# Sensors vs. Intuitives



## Calvin (Jun 21, 2012)

Ok, so this whole rivalry thing is getting way out of hand. Sensors are angry because intuitives gang up and portray themselves as superior, but if you ask me, there is a reason for this. I grew up in sensorville U. S. A. (aka, rural Oklahoma), where I was treated like an alien by kids my age, discouraged from pursuing anything that didn't end in making money or getting married, called a moron for losing my phone, and criticized for voicing any opinion that disagreed with the gun-tote'in, kid-spank'in, Republican-American philosophy of life. But I don't blame them. Sensors comprise over 75% of the population, and so naturally, their view of the world is going to be shown as the superior one. Back home, intuitives were always portrayed as dreamy, impractical, useless, and lazy. If your main focus in life was not chasing skirts, playing sports, or climbing the job ladder, you were considered a real "weirdo-hippie." After discovering MBTI, I no longer feel like the waste of skin that sensors back home led me to believe. My social life has improved, my confidence has been boosted, and I am not forced to live up to SJ-American-dream standards any more (nothing personal SJs). Don't get the impression that I hate sensors, on the contrary, my two closest friends are SPs. The point that I am trying to make is that because of the lop-sided population, sensor values and cultural norms dominate, which makes intuitives feel alienated; sort of like minorities in 1950s America. You can't blame us for being a little defensive at times lol.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

It's getting out of hand because people keep creating more S vs N threads.


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## birdsintrees (Aug 20, 2012)

This whole debate is overrated.


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## I Kant (Jan 19, 2013)

Apologetics for us-vs-them 2013 edition. Now with less Nazis.


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## Bluefireluv (Jun 17, 2013)

Well, I'm sure this helps a lot ._.


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## Keepin it Steel (Sep 9, 2012)

Heat up the forges!! Shits about to hit the fan! :dry:


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

Calvin said:


> Ok, so this whole rivalry thing is getting way out of hand. Sensors are angry because intuitives gang up and portray themselves as superior, but if you ask me, there is a reason for this. I grew up in sensorville U. S. A. (aka, rural Oklahoma), where I was treated like an alien by kids my age, discouraged from pursuing anything that didn't end in making money or getting married, called a moron for losing my phone, and criticized for voicing any opinion that disagreed with the gun-tote'in, kid-spank'in, Republican-American philosophy of life. But I don't blame them. Sensors comprise over 75% of the population, and so naturally, their view of the world is going to be shown as the superior one. Back home, intuitives were always portrayed as dreamy, impractical, useless, and lazy. If your main focus in life was not chasing skirts, playing sports, or climbing the job ladder, you were considered a real "weirdo-hippie." After discovering MBTI, I no longer feel like the waste of skin that sensors back home led me to believe. My social life has improved, my confidence has been boosted, and I am not forced to live up to SJ-American-dream standards any more (nothing personal SJs). Don't get the impression that I hate sensors, on the contrary, my two closest friends are SPs. The point that I am trying to make is that because of the lop-sided population, sensor values and cultural norms dominate, which makes intuitives feel alienated; sort of like minorities in 1950s America. You can't blame us for being a little defensive at times lol.


While I am typically not excited about S v N posts.. I think the point you lay out here is the real core of it. N types, especially INxx types often experience a great deal of difficulty in childhood as a result of their type. Unfortunately, S types have absolutely no clue that this is happening, and are not to blame for it. It is simply how it is. 

Invariably, however, the N type finally gets to adulthood and suddenly everything is hunky-dory - congratulations, you are an N and get to spend the rest of your life being elitist about it if you want to. You still don't really fit in but now you have a broader community to find your place within. Time to let that rage out. 

Well, there is no one to let it out on. The people who didn't understand before still won't.. and everyone else either doesn't have a stake in the game or is just like you. 

I could write a book on my S v N angst, but it would just be preaching to the choir and railing on people who either don't deserve it or don't understand to care. That's brass tacks. 

You were born different... take it as a gift, just one you had to pay for.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> While I am typically not excited about S v N posts.. I think the point you lay out here is the real core of it. N types, especially INxx types often experience a great deal of difficulty in childhood as a result of their type. Unfortunately, S types have absolutely no clue that this is happening, and are not to blame for it. It is simply how it is.
> 
> Invariably, however, the N type finally gets to adulthood and suddenly everything is hunky-dory - congratulations, you are an N and get to spend the rest of your life being elitist about it if you want to. You still don't really fit in but now you have a broader community to find your place within. Time to let that rage out.
> 
> ...


oh my, we're going into faulty childhoods on type. This is gettin' deep with you isn't it?


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

FlightsOfFancy said:


> oh my, we're going into faulty childhoods on type. This is gettin' deep with you isn't it?


Are you f***ing kidding me? What precisely about my post earned your disdain?

What exactly do you imagine the experience of an INTP during their school years might be? That type is irrelevant? If it was irrelevant for you, then I am glad for you. Are you really offering me condescension at the implication that the same might not be true for me and many members of my type? Really?


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## ENTPreneur (Dec 13, 2009)

ENTP forum were ripe with threads about awkward childhoods a couple of years ago... Mine were difficult too. So, not just for INxx.

Sooner or later you just have to embrace that you are different, and find many or most "S"-interest shallow, unfulfilling and uninteresting. Then you start to be able to use your strengths. Then, some years later, I believe you start to be able to harness what the S majority uses, blocking the precog-forward-thinking to be able to endure doing everyday chores that seem pointless in the big picture. We all become more evenly rounded with age, which is a good thing. I almost believe that those "difficulties" to fit in when a child actually is THE thing that gives the most intelligence boost: You need to think things over....a lot. Most S that become "wise" have been through some tough stuff, and for most that might be when older relatives start dying. N are forced to start out "wiser".... But that takes it toll socially....


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> Are you f***ing kidding me? What precisely about my post earned your disdain?
> 
> What exactly do you imagine the experience of an INTP during their school years might be? That type is irrelevant? If it was irrelevant for you, then I am glad for you. Are you really offering me condescension at the implication that the same might not be true for me and many members of my type? Really?





> especially INxx types often experience a great deal of difficulty in childhood as a result of their type. Unfortunately, S types have absolutely no clue that this is happening, and are not to blame for it. It is simply how it is.


instils a victim complex based on a supposed innate characteristic--dangerous.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

FlightsOfFancy said:


> instils a victim complex based on a supposed innate characteristic--dangerous.


What is dangerous is assuming that a large subset of people claiming the same experiences... experiences that anyone with eyes attached to the front of their head could observe, are wrong simply because you inexplicably cannot or do not see it.

I have met maybe 10 or so INTPs in real life. Their experiences are the same with shockingly little variation. I have encountered far more over the internet. We don't connect on those experiences - we connect on shared interests, ways of thinking, etc. We sit in our little groups and do nerdy things for nerdy reasons ... like making systems for imaginary worlds, or theorizing about this or that, or getting into super nerdy things... and it's different. We are different. We aren't supposing innate characteristics, we are noting ridiculously obvious external facts. 

I didn't imagine getting my face slammed into my locker. I experienced it because I didn't fit in, and didn't pursue physical development, I was a nerdy little kid with no friends and if some asshat wanted to impress his friends by body checking me into a steel frame, he would do so without consequence. You want to say that doesn't happen? You want to say that the way my brain works has nothing to do with that? If you do, you are a fool. 

The point is, I don't have a victim complex. A year on this forum and this is the first time I have even mentioned it. I don't think about it. It's not important to me, and has no bearing on my life. I read a post and chose to offer some help and context to someone I had sympathy for. 

You've made an ass out of yourself, friend. You don't know what you are talking about.


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## DarkSideOfLight (Feb 15, 2011)

In your case OP's author it's not N but Ti, so stop living in your bloody head and get out  I as primary Ne creature should have had more trouble and my childhood was actually great, while being surrounded by Ss most of the time.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> What is dangerous is assuming that a large subset of people claiming the same experiences... experiences that anyone with eyes attached to the front of their head could observe, are wrong simply because you inexplicably cannot or do not see it.
> 
> I have met maybe 10 or so INTPs in real life. Their experiences are the same with shockingly little variation. I have encountered far more over the internet. We don't connect on those experiences - we connect on shared interests, ways of thinking, etc. We sit in our little groups and do nerdy things for nerdy reasons ... like making systems for imaginary worlds, or theorizing about this or that, or getting into super nerdy things... and it's different. We are different. We aren't supposing innate characteristics, we are noting ridiculously obvious external facts.
> 
> ...


1) I'm trolling you at this point
2) Did you not just fail on every attempt to categorize me. All your predictions were false. I don't know why I'd trust them now


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

@arkigos even sensors get bullied and like to do nerdy things for nerdy reasons.

I was bullied, beat up, and had a gun in my face because I didn't fit in. It's not because of S vs N, it's because of ignorant assholes.


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## Pinion (Jul 31, 2013)

I don't find the preoccupation of the intuitives in question with their victim status to be offensive, just tedious. I treat it with about the same seriousness as I would a teenager claiming that the adults just don't understand and are all against him.

Welcome to life. People who think differently get shit for it, and there's a lot more ways to be different than to be intuitive. You can start drawing imaginary lines and creating more petty squabbles battles, or you can get over yourselves and stop trying to win your war using the same tactics that began it.


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## Meltboy (May 14, 2013)

I'm an ISFP. Fi dominant.
One of my biggest values is egalitarianism. I strongly believe everyone is intelligent and everyone is valuable. Trouble is schools only favour logical intelligence and language intelligence. I'm lucky enough to be rounded enough to have had little trouble with school.

Imagine though that your strengths are devalued (which in your case they are not). For me I excelled most at Music, Art and P.E.
None of those things are valued in school. Everyone who wants to be a singer is told something along the lines of "that's unrealistic". Same goes for Art and Sports.
Dreams crushed. Passion gone. Value gone.

Life is tough on everyone at some point.

If you take nothing else away from this post I hope you understand that N's are not special when it comes to difficulties in life.


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## Amonite (Feb 5, 2012)

Actually, most of the school system (and a lot of social institutions in general) are geared towards the SJ. Keirsey Temperament Website - Portrait of the Guardian® (SJ) This is not actually a bad thing, but it can be frustrating the more one-size-fits-all the school gets.

I had similar troubles in school, it was one reason I skipped a grade and graduated early. Some teachers actually liked my uniqueness, some kept trying to make me fit the mold (despite that I was at the top of the class), and would actually be -angry- that I scored highly or solved a problem if I did not do it at the same pace or inside the same box as everyone else. Perhaps the clearest example is when I was younger - I was a mental math champion for my school, one of the teachers would take 15 mins a day to train me even, and I'd won a challenge among five schools. The next year I transferred to one of those other schools (that had taken last, actually). It turned out that mental math was -forbidden- at their school and seen as harmful. I was not allowed to use it, and forced to show my work on even basic problems like 12+12. They still participated in the contest, and I beat out their previous champion so got to go to the contest again - but after a year of unuse and no further training, I only took third. This hatred of mental math was actually part of new 'state standards' that were being brought in at the time. By middle school, the math program had gotten even worse (Open ended math, yeesh). 

I do not think it is a problem so much of s vs. n, but that because the majority of social systems are being designed by SJs, and those are being standardized, there is not the flexibility needed to accommodate or understand other types. 

This goes in many ways - from the need of FPs to have a bit more freeform learning, to the need of NTs to go -beyond- the textbook and experiment and innovate and test.


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## Meltboy (May 14, 2013)

Amonite said:


> Actually, most of the school system (and a lot of social institutions in general) are geared towards the SJ. Keirsey Temperament Website - Portrait of the Guardian® (SJ) This is not actually a bad thing, but it can be frustrating the more one-size-fits-all the school gets.
> 
> I had similar troubles in school, it was one reason I skipped a grade and graduated early. Some teachers actually liked my uniqueness, some kept trying to make me fit the mold (despite that I was at the top of the class), and would actually be -angry- that I scored highly or solved a problem if I did not do it at the same pace or inside the same box as everyone else. Perhaps the clearest example is when I was younger - I was a mental math champion for my school, one of the teachers would take 15 mins a day to train me even, and I'd won a challenge among five schools. The next year I transferred to one of those other schools (that had taken last, actually). It turned out that mental math was -forbidden- at their school and seen as harmful. I was not allowed to use it, and forced to show my work on even basic problems like 12+12. They still participated in the contest, and I beat out their previous champion so got to go to the contest again - but after a year of unuse and no further training, I only took third. This hatred of mental math was actually part of new 'state standards' that were being brought in at the time. By middle school, the math program had gotten even worse (Open ended math, yeesh).
> 
> ...




I hope you don't think I'm saying something I'm not (not intentionally anyway).
I don't mean to say school is made for NT's, I meant to say that what NT's are typically good at (logic - maths, science...) is highly valued in schools. Their natural intelligence is in the form of logic <<< my understanding.

All I intended to point out was that N's aren't the only people who have trouble in life. I'm sure SJ's also have had trouble in school at some point for whatever reason.

For me as an ISFP it was the lack of value placed on the subjects that I could have excelled at, given the encouragement.
As an NT it might be having to show your workings when you actually know the answer intuitively.
NF's will surely have their own view of why school was difficult in some places.


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## Coburn (Sep 3, 2010)

Shitty childhoods are not N exclusive and small towns are not SJ stereotypes. Sorry you had a bad childhood, but chalking it up to "me N, they SJs" is about as shallow, vapid, and ignorant as you can get.

Stop perpetuating the same prejudicial thinking that made your own childhood suck.


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## Calvin (Jun 21, 2012)

monemi said:


> I don't imagine I would have had an easier time in OP's hometown. This looks like a cultural issue not an N vs S issue with areas that lack education. You don't see anything wrong with chalking it all up to the evil sensors?
> 
> 
> 
> You got a point? Make it. I'm not sitting around every time I see nasty behaviour hung on a cognitive behaviour without any solid evidence. You've got issues with your culture, don't peg it on sensors.


 Can't help it. I LOVE stereotyping people


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## Pertinent.Irrelevance (Nov 2, 2013)

monemi said:


> You've got issues with your culture, don't peg it on sensors.


/thread


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## Dragheart Luard (May 13, 2013)

Calvin said:


> Can't help it. I LOVE stereotyping people


Here we have one of the core issues of this thread. By the way, if you're searching for reasons about misunderstandings, judging functions also would play a relevant role, as I personally have some troubles grasping Ti and Fe related reasoning, while Fi and Te is easier to understand, plus about the perceiving functions, Ni-Se and Ne-Si can also clash.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

lilpixieofterror said:


> I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but bullies come from all personality types, much as victims do too. You should see some of the things the disabled have to deal with. It can be terrible and tells us that bullies are not just from one personality type, but can be from many.


Bearer of bad news to whom? I agree with you. What gave you the impression otherwise? This is so bizarre. Did you read my post?


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

I get the distinct feeling that we are arguing against what we think the other side is saying rather than what they are actually saying at all.

I think I am tired of tanking for a position I absolutely don't hold.

/thread?

EDIT: For example, I picked on an ... ISFJ? I think... when I was in school. I later got the chance to apologize to him, but I was really mean to him. No type is a bully. Luckily, I never said any type was.


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## lilpixieofterror (Oct 24, 2013)

arkigos said:


> Bearer of bad news to whom? I agree with you. What gave you the impression otherwise? This is so bizarre. Did you read my post?


My mistake. Misread you.


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## Calvin (Jun 21, 2012)

Blue Flare said:


> Here we have one of the core issues of this thread. By the way, if you're searching for reasons about misunderstandings, judging functions also would play a relevant role, as I personally have some troubles grasping Ti and Fe related reasoning, while Fi and Te is easier to understand, plus about the perceiving functions, Ni-Se and Ne-Si can also clash.


 Good points. You do realize that my post was humorous, right?


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## Ninja Elf (Jun 30, 2013)

This thread is fascinating!

That said, I'm an INxJ who is very politically conservative, a stalwart Christian, likes to hunt and target shoot with both bow and rifle, and wants to live in the country, preferably on a ranch. That may or may not go against the stereotype of the typical Ni; I'm still learning about the MBTI and functions in general and don't profess to be an expert at all, but from what I can glean from the thread it sounds like I'm a little different than would be expected!

I also was socially isolated. I had a few very close friends who I still would literally die for, but I have extreme difficulty making new ones. When I do, however, they are a nice mix of S and N types. I have never really been bullied, maybe because they felt my anger (which scares even me sometimes) or more likely because they didn't really know that I existed. It's something that a lot of Introverts have to deal with I think, getting out of our own heads and joining with the real world, and I think that Ni really does have something to do with that, because I know that my Si friend has a much easier time with people than I do. But we all have our trials and our hardships, and type bias and stereotypes do nothing but drive us apart.


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## Dragheart Luard (May 13, 2013)

Calvin said:


> Good points. You do realize that my post was humorous, right?


I could suspect that, but it's better to confirm that it was a joke. Sarcasm can be lost in translation when you're on the internet. Now about my point, after reading a bit of socionics I grasped why Fe related behaviours grated my nerves, and that's thank to the point of least resistance (PoLR), so every type would be specially annoyed by a certain 'function' (well, they're actually called IMs in socionics), thing that could provoke some misunderstanding. So, really judging functions can explain why you also perceive that some people is less tolerable than others.


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## ENTPreneur (Dec 13, 2009)

If the majority of people were Ns, the S would have a really tough time socially at school. Stereotypically speaking. Now it is just the other way around....


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

Calvin said:


> Ok, so this whole rivalry thing is getting way out of hand. Sensors are angry because intuitives gang up and portray themselves as superior, but if you ask me, there is a reason for this. I grew up in sensorville U. S. A. (aka, rural Oklahoma), where I was treated like an alien by kids my age, discouraged from pursuing anything that didn't end in making money or getting married, called a moron for losing my phone, and criticized for voicing any opinion that disagreed with the gun-tote'in, kid-spank'in, Republican-American philosophy of life. But I don't blame them. Sensors comprise over 75% of the population, and so naturally, their view of the world is going to be shown as the superior one. Back home, intuitives were always portrayed as dreamy, impractical, useless, and lazy. If your main focus in life was not chasing skirts, playing sports, or climbing the job ladder, you were considered a real "weirdo-hippie." After discovering MBTI, I no longer feel like the waste of skin that sensors back home led me to believe. My social life has improved, my confidence has been boosted, and I am not forced to live up to SJ-American-dream standards any more (nothing personal SJs). Don't get the impression that I hate sensors, on the contrary, my two closest friends are SPs. The point that I am trying to make is that because of the lop-sided population, sensor values and cultural norms dominate, which makes intuitives feel alienated; sort of like minorities in 1950s America. You can't blame us for being a little defensive at times lol.


Dude, this has _nothing _to do with being an 'intuitive.' I'm an ESFP and I have felt the same way as you at times. In fact, so much so that I even thought I was an intuitive for the best part of 2 years. I think typology is pretty much rendered useless if it's just used as a scapegoat for people and their issues.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

Kintsugi said:


> Dude, this has _nothing _to do with being an 'intuitive.' I'm an ESFP and I have felt the same way as you at times. In fact, so much so that I even thought I was an intuitive for the best part of 2 years. I think typology is pretty much rendered useless if it's just used as a scapegoat for people and their issues.


Is it possible that what some N types report is something else entirely? If you are indeed an ESFP, you could assume that you wouldn't be cognizant of it... and are perhaps conflating the very significant things you have gone through with this entirely-separate-and-incommensurate-but-nevertheless-actually-real thing? 

I didn't understand before why this was so upsetting to some S type people. I now understand: 

1) It seems to seek to mitigate or diminish their own struggles.
2) For Se types, drawing conclusions from anecdote is often difficult because sensory experience is processed objectively. It's a wash, they say. Isn't it interesting that it is Ne/Si types who do most of the reporting, and Se/Ni types that are the ones railing against it? 

EDIT: If you look at this post... it isn't an S v N argument. It's an Si vs Se argument!

It's just us low-order Si types drawing strong conclusions from our experiences, and you Se types (of any order) saying it's a wash and seeing it objectively and as 'bled-together'.

Fascinating!


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

arkigos said:


> Is it possible that what some N types report is something else entirely? If you are indeed an ESFP, you could assume that you wouldn't be cognizant of it... and are perhaps conflating the very significant things you have gone through with this entirely-separate-and-incommensurate-but-nevertheless-actually-real thing?
> 
> I didn't understand before why this was so upsetting to some S type people. I now understand:
> 
> ...


Yep. I'm Ni-seeking, drawing conclusion from anecdote doesn't really do it for me.

On a side note: Not really sure I fully understood what you said above; I think you're basically just highlighting the clash between the perception/irrational functions (Ne/Si & Si/Ne Vs Ni/Se & Se/Ni). I found Socionics a better model to use when trying to understand these differences. MBTI just confused and eventually frustrated me.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

Kintsugi said:


> Yep. I'm Ni-seeking, drawing conclusion from anecdote doesn't really do it for me.
> 
> On a side note: Not really sure I fully understood what you said above; I think you're basically just highlighting the clash between the perception/irrational functions (Ne/Si & Si/Ne Vs Ni/Se & Se/Ni). I found Socionics a better model to use when trying to understand these differences. MBTI just confused and eventually frustrated me.


I admittedly don't know socionics terribly well, but I agree with your critique of MBTI. I am indeed just highlighting the clash between the perception/irrational functions... rather than the, I think, often confusing and meaningless S v N dichotomy, which I think this thread has once again shown to be lacking.


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

arkigos said:


> I admittedly don't know socionics terribly well, but I agree with your critique of MBTI. I am indeed just highlighting the clash between the perception/irrational functions... rather than the, I think, often confusing and meaningless S v N dichotomy, which I think this thread has once again shown to be lacking.


I would strongly recommend giving Socionics a try. It's much more in depth than MBTI, and, IMO, is the more superior system.


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

Kintsugi said:


> Dude, this has _nothing _to do with being an 'intuitive.' I'm an ESFP and I have felt the same way as you at times. In fact, so much so that I even thought I was an intuitive for the best part of 2 years. I think typology is pretty much rendered useless if it's just used as a scapegoat for people and their issues.


l'd say it does and it doesn't. 

The reason a lot of N types are drawn to typology in the first place is due to that feeling, which many don't try to explain to other people because it's usually interpreted as sadness or something else.


What l realized after l figured out what it was is that l was putting too much stock into connections that l felt were the most ''pure'' and completely disregarding the ones l didn't feel as strongly. As a result, l ended up with less people in my life than l'd prefer (but it was all my doing).

Most people just get to know someone and allow these things to develop naturally, whereas l know if l'm going to connect with someone immediate and if not, l've had the tendency to avoid them unless they're family (and sometimes even then).

l still feel like l'm ''cheating'' sometimes when l get to know people that l don't have an immediate sense of connectedness with but l'm learning to have a more balanced approach, and take into account that the other party isn't looking for a soul connection in everyone they speak to, either.

l think l suppress _a lot_ of my natural social tendencies (being extroverted), so much so that l believe l'm introverted half the time but can see very clearly that it's not my natural preference at other times. lt's caused me a lot of regret not to have the social circle l'd like to because of the way l view other people.

l've been back and forth with trying to maintain a wide circle of people and shutting most of them out. lt's caused even more detachment than l feel naturally, so l am working toward...working_ around_ my perception in this area. l think it's something that can be managed on my end rather than predetermined destiny like l used to believe.


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

OMG WTF BRO said:


> l'd say it does and it doesn't.
> 
> The reason a lot of N types are drawn to typology in the first place is due to that feeling, which many don't try to explain to other people because it's usually interpreted as sadness or something else.
> 
> ...


Again, this is not necessarily type related. It's called being _human.
_
Besides, we are all a mix of both sensor and intuitive. I have yet to come across a decent _theoretical _explanation, that is compatible with my own observational experience, that explains why N types should suffer more from 'special snowflake' syndrome than S types. Ironically, most of the views from so-called 'intuitives' on these 'S v N' threads display a certain degree of narrow-mindedness.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

Kintsugi said:


> Again, this is not necessarily type related. It's called being _human.
> _
> Besides, we are all a mix of both sensor and intuitive. I have yet to come across a decent _theoretical _explanation, that is compatible with my own observational experience, that explains why N types should suffer more from 'special snowflake' syndrome than S types. Ironically, most of the views from so-called 'intuitives' on these 'S v N' threads display a certain degree of narrow-mindedness.


...that's the problem. It ISN'T 'special snowflake syndrome'. It's low order Si, I think... driven by problems caused by Ne. 

Ne gets bad reactions - doesn't connect with people. Si spins out trying to codify it all. It freezes us up and becomes fatalistic. 

We aren't sitting here thinking "Oh, we are such special things and no one is special like us" ... more likely we are thinking, "What is wrong with me? Why can't I just be like everyone else?"

In fact, I've at times thought that someone who absolutely doesn't want to fit in is not likely an Ne type. I think Ne types, being Si types, often very much want to fit in, and deeply lament that they can't. 

Not Special Snowflake. Sad Martian.

EDIT: That we separate ourselves and emphasize the differences is our Si at work. It must seem silly to Se types. If we had Se, we could probably let it go.. we might not see it in the first place.. or care.


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## LadyO.W.BernieBro (Sep 4, 2010)

Kintsugi said:


> Again, this is not necessarily type related. It's called being _human.
> _
> Besides, we are all a mix of both sensor and intuitive. I have yet to come across a decent _theoretical _explanation, that is compatible with my own observational experience, that explains why N types should suffer more from 'special snowflake' syndrome than S types. Ironically, most of the views from so-called 'intuitives' on these 'S v N' threads display a certain degree of narrow-mindedness.


Wow. l participate in these threads pretty rarely for the very reason that l don't want to give that impression, l really didn't think l was.

l don't have that life experience. l'm trying to tell you as a person who is actually motivated to socialize l can see where l went ''wrong''. l understand it better (after years of repeating the same patterns), so whether it's ''real'' or not isn't really my concern as much as l'm trying to change it.

For the types who don't want to examine how much responsibility may lie on their end, l think they will suffer Special Snowflake Forever Alone Syndrome, but many are introverts anyway so there's often an even larger gap there.


----------



## Dragheart Luard (May 13, 2013)

Kintsugi said:


> Again, this is not necessarily type related. It's called being _human.
> _
> Besides, we are all a mix of both sensor and intuitive. I have yet to come across a decent _theoretical _explanation, that is compatible with my own observational experience, that explains why N types should suffer more from 'special snowflake' syndrome than S types. Ironically, most of the views from so-called 'intuitives' on these 'S v N' threads display a certain degree of narrow-mindedness.


Yeah, I suspect that part of that narrow-minded ideas are related to the conclusions that are made from anectodical information, thing that for Ni-Se users is moot, as the perception of the same events would vary thanks to the different perception functions.

Funny thing that the intuitives that have written the most about such 'discrimination' are the ones that value the same functions than the '*******' SJs. Maybe they haven't realized yet that they're more similar than they think from a first glance, like SPs and NJs would also notice sooner or later.

I highly doubt that someone would be able to give such kind of explanation to be honest, as much of those problems are product of different variables and biases.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

FlightsOfFancy said:


> I'm sorry; I have to agree with @_monemi_ and that picture aptly describes it. You make it seem like Ni is the reason why most of this blugeoning of your subjectivity comes from. Ok, so that user is an ESTP, who would share all functions with me if I'm an "INFJ," but there are "ENTPs" disagreeing with you are well.


I don't recall thinking that. If I implied it I apologize. I didn't think it.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Actually, I have more trouble reading your stuff than other self-proclaimed INTPs. I doubt it's something that's type related for this reason, in addition to many others I've stated.


I think that INTPs being difficult to follow is actually widely reported... but I can't really say. I could see it being difficult to follow. I was thinking as I posted that it might be a little difficult to follow.




FlightsOfFancy said:


> Yes, but I gravitate towards what I do not understand so I can understand it. Not everyone views it as off-putting. Again, I was bullied when I was younger--but it was mainly because I was just erudite and quiet.


I think most people seek to understand what they don't. I hope so at least.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Well, you want this to be taken seriously as a topic of predictive potential; is it not only reasonable for you to demonstrate this? You love Einstein so much, yet you don't see where he is doing something you are not: showing that his metric is going to work every time.


Do I want it to be taken seriously? Hrmm...

Oh, 'this' meaning typology? Or my theorizing in this thread? If the former: yes. If the latter: I don't know. If it proves worthwhile. It will be predictive if it predicts stuff... and I think that has to be absurdly thorough.. and most importantly not just reported by me. 

I require that the metric work every time, yes. I have to develop the theory first, though. I am not saying this is true... I am brainstorming. I -think- it's true, but don't know because I haven't tested it. I have said this to you so many times. So many.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> His logic is impeccably defined; it isn't this sporadic and based off of subjection. According to Kiersey, he is INTP, so again, I don't know why you think this is type related.


I don't understand what you just said. Three INTPs but it's not related?

"*I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."
*
Your assessment of Einstein should probably be drawn from Einstein.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> It has nothing to do with that.
> 
> You are asking people to:
> 1) Believe you, as you say it. (Invoke it yourself)
> 2) Then believe that it is as you say it, even outside your own mind. (Have others invoke it)


1) I am specifically not asking that. Only if it is the conclusion that they also reach. I do ask, however, to not be required to think as they do... and I prefer not to be called an idiot.
2) Again, no. Specifically not that. I am reticent to relent on my logical process, though.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> This is the purpose of standardization. We all have our own subjective lenses; I was actually quite avidly into typology for some time and have my own observations on types. I think they're valid, but I have not shown it to be so valid as to explain the way another person views it. You are stuck at 1 and claiming 2.


We all have our subjective lenses, indeed. I am pointing out those lenses as I see them. ....and therein lies the error. I am not saying that my lense is correct... just that it exists. I am saying that I have a lense over my eyes. I want to talk about that because I don't believe that I am the only one that possesses it. I am NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT saying that my lense is correct. In fact, I have repeatedly supposed that it is not. If I am the only one that has it, we can approach the question of why. I don't think that is the case... but what I think is the case isn't always the case. I have said that so many times. So many.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> IMO, all I see you doing is harping on these hardships of having 'diffcult to grasp' cognitive styles, when Ni/Ti (as you claim I operate on), is likely the oddest thinking style. Both are pretty subjective, unlike Si which would have more raw factual interpretations of experiences (according to theory).


Maybe you aren't that. I said I thought you were... but what I think isn't always true. That doesn't mean I don't think it. It was a hypothesis. Still is.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Yet I have witnessed an INFJ eloquently explain why she believes MBTI to be an illusion--in quite a cogent manner, segmented (e.g. has flow/doesn't run-on or ramble). Yet she is imbued with the 'oddest' of cognitive types. She doesn't use this as an excuse for being misunderstood.
> 
> I see you do this; you think "they don't understand me" but unlike this INFJ and Einstein, you don't provide much aside from anecdotes. You don't provide the logic behind your analysis that can stand without the anecdotes.


It's a theory, my friend. A theory I am interested enough in to explore. How can I pound that into your brain? I have said this many many times.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

arkigos said:


> ...that's the problem. It ISN'T 'special snowflake syndrome'. It's low order Si, I think... driven by problems caused by Ne.
> 
> Ne gets bad reactions - doesn't connect with people. Si spins out trying to codify it all. It freezes us up and becomes fatalistic.
> 
> ...


Are you sure that's just not Fe rather than Si? Si and Ne are perception functions so they simply perceive but they cannot draw conclusions or make judgements about reality on their own. That requires the workings of a judgement function. Fe, seeking interpersonal connection and objective relations would thus be able to create such antagonistic thoughts from within the psyche, the contamination being caused by its inferior and thus also unconscious nature. They are, as socionics and also Jung, posit, unconscious hidden forces that motivate us to seek certain stimuli around us and when we fail to get what we want, we may for example blame it on the daemon complex that Beebe mentions. For an xNTP type, it would be Fi or Se, and if one would actually study part what is going on in this thread, that's pretty much what's happening here.

No, I am misunderstood because you and I do not connect in the world of objective emotion, but instead the problem is that you are holding yourself and your emotions back within yourself (Fi) instead of sharing and expressing it externally (Fe);

As for Fi that was mentioned, Fi would have a different snowflake phenomenon attitude in that no one can truly and genuinely understand how I feel, think and value in this world. I think honestly though, if you truly were to genuinely ask people about this, that most people at some point regardless of whether they _are_ extroverted or introverted especially cognitively, will have some kind of experience of feeling left out or on the outside. Enneagram might play a large role too. I have an ESFP friend who feels a lot like this and yes, ESFP. She's also socially extraverted or at least ambiverted in that she's very outgoing, likes parties, meeting new people etc, but just because she does that doesn't mean she genuinely feels she's capable of connecting with people at a level that feels satisfying or that people are genuinely capable of understanding her. 

One could even argue that snowflake thinking might be _more_ related to enneagram if one were to mention another typology system, than it is cognition itself. How we reason around our snowflake syndrome may be cognitively related, but the core experience of it isn't necessarily. I mean, I experience issues with people not getting my cognition on this forum as well, but I wouldn't necessarily attribute it all to S/N. Just average intelligence levels as a whole will play a much larger role in that it directly determines people's ability to cognize the information someone else presents, and the more intelligent one is, the greater the ability to understand abstract information as well as producing abstract information. 

So I think there are many more factors contributing to feelings of not being understood or such than cognition.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> I don't recall thinking that. If I implied it I apologize. I didn't think it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





> I think that INTPs being difficult to follow is actually widely reported... but I can't really say. I could see it being difficult to follow. I was thinking as I posted that it might be a little difficult to follow.


Let me indulge how I think this is wrong even as per theory:

Not really; their logic and structuring is generally much preferred, if you want to get into type theory. Newton (an INTJ) has a version of calculus that is just not preferred over Leibniz's(INTP)--much because of how well structured the Ti logic is. His formalism is much more lucid, even to non-intuitives. Likewise, Ne is much more common than Ni, so most people would be able to follow an Ti/Ne more than a Ni/Ti, no? 



> Your assessment of Einstein should probably be drawn from Einstein.


Einstein's theory is the result of intuitive insight (whether it is Ne or the just plain intuition--the latter of which has been shown to exist while the former has not). There's nothing wrong with being a perceptive person, but there is a problem with abhorrent organization of those ideas when it comes to writing them out. 

Einstein did not just use anecdotes randomly and shoot off into unrelated directions when he wrote it down. You are trying to write it down now to convince us/others. It is leaving your head; please do standardize it in a cogent fashion. I think this is not function related at all, given how you certainly could not do academic research on the MBTI with scatter-brained text.



> I want to talk about that because I don't believe that I am the only one that possesses it. I am NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT saying that my lense is correct. In fact, I have repeatedly supposed that it is not. If I am the only one that has it, we can approach the question of why. I don't think that is the case... but what I think is the case isn't always the case. I have said that so many times. So many.


It's just that you seem to have appropriated this title to a degree that--at least to you--explains nearly all variances in your behavior. I think you look past what does not fit and zero in on what does. Perhaps you do indeed have these similarities, but do you think you are overemphasising them? 

For example, read a physics journal, since you like physics a lot. I doubt you will find many sporadic articles. Did the ideas arise in a sopradic fashion? Most likely.

Kids do this as well; they create fanciful worlds that they have trouble explaining. We, as adults, have to utilize the standard of science (which you keep mentioning) and general communication by at least being objective and cogent once we let our minds hit the paper.

Alls I'm sayin' here.



> Maybe you aren't that. I said I thought you were... but what I think isn't always true. That doesn't mean I don't think it. It was a hypothesis. Still is.


That's nice; I have hypotheses on a lot of things, too. I didn't much have an issue with this; I thought it was cool. It was also logical--albeit, as I already stated--sporadically explained. I thought you already confirmed your hypthosis, however. Why is this ongoing? Was it not a completed experiment?It seemed it was.



> It's a theory, my friend. A theory I am interested enough in to explore. How can I pound that into your brain? I have said this many many times.


As an INTP, an intellectual, a person who trolls, whatever--all I am asking is that you provide something aside from anecdotes to substantiate your claims as to why something is as you see it. "Compared to reckful, my wife is like this" What is reckful like? what is the wife like? How is this something broad yet specific enough to be indicative of said function? How is it not or likely not to be anything else? 

This is what logic was constructed to do. As you claim, you are a Ti dom, I am waiting for an explanation for why you believe this to be the case sans other possible avenues. 

For example: "This happens to intuitive children all while they grow up, and Sensors never notice" or whatever. How and why and why not else? Otherwise, I think those ideas are toxic and unethical to propagate as they create the very mentality that the OP addresses (Fe, I guess, if you say so--but can not explain other than redirecting. Or Fi in that I hate being misinformed myself. See what I mean?)


----------



## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

ephemereality said:


> Are you sure that's just not Fe rather than Si? Si and Ne are perception functions so they simply perceive but they cannot draw conclusions or make judgements about reality on their own. That requires the workings of a judgement function. Fe, seeking interpersonal connection and objective relations would thus be able to create such antagonistic thoughts from within the psyche, the contamination being caused by its inferior and thus also unconscious nature. They are, as socionics and also Jung, posit, unconscious hidden forces that motivate us to seek certain stimuli around us and when we fail to get what we want, we may for example blame it on the daemon complex that Beebe mentions. For an xNTP type, it would be Fi or Se, and if one would actually study part what is going on in this thread, that's pretty much what's happening here.
> 
> No, I am misunderstood because you and I do not connect in the world of objective emotion, but instead the problem is that you are holding yourself and your emotions back within yourself (Fi) instead of sharing and expressing it externally (Fe);
> 
> ...


I think I assumed Si because I've heard something I interpreted as matching from xNFPs I have discussed this with. I think the way that I approach it is Fe, yes. That would make sense for sure. However, I do think that Si types in general tend to see the impassible divisions in people and situations more than other types. I think Si types are more inclined to see the river as daunting and uncrossable. Granted, it requires rational functions to ultimately determine that, but it's Si perception that creates the problem ... that sees the river in the first place. Ne would be what saw the possibility of a bridge. I guess J would have to decide how to go about interacting with these perceptions? (EDIT.. Si doesn't just see the river.. they see the Daunting River... and, as for me, rational functions come in and question this, but it is Si that provides it).

I liked your analogy and thoughts generally, though. I think that you are right that there are so many factors. 

All I really know is that there are obviously plenty of people who report an S v N divide. I think that it is faaaaaar from fully understood... I also don't think that it's really an S v N divide and that people are mistaken in that broad assumption. I know that I have experienced what I think is a unique experience, and at first I was pushing that it was real....

I still do, but now I am going kinda meta and saying that perhaps there is some cognitive explanation for why I am among those who want to make it so unique. Maybe it isn't unique at all, but for some reason we want it to be or see it that way. I'd prefer a better explanation for that than the clearly ungenerous and bias reasons that have been offered. Perhaps we can approach this from behind and realize that this 'complex' is real, which will mean that the experience is real. It's a subjective experience... that it is reported makes it real... just not objectively real.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

ebullientcorner said:


> So, I read the thread. What I'm not getting is the argument with arkigos, monemi, and flights of fancy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Why would we personally attack you? You didn't to us.

Either way, I have addressed why I find his ideas to be toxic to people reading and believing them. They perpetuate the idea that major problems in life have a root cause in type. This went so far as to suggest that S-type parents do not understand their N-child's behavior and that N types have to grow up in an S world, while suffering an inability to co-exist to a large degree.

This is an inbred victimization-loving supposition based on what is not even shown to be true. Surely, this can't be good for people to think?


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

What's also interesting:


> I don't have anything against anyone, but I just want to have some discussion with out so much s*it being flung. All. the. time. So* take some responsibility, and we'll see you next time.*


@*ebullientcorner

*Seems like you've appropriated him into your group. What group is this and why was it done? I didn't even see you debating with him, so when did this "we" come from? What do you share in common that those who are not in "we" do not?


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

FlightsOfFancy said:


> Let me indulge how I think this is wrong even as per theory:
> 
> Not really; their logic and structuring is generally much preferred, if you want to get into type theory. Newton (an INTJ) has a version of calculus that is just not preferred over Leibniz's(INTP)--much because of how well structured the Ti logic is. His formalism is much more lucid, even to non-intuitives. Likewise, Ne is much more common than Ni, so most people would be able to follow an Ti/Ne more than a Ni/Ti, no?


Have you read Keirsey? His system, by his own direct admission, is stereotype based. Based on observations... his, specifically. There is a term for referencing a database of personal observations. Anecdote means 'unpublished', so since he published them and abstracted them into a set of labels, it isn't anecdote anymore? He did roughly zero tests and totally removed himself from any objective statistics, other than the vaguest of footnotes. PUM II contains no studies or statistics.. for proof or otherwise. It is purely from his observations and labels. He is often criticized for this.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Einstein's theory is the result of intuitive insight (whether it is Ne or the just plain intuition--the latter of which has been shown to exist while the former has not). There's nothing wrong with being a perceptive person, but there is a problem with abhorrent organization of those ideas when it comes to writing them out.


...sorry? I rather think my mind is TOO organized. My system is painfully specific... it just changes when my perspective changes. That you don't think much of my communication style means I am not an INTP? Awful. There's some subjectivity for you. Maybe you should take a poll to validate your findings. Don't conflate your personal esteem with something objective. I don't think your opinion is shared. I get at least one PM a week from someone asking me to help explain something to them or offer my perspective on their type. 

Their stated reason is invariably thus paraphrased: "You explain things so well". Perhaps it is the emotional nature of this subject? The abstract nature of my thoughts? Maybe I ate too much Halloween candy.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Einstein did not just use anecdotes randomly and shoot off into unrelated directions when he wrote it down. You are trying to write it down now to convince us/others. It is leaving your head; please do standardize it in a cogent fashion. I think this is not function related at all, given how you certainly could not do academic research on the MBTI with scatter-brained text.


Relativity is not a system that can be developed using anecdote. Type theory comes from observing people and adjusting the theory against that. It's the nature of the system. You keep going back to the idea that I am validating it purely on anecdote and subjective theories. For the 1000th time, I don't. Sweet baby jesus, man, I am not! Again, that you see me doing it unfortunately does nothing for the great effort of making it in any way true.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> It's just that you seem to have appropriated this title to a degree that--at least to you--explains nearly all variances in your behavior. I think you look past what does not fit and zero in on what does. Perhaps you do indeed have these similarities, but do you think you are overemphasising them?


I don't think I am basing anything unduly on my own type. I don't think that would be objective. I base my theory off those that are typed INTPs by others. I think that is the best way. I include myself, but only positively, not negatively. Does that make sense?



FlightsOfFancy said:


> For example, read a physics journal, since you like physics a lot. I doubt you will find many sporadic articles. Did the ideas arise in a sopradic fashion? Most likely.


Nor would one if I wrote it. I wouldn't take it from anecdote and theory until I had proven it. Then, I would speak from that evidence. 1001st time.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Kids do this as well; they create fanciful worlds that they have trouble explaining. We, as adults, have to utilize the standard of science (which you keep mentioning) and general communication by at least being objective and cogent once we let our minds hit the paper.


I do use fanciful words I have trouble explaining. Why you gotta be so hard on Jung and Keirsey? 



FlightsOfFancy said:


> That's nice; I have hypotheses on a lot of things, too. I didn't much have an issue with this; I thought it was cool. It was also logical--albeit, as I already stated--sporadically explained. I thought you already confirmed your hypthosis, however. Why is this ongoing? Was it not a completed experiment?It seemed it was.


No, my brain doesn't work in conceptual certainties. Just a hypothesis. This whole conversation is sifting through your misunderstandings. It's getting very old. Listen.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> As an INTP, an intellectual, a person who trolls, whatever--all I am asking is that you provide something aside from anecdotes to substantiate your claims as to why something is as you see it. "Compared to reckful, my wife is like this" What is reckful like? what is the wife like? How is this something broad yet specific enough to be indicative of said function? How is it not or likely not to be anything else?


I agree. That is necessary as I have stated ceaselessly. As far as what people are like to me, if it's not clear to you, you may deign to ask. Sometimes I don't realize that people don't see what I see. Whoops!



FlightsOfFancy said:


> This is what logic was constructed to do. As you claim, you are a Ti dom, I am waiting for an explanation for why you believe this to be the case sans other possible avenues.


Because it is consistent with anecdotal observations. Those observations could be wrong.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> For example: "This happens to intuitive children all while they grow up, and Sensors never notice" or whatever. How and why and why not else? Otherwise, I think those ideas are toxic and unethical to propagate as they create the very mentality that the OP addresses (Fe, I guess, if you say so--but can not explain other than redirecting. Or Fi in that I hate being misinformed myself. See what I mean?)


It's the beginning of the discussion and not the end. That you see it and see the discussion closed is ... odd, but is not the case in my mind. It's the opening of a dialog that continues as long as is necessary.


----------



## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

@FlightsOfFancy -

I can't find where you were saying that N and not Ne is proven. That's ridiculous. Howso? Please don't say CAPT studies. Please don't.

As an aside... what type do you think I am, if you have a theory on it. I'd like to consider your thoughts on the subject.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> Have you read Keirsey? His system, by his own direct admission, is stereotype based. Based on observations... his, specifically. There is a term for referencing a database of personal observations. Anecdote means 'unpublished', so since he published them and abstracted them into a set of labels, it isn't anecdote anymore? He did roughly zero tests and totally removed himself from any objective statistics, other than the vaguest of footnotes. PUM II contains roughly zero statistics.. for proof or otherwise. It is purely from his observations and labels. He is often criticized for this.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





> Have you read Keirsey? His system, by his own direct admission, is stereotype based. Based on observations... his, specifically. There is a term for referencing a database of personal observations. Anecdote means 'unpublished', so since he published them and abstracted them into a set of labels, it isn't anecdote anymore? He did roughly zero tests and totally removed himself from any objective statistics, other than the vaguest of footnotes. PUM II contains roughly zero statistics.. for proof or otherwise. It is purely from his observations and labels. He is often criticized for this.


When did I say I ever respected this man? I don't even recall reading or hearing of any of his articles until I joined this site. You make it seem as if he's a well-respected researcher with a wide audience. He has a niche and a Dr., but he isn't making it into the annals of serious psychological journals is he?



> ...sorry? I rather think my mind is TOO organized. My system is painfully specific... it just changes when my perspective changes. That you don't think much of my communication style means I am not an INTP? Awful. There's some subjectivity for you. Maybe you should take a poll to validate your findings. Don't conflate your personal esteem with something objective. I don't think your opinion is shared. I get at least one PM a week from someone asking me to help explain something to them or offer my perspective on their type.


Perhaps it is--to you. I am saying that it would be easier to read if you broke down what your points would be per paragraph. The flow makes it harder to comprehend because it is written in the fashion that many of us do indeed think to ourselves in our heads. If you have no issue with it, fine.



> No, my brain doesn't work in conceptual certainties. Just a hypothesis. This whole conversation is sifting through your misunderstandings. It's getting very old. Listen.


What do you even mean? Our brains work on some conceptual certainties. You are certain that there is a way such to type a person. The concept of being able to type is a conceptual certainty for you. 

Hypotheses have to be tested before they can be assumed correct because we all are plagued by conceptual certainty, to one extent or another. We may even fool ourselves into a bias, which is why so much is peer-reviewed. You would hate peer-review, I can tell.



> I agree. That is necessary as I have stated ceaselessly. As far as what people are like to me, if it's not clear to you, you may deign to ask. Sometimes I don't realize that people don't see what I see. Whoops!


It is clear what you believe is; I am asking, now that you do, how are you sure it is not something else? As just with the "intuitve kids get this and this because of intuition" why is it intuition and not something else? How can this not be explained by anything else aside from what you have witnessed. 



> It's the beginning of the discussion and not the end. That you see it and see the discussion closed is ... odd, but is not the case in my mind. It's the opening of a dialog that continues as long as is necessary.


I already explained why I thought it was toxic, and all I asked was for you to explain, how, to you, these issues are caused by type and not anything else. Why is it in your mind only this and not that, in other words?

You can always ignore me, as well. You predicted that I would be the one "hurt" or "trolled", then apologized for getting me upset as you knew I was an "INFJ". It seems like you're far more perturbed in the long run. How does this work under theory as well?


----------



## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

FlightsOfFancy said:


> When did I say I ever respected this man? I don't even recall reading or hearing of any of his articles until I joined this site. You make it seem as if he's a well-respected researcher with a wide audience. He has a niche and a Dr., but he isn't making it into the annals of serious psychological journals is he?


Ugh. Listen. I am discussing Keirsey in the context of his stated type and it's association to my behavior. You make so many assumptions, dude.




FlightsOfFancy said:


> Perhaps it is--to you. I am saying that it would be easier to read if you broke down what your points would be per paragraph. The flow makes it harder to comprehend because it is written in the fashion that many of us do indeed think to ourselves in our heads. If you have no issue with it, fine.


That is an excellent observation that I have already agreed with. I regret communicating in a flow of thought because it is clear that it was difficult to follow. I don't like to be unclear and I will take that feedback to heart. It certainly didn't help me to be unclear in this situation. 



FlightsOfFancy said:


> What do you even mean? Our brains work on some conceptual certainties. You are certain that there is a way such to type a person. The concept of being able to type is a conceptual certainty for you.


Touche. I spoke incorrectly. I had something specific in mind that I over generalized. You are correct.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> Hypotheses have to be tested before they can be assumed correct because we all are plagued by conceptual certainty, to one extent or another. We may even fool ourselves into a bias, which is why so much is peer-reviewed. You would hate peer-review, I can tell.


True enough. I think they are logically consistent and seek to prove them externally. That task is daunting, however, logistically, and is one thing on a long list. 



FlightsOfFancy said:


> It is clear what you believe is; I am asking, now that you do, how are you sure it is not something else? As just with the "intuitve kids get this and this because of intuition" why is it intuition and not something else? How can this not be explained by anything else aside from what you have witnessed.


It can! Again with the assumption as to my mental state. Again incorrect. Stop doing that. Seriously, stop it. I do not think in the way you continuously assert. I have told you countless times otherwise. Stop.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> I already explained why I thought it was toxic, and all I asked was for you to explain, how, to you, these issues are caused by type and not anything else. Why is it in your mind only this and not that, in other words?


Look up hypothesis. I do indeed need to run it through a null or alternative hypothesis. We've discussed this. Stop making assumptions.



FlightsOfFancy said:


> You can always ignore me, as well. You predicted that I would be the one "hurt" or "trolled", then apologized for getting me upset as you knew I was an "INFJ". It seems like you're far more perturbed in the long run. How does this work under theory as well?


I am fine with being wrong. It's testing via hypothesis. I make a prediction, and see if it works. If it doesn't I change the hypothesis or step back from it. I still think INFJ is the most likely guess for you - but either my assumption or the details of it were incorrect... at least ostensibly so. I can't say if they were in essence.

This is a broken record. We can continue this in PM if you'd like. I get something out of this and would be happy to continue, but we need to stop hijacking threads. I am stopping now in this context. Thanks for your time, I hope we can continue this discussion in some format.


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## monemi (Jun 24, 2013)

arkigos said:


> On a whim here... do you mind repeating back to me what you think I am saying? I am not certain it's translating. I don't think that your response applies.
> 
> I am theorizing that I see this subjectively and too categorically. I am telling you that I see in myself that I am doing what you are accusing me of. Let me repeat that to avoid yet another misunderstanding.
> 
> ...



*


arkigos said:



1) I think that introverts of other types report SOMETHING. I don't think it's the same thing at all. I mean, feeling marginalized IS the same thing, but that isn't what I am talking about. In medicine, two people can have shared symptoms but wildly different ailments...

Click to expand...

*This is you saying you're wrong? I see nothing of the sort here. Right here, you've dismissed similar symptoms with different ailments. I'd say different causes resulting in shared symptoms and shared ailments. This is a major source of frustration and exhibited that you still haven't comprehended what others have been saying. After I wasted time and effort reading your rambling posts. I hate that. I just hate it. Why did I bother? I've given thought to other intuitives perspectives multiple times on bullying, I've made a point of understanding their perspective. And I've still disagreed, but I put in the effort to understand them. 

How much effort have you put into understand that other dom's cognitive functions aren't exactly met by the hall of gratuitous praise? I find that other Se dom's and Se aux's really get those things that aren't accepted and leave us vulnerable. 





arkigos said:


> However, paradoxically, ironically, humorously, I think that my wrong perspective is endemic to my type of cognition.
> 
> I'll repeat that as well, in other words:
> 
> ...


*



2) Also, one of the great values of typology - one that both Myers (I think) and definitely Keirsey emphasized, is the fundamental differences... and how we so often fail to see them. Keirsey called it the Pygmalion Project... the phenomena in which a person of a certain type will assume naturally that their method of cognition is universal to everyone, and approach others assuming that whatever they are doing is a manifestation of their same cognitive mechanism. Naturally, the results of that are devastating. Other types, if judged by our own cognitive standards, will always be seen to be 'doing it wrong'. This feeds the all-important premise: that INxP types could be experiencing something that you are not cognitively capable of understanding. 

Click to expand...

*You sound like a insulting, arrogant, bastard to me. How did you not expect to rile people up with your choice of words? I dealt with bullies growing up. I made it my business to learn how to deal with them. Cajole, entertain, confront, empathize, befriend. What makes you so sure you understand us? These N's so arrogantly sure that they understand sensors but Sensor's could never truly understand them? You sound the same as them. 

*



It's natural to human bias to assume that what we don't understand is either dangerous or wrong. 

As a good example of this bias... it bothers me that Ni types are so dismissive of the powers of comprehension in others. I see that as arbitrary and foolish. However, I take a step back and see all the necessity and good that comes from it. I remember how some of the truly greatest people I've ever beheld were examples of this cognition. I can't understand it, but I value the results. 

Ni, above all, needs the concept to be in order - to be truely true. It's a pain in the ass how that sometimes manifests, but it's so valuable to me. 

I even like that people like reckful dismiss all the abstraction in my logic and just pound the stats over and over. These are fundamentally different modes of cognition. There is no mistaking that. 

It is therefore so narrow to assume that when one person says they feel like fish out of water, and you feel like you are a fish out of water... that you are both saying the same thing... and that they are somehow foolish or arrogant or petty for stating that it isn't. Because..

.... what if it isn't?

Click to expand...

*You ramble for awhile here. Making digs and then slip in the possibility that maybe it's not the same thing. That's the part where I start banging my head against the wall. It literally felt like I just tried communicating with a brick wall. With all of your convoluted reasoning having me jump through hoops to make sense of a point that you took a long time to reach, you are frustrating to read. You couldn't just give us an executive summary than a full business report? I just took the scenic route when the freeway would have sufficed. You pressed my patience and then proved that I wasted my time. You don't see why someone might be angry with you after that? And you're playing wounded victim?! These are your words. This was the way that you chose to communicate. What response were you expecting? 

*



The thing is, I don't even blame them for that. Shared experiences, blurred lines of sensory differences. Wait! Oh man.... look at that! Se. It's Se to want to pull our experiences together into an objective soup. Of course they want to make it the same and of course we want to make it different.... because we see it through those respective lenses!

There is value in us seeing the nuanced differences in us from them. There is value in that separation. There is value in them pulling it back into the mix, demanding that it remain unfixed... seeing the sames before seeing the differences. It would do both sides good to consider that the other side is right, in their way. 

So, no, my experiences were not at all like theirs. However, I very much value the justifiable difficulty they have in seeing that. My brother can't see it at all and I deeply value that in him.

Click to expand...

*Oh look at that. More poor silly sensors not understanding you again. Clearly, you're beyond our scope of comprehension. Let's find more ways to write sensors off... again. 




> EDIT: Another possible point of confusion... that I might have implied that sensors see everything as all the same... I mean the opposite in a sense.... pure diversity is pure dissolution. In forming strong groups we make solid lines of 'different'. In breaking down those groups, we create a low hum of same. Kinda like in The Incredibles... where giving everyone super powers will create wild diversity... and when everyone is special, no one is. I hope that makes sense. It means that you should be careful reading too much into my terms, because sometimes the meaning flips inside out. That I say Se sees us all as the same... means that EVERYONE is diverse, and thus no arbitrary categories can apply.


No, you're dismissing our points... again. Enjoy differences. But not so much that you fail to see the very basic human experiences that EVERYONE experiences. The things you describe are LITERALLY experienced by every person that has ever lived long enough to be self-aware. We have different reasons for it. But if you bring it down to it's essence, it's the same experience. Not all types are willing to discuss it or take the time to actually recognize it or admit it to themselves. 



> EDIT EDIT: Humorously, imagine how well this sort of cognition I am showing you right now went over with people as I grew up. But, yeah, like you say... it's pretty much the same thing you went through. Right?


It's the same thing I went through, for different reasons. Lots of people don't appreciate Se. In fact, it pisses off some people. Usually teachers will single you out and pick you apart and make a fool of you for it. This serves to isolate and alienate you from classmates. If you want to survive, you have to grow a thick skin and fast and learn how to deal with bullies. Different reasons, same outcome, same experience. 



> EDIT EDIT EDIT: You are mean.


Damn right I am. I didn't make it this far in life being a soft touch. This is probably an immense waste of time and I'm already kicking myself for even trying. If you haven't gotten by now, I doubt you're going to get it.


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## monemi (Jun 24, 2013)

ebullientcorner said:


> So, I read the thread. What I'm not getting is the argument with arkigos, monemi, and flights of fancy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


If you think I'm a bully, report me. Your rape comparison just proves you haven't understood my points at all.


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## Psychopomp (Oct 3, 2012)

@monemi -

I was thinking out loud. My digs were meant to be earnest. I was admitting my bias. I was being honest.

It likely never occurred to you how often I have been bullied because of my rambling off-topic thoughts. 

I am sorry for what you have gone through and recognize that there are so many people in so many situations who have been bullied. Nobody has any claim on that above anyone else, and so many people go through crap only to be told that their pain is marginal or doesn't matter. It's terrible and I don't want to be a part of that.

I am sorry that I rambled or was unclear in my sentiments.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

arkigos said:


> @_FlightsOfFancy_ -
> 
> I can't find where you were saying that N and not Ne is proven. That's ridiculous. Howso? Please don't say CAPT studies. Please don't.
> 
> As an aside... what type do you think I am, if you have a theory on it. I'd like to consider your thoughts on the subject.


Let me use this as an opportunity to explain myself as well: 

I don't think I said proven; I think I said it was demonstrated to be linked? I recall being careful not to say that it was proven. It is, however, a conjecture that is well-accpeted.

As to your type, I do not know. I used to consider myself semi-well versed in this, in part because I have a keen interest in psych. However, it is plagued by subjectivity. 

I don't mean that subjectivity is bad. All of psychology is subjective; it is often why you'll hear hard-science PhDs scoff at them. However, they fight this subjective bias with the aid of statistics to build upon the edifice which is pure anecdotal appraisal. 

For example, I am finishing a Machine Learning course for an M.S., and one of the most basic questions prior to employing those fancy neural networks is: what do we even measure? I never thought about how simple this question was before because in all my previous work, it was pretty clear what to measure because it was in the same field. 

For example, if I were working with an acid-base extraction, I KNOW I have to measure the pH. I have to think of ways in which to buffer the pH, but I know what I'm after. In physics, if I'm trying to measure the trajectory of a rocket, I know what I need from simple kinematics (and if you're nerdy about it you can get all you need from integrating adt). Similarly in programming, I know I need specific variables and data structures. I know I need a tree if I'm doing some sort of decision. 

Aside from to show you that I'm indeed interested in theory and geeky shit just as much as you are, I am also highlighting the fact that in all these cases: you KNOW what to look for. It may involve a cunning genius for some really complicated problems. I for the life of me cannot imagine how Einstein thought of time dialation and length contraction, but he DID know he was looking to combine to key facets of physics. 

What would I look for to judge you as an INTP? I don't know what Ti is. I don't know what to calculate it as. I don't know how to test for it. 

Yes, some of this is from my own subjective experience. I've been typed myself as (in order of prevalence):
1) INTJ
2) INTP
3) INFJ
4) ISTJ
5) ISTP 

quite clearly to most (and to a psychologist that understands introversion as per psychology) I'm an introvert. There are ways to measure this in psychology now to see this. 

However, the rest was based on:
1) What I studied in undergrad/grad
2) What I talked like in the situation given
3) What it appeared my values were as per a given quadra mapping by a Russian text
4) What I was in terms of the 4 dichotomies, irrespective of function--then mapping me over to that type's description. 

But:

How do I go about the rest, really? The rest are easily conflated, and cognitive function tests normally reveal a quite scattered pattern that would suggest some types don't even rely on them all in the pattern pre-determined by type. This is the issue people have here: there's no variables to begin with. 

This is like what math is to physics. Math has all the tools (as does this theory) but it just doesn't know what to measure and how without physics, right?

I saw your other attempt; I think a good thing to do would be to have people figure out what is indicative of what first. These would be the variables. From there, you'd see how strong people of a 'thought type' would rank among these variable and backpropagate to fix. 

As of right now, no one agrees on what variables are indicative of what functions, exclusively. There's nothing to test because it's, in practice of typing, totally divergent from person to person, even though they share the same idea of what the function entails.


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## FlightsOfFancy (Dec 30, 2012)

monemi said:


> This is you saying you're wrong? I see nothing of the sort here. Right here, you've dismissed similar symptoms with different ailments. I'd say different causes resulting in shared symptoms and shared ailments. This is a major source of frustration and exhibited that you still haven't comprehended what others have been saying. *After I wasted time and effort reading your rambling posts. I hate that. I just hate it. Why did I bother? I*'ve given thought to other intuitives perspectives multiple times on bullying, I've made a point of understanding their perspective. And I've still disagreed, but I put in the effort to understand them.
> 
> How much effort have you put into understand that other dom's cognitive functions aren't exactly met by the hall of gratuitous praise? I find that other Se dom's and Se aux's really get those things that aren't accepted and leave us vulnerable.
> 
> ...


Well, @arigos, I guess you can start with testing if ESTP ability to distill what's really going on in a vivid and almost too-truthful way is a good common variable. Cross that with the amount of lulz their posts produce and you might get a variable. 

I'm kind of being serious about the process but this content is just damn near stand up.


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## monemi (Jun 24, 2013)

arkigos said:


> @_monemi_ -
> 
> I was thinking out loud. My digs were meant to be earnest. I was admitting my bias. I was being honest.
> 
> ...


It has been reiterated on this thread and others that this type of thing leads to bullying. It has most definitely occurred to me Arkigos. Has it occurred to you that sensor types aren't likely to communicate what weaknesses of ours are likely to make us targets for the attacks of bullies? I would consider that private, sensitive information that some intuitives seem to want to share with anyone and everyone who will listen. We got the message loud and clear. We read you. We hear you. We understand. 

I don't want you sympathy or pity. I want you to understand that other types aren't clueless. We do have a decent understanding of where you're coming from. I don't think your vulnerability to bullying is higher than other types. The cause is different. How you respond to bullying is different. That you've been subjected to it, is different. As a Se-dom, our typical response to bullies is: "Challenge accepted." We meet bullies head on with whichever tools we have available on hand. Even if it's an authority figure. I never told my parents, I didn't tell anyone. I took it on as my problem and kept at it until I figured them out. And it's hard to swallow that you were bullied for being smart. If you've ever bullied for being perceived as dumb, it's a much more damaging to your psyche. Society values intelligence and throws away the unintelligent.


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## Glenda Gnome Starr (May 12, 2011)

My nephew was bullied for being smart.
There is a tendency to bully people who are perceived to be different.
Society values intelligence to a point. It doesn't value people who think for themselves and who don't conform.


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## cudibloop (Oct 11, 2012)

arkigos said:


> ...that's the problem. It ISN'T 'special snowflake syndrome'. It's low order Si, I think... driven by problems caused by Ne.
> 
> Ne gets bad reactions - doesn't connect with people. Si spins out trying to codify it all. It freezes us up and becomes fatalistic.
> 
> ...


Not my experience of it. I'm _very_ limbic, moreso than many intuitives. Se makes you hyper aware of people's reactions to you, while Ni takes that, and blows it out of proportion.

In theory, Se types 'live in the moment', but with a decent amount of Ni, you can get a person who's very much stuck in their own head.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

arkigos said:


> I think I assumed Si because I've heard something I interpreted as matching from xNFPs I have discussed this with. I think the way that I approach it is Fe, yes. That would make sense for sure. However, I do think that Si types in general tend to see the impassible divisions in people and situations more than other types. I think Si types are more inclined to see the river as daunting and uncrossable. Granted, it requires rational functions to ultimately determine that, but it's Si perception that creates the problem ... that sees the river in the first place. Ne would be what saw the possibility of a bridge. I guess J would have to decide how to go about interacting with these perceptions? (EDIT.. Si doesn't just see the river.. they see the Daunting River... and, as for me, rational functions come in and question this, but it is Si that provides it).
> 
> I liked your analogy and thoughts generally, though. I think that you are right that there are so many factors.
> 
> ...


Yes, this for example. Might speak to you because Naranjo is an Ne-Si type:


* *





*ENNEA-TYPE IV*

*1. Core Theory, Nomenclature, and Place in the Enneagram*
The emotional state of envy involves a painful sense of lack and a craving toward that which is felt lacking; the situation involves a sense of goodness as something outside oneself which needs to be incorporated. Though an understandable reaction to early frustration and deprivation, envy constitutes a self-frustrating factor in the psyche, for the excessive craving for love that it entails never answers the chronic sense of inner scarcity and badness, but on the contrary, stimulates further frustration and pain.

Frustration is a natural consequence of envy. In addition, over-desiring can lead to painful situations as portrayed by Quevedo in his dream of hell, when he tells us that when the envious arrive there and see the different souls subjected to the various tortures of the hell realms, they are frustrated and suffer by seeing that there is no place reserved for them.1
The position of envy in the enneagram is that of a satellite to vanity and a neighbor to point 5, avarice, which entails a comparable sense of deprivation to envy, though it involves a different attitude in face of the experience of scarcity. While point 4 represents a forceful reaching out, an intense demand for that which is missed, point 5 is characterized by a psychic
attitude of giving up the expectation of anything receiving from the outside and, rather, a concern about holding in one’s energy, caring, and attention. 

The connection with vanity is even more important than the one with avarice, since point 4 constitutes a member of the triad in the right corner of the enneagram, which, as a whole, gravitates around an excessive concern with the image of the self. While an ennea-type III person identifies with that part of the self that coincides with the idealized image, the enneatype
IV individual identifies with that part of the psyche that fails to admit the idealized image, and is always striving to achieve the unattainable. Here is a person animated by a vanity that fails to reach its goal because of the admixture of the sense of scarcity and worthlessness (of point 5).

Even though the ennea-types mapped at the positions 4 and 5 (envy and avarice) have in common the sense of worthlessness, guilt, and lack, and both may be described as depressed, common the sense of worthlessness, guilt, and lack, and both may be described as depressed, they are in marked contrast in various regards. While guilt in envy is conscious torture, in avarice it is partially veiled over by a seeming moral indifference (that it shares with enneatype
VIII and constitutes a rebellion against its own excessive demands and accusations); while depression in envy manifests as overt grief, the avaricious often have trouble in crying or contacting their pain, so that their depression manifests, rather, as apathy and a sense of emptiness. It may be said that ennea-type V is a “dry” depression contrary to the “wet” depression of ennea-type IV: just as avarice is resigned, envy is passionate. In this is rejected a sharply differentiated feature: dry avarice is apathetic, wet envy, most intense; if the one is a desert, the other is a marsh. (The French use of envie to mean “desire” underscores the implicit observation that envy is the most passionate of passions.) While ennea-type V involves an internal atmosphere of quietness, ennea-type IV involves an atmosphere of turmoil and turbulence. The most characteristic aspect of ennea-type IV character besides envious motivation may be seen in the tendency to self-victimization and frustration.
Kernberg and others have rightly criticized DSM III for not taking account of the depressive, self-defeating, masochistic personality style. I am pleased to see that it has been brought in, at least tentatively, to the DSM III revision, for it surely constitutes one of the most common sources of interpersonal problems. Grumbling, lamenting, and the tendency to discontent on the other hand, have been observed since antiquity, while the masochistic pattern which was already described by Kurt Schneider, was rediscovered by Abraham in his observation of the oral-aggressive character and has been elaborated upon at length by Horney. 

*2. Antecedents in the Scientic Literature on Character*
Though the masochistic and self-defeating personality syndrome was not acknowledged in DSM-III, this was the result of having included the tendency to depression that is so characteristic of such character among the mood disturbances. The recognition of a definite personality style surrounding depression is very old, however, and Schneider quotes Kraepelin2 as speaking of personalities in which there is a “constant emotional emphasis in the somber emotions involved in all the experiences of life.” Schneider depicts a kind of person who is “pessimistic and skeptical and who, at bottom, denies life,” and “yet surrounds it with a sort of unrequited love.” “This is an over serious kind of person who is embittered and for whom everything is somewhat rotten… . All this is not necessarily obvious, however, for the melancholic individual is hidden … they may manifest joy and a hypomanic activity as a way of escaping sadness.” Schneider quotes in this regard a poem of Hölderlin concerning jokers, in which he says “you are always playing and joking, you cannot help it friends, I am
deeply touched because only the desperate are forced to do so.” Also Schneider notices a tendency to vanity among the melancholic.

“Comparing themselves with those who live happily and knowing the simplicity characteristic of such people leads them to consider suering something noble and to regard themselves rather in an aristocratic manner. Others see suffering as a merit, which together with their tendency to reject and ponder bitterness of earthly life and the deep need for help,
leads them to seek a philosophical or religious refuge.” He notes too “an esthetic preoccupation among the melancholic which may be manifest in their way of dressing and living and can even lead to presumptuousness.” Finally he draws a distinction between those depressive individuals that are properly melancholic (such as those that Kretschmer aligned among the cyclothymic and labeled as having “heavy blood”) and others that are predominantly “ill-humoured”: “they are cold and selsh, grumbling and hateful, irritable and critical, even mean and ill-intentioned. Their pessimism in face of all things and also in regard of their own fate has something fanatical about it. They almost rejoice at new failures, and neither do they desire anything good for others.” The ennea-type IV syndrome has been recognized since early in the history of psychiatry,
as we can observe reading Kurt Schneider’s volume on psychopathic personalities.3 Summarizing German publications of before his time, he quotes, for instance, the following observation on the “depressive psychopath”: “At bottom he refuses life and still surrounds it by a sort of unrequited love. Frequently, too, we see him develop a tendency toward vanity, a comparison with those who are contented and happy, the awareness of simplicity, even of the excessive simplicity that often characterize these brings the sufferers to deem suffering as something noble and themselves as aristocratic … Others see in suffering a merit which is no different from their tendency to reject and to brood … Not rarely one finds that in the environment and way of living there is an aesthetic preoccupation that can convey arrogance and dissimulates an inner despondency. Other depressives are rather in a bad mood, are cold and selfish, grumbling and embittered, irritable
and critical, cruel and ill intentioned. They are pessimists in the face of everything and also in the face of their own they almost cheer up when they meet new failures. Neither do they desire anything good for others.” Such character has been designated by Kraepelin as “irritable predisposition” and by Bleuler under “irritable dysthymia,” designations that also correspond to the eternally discontented and the resentful of Aschaffenburg.4 In the history of psychoanalysis it was Karl Abraham who first drew attention to the ennea-type IV syndrome in his description of “oral aggressive character,” as he sought to relate character structure to vicissitudes in the unfoldment of the libido corresponding to Freudian theory. Here is how Goldman-Eisler describes the oral aggressive or oral pessimistic character in their classical investigation of “Breast Feeding and Character Formation”:5 “This type is characterized by a profoundly pessimistic outlook on life, sometimes
accompanied by moods of depression and attitudes of withdrawal, passive-receptive attitude, a feeling of insecurity, a need of assurance of getting one’s livelihood guaranteed, an ambition which combines an intense desire to climb with a feeling of unattainability, a grudging feeling of injustice, sensitiveness to competition, a dislike of sharing and an impatient importunity.”
Edmund Bergler describes a similar syndrome which he calls “oral pessimism.” He emphasizes its narcissistic aspect and interprets it as a compulsion to repeat the experience of the original frustration supposedly caused by the loss of mother’s breast. In seeking to interpret this orientation of personality in line with Freud’s idea of fixation, he believes that by being
fixated to frustration the oral pessimist would derive pleasure from anticipating calamity and disappointment and this must give him satisfaction from being the victim.

It is curious to note that the concept of “masochistic character,” introduced by Reich through a paper in the International Journal for Psychoanalysis (1932/33), makes no reference to the oral aggressive or oral-pessimistic syndrome—which suggests that Reich believed he was describing an independent character structure. The distinguishing mark of masochistic character is for him “a chronic subjective feeling of suffering which is manifested objectively and specially stands out as a tendency to complain. The most important additional trait is the ‘chronic tendency’ to inflict pain upon and to debase oneself.”
The main thrust of Reich’s paper was his controversy with Freud in regard to the existence of a death instinct—a controversy which motivated the publication of this paper together with a reply entitled “The Communist Discussion of Psychoanalysis.” Though descriptively accurate, I think most of us today would disagree with both Freud and Reich’s alternative to Freud’s
theory of masochistic behavior: “the specic masochistic inhibition of the orgasm function, which became manifest as a fear of dying or fear of bursting.”

Among the theoreticians of psychology none has emphasized envy more than Melanie Klein, however. She tells us in Envy and Gratitude6: “I arrived at the conclusion that envy is the most potent factor in undermining feelings of love and gratitude at their root, since it affects the earliest relation of all, that of the mother. The fundamental importance of this relation for the individual’s whole emotional life has been substantiated in a number of psycho-analytic writings, and I think that by exploring further a particular factor that can be very disturbing at this early stage, I have added something of significance to my findings concerning infantile development and personality formation.” 

Essentially she shows how envy contributes to the infant’s difficulties in building up his good object, for his frustration leads him to the perception of his mother as evil. Ms. Klein draws a distinction between envy and greed, that we may read as a differentiationn of “lust” and “envy”: “Greed is an impetuous and insatiable craving, exceeding what the subject needs and what the object is able and willing to give. At the unconscious level, greed aims primarily at completely scooping out, sucking dry, and devouring the breast: that is to say, its aim is destructive introjection; whereas envy not only seeks to rob in this way, but also put a badness, primarily bad excrements and bad part of the self, into the mother, and first of all into her
breast, in order to spoil and destroy her. In the deepest sense this means destroying her creativeness.”

Whether we are willing to believe as Kleinians do that the child indeed fantasizes putting excrements into her mother or whether we perceive such a fantasy as one that the adult projects back onto the screen of childhood, we may regard her statements in the same way that we read a surrealist caricature, i.e., symbolically and phenomenologically. Something similar may be said to the standard psychoanalytic statements concerning the oedipal situation: whether we take the sexual symbols literally or not, they contain an appropriate description of the relationship of the child with the parents: “Throughout this section I am speaking of the primary envy of the mother’s breast, and this should be didifferentiated from its later forms (inherent in the girl’s desire to take her mother’s place and in the boy’s feminine position) in which envy is no longer focused on the breast but on the mother receiving the father’s penis, having babies inside her, giving birth to them, and being able to feed them.”7 Penis envy is certainly a reality, if we take it to mean, metaphorically, an envy of masculine prerogatives, and occasionally, also literally—as part of a desire to identify with the privileged sex, even physically and also in view of a concomitant disidentification with a hated mother. Yet I am sure the basic issue is love, and only secondarily sex. Klein’s more
original contribution on the emphasis of the primitive nature of envy is her stress of envy as “a spoiling of the object.”
While the masochistic pattern is widely recognized today among psychologically sophisticated laymen, this is not to be attributed so much to the inuence of Melanie Klein (who failed to point out an envy-centered personality type) nor to Reich (for the word masochistic in bioenergetics has shifted in its original meaning and has come to designate our cyclothymic ennea-type IX) but, rather, to Eric Berne’s Games People Play where it is echoed in the games labeled “Ain’t it Awful,” “Blamish,” “Kick Me,” and “Broken Skin.” “Ain’t it Awful,” according to Berne, finds its most dramatic expression in “polysurgery addicts”8: “They are Doctor Shoppers, people who actively seek surgery even in the face of some medical
opposition.” Concerning this type of person he makes the same observation that Schneider records concerning his “depressive” psychopaths: “Overtly expresses distress but is covertly gratified at the prospect of the satisfaction he can bring from his misfortune.” 

Of “Kick Me” he says that “this is played by men whose social manner is equivalent to wearing a sign that reads ‘Please don’t kick me’ up to ‘My misfortunes are better than yours’.” In Steiner’s Scripts People Play I find a life pattern labeled “Poor Little Me,” characterized by the role of a victim looking for a rescuer.9 I quote some of the more original observations: “She experiences some intimacy from her child ego state in relation to the Parent ego state of others, but rarely experienced intimacy as an equal. Because she has permission to be childlike she can be spontaneous in a childlike and helpless way and be inventive about acting ‘crazy.’ She learns she can get things more easily if she tells people about her troubles and thus
she becomes invested in not giving up that self-image. She spends a lot of time complaining about how awful things are and trying to get others to do something about it. She keeps proving that she’s a Victim by setting up situations in which she first manipulates people into doing things for her that they really don’t want to do, then getting persecuted by them when
they feel resentful towards her.” 

Otto Kernberg,10 as I have already pointed out, draws attention to how depressivemasochistic personality is ignored by DSM III.11 Here is his description: “The person places himself or herself in situations that are self-defeating and have painful
consequences even when better options are clearly available … Reasonable offers of assistance from others are rejected … The person’s reaction to positive personal events may be depression or feelings of guilt … Characteristically, people with this disorder act in such a way as to cause others to be angry or to reject them … Opportunities for pleasure may be repeatedly avoided … The person frequently attempts to do things for others that require excessive self-sacrifice
that engenders a sense of pride and enhances the subject’s self-esteem.” 

Since people with a masochistic character typically perceive themselves as problem-ridden and seek help, one may wonder how they have been diagnosed thus far by DSM III users. I conjecture that many have been assigned to the”borderline personality disorder” category, for, in spite of the more general sense in which Kernberg proposes that we use the expression “borderline” (in reference to a level of psychopathology rather than a specific interpersonal style) the “borderline” diagnosis in practice is made in terms of ennea-type IV traits such as these: variability of mood, self-condemnation, impulsivity, rage, excessive dependency and tempestuous transference.12

Grinker’s cluster analysis based on the borderline population sample further confirms the association of this diagnostic category with ennea-type IV for I can recognize in three of the resulting clusters the three subtypes of ennea-type IV in protoanalysis: the angry hateful, the shameful guilty, and the depressed.13

Describing borderlines, Millon 14 writes: “Not only do they need protection and reassurance to maintain their equanimity, but they become inordinately vulnerable to separation from these external sources of support. Isolation or aloneness may be terrifying not only because borderlines lack an inherent sense of self but because they lack the wherewithal, the knowhow,
and equipment for taking mature, self-determined and independent action. Unable to fend adequately for themselves, they not only dread potential loss but often anticipate it, ‘seeing it’ happening, when, in fact, it is not. Moreover, since most borderlines devalue their self-worth, it is diffi cult for them to believe that those upon whom they depend could think
well of them.

“Consequently, they are exceedingly fearful that others will depreciate them and cast them of. With so unstable a foundation of self-esteem, and lacking the means for an autonomous existence, borderlines remain constantly on edge, prone to the anxiety of separation and ripe for anticipating inevitable desertion. Events that stir up these fears may precipitate extreme
eorts at restitution such as idealization, self-abnegation, and attention-gaining acts of self-destruction or, conversely, self-assertion and impulsive anger.” 

The masochistic aspect of ennea-type IV is clearly portrayed in Millon’s observation that by “sacrificing” themselves, borderlines “not only assure continued contact with others but serve as implicit models for others to be gentle and considerate in return. Virtuous martyrdom, rather than sacrifice, is a ploy of submissive devotion that strengthens the attachment borderlines need.” 

Of depression itself, he remarks that “… the pleading anguish, despair, and resignation voiced by borderlines serve to release tensions and to externalize the torment they feel within themselves. For some, however, depressive lethargy and sulking behavior are a means primarily of expressing anger. Depression serves as an instrument for them to frustrate and
retaliate against those who have ‘failed’ them or ‘demanded too much.’ Angered by the ‘inconsiderateness’ of others, these borderlines employ their somber and melancholy sadness as a vehicle to ‘get back’ at them or ‘teach them a lesson.’ Moreover, by exaggerating their plight and by moping about helplessly, they effectively avoid responsibilities, place added burdens and by moping about helplessly, they eectively avoid responsibilities, place added burdens upon others, and thereby cause their families not only to take care of them but to suffer and feel guilty while doing so.”

I think that the most insightful and articulate discussion of masochistic character in the literature thus far is that by Karen Horney—who, however, sometimes discusses the syndrome in terms of the over-generalization of “self-effacement.” Here is what Horney’s disciple Harold Kelman says of masochism in Wolman’s International Encyclopedia of Psychology 15 :
“According to Horney masochism is neither a love for suffering for its own sake nor a biologically predetermined self negating process. It is a form of relating and its essence is the weakening or extinction of the individual self and merging with a person or power believed to be greater than oneself.” This observation corresponds with the self-shrinking aspect of envy,
and an intense craving to absorb into oneself the values perceived in others, but also a willingness to suffer for this “love” or, more exactly said, love-need. The entry continues:

“Masochism is a way of coping with life through dependency and self minimizing. Though it is most obvious in the sexual area, it encompasses the total range of human relations. As part of a neurotic character development, masochism has its own special purposes and value system. The neurotic suffering may serve the defensive purposes of avoiding recriminations, competitions, and responsibility. It is a way of expressing accusations and vindictiveness in a disguised form. By exaggerating and inviting suffering, it justifies demands for affection, control and reparations. In the distorted value system of the masochism, suffering is raised to a virtue and serves as the basis for claims to love, acceptance and rewards. Since the masochist takes pride in and identifies with the self-effacing suffering, subdued self, an awareness of conflicting drives towards expansiveness and self-glorification as well as a healthy striving for growth would be destructive to his self-image. By abandoning himself to uncompromised hatred for the intolerable side of himself, the masochistic attempts to eliminate
the conflict of contradictory impulses, thus a masochist has engulfed himself in self-hate and suffering.”

I n Neurosis and Human Growth , Karen Horney devotes a chapter to “Morbid Dependency,” in which she begins by commenting upon the fact that among the three possible “solutions” to the basic conflict between approaching others, asserting oneself in a movement against them and withdrawing, the “self-effacing” one is the one that entails the greater
subjective feelings of unhappiness than the others: “The genuine suffering of the self-effacing type may not be greater than in other kinds of neurosis, but subjectively he feels miserable more often and more intensely than others because of the many functions suffering has assumed for him. Besides his needs and expectations of others make for a too great
dependency upon them. And, while every enforced dependency is painful, this one is particularly unfortunate because his relation to people cannot but be divided. Nevertheless love (still in its broad meaning) is the only thing that gives a positive content to his life.

“Erotic love lures this type as the supreme fulfillment. Love must and does appear as the ticket to paradise, where all woe ends: no more loneliness, no more feeling lost, guilty or unworthy; no more responsibility for self; no more struggle with a harsh world for which he feels hopelessly unequipped. Instead love seems to promise protection, support, affection,
encouragement, sympathy, understanding. It will give him a feeling of worth, it will give meaning to his life, it will be salvation and redemption. No wonder then that for him people often are divided into haves and have-nots, not in terms of money and social status but of being (or not being) married or having an equivalent relationship.”

Together with pointing out this “envy of love” she goes on to explain the significance given to love in terms of all that is expected from being loved and also remarks how psychiatric writers describing the love of dependent persons have put a one-sided emphasis on this aspect which they have called parasitic, sponging, or “oral erotic.” “And this aspect may
indeed be in the foreground. But for the typical self-effacing person (a person with prevailing self-effacing trends) the appeal is as much in loving as in being loved. To love for him, means to lose, to submerge himself in more or less ecstatic feelings, to merge with another being, to to lose, to submerge himself in more or less ecstatic feelings, to merge with another being, to
become one heart and one flesh, and in this merge to find a unity which he cannot find in himself.”

Just as it was a surprise not to find a description of ennea-type IV in DSM III (before revision) it was surprising not to find it clearly echoed in Jung’s psychological types. I would have assumed its characteristics to be found under the label of “the introverted feeling type,” for a feeling type it certainly is, and the most introverted among them—as the proximity to ennea-type V indicates in the enneagram. Yet what Jung says of the introverted feeling type fits only very fragmentarily. It fits in that he states that “it is principally among women that I have found the predominance of introverted feeling,” for the masochistic-depressive type is indeed most predominant among women. What also fits is Jung’s important statement that
“their temperament is inclined to melancholy.” Yet most of Jung’sstatements are more appropriate to ennea-types V and IX rather than to ennea-type IV.16 Turning to Keirsey and Bates’ 17 portraits of individuals according to testing results I find 
characteristics of ennea-type IV including in the two intuitive subtypes of introverted feeling, the INFJ and the INFP. INFJ’s (in whom judgment predominates over perception) are described as having strong empathic abilities, particularly in regard to distresses or illness of others; as being vulnerable and prone to introjection; imaginative and able to create works of art, being “the most poetic of all the types.” INFP people (with a predominance of perception over judgment) are described as having “capacity for caring” which is not always found in other types, as being idealistic and living a paradox: “drawn to purity and unity but looking over the shoulder toward the sullied and discreated.”

The personality corresponding to our ennea-type IV in the homeopathic tradition is one said to have an affinity with Natrum muriaticum, common salt. I quote Catherine R. Coulter:18 “Even as an adult, he may forever harp on his parents’ inadequacies or offenses … Yet, it is part of the nature’s complexity and perversity to suffer inordinately from depravity of
parental affection even when rejecting it. He thereby creates a ‘no win’ situation for his parents and himself … At times Natrum muriaticum’s pathology stems from early sibling rivalry… . “Thereafter, projecting his childhood experience onto the world at large, he will be quick to sense others’ repressions, rejections, thwarted longings, and victimizations … The remedy is probably indicated if the physician is tempted to tell a ‘forever remembering’ patient belaboring past slights and oenses, ‘Put that sorrow behind you… .’ 

The practitioner may suspect Natrum muriaticum “of seeking injury, even if unconsciously, or at least of placing himself in a situation where injury can occur… . “On the other hand, Natrum muriaticum can be his own worst enemy by allowing some specific emotional injury, or the cloud of depression constantly hanging over him, to be the lens through which he views reality. An apposite term for this distorting lens is ‘bleakness,’ implying, as it does, not only isolation, barrenness, and desolation, but also cheerlessness and discouragement (‘sad and dejected’: Hahnemann)… .”

T h e Natrum muriaticum person may appreciate artistic beauty for its melancholy associations: “… at times he will turn to affecting music to indulge his bittersweet sorrow or voluptuously to reinforce some ancient (or recent) hurt … “Over and above everything else, there is romantic love! With its enormous potential for pain, disappointment, and sorrow, it is
fated to catch Natrum muriaticum at his most vulnerable … Even if the love is requited, he may put himself into insoluble difficulties, courting relationships that will inevitably lead to grief.”

Though the forceful Lachesis personality evokes the counter-phobic type VI, I think that its perfect match is the sexual type IV: “he is highly emotional—far more so than Sulphur, whose intellect clearly predominates. In fact, the intensity of feeling which Phosphorus tries to sustain is already present in Lachesis—who is often incapable of relinquishing it (the feeling possesses him, rather than he the feeling). Finally, the type is strongly given to sensual gratification … Without the calming effect of a normal sex life, deep depression may set in. The patient may Without the calming effect of a normal sex life, deep depression may set in. The patient may exhibit manic behavior with sexual passion.” Since it is easy to recognize Voltaire as an enneatype IV, I find it of interest that Coulter gives him as an exemplar of a Lachesis personality.

*3. Trait Structure
Envy
*If we understand the essence of envy as an excessively intense desire for incorporation of the “good mother,” the concept coincides with the psychoanalytic notion of a “cannibalistic impulse” which may manifest not only as a love hunger, but as a more generalized voraciousness or greediness.

Though a guilty and controlled greed is part of type IV psychology, it is no greater than the exploitative and uninhibited greed of type VIII, and not so peculiar to envious characters as is envy in Melanie Klein’s conception:19 “Greed is an impetuous and insatiable craving, exceeding what the subject needs and what the object is able and willing to give. At the unconscious level, greed aims primarily at completely scooping out, sucking dry, and devouring the breast: that is to say, its aim is
destructive introjection; whereas envy not only seeks to rob in this way, but also put a badness, primarily bad excrements and bad part of the self, into the mother, and first of all into her breast, in order to spoil and destroy her. In the deepest sense this means destroying her creativeness.”

Whether we agree or not with Klein in regard to the envious fantasies that she attributes to the infant at the breast, I think that it is reasonable to take them as a symbolic expression of experiences in the adult—and, more particularly, the characteristic process of self-frustration that seems inseparable from envy, as the ongoing basis of its over-desiring characteristic. Whatever the truth about the beginnings of envy during breastfeeding, too, in the experience of many envy is not consciously experienced in connection with the mother but toward a preferred sibling, so that the individual has sought to be her or him rather than himself in the pursuit of parental love. Often there is an element of sexual envy that Freud observed in women and—from the point of view of his sexual and biological interpretation—branded as “penis envy.” Since envy of women is also experienced by some men in distinctly erotic terms we might also speak of “vagina envy”—though I am of the opinion that sexual fantasies are derivative from a more basic phenomenon of gender-envy involving a sense of the superiority of the other sex. Given the patriarchal bias of our civilization it is no wonder that envy of the male is more common (and, indeed, ennea-type IV women loom large in the liberation movement) but both forms of sexual envy are striking in the case of the counter-sexual identification underlying homosexuality andlesbianism (both of them more frequent in type IV
than in any other character). 

Another realm of expression of envy is social, and can manifest both as an idealization of the upper classes and a strong social climbing drive, as Proust has portrayed so masterfully throughout the first volumes of Remembrance of Things Past . Still more subtly, envy can manifest as an ever present pursuit of the extraordinary and the intense, along with the
corresponding dissatisfaction with the ordinary and non dramatic. 

A primitive pathological manifestation of the same disposition is the symptom of bulimia, which I have observed to exist in the context of type IV character; many people experience a subtle echo of that condition: occasional feelings of painful emptiness at the pit of the stomach.

Whereas avarice and, most characteristically, anger are hidden traits in the personality syndromes of which they are part (since they have been compensated by pathological detachment and reactive traits of benignity and dignity, respectively) in the case of envy the passion itself is apparent, and the person thus suffers from the contradiction between an
passion itself is apparent, and the person thus suffers from the contradiction between an extreme neediness and the taboo against it. Also in light of this clash between the perception of intense envy and the corresponding sense of shamefulness and vileness in being envious we can understand the “bad image” trait discussed below.

Poor Self-image 
The most striking of traits from the point of view of the number of descriptors in it is that which conveys a poor self-concept. Included among the specific characteristics are not only “poor self-image” itself, but others such as “feeling inadequate,” “prone to shame,” “sense of ridicule,” “feeling unintelligent,” “ugly,” “repulsive,” “rotten,” “poisonous” and so on. Even
though I have chosen to speak of “bad self-image” as a separately (thus echoing the appearance of an independent conceptual cluster of descriptors) it is impossible to dissociate the phenomenon of envy from this bad self-image, which object relations theorists interpret as the consequence of the introjection of a “bad object.” It is such self-denigration that creates the “hole” out of which arises the voracity of envy proper in its clinging, demanding, biting, dependent, over attached manifestations. 

Focus on suffering
I still have not commented upon the cluster of traits usually designated by the label “masochistic.” In the understanding of these we should invoke, beyond the suffering that arises through a bad self-image, and the frustration of exaggerated neediness, the use of pain as vindictiveness and an unconscious hope of obtaining love through suffering. Ennea-type IV
individuals, as a result of these dynamic factors and also of a basic emotional disposition are not only sensitive, intense, passionate, and romantic, but tend to suffer from loneliness and may harbor a tragic sense of their life or life in general.

Possessed of a deep longing, dominated by nostalgia, intimately forlorn and sometimes visibly liquid-eyed and languorous, they are usually pessimistic, often bitter and sometimes cynical. Associated traits are lamenting, complaining, despondent, and self-pitying . Of particular prominence in the painful landscape of type IV psychology is what has to do with
the feeling of loss, usually the echo of real experiences of loss and deprivation, sometimes present as a fear of future loss and particularly manifest as a proneness to suffering intensely from the separations and frustrations of life. Particularly striking is the propensity of type IV to the mourning response, not only in relation to persons but also pets. It is in this cluster, I think, that we are closest to the core of the character type, and particularly in the maneuver that it entails of focusing upon and expressing suering to obtain love.

Just as it is a functional aspect of crying, in the human infant, to attract mother’s protective care, I think the experience of crying contains that of seeking attention. Just as ennea-type III children learn to shine to get attention (and those who will develop the type V or type VIII character, hopeless about ever getting it, prefer the way of withdrawal or the way
of power), here the individual learns to get “negative” attention through the intensification of need—which operates not only in a histrioni cmanner (through the imaginative amplification of suffering and the amplification of the expression of suering), but also through walking into painful situations—i.e., through a painful life course. Crying may be, indeed, not only a pain,
but a satisfaction for a type IV individual. It remains to say that (as the word “masochistic” brings to mind), there can be a sad sweetness in suffering. It feels real, though it is also the opposite—for the main self-deception in ennea-type IV is exaggerating a position of victimization, which goes hand-in-hand with their “claiming,” demanding disposition.20

“Moving Toward”

More than those of any other character, ennea-type IV individuals can be called “love addicted,” and their craving for love is in turn supported by a need of the acknowledgment that they are unable to give themselves. “Dependency”—its corollary—can manifest not only as a clinging to relationships that are frustrating, but as an adhesiveness—a subtle imposition of
contact which seems the outcome of not only a contact need, but an anticipated defense or postponement of separation. Related to the craving for care is also the commonly observed “helplessness” of type IV individuals, which, as in type V, manifests as a motivational inability to care properly for themselves and may be interpreted as an unconscious maneuver to attract protection. The need for financial protection, specifically, may be supported by the desire to feel cared for.

Nurturance
Ennea-type IV people are usually considered thoughtful, understanding, apologetic, soft, gentle, cordial, self-sacricing, humble, sometimes obsequious. Their nurturant quality not only appears to constitute a form of “giving to get,” i.e., dependent on the love need alone, but on an empathic identication with the needs of others that causes them to be concerned parents, empathetic social workers, attentive psychotherapists, and fighters for the underdog. The nurturant characteristic of type IV can be dynamically understood as a form of seduction in the service of the intense need of the other and its painful frustration. Caring for others may be masochistically exaggerated to a point of self-enslavement, and contributes thus to the self-frustration and pain that in turn activates the demanding and litigious aspects of the character.

Emotionality 
The word “emotional,” though implicit in a high level of suffering, deserves to be placed by itself in view of the determining contribution of feeling-dominance to the structure of ennea-type IV character. We are in the presence of an “emotional type,” just as in the case of ennea-type II, only here with a greater admixture of intellectual interests and introversion. (Indeed, these are the two kinds of character most properly regarded as emotional, for the word applies to them more exactly than in the case of the cheerful and helpful seductiveness of gluttons, and the defensive warmth of the more outwardly fearful and dependent cowards.) The quality of intense emotionality applies not only to the romantic feelings, the dramatization of suffering, and to the love-addicted and nurturant characteristics, but also to the expression of anger. Envious people feel hate intensely, and their screams are the most impressive. Also found in ennea-types II and III, at the right corner of the enneagram, is that quality that psychiatry has called “plasticity” in reference to a capacity to role-play (related to the capacity
to modulate the expression of feelings).

Competitive Arrogance
Connected to a hateful emotionality, an attitude of superiority sometimes exists along with —and in compensation for—a bad self-image. Though the individual may seethe in self-deprecation and self-hate, the attitude to the outer world is in this case that of a “prima-donna” or at least a very special person. When this claim of specialness is frustrated it may be complicated by a victimized role of “misunderstood genius.” In line with this development, individuals also develop traits of wit, interesting conversation, and others in which a natural disposition towards imaginativeness, analysis, or emotional depth (for instance) are secondarily put to the service of the contact need and the desire to summon admiration.

Refinement
An inclination to refinement (and the corresponding aversion to grossness) is manifest in descriptors such as “stylish,” “delicate,” “elegant,” “tasteful,” “artistic,” “sensitive,” and descriptors such as “stylish,” “delicate,” “elegant,” “tasteful,” “artistic,” “sensitive,” and sometimes “arty” and “affected,” “mannered” and “posturing.” They may be understood as
eorts on the part of the person to compensate for a poor self-image (so that an ugly self-image and the refined self-ideal may be seen as reciprocally supporting each other); also, they convey the attempt on the part of the person to be something different from what he or she is, perhaps connected to class envy. The lack of originality entailed by such imitativeness in turn perpetuates an envy of originality—just as the attempt to imitate original individuals and the
wish to emulate spontaneity are doomed to fail. 

Artistic Interests
The characteristic inclination of ennea-type IV towards the arts is over-determined: at least one of its roots lies in the rened characteristic of envious character. It is supported too, by the feeling-centered disposition of the type. Other components are the possibility of idealizing pain through art and even transmuting it—to the extent that it becomes an element in the
configuration of beauty.

Strong Superego
Refinement is perhaps the most characteristic of ways in which ennea-type IV seeks to be better than he or she is, and in doing so exercises discipline. More generally there is a typically strong superego that the type IV character shares with type I, but on the whole, type IV is more keenly aware of his or her standards and his or her ego ideal is more aesthetic than ethical.

Along with discipline (which may reach a masochistic degree) the superego characteristic of ennea-type IV involves descriptors of tenacity and of being rule-oriented. Love of ceremony reflects both the aesthetic-refined and the rule-oriented characteristics. A strong super ego is, of course, involved in the guilt propensity of ennea-type IV, in its shame, self-hate, and self-denigration. 

4. Defense Mechanisms
In my experience the dominant defense mechanism in ennea-type IV is distinctly introjection, the operation of which becomes apparent through a consideration of the character structure itself. We may say that the bad self-image of type IV is the direct expression of an introjected self-rejecting parent and that an envious neediness results from the chronic self-hate entailed by such introject—the need of external approval and love being in the nature of a need to compensate for the inability to love oneself. 

The concept of introjection was introduced by Ferenczi in “Introjection and Transference. ”21 The concept was taken up by Freud in his analysis of the mourning process (in “Mourning and Melancholia”) where he observes that the individual reacts to the loss of love by becoming like the loved one (as if saying to the dead loved one: I don’t need you, I now have you inside
myself). While in Ferenczi and Freud the emphasis lies in the idea of bringing into oneself a “good object,” it was Melanie Klein who stressed the importance of bad introjects. In these cases it is as if the person—driven by an excessive love need—wanted to bring a parental figure into the self at all costs (i.e. “masochistically”). 

In connection with the subject of introjection it may be useful to point out that Freud frequently used the terms “introjection” and “incorporation” without differentiating their meanings. In present usage “incorporation” retains the meaning of a fantasy of bringing a person into one’s body while in “introjection” the notion is more abstract, so that in speaking of “introjection into the ego,” for instance, there is no particular reference to body boundaries.

The word “internalization” is also used in the same sense as “introjection” sometimes, though it may be more proper to retain it to indicate the transposing of a relationship from the outer may be more proper to retain it to indicate the transposing of a relationship from the outer world to the inner.

Even in this case, however, its operation goes hand in hand with introjection. As Laplanche and Pontalis 22 observe, “we may say that … with the decline of the oedipal complex the subject introjects the parental image while internalizing the conflict of authority with the father.” In similar fashion and more specifically (in connection with our topic) we may say that ennea-type IV internalizes parental rejection or introjects an unloving parent, and thus brings into his psyche a constellation of traits ranging from a bad self-concept to the pursuit of special distinction and involving chronic suffering and a compensatory) dependency on external acknowledgment.

Though Melanie Klein gives much importance to projection in the mechanism of envy (as in the paradigmatic fantasy of putting excrements in mother’s breast), I think that the process through which in type IV “familiarity breeds contempt” (and through which the available is never as desirable as the unavailable) is more like an “infection” in virtue of which self-denigration
extends to those, who, through intimacy, have come to partake to some extent of a “self-quality.” Unlike the situation of projection, in which something is “spit out” of the psyche as a means of not acknowledging its presence, in this situation there is no disavowal of personal characteristics, but the manifestation of the fact that the sense of self—which is never xed (but, as Perls proposed, an “identity function”)—seems in the more dependent personalities to extend furthest into the world of intimate relationships. 

Also striking in type IV psychology (particularly as it is manifested in the therapeutic process) is the mechanism that Psychoanalysis calls “turning against the self” (roughly the same mechanism that Perls calls “retroflection”). While self-hating or self-rejection is implicit in the notion of an introjected “bad-object,” the idea of retroflection invites the thought that anger
generated in consequence of frustration is aimed not only at the outer source of frustration (and to the original frustrator in one’s life) but also—in consequence of its introjection—at oneself.

It remains to consider aside from a dominant defense mechanism the existence of a dominant content of repression in type IV, a content to the repression of which introjection may be most specifically suitable. I think that it may be said that the most avoided attitude for type IV is that of demanding superiority which is so natural in type I. In light of this, introjection is a mechanism that makes it possible for the person to transform superiority into inferiority as he adopts the masochistic strategy in interpersonal relationships. It is as if the introject were a stone tied to the person’s feet to make sure that he sinks—at the same time maintaining a position of neediness and avoiding a superiority that might have been dysfunctional through early childhood adaptation.

Demandingness will survive the transition from ennea-type I to ennea-type IV, yet the sense of justice in demanding at the time of shift will turn into an association of claiming with guilt (which perpetuates the position of inferiority). As in other cases, the dynamic represented by the enneagram structure signifies not only the repression of one emotion (anger), but its
transformation into the next (envy)—for in envy, through the intensification of oral strivings, the individual seeks to satisfy the same needs that in the type I approach are satisfied through assertive demanding. 

5. Etiological and Further Psychodynamic Remarks 23
Constitutionally ennea-type IV is most often ectomesomorphic in body build—neither as high in ectomorphia as type V nor as mesomorphic as type III—though occasionally they may be of more rounded contours in body build, particularly with aging and among men. The oversensitivity and the measure of withdrawnness characteristic of type IV is thus consistent with
the cerebrotonia that is the counterpart of ectomorphia. The plasticity or dramatic ability of type IV (which it shares with the other characters in the hysteroid corner of the enneagram) may also correspond to a constitutional endowment. Though congenital defects may support a may also correspond to a constitutional endowment. Though congenital defects may support a sense of inferiority (just as it is said that the limp are envious) more commonly stature or the lack of physical beauty have a part. Of course, however, some type IV women are outstandingly beautiful and the source of envy is found in environmental sources of deprivation and injury to self-esteem.

It is pertinent to quote here the famous Frieda Goldman-Eisler 24 study, showing a correlation between oral-aggressive tendencies and problematic breast feeding. This correlation has been usually understood as a confirmation of the idea that insufficient breast feeding lingers as adult pain, yet it is possible to think that it may also reflect the fact that a child constitutionally endowed with a greater oral aggressiveness, (i.e. a tendency to bite the nipple) displeases its mother, which may contribute to the interruption of breast feeding. Beyond what it literally proves, it may be viewed as paradigmatic of a more general relationship between childhood frustration and adult discontent. Indeed, later psychoanalysis has emphasized a frustration in maternal affection at a later stage, after the “rapprochement” stage of establishing an early bonding with her. This accounts for a “paradise lost” quality to the experience of type IV individuals. Unlike the apathetic type V individual, who does not know what he has missed, the type IV person remembers it very well at an emotional level—if not necessarily through reminiscences.

Occasionally an intense experience of abandonment was not matched by an obvious external fact, but has been subtle enough not to be perceived by others and may be forgotten until it is recovered in the course of psychotherapy. More than abandonment, we see in these cases events in which the child was disillusioned in regard to a parent, moments of discovery
that the parent has never been there for him or her. As for instance in the following passage from an interview: “I wanted to be a tap dancer, I was seven, eight years old and that was the rage. And I can remember we had very little money. We had just come to New York and we had lost everything in the depression and my mother had saved up, and saved up, and saved
up. And anyhow I was going to get this one day the dancing shoes, the tap dancing shoes and the leotard and my father was going to lower side New York, East side, to get an inexpensive one and I can remember all that day, I was just, Oh! talk about being on the heights of the world, the top of the world and that evening coming up the stairs, I remember my mother
went toward the door and I was with her and the door opened and he had nothing with him. He had nothing with him. He did not have a package with him. And so mom, I mean this was all I was talking about for ages, and mom went to him and said well where is, you know where is Monica’s shoes. And he looked at her and at that moment he didn’t remember. I don’t know if he didn’t remember or what, but he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I fell asleep and I left it on the subway.’ And it was just awful. I think with that it was always like, you know, you’re worthless.”

The typical life history of type IV is painful, and it is often apparent that the causes for pain were unusually striking, so it is clear that painful memories are not only a consequence of claiming attitude or tendency to dramatize pain. Beyond the cases of rejection, I have encountered some instances where there was a loss of a parent or other family members. I have noticed how frequent the experience of being ridiculed or scorned by parents or siblings has been. Sometimes poverty contributed to the painful situation of all, and other times a cultural or national difference between the family of origin and its environment contributed to a generalized sense of shame.

In the following illustration various sources of pain converge: “I grew up on an ethnic street. My mom and dad were Slovak, and everybody on the street spoke Slovak, and we had our own little variety store, and the kids played together. So it was very strange for me to go to school, to an English School and then come home and be in an altogether different environment, in a different culture. And my sister-in-law who married my brother, she’s English, and she says that she was told never to go down to Water Street, because that’s where all “those kids” were, you know, that you don’t associate with and always kind of had that sense when I was growing up that I was very different. What I’d like to comment on is the sense when I was growing up that I was very different. What I’d like to comment on is the abandonment by mom, and that was in a couple, three other cases. When dad was in a rage, mother would back down. When some change was needed, like when we needed to move our home. Or to get him to find a job, she was the dominant one, but when he became very violent and abusive—and he was violent—then she would back down and would sort of stand in the background and say don’t do it, but even not that,… . Once when there was a great deal of violence, I don’t even remember her taking care of me afterwards. I didn’t feel abandoned by my mother physically. She was there and I felt used by her to king of maybe fill her needs. 

My dad went off to war, and she would dress me up and pretty me up and carry me around, and I was the first child and the first girl and the first grandchild on my dad’s side, and grandmother took care of me a lot when mom was busy later in the store after we moved from my grandmother’s house, but my mom took me to her mother’s house when I was two months old, we were already traveling on the train back and forth. And I’ve done a lot of traveling and movement back and forth all my life. Maybe I, has a connection with my inner movement, I’m always going, I don’t know. The other thing I wanted to, well, the being used, used in all the roles—victim and scapegoat and every family member practically and then feeling used in my relationships after a time whenever I would go through feeling very pleasured and lled and fullled, there would come a point where all of a sudden I felt used. And I would just kind of like drop off and stop everything and a lot of fear in that too. I don’t know why the feeling used and the fear would come in there together. 

Besides ethnic background, the presence of alcoholism or other social disgraces may have inspired a feeling of not having a normal family and become a source of envy. A daughter of poor parents says, for instance: “I felt envy towards a girl who attended school in a uniform.” The experience of siblings is, of course, a common factor in that of early envy. Thus a young man says: “I was the fifth among seven, I was neither with the older ones nor with the little ones. I felt alone without a place.” 

Another man says: “I was a boy among four girls. My mother didn’t touch me very much, so as to avoid making me ‘soft’, so that I wouldn’t be like the girls, but at the same time there was a message of ‘don’t be like your father’. I strongly felt a lack of warmth and shame.” Still another says: “I have been the eldest among my brothers and all went well until others appeared and then I entered in a dynamic of incessant competition with much complaining.”

Still another says: “I wept a lot, I felt the competition of my brother who studies much and was an athlete. I sought refuge in books and identified with those I read.” Particularly striking in the early history of ennea-type IV women is the frequent
occurrence of a more or less incestuous relationship with the father, or sexual abuse by another male relative.25 For some this experience has not been problematic (“I miss the physical contact I used to have with my father.”). For others it caused diculty with the parent of the same sex. Still others remember it with disgust or guilt. The following situation is surely not unique: “I loved my father, he made me feel a happy woman, but he ridiculed me and rejected me later.” 

Most ennea-type IV individuals answer “yes” to the question whether did they receive more attention and care through suffering and needing. “Pleasure was forbidden” says one, “a reasonable cause was the best incentive.” Another observes: “They didn’t pay any attention if my whipping was unfounded,” another pointed out that she has always played the victim to
get attention, but she usually did not succeed and was rejected instead.

It is clear that occasionally a type IV child was not conscious of suffering until puberty or suffered secretly. So one answered to the question above “yes and no—no because it was a silent suffering and few people saw it; yes because my body and my face expressed it and that attracted attention.” Of course it is not uncommon for the parents to react differently to the
child’s need: “My mother had compassion and received suffering well, even though not always she paid attention to me when I wept. My brother ridiculed crying.” Occasionally it is possible to discern an element of seduction in being sick, in that the mother liked the role of nurse: 
“My mother liked to take care of me when I was sick, and in that way she dominated me." It is quite common for “self-defeating” women to have had a mother of the same character along with a weak father. Also I have noticed more sadistic fathers (ennea-type VIII) in the histories of type IV’s than any other except for type VIII itself. In such instances, of course, the sado-masochistic relation with the parent of the opposite sex contributed to the crystallization of the overall personality style. On the whole we may say that the suffering individual inwardly cultivates his pain, as those beggars in Oriental countries who cultivate their wounds. While type I seeks to be good and claims his due in the name of justice, type IV only claims in the name of pain and unfillled need. If the pursuit of love in type I becomes a pursuit of respect, in the sel-fdefeating
type it becomes to some extent an implicitly dependent pursuit of care and empathy.26

6. Existential Psychodynamics
While we have good reason to believe that the pattern of envy originates in frustration of the child’s early attachment needs and we may understand the chronic pain in this character as a residue of the pain of the past, it is useful to consider that it may also be a trap for enneatype IV individuals to get stuck in lamenting over the past. Also, while it is very true that it was love that the child needed urgently and sought, the exaggerated and compulsive search for love in the present may be regarded as a disfunction and only a mirage or approximate interpretation of what the adult is in dire need of. This, rather than outer support, acknowledgment, and care, is the ability to acknowledge, support, and love him- or herself; and also the development of a sense of self as center that might counteract the “ex-centric” expectation of goodness from the outside.
We may envision type IV psychology precisely from the point of view of an impoverishment of being or selfhood that envy seeks to “ll up” and which is, in turn, perpetuated through self-denigration, though the search for being through love and through the emulation of others. (“I am like Einstein, therefore I exist”). The type IV psyche functions as if it had concluded early in life “I am loved therefore I am not worthless” and now pursues worthiness through the love that was once missing (love me so I know I am all right), and through a process of self-refining distortion—through the pursuit of something different and presumably better and nobler than what he or she is. 

These processes are self-frustrating, for love, once obtained, is likely to be invalidated (“he cannot be worthwhile if he loves me”) or, having stimulated neurotic claims, leads to frustration and also invalidation on that basis; yet, more basically, the pursuit of being through the emulation of the self-ideal stands on a basis of self-rejection and of blindness to the value
of one’s true self (just as the pursuit of the extraordinary involves denigration of the ordinary). 

Because of this, type IV needs, in addition to insight into these traps, and more than any other character, the development of self-support: the self-support that comes, ultimately, from appreciative awareness and the sense of dignity of self and of life in all of its forms. There is a pathology of values entailed in envy that may be explained in light of the metaphor (which I nd in the Arcipreste de Hita’s Book Of Good Love) 27 of a dog who carries a bone and who, believing his reflection upon a pool to be another dog with a more desirable bone, opens his jaws as he lunges for it, losing in the process the bone he has. We may say: the reflection of a bone has no “being,” just as there is no being in either idealized or deprecated self-images.

1De Quevedo, Francisco,“Sueño del Infierno” in Sueños y Discursos, English translation in Dreams and Discourses (U.K.:
Aris & Philips, 1989).
2Kraepelin, E., Die Psychopathischen Personlichkeiten (Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1950) quoted in K. Schneider, Las
Personalidades Psicopaticos (Madrid: Ed. Morete, 1962).
3op. cit.
4The syndrome described by Butler in his “Litigious Man” ( i.e., a pathological wish to punish others through justice)
has also been known in European psychiatry-where it has gone by the name of “querulous.”
5Goldman-Eisler, Frieda, “Breastfeeding and Character Formation” in Personality in Nature, Society & Culture, 1st ed.,
Clyde Kluckhohn & Henry A. Murray, editors (New York: A.A.Knopf, 1948).
6Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude (London: Tavistock, 1957).
7Klein, Melanie, op. cit.
8Berne, Eric, Games People Play (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985).
9Steiner, Claude H., Scripts People Play (New York: Bantam Books, 1985).
10Kernberg, Otto, in Severe Personality Disorders: Psychotherapeutic Strategies (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1984).
11In the revised version of DSM II? a syndrome of “self-defeating personality disorder” is proposed among the
categories needing further study.
12According to Perry and Klerman “the borderline term neither connotes nor communicates a behavioural pattern that
portrays distinctive stylistic features.” in “The Borderline Patient” in Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, pp. 141-150,
1978.
13Grinker, R.R., The Borderline Syndrome (New York: Basic Books, 1968). A fourth cluster clearly belongs to the
squizoid and maybe attributable to the presence of ennea-type V individuals in the sample.
14op.cit.
15Mitchell, Arnold, and Harold Kelman, “Masochism: Horney’s View” in International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry,
Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Neurology, Vol. 7, pp. 34-35, edited by Benjamin B. Wolman (New York: Van Nostrand
/ Reinhold, 1977).
16“Their true motives remain hidden” fits the schizoid and also that they may be suspected of indierence or coldness.
“The impression of pleasing response, or of sympathetic response” suggest ennea-type IX.
17op. cit.
18Coulter, Catherine R., op. cit., Vol. 1, excerpts quoted by permission of the author from pp. 349-361.
19Envy and Gratitude (London: Tavistock, 1957).
20Arietti, Sylvano, “Affective Disorders” in American Handbook of Psychiatry, Volume III, S. Arietti, Editor-in-Chief
(New York: Basic Books, 1974). Arietti has proposed precisely this expression “claiming” for the most common
personality background of neurotic depression (in contrast to that of psychotic depression, which we will discuss in
connection to ennea-type IX).
21Ferenczi, S., First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis (London: Hogarth Press, 1952). Where he writes “whereas the
paranoid expels from his ego the impulse that has become unpleasant, the neurotic helps himself by taking into the ego
as large as possible a part of the outside world…”
22Leplanche, J., and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1973).
23Stuart S. Asch writing on the masochistic personality in Cooper, Arnold M., Allen J. Frances, and Michael Sacks’
Psychiatry, Vol. I, The Personality Disorder and Neurosis (New York: Basic Books, 1990), begins by stating that “despite
the multiplicity of explanations that have been suggested the etiology of masochistic personalities is basically
unknown.” Among the suggestive data that he quotes, it is of interest to draw attention to some work with imprinting in
chicks that had shown that “painful stimuli presented during the critical first 18 hours of life establish a more rapid
and more rmly entrenched attachment to the parent object than occurs in controls.” He quotes Berliner stating that
“the masochist insists on being loved by the punishing person because it may be the only kind of intimacy he has
known.” Yet adds that “it is uncommon to find a history of severely punitive parents in the childhood of the moral
masochist.”
24Goldman-Eisler, Frieda, op. cit.
25became aware of this reflecting on the personality of women raped by their father in my past psychotherapeutic
experience.
26The sexual sub-type of an ennea-type IV character introduces a complexity into discussion, since it develops a
striking need to be special, which can in turn manifest as a measure of arrogant vindictiveness.
27Libro de Buen Amor, ed. by Maria Brey Marino (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1982).


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

As for the rest of the discussion, seriously it's not 

1) It's not difficult to standardize typing just like DSM. There are a lot of problems with this however, some of them being that when we standardize we also submit people to this standardization and it might for example lead to people copying the standardized text into their actual behavior. An example is that anorexia as is standardized in DSM was not recognized under those common definitions in East Asia though the behavior was similar but it did not fit the DSM pattern. After DSM got standardized and likely as a result of other factors as well by these societies adopting values that differ to their previous ones, anorexia now started fit the standard DSM pattern. Other issues such as treatment of patients also occur. Among native tribes, it might be popular definition to think of someone born with what we over here would consider to be a result of the autistic spectrum to be possessed by spirits. This attitude leads to an entirely different care of the patient as opposed to the western notion of care that is much more impersonal and clinical. 

Or let's take the icky issue of gender dysphoria/GID/transsexualism because I have personal experience with it. Some people who experience themselves as such are denied because they do not fulfill the criteria and are labeled as something else e.g. transvestites. Who are doctors to deny the patient's experiences and claim they are something against they are not because they don't always fit the criteria that are by the way, still subjectively understood and applied by each practitioner? 

2) We can standardize using systems that already exist at hand that are interpretations of Jung's studies e.g. socionics. I would for example consider monemi's cognitive conflict, cognitive, because the problem seems to stem from a sense of the other person not understanding the reasoning of the other, as a possible good example of conflict relations or at least a negative socionics relation. 

We can observe and standardize patterns like these and it's not very difficult at all, and we do this simply by typing people of a certain type without their knowledge and then let them interact with each other in problem-solving situations to see if the pattern is repeated. 

3) And the thing that fucking bothers me the most: the definition of science in this thread is so fucking narrow I want to bash my brain against the wall. 

_What science is just exists in your head. _


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