Somebody's 'kind of'

Question

I know the idiomatic usage of "somebody's kind of place/person/thing" to mean the types of place, person or thing that someone usually likes. But what about using it in the context below?

I don't have his kind of mental strength.

Is this considered proper usage of the phrase?

For the purpose of clarification, I intended for the above sentence to have the same meaning as:

I don't have the kind of mental strength he does.

Is it awkward to have a possessive pronoun before 'kind of XXX' instead of a normal pronoun after it to denote that XXX is of the type belonging/relating to the pronoun?

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, you've used it properly.

I don't have his kind of mental strength.

I don't have the kind of mental strength he does.

These two sentences have the same meaning. They would usually be understood as meaning that the person he refers to is mentally strong, and the speaker are not as mentally strong as he is.

This is is not strictly entailed, so you could subvert the listener's expectation:

I don't have the kind of mental strength he does. I'm even stronger mentally!

But usually, you wouldn't do that, so the listener would understand it to mean the person he refers to is mentally stronger than the speaker.