wife is killed in the crossfire, making Orpheus a widower with two children. Driven mad by grief, he convinces himself that Roman is to blame and he vows vengeance. Seven years later, he comes into the employ of Victor, who is seeking out the bonds. The body count racks up as Britta and anyone else who knows of what happened that night seven years ago in Old Town are systematically murdered. Desperate to find the bonds, the ISA begs Roman to return to Stockholm and uncover the bonds before Kiriakis gets his hands on them, but Roman refuses; in a Machiavellian move, the ISA then kidnaps Roman's wife Marlena to Stockholm and holds her hostage there as an inducement; Roman is tricked into thinking that Orpheus and Victor are responsible for the kidnapping. Once Roman arrives in Stockholm to find Marlena and rescue her, Orpheus begins his long-drawn-out scheme of revenge.

 

Orpheus is not interested in Victor's schemes in the slightest, and after he finds the bonds, he steals them for himself and lies to Victor about their whereabouts. His motivation is that he wants the cat and mouse game with Roman to continue. Eventually Roman tracks Orpheus down to his tropical island lair, a fight ensues, and Orpheus dies in a gun battle (or so we think) and Marlena dies in plane crash (or so we think).

 

Orpheus returns to the show thirty years later, and it is never explained as to how he survived being shot: this has become something of a recurring theme with Days - a character will die and then be brought back to life without explanation. Other continuity problems cropped in the wake of Orpheus' return. Days fans know that Roman was played by actor Wayne Northrop, whose portrayal of the character ended when Roman died in 1984; he returned in the following year, this time being played by Drake Hogestyn, and plastic surgery was given as the reason for the difference in appearances between Hogestyn and Northrop. But, in 1991, the Northrop Roman returned, and the Hogestyn Roman was revealed to be an imposter called John Black. And then in 2016, Orpheus returns, and all his animus towards Roman Brady - so important to the Orpheus's motivation - is redirected towards John Black; he pays little attention to the real Roman Brady.

 

To conclude, two traits make Orpheus a typical ISTP. The first of these is his svelte appearance, in the 1980s at least, when he wears hauteur-couture eighties gear (including a marvellous Michael Jackson style jacket with shoulder pads and zip up pockets (in which he hides the Stockholm bonds)). The consensus among female viewers is that the character is extremely attractive, and it is this quality that explains why it is that Calliope Jones, who is working at a waitress, leers at him and behaves in a licentious and flirtatious manner after he approaches her to ask for a table at her restaurant. Amusingly enough, the normally unflappable Orpheus is deeply discomforted by Calliope, and this touches upon another distinctive ISTP trait: Extraverted Intuition (Ne) makes up the vulnerable function of the ISTP and it is main function of Calliope's type, the ENFP. Ne rattles the ISTP, as does the ENFP; the relation between the two types is one of Conflict.

 

Andrew 'Drew' Donovan III - ENTP (first appears 1988)

 

Like André, Drew is an evil twin and like André, Drew is fond of elaborate disguises that change his appearance completely. In this he is a typical ENTP villain: NT villains are often shape-shifters.

 

When we first meet him, Drew, like André, impersonates his twin brother. Drew attempts to take over his brother Shane's life in all aspects, which includes of course an attempt to enjoy intimate relations with his brother's wife Kimberley Brady. Like André, Drew resents and envies his good twin. His career follows the trajectory of André's: at some point Drew falls into evil ways, becomes an employee of Stefano DiMera, and carries out several murders and kidnappings on Stefano's orders. But whereas André is an introvert, Drew is an extravert. He performs his deeds with a theatrical flair. In one story, he impersonates a stage magician, dons makeup and a costume, and has a captive Steve lowered headfirst into a water tank on a stage; the theatre audience thinks Steve's immersion and drowning is part of the act. The ENTP's dominant function Ne gives Drew great powers of invention.

 

The secondary function of the ENTP, Introverted Thinking (Ti), comes into play when Drew returns to the show in 2017. He had left in 1989 after giving up being a villain; in his last appearance, he had let his brother and Kimberley escape Stefano's secret island (where Shane and Kimberley have been held captive) and he achieves a reconciliation of sorts with Shane; as often happens when a villain changes his ways, Drew is punished - he is shot, and for a while we think that he is dead. He survives, however, and decides to leave Salem. In 2017, he turns up in Salem - in a wooden crate. Usually as dapper as his brother, he now looks dishevelled - and maniacal. We learn he is now a brilliant computer programmer and hacker, a variant on the ENTP as mad scientist stock type. Ti + Ne gives a character a knack for creativity and scientific discovery. By the time of his next appearance (in the 2021 mini-series Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem), he has been transformed into fully-fledged mad scientist:

 

He poses as his twin brother, Shane, conspires with Dimitri von Leuschner to steal Alamainian gemstones which Drew uses to connect with satellite lasers in space. He intended to use them to destroy various locations worldwide, including Salem. However, he was found out and stopped by John, Marlena, Shane, and Billie Reed before being sent to prison.

 

Saul Taylor - ESFJ (first appearance 1989)

 

Certain stories and seasons of a soap build up a reputation among fans. The decade of the eighties is held to be one of the best, if not the best, for Days, but the consensus is that the quality tailed off after the two excellent seasons of 1986 and 1987; the seasons of 1988 and 1989 are not highly regarded. In response to this, all I can say is ignore the critics: widely disparaged storylines such as the Marlena demonic possession story of 1995, the Salem Stalker / Melaswen arc of the early 2000s, and the Santo and Colleen romance of the late 2000s, are great fun. In the seasons of those years, the producers, writers, directors, and actors did their jobs with the usual professionalism and skill that we have come to expect. And that is true of the all the stories of the late eighties period.

 

Having said this, I found the certain of the storylines of the 1989 season more bizarre and confusing than usual; one of these is the Saul Taylor storyline, which made little to no sense.

 

The overweight and middle-aged evangelist Saul Taylor comes to Salem and holds a revival meeting near the docks. After an accident, his sheltered and virginal daughter Faith is taken to hospital; there she meets Dr Marcus Hunter. Saul takes a dislike to Marcus and warns his daughter to stay away from him. Whether this antipathy stems from a father's natural protectiveness or from a racial animosity (Marcus is African American) is not known; the answer, we begin to suspect, is both.

 

At this point in the season, Marcus is undergoing a trauma; he keeps having flashbacks to his childhood, when his two parents (both civil rights activists) died in an explosion in a church; gradually we learn that Saul Taylor and his associate Alfred Jericho planted a bomb. DaysWiki describes it thus:

 

Years ago, Saul was responsible for numerous black church burnings in the south with a man named Jericho. One of those churches was blown up, and though Saul thought it was empty it really was full which Jericho knew. Among those inside the church were the parents of Marcus Hunter, whose father was a civil rights activist who was Jericho's target. Jericho tried to kill the young Marcus Hunter, who fled from the church.

 

Here is more background on Alfred Jericho:

 

Jericho was a crooked ISA agent who was involved with the Reverend Saul Taylor. The two of them had burned many black churches in the south and fenced stolen goods through Saul's traveling revival camp.

 

It is here that the story goes off the rails. Why would an ISA agent blow up churches and fence stolen goods? The incongruity is compounded after Jericho establishes himself in Salem; we see that he is a criminal mastermind, a master villain, and an ENTJ villain in the tradition of Stefano DiMera, Victor Kiriakis, and Ernesto Toscano. He is important enough to attract the attention of the ISA, which sends one of its best men (Shane Donovan) after him. He lives in a Stefano-like secret base inside a mountain; the walls of it are lined with giant computers. But even though he is a supervillain, he stills retains his alliance with the preacher Saul. They are engaged in some secret scheme that I never understood the particulars of, but it did involve more than fencing stolen goods.

 

After Jericho takes Shane prisoner, Steve is sent by the ISA to infiltrate Jericho's operation and become a member of Saul's church. Given plastic surgery and a glass eye to make him 'look pretty again', he poses as a drunk homeless man and makes his way into one of Saul's revival meetings. There he pretends to have a religious conversion; he gives testimony and confesses his sins to the assembly: 'I drank! I lay with whores!'. (This is probably Steve's funniest scene). Saul trusts and approves of Steve, who is sent to a religious camp on the outskirts of Salem; there in a secret room Shane has been tortured and imprisoned.

 

As could be expected, the story ends with a bang. Saul is shot and wounded, Jericho's mountain base blows up, and Jericho and Shane fight on top of a cliff. Both men fall to their apparent deaths. Steve's glass eye is put out and his eye socket crushed, and he goes back to wearing a patch. Saul gives a deathbed confession to his daughter. And so, the strange and confusing Saul Taylor and Alfred Jericho arc ends. In retrospect, it seems that the writers and writers wanted a certain aesthetic effect: they wanted to portray the Deep South in the 1960s, the Civil Rights struggle, and so on, and accompanying the footage of life in the South they had made, they wanted gospel songs. The need for effect took priority over writing a story that made sense.

 

When Saul first appears, I typed him as an Extravert and a Feeler - most likely an Extraverted Feeling (Fe) dominant. Seeing as he was a preacher, this raised the possibility that he was an ENFJ villain like Glorious Godfrey in Jack Kirby's Fourth World. But down to earth and small-minded Saul gets his information through his senses, not his intuition; he is not a mystic or a seer. And his family matters most of all to him - another trait of the ESFJ (Extraverted Feeling / Introverted Sensing) type.

 

IV.  The Nineties

 

Vivian Alamain - ESFP (first appears 1992)

The fan favourite Vivian arrives in Salem in 1992, showing up at the mansion of her villainous nephew Lawrence 'Larry' Alamain. The pair come from a Ruritania country, and both are fabulously wealthy and of royal heritage. The two should be considered as a pair: they are what Socionics calls Duals.

 

Because of this relationship, we need to look at Lawrence in some detail. Lawrence is well-dressed, well-mannered, well-groomed; he is a man who speaks with an American accent that is aristocratic as can be, and a man who is cultured and genteel; he is also snide, prissy, effeminate, self-centred, and a villainous schemer. He is, in short, a typical INTJ villain, and this time a typical INTJ villain as prince or playboy. Lawrence is a Bruce Wayne but a Bruce Wayne who has turned to the dark side; I am cynical enough to say that if Bruce Wayne did exist in real life, he would probably be Lawrence Alamain.

 

Lawrence is not irredeemable: as his time on the show progresses, he is drawn in shades of grey. In the 1992 season, when his ex-wife Carly Manning becomes ill and she and her stepson Shawn Douglas Brady come into his care, he treats the boy Shawn with great kindness; Lawrence is a gentle, albeit preoccupied, father figure. In these sequences we see one of the typical tricks that writers use to humanise a villain: they show him going out of his way to be nice to small children.

 

Vivian plays the part of Harley Quinn (another ESFP) to Lawrence's Bruce Wayne. A forceful woman and a woman who calls attention to herself wherever she goes, she is a bon vivant who loves life, and she lives up to the ESFP's nickname - the Performer. Unlike her nephew Lawrence, she is improvident and has no business sense. Early on, she confesses that she squandered her fortune by giving most of it away to a gigolo in Europe. Nonetheless, she keeps up appearances by living off credit and by doing so she maintains a luxurious lifestyle; and part of that lifestyle is keeping her dour Eastern European butler, Ivan Marais, in tow; the loyal and laconic manservant is inseparable from her and accompanies her throughout all her subsequent appearances.

 

To ameliorate her financial woes, Vivian sets her sights on Victor Kiriakis and becomes a rival to Kate Roberts (see below) for his affections. Vivian goes on to commit terrible crimes to achieve her objectives, but excuses are made for her - she was under the influence of drugs at the time. Improbably enough, she goes on to have more than one child (using stolen embryos): the middle-aged Vivian is as fertile as an ewe.

 

To sum up, she is your typical larger than life soap villainess, and like most extraverted villain types (see Stefano DiMera) she possesses a great charm and warmth; we like her, and we like seeing her on our screens, even though we feel we shouldn't. She becomes a fan favourite, which is why the writers kept bringing the character back.

 

Kate Roberts - ESTJ (first appears 1996)

 

The character of Kate, as played by Lauren Koslow (who previously had been an actress on a rival soap, Bold and the Beautiful), has seen a long run; she has appeared over the course of nearly three decades.

 

Interestingly, Kate Roberts as villain was created out of two characters. The first of these is a nurse called Kate Roberts who debuted on Days in the late seventies; the second, a nurse who debuted in the mid-eighties. The latter, a character called Kate Honeycutt, worked for Stefano DiMera and then Victor Kiriakis; Victor employed her to minister to a captive John Black (who in the first few months of his time on the show was a bed-ridden amnesiac swathed in bandages and who went by the name of The Pawn). In the early nineties, the writers of Days dusted off the 1970s good-girl Kate and made her into a love interest for Victor. She made herself useful to the show by expanding the cast; after her debut her children Lucas, Austin, and Billie were introduced (a soap can always benefit by introducing young blood). After the departure of Deborah Adair who had played her, Kate was recast; she was henceforth played by Koslow. And as often happens with a recast, the character's personality type changed. Elements of Nurse Honeycutt were introduced, and Kate became scheming, manipulative, ruthless, and evil.

 

Kate Roberts' medical background was excised, and Kate was made a businesswoman who pulled herself up by the bootstraps, a social climber who went from being a struggling single mother (and prostitute) to head of a corporation. A stylishly dressed woman who has the best fashion sense of all the women characters on the show, her life revolves around the men she manages to attract, and her children. Like many a soap parent, she is constantly interfering in her children's lives, especially their romantic lives, and in this capacity, she makes an enemy of Sami Brady, who is romantically entangled with two of her sons and who is the mother of her grandchild Will. A villain in her own right, Sami drugs Austin so she can have sex with him and claims to have been pregnant so she can trap him into marriage; she is pregnant, but by Austin's brother Lucas. Their son, Will, makes Sami a permanent fixture in Lucas' and Kate's lives, and such is her irritation, Kate cannot stoop low enough to get rid of Sami. In 1998, Kate and Lucas - whose relationship with Sami has soured by this point - frame Sami for murder, and Sami gets sent to death row.

 

Putting it mildly, Sami and Kate do mean things to one another. One of the most amusing of Kate's schemes has Lucas impersonating a blonde, long-haired surfer who looks Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar; Lucas sneaks into a restaurant in Italy and drugs Sami's meal; Sami hallucinates, and she nearly becomes mad after Lucas visits her in her bedroom and torments her with a life-sized Will mannequin that talks in Will's voice. 'Don't go mommy, don't go; why are you hurting me?'. But after she after she wanders to the seashore and nearly falls off a cliff, Lucas becomes remorseful. He is not evil like his mother and not a villain; he is merely a neutral character and a weak-minded one, so he is easily influenced.

 

Shortly after this story, Kate, who is married to Victor again, tries to kill Victor - twice - and he retaliates by throwing her out on the street. Homeless and sleeping in her car, she lands a job as a waitress at a café. There Sami finds her serving meals, and Sami of course gloats over Kate's predicament and rubs it in her face. The argument between the two continues into the restroom, and there Kate, who has made ill by her ordeal, collapses, and starts bleeding between her legs. Revealing herself once more to be a total sociopath, Sami snickers, and she gingerly steps over the growing pool of blood on the bathroom floor. This is strong stuff, and I don't think anything quite like it had been seen on a daytime soap before.

 

As could be expected, Kate hauls herself up by the bootstraps again after this low, and she achieves escape velocity from poverty. This is in keeping with her personality type, which is the ESTJ. That type belongs to a group of four that Socionics calls the 'Delta Quadra'. One of the distinguishing marks of a type that belongs to that Quadra is a desire for self-betterment, self-actualisation, moral uplift, the bringing-forth of one's inmost possibilities to completion. Whenever her children are caught up in a romantic entanglement that she feels is unworthy of them, she exhorts them, and the theme that lurks underneath all her lecturing is, 'You can do better'. In a twisted way, Kate embodies the qualities of the Delta Quadra. A character can preach moral uplift and at the same time be evil.

 

Like any ESTJ, Kate can be summed up by three functions, and these are Extraverted Thinking (Te), Introverted Sensing (Si), and Extraverted Sensing (Se). The dominant function of the ESTJ, Te, is logic, business logic; it guides all of Kate's most important decisions; the type’s secondary function, Si, drives her to create a safe, comfortable, familiar, reassuring domestic environment for herself and her family. Extraverted Sensing, which is what Socionics calls the ESTJ's Demonstrative Function, means that she is prepared to defend that safe and cosy environment with force - brutal force if need be.

 

Bart Biederbecke - ISFJ (first appears 1997)

 

Some characters must perform the function of background characters, drudges, servitors, henchman; not every character can be a bright and shining star. Keirsey calls these workmanlike, yeoman characters 'Guardians', and Bart Biederbecke is one such Guardian. Normally, Guardian characters stand on the side of good; Bart breaks the mold insofar as he stands on the side of evil.

 

Bart begins his life as a henchman and hitman of Stefano and he wears, like many a gun-wielding character of the nineties, a navy suit and a navy trench coat; he dresses like a spy or secret agent from the X-Files. As time goes on, we see more and more of the inner Bart, and he is revealed to be a sentimental character, and a character with barely suppressed creative longings; at one point, he records, in one of the DiMera hideaways, an imitation Frank Sinatra tune, and for the recording session, he wears his tie loose, Sinatra-style.

 

We can trace all these elements back to functions of the ISFJ that are strong. The first of these is Fe, Extraverted Feeling, a function that manifests itself in Bart's gross sentimentality. On finding that André, the son of his employer Stefano, is alive, Bart weeps tears of gratitude and hugs him; André, horrified, responds by yelling 'Don't touch me!'. This is a piece of cleverness on the part of the Days writers: like many a soap villain, André is an INTJ, and that type finds itself vulnerable to overt displays of Fe; Fe forms what Socionics calls the Vulnerable Function in the INTJ; simply put, Fe makes the INTJ uncomfortable, overwhelmed, oppressed.

 

At the conclusion of the notorious Melaswen story arc, one which saw around a dozen regular characters killed off and then brought back to life on a secret island (in a village that is a perfect imitation of Salem, right down to the last detail), Bart is holding the good guys hostage at gunpoint; the heroes attempt to reason with Bart and get him to join their side; after all, they argue, André's mental state is deteriorating rapidly, he is becoming more and more crazy; and furthermore, the entire island is about to be engulfed by an erupting volcano. So why not switch sides? Bart refuses, and in a strangled voice cries out: 'The DiMeras took me in!'. That is typical Bart and typical ISFJ. ISFJ loyalty supersedes self-preservation.

 

Dr Wilhelm Rolf - ISTJ (first appears 1997)

 

Like Bart, Rolf is an Introverted Sensing (Si) dominant, and it is the lot of the Si-dominant character to be nondescript background figure, which is what Rolf is; and like Bart, Rolf is a loyal, long-standing and long-suffering henchman of Stefano DiMera who is bullied and abused. Rolf does not deserve our sympathy, however; he is perhaps the most cold-hearted villain on the show, one who kills without thinking and without remorse.

 

Rolf spends most of his time in Stefano's employ inventing; he constantly comes up with miracle potions and cures, the most famous of which is his 'reviving serum', which can bring a man back from the dead. The inventive streak has led others to call Rolf a mad scientist, and from the perspective of MBTI, the most interesting thing about this appellation is: should it lend weight to the categorising of Rolf as an INTP?

 

We find a lot of Introverted Intuition (Ne) in Rolf. This is the function of creativity, and the exploration of possibilities and potentialities. Mad scientist types, such as the INTP and ENTP, possess Ne in spades. But Ne can be detected in a few Si-dominant characters, like Bart for instance. An Si-dominant will have Ne bubbling underneath the surface, liable to erupt at any time; Ne is the type's inferior function, or what Socionics calls the Suggestive Function. If a type is put under stress or placed in an extreme state of loosening of inhibitions, the inferior function will burst forth. And that is what we see in Bart, who has barely suppressed desires to be a creative type, an artist, a performer. We also see it in other Si-dominant types - Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager.

 

In Rolf, Introverted Thinking (Ti) recurs again and again. That function is the dominant one of the INTP, and perhaps the prevalence of Ti in Rolf could support the argument that Rolf is an INTP. But Ti does form an important part of the makeup of the ISTJ as well, Ti being what Socionics calls the ISTJ’s Demonstrative Function.

 

The ISTJ's Ti helps the ISTJ's first two functions, Si and Extraverted Thinking (Te) do their work. One MBTI nickname for the ISTJ is the Duty-Fulfiller; the fundamentally passive ISTJ, an Si-dominant, uses his secondary function Te, which is business logic, in his capacity as a cog in a wheel, in either a business, an army, or in Rolf's case, an organised crime syndicate. But his approach to business uses a lot of Ti; the Ti function is analysing, and it closely attends to underlying first principles, mechanics.

 

This explains why it is that cold and cerebral character who is a scientist can often appear to be an INTP, the consummate scientist and rationalist; after all, there are two functions that the ISTJ returns to again and again, and these are Ne and Ti, form the first two functions of the INTP.

 

V. The 2000s

 

Hattie Adams - ENFP (first appears 2000)

 

Hattie, one of several evil twins in Days, and Dr Marlena Evans' doppelganger, is played by Andrea Hall, the real-life twin sister of Deirdre Hall, who plays Dr Marlena.

 

A waitress who works at a greasy truck stop café, the malcontent Hattie develops a dislike for Dr Marlena after she replaces Hattie's favourite celebrity psychiatrist on a radio show. An extravert - unlike Marlena - she attracts the attention of a few prominent Salemites, including Marlena's ex-husband Roman Brady, who she falls in love with, and the supervillain Stefano DiMera, who frequents the café and calls it his 'Own little piece of Americana'. Stefano conceives a scheme to turn Hattie into Marlena's perfect double, and being Stefano, he intends no good. He sends Dr Rolf to persuade her to take plastic surgery and tutor her in how to reproduce Marlena's mannerisms. Rolf, a secret romantic, falls for Hattie, and we see a re-run of the plot of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1912), the Audrey Hepburn movie My Fair Lady (1964), and the Richard Gere and Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman (1990).

 

Stefano plans on abducting Marlena and making her disappear, in order to punish for refusing his advances; Hattie will take Marlena's place, the perfect resemblance ensuring that no-one will notice that Marlena is gone. Before Stefano can carry out this intriguing scheme, he is forced to leave Salem abruptly. He would not return for five years. Hattie would put in a brief appearance for the notorious Salem Slasher / Melaswen storyline of 2003 to 2004.

 

A Feeler like Marlena, Hattie displays a great deal of Marlena's Introverted Feeling Fi; at the same time, she is an Extravert whereas Marlena is an Introvert. This led me at first to type Hattie as being an ESFP, but I think Hattie dwells much in a dream world to be a Sensor, which is what an ESFP is. Besides which, Hattie's rather weird turns of phrases show a lot of Extraverted Intuition (Ne). This makes her sound like the John Candy character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). Here's what Taylor has to say on the Candy character, whose name is Del Griffith (I cannot link to Taylor’s site Zombies Ruin Everything site here, because the site is down).

 

Del’s Ne seems to come in the form of not only being able to find a solution in the dimmest of situations (and ones that get the better of Neil throughout the film), but in his constant analogous sayings and anecdotes.

 

"St. Louis and Chi-town are booked tighter than Tom Thumb’s ass"

 

"We’d have more luck playing pick-up sticks with our butt cheeks than we will getting out of here before daybreak."

 

"If they told you wolverines make good house-pets, would you believe them?"

 

Hattie, like Del, gets the best lines, and I believe that Hattie's creators took inspiration from Del, among other sources.

 

EJ DiMera (INFJ) - (first appears 2006)

 

I think of all my typings, this would be most controversial. Intuitive-Feeling (NF) types rarely turn up as the villain, especially INFJ types; as a rule, NFs are soon as too sensitive, too nice, and too ethical.

 

In 1996, Stefano fathers by artificial insemination a son on hillbilly moron Susan Banks; Stefano, preying on Susan's gullibility, convinces her that he is Elvis Presley and even wears an Elvis costume when he is with her. The baby, Elvis John DiMera, is born in 1997, and Susan escapes with him to England, fleeing Stefano's clutches. Sometime later, Stefano does catch up with the boy and raises him to be his evil protégé. EJ returns to Salem in 2006, not as a ten-year-old, but as a man in his thirties: the writers have taken the liberty of artificially aging him, that is, subjecting him to the 'SORAS' (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome) treatment.

 

EJ takes the name 'EJ Wells' and moves into the apartment next door to Sami Brady's. He keeps his lineage secret; the world knows him only as a race car driver and businessman. A handsome snake, his British accent, his charm, his fine clothes, his culture, his good looks, and his habit of walking around half-nude in a towel and flaunting his waxed, oiled-up torso - all serve to attract Sami's attention. His sympathising with her, his listening to her, and his lack of moralising and condescending to her, makes him different from all her other suitors; unlike these men, he accepts her unconditionally. The truth is that EJ, an INFJ, is the Dual of Sami's type, an ESTP. Sami has found the love of her life but does not get to enjoy EJ's good side for long; the writers of the show have decreed, as usual, that Sami must be punished for her long list of crimes, Sami being as much a villain as EJ.

 

At the first, I typed the slippery, insubstantial, vague, and otherworldly EJ as an Intuitive, and Intuitive dominant; his leading function was Intuition, N. In some ways, he reminded me of Lord Baelish from Game of Thrones, who Taylor types as an ENTP. Was EJ an ENTP? To be one, he would need to be a Thinker, and he lacks the ruthlessness that comes with a villain who is a Thinker. EJ expresses himself more in terms of emotions, feelings, ethics, values, than cold rationality; this is made clear when we see him on the screen with his brother André, an INTJ. Both are Intuitive dominants, but one is a Feeler, the other a Thinker. This is not to say that EJ does not do villainous deeds, but at this point, we are willing to accept - or half-accept - his contention that these are not in keeping with his true character. He is a 'good' DiMera, or so he argues.

 

One MBTI nickname for the INFJ is 'The Counselor', and that is precisely what EJ does with Samantha: he counsels. And he does not criticise Sami's lack of morals and her inability to empathise with others, which is for the good, for as Gulenko writes of the ESTP, 'Lecturing and annoying hectoring over this element can lead to a sharp deterioration of [the ESTP's] mood'. Gulenko writes:

 

The [INFJ] unconsciously produces large psychological distances on this element, he as if slips away from his conversation partner, closes himself off behind a meaningless smile. Events that are relayed by his conversation partner do not affect him deeply. It is exactly these kind of elusively polite relations that seem inviting to the [ESTP], creating for him [the ESTP] the stability of the external psychological situation.

 

EJ's thin-lipped smirk is the default facial expression for the character, and Gulenko is right to describe it as a 'meaningless smile'.

 

Ava Vitali (ESTP) - (first appears 2008)

 

Iconic Days hero Steve 'Patch' Johnson returns to the show after a 16-year absence in 2006; he was presumed dead, murdered, in 1990, but in a typically soapy retcon, it transpires that his death was faked and his memories erased. Steve takes up the identity of 'Nick Stockton', male nurse and delivery driver for the mafia. Sometime during his missing years, which are somewhat like Ben Reilly's missing years in the notorious Spiderman Clone Saga of the 1990s, Steve had an affair with the daughter of his employer, mob boss Martino Vitali. The pair are engaged, but on their wedding day, Steve is abducted by Vitali's goons and sent away. Thereafter Ava falls into a depression. She is prescribed drugs by a quack doctor and locked away by her father in a luxurious bedroom in the Vitali compound, which we assume is somewhere in New York State. The influence of The Sopranos can be detected in the 2008 season, and this is natural enough, because The Sopranos, which had come an end the year before, had been a highly popular show. It concerned the decline of an Italian American organised crime family, and the mafiosos in The Sopranos, like those in 2008 Days, live with the ghosts of the past; by the time we see them, both crime families, the Sopranos and the Vitalis, are clearly on the way out.

 

Isolated in her New York compound and drugged up to the eyeballs, Ava becomes increasingly unhinged. Obsessed by the past and her affair with Steve Johnson, she plans to win him back with the aid of her father's goons; even though she is progressively losing touch with reality and is neglected by the father whom she hardly sees, she still has a hold on the gun-wielding mafiosos in her circle; these men will obey her orders without question. 

 

She and her retinue follow Steve, who is in the company of the Brady family, to Ireland. After Steve's party board a passenger plane back to Salem, the plane is sabotaged by Ava's goons and its pilots are drugged. Ava wanted to ground the plane and leave the Salemites stuck in Ireland, but her scheme backfires. The jet does succeed in taking off but develops engine trouble over the Atlantic, and it goes down in a sequence so thrilling that we in the audience hardly notice that the same plot device was used before, in 2000. Days possessed so much realism in this period that one could be forgiven, when looking at the wreckage of the jet when it crashes, that a real jet was destroyed.

 

These exciting events only form the beginning of the Ava arc. The denouement, or climax, occurs when Salem's heroes Steve, Kayla, Bo, and Hope, are held hostage by Ava in her family compound. Inevitably - and we see this coming from a mile off - Ava blackmails Steve into sex; her ultimatum is that if he lets her have her way with him, the lives of his wife Kayla and his friends Bo and Hope will be spared. Fortunately, Bo, who is tied up, escapes his captors in what is an implausible escape ('And with one bound, Jack was free'), and he rescues Steve, who is mercifully spared the choice between sex with Ava or Kayla's life.

 

After the rescue, the Salem police descend on the compound and arrests are made; Ava is taken to a hospital, and she detoxes. After the drugs have been flushed out of her system, becomes halfway normal. She leaves the show and comes back in 2015.

 

For the Ava arc, the writers of Days were inspired by a Steve story from 1989; in it, Steve and Kayla, happily married, saw their lives upside down after a woman from Steve's mysterious reappeared; her name was Marina Toscano, and she was played by Hunter Tylo, who would in a few years become famous on rival soap Bold and the Beautiful. Marina claimed to be Steve's former wife, and in this she was correct, and the unfortunate consequence was that supercouple Steve and Kayla's marriage was null and void, and Steve was revealed to be a bigamist. But Marina assures him, this can be undone; in return for a divorce, Marina demands that Steve help her locate a map that will lead to buried treasure...

 

The two women, Marina and Ava, are con women and grifters, and share the same personality type, which is ESTP. The dominant function of the type, Extraverted Sensing, can be defined as pure force, volition, concentration of energies into a focal point like a laser; the secondary function, Introverted Thinking Ti, is understanding of the structures of things - and personalities - and for the predatory and crooked ESTP character, that means an understanding of others' weaknesses and how to take advantage of these. It should be noted that in such ESTP characters, the moral sense is atrophied, and this is largely due to the function of Introverted Feeling Fi. This function, a moral function, makes up the Vulnerable Function of the ESTP type; the ESTP lacks a strong Fi, feels embarrassed by it, and prefers not to think about it.

 

Considering the three functions the strong Se and Ti and the weak Fi, we arrive at a sketch, an outline, of the ESTP type, and we recognise the sketch in its essentials in plenty of Days villains over the decades; there have been many hoodlums, con-men, pimp, bullies, extortionists, blackmailer ESTP characters - too many to count.

 

Another strong function in the ESTP is what Socionics calls the type's Demonstrative Function: this is Extraverted Thinking Te. Simply explained, Te, which is business logic, help the ESTP's two main functions, Se and Ti, do their work. Se equals force, volition, will; Ti equals an understanding of systems, and a certain obstinacy. The ESTP wants to understand existing social hierarchies and carve out a place for himself in them; and he uses force, bullying, effrontery, to get his way. In this struggle, he draws upon the organisational power of Te; furthermore, he 'hustles', like a good Te-dominant businessman.

 

When we translate the above into popular culture and apply it to a female character such as Ava, we arrive at the stock character of the 'Girl Boss' who, when a villain, manages a criminal gang by dint of her charisma and organisational acumen. Think of Catwoman, and transpose her to Days, and we get Ava.

 

VI. The End

 

After looking at all the major villains from a twenty-five period, I have found twelve characters who are representative of twelve out of the sixteen personality types. The reader will notice the types missing from the above list: INTP, ENFJ, ISFP, and INFP. Coincidentally, each of the four missing types belongs to a different Socionics Quadra.

 

If you read my two articles on Days together, you will not need to watch twenty-five seasons worth; I have done all the work for you. Having said that, I hope that now my readers will want to explore further, because the series was a classic for a reason. It provided hundreds of hours of entertainment, and writing on Days’ past has made nostalgic and want to watch some of it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.