# E vs. I



## Pointless Activist (May 22, 2012)

ESTJ vs ISTJ. ESFJ vs ISFJ. ESFP vs ISFP. ESTP vs ISTP. ENTP vs INTP. ENFP vs. INFP. ENFJ vs. INFJ. ENTJ vs INTJ. What marks the difference between introverts and extroverts? I understand that it is where your power is drawn, etc. I still am wondering though, because I am an INFP that is rather outgoing, for an introvert. I do need a lot of time to myself however. I have seen some extroverts that are rather reserved and seem to be introverted a lot. I suppose that my question is, how do you tell the difference, function-wise? It seems like they would process the world very similarly.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Depends on who you ask. 

In the classical Jungian sense this relates to objectivity vs. subjectivity. In other words the extravert is the person who habitually directs his thoughts toward the object or outer world, the introvert defaults to directing his thoughts toward the inner world or the subject. That's what he meant when he coined the terms introvert and extravert.

As it relates to MBTI however and many more modern variations, the terms generally are talking about behavior. I personally find (and most type enthusiasts are similarly annoyed) this not an effective way to measure someone's personality. Because Jungian functions don't really have much to do with behavior. Simply being an introverted feeling type does not equal shyness. That's generally a misconception, you can be a very shy person whose thoughts are always directed at the outer world. A shy extravert so to speak. The reason is that shyness is a reaction to a specific moment, not a state of being. This is actually better explained with temperament theories or other psychological metrics like avoidance or what have you, and not really cognitive functions. 

In the classical sense, the Introvert may retire from the outer world because that is not their preferred orientation but also because they are unconsciously extraverts. In the classical sense Introversion is always met with unconscious (or semi-conscious) extraversion via your inferior function. So the INFP always has an Extraverted Thinking shadow. Inside every INFP is an ESTJ so to speak, the person just isn't consciously aware of it. So to say someone is an extravert or introvert is just a psychological sleight of hand. It's only looking at the exposed part of the picture, but the INFP (or all introverts) have a very active Extraverted 'shadow.' They themselves just think they prefer the inner world to the outer world.

This then is another reason why its so dicey to type people by outgoing/shy because we can't be sure whether or not their behavior is being influenced by their conscious introversion, or unconscious extraversion (and the person themselves unless they are really self-aware can't be sure either). Nor can we be sure whether or not their outgoing/withdrawn disposition is related to functions at all or something else like fear or social obligation. 

So this is why everyone immediately jumps on you on these type forums with "learn the cognitive functions," because very quickly it becomes evident that simply trying to figure out I/E based on behavior is a dicey proposition. But you can figure out where you habituate your thought processes, either at the outer world or at the self (and actually its easier to figure this out in reverse -- which scares you more? Where does the threat come from? The outer world threatening to swallow you up, or the inner world which is a huge mystery?) In Extraverts its the inner world that is often the great mystery, they often don't really know who they are or what they want deep down and on some level may actually concerned by this saying things like "i honestly don't know what I'd do in x situation," or "I can't believe I did that." Generally with introverts its the opposite, its the outer world that to them seems unwieldy and impossible to control thus they retire inward. In both cases this is the result of their lack of preference of their inferior function which in extraverts will be introverted and in introverts will be extraverted. 

The reason introverts are 'introverts' is because they have a hard time dealing with extraversion. It's not easy for them to manage. The reason extraverts are 'extraverts' is because the inner world is hard to get a handle on, they're much more adept manipulating the outer world. But in both cases these are delusions because we do both. When we speak of someone as introvert or extravert we are simply speaking of which orientation the person prefers consciously, not describing the sum-total of a person's personality. Basically just the parts they are comfortable with and try to put forth to the world. (But that doesn't mean the people around you cannot perceive your 'shadow' or hidden character - sometimes, for example a ESFP's Inferior Ni might speak louder than their Se. Or an INTP's Inferior Fe and the hypersensitivity it produces to the judgments of other people may define that person outwardly much more than their dominant Thinking to observers, even if the person themselves doesn't recognize this).


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> In the classical Jungian sense this relates to objectivity vs. subjectivity. In other words the extravert is the person who habitually directs his thoughts toward the object or outer world, the introvert defaults to directing his thoughts toward the inner world or the subject. ...
> 
> As it relates to MBTI however and many more modern variations, the terms generally are talking about behavior. I personally find (and most type enthusiasts are similarly annoyed) this not an effective way to measure someone's personality. Because Jungian functions don't really have much to do with behavior. Simply being an introverted feeling type does not equal shyness. That's generally a misconception, you can be a very shy person whose thoughts are always directed at the outer world. A shy extravert so to speak. ...


The idea that Jung is all about _how you think_ and Myers (or "the MBTI") is mostly about _behavior_ is one of those ever-popular internet forum memes with little basis in the facts. Jung described lots of behavior in Psychological Types, and Myers' descriptions include the essential internal attitudes/values/focus/worldviews/etc. that form the core element of the MBTI preferences.

You criticize MBTI sources for relating introversion/extraversion to being shy or outgoing. Well, here's a little dose of Jung for you on that subject:



Jung said:


> [Extraverts and introverts] are so different and present such a striking contrast that their existence becomes quite obvious even to the layman once it has been pointed out. Everyone knows those reserved, inscrutable, rather shy people who form the strongest possible contrast to the open, sociable, jovial, or at least friendly and approachable characters who are on good terms with everybody, or quarrel with everybody, but always relate to them in some way and in turn are affected by them.


Want some more?



Jung said:


> [The introvert] holds aloof from external happenings, does not join in, has a distinct dislike of society as soon as he finds himself among too many people. In a large gathering he feels lonely and lost. ... He is not in the least "with it," and has no love of enthusiastic get-togethers. He is not a good mixer. What he does, he does in his own way, barricading himself against influences from outside. He is apt to appear awkward, often seeming inhibited, and it frequently happens that, by a certain brusqueness of manner, or by his glum unapproachability, or some kind of malapropism, he causes unwitting offence to people. His better qualities he keeps to himself, and generally does everything he can to dissemble them. He is easily mistrustful, self-willed, often suffers from inferiority feelings and for this reason is also envious. His apprehensiveness of the object is not due to fear, but to the fact that it seems to him negative, demanding, overpowering or even menacing. He therefore suspects all kinds of bad motives, has an everlasting fear of making a fool of himself, is usually very touchy and surrounds himself with a barbed wire entanglement so dense and impenetrable that finally he himself would rather do anything than sit behind it. ...
> 
> For him self-communings are a pleasure. His own world is a safe harbour, a carefully tended and walled-in garden, closed to the public and hidden from prying eyes. His own company is the best. He feels at home in his world, where the only changes are made by himself. His best work is done with his own resources, on his own initiative, and in his own way. ...
> 
> His relations with other people become warm only when safety is guaranteed, and when he can lay aside his defensive distrust. All too often he cannot, and consequently the number of friends and acquaintances is very restricted.


Good luck finding any passage in Myers characterizing introverts (or extraverts) with a more striking collection of behavioral stereotypes than that.


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## Kito (Jan 6, 2012)

IMO they can be very different... every type has a different dominant function to their extroverted/introverted counterpart. They will surely be able to relate somewhat, but it's mainly about the dominant and inferior. An ISFP can have a very different attitude to an ESFP (I'm just using this example because I'm familiar with it). The most similar types are those with the same dominant function, so INTP/ISTP, INFP/ISFP, ENFP/ENTP. If you have two people with the same dominant function in the same room, you'll probably find them very similar.

So it's really all about how people see the world, externally or internally. All extraverted functions are weighed against external values or standards, whereas introverted functions are the opposite. This does affect the standard intro/extroversion that we're all familiar with, but you just need to look where your main world focus is. Often I find introverts agree that what's going on for them is more interesting than what's going on around them.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> But you can figure out where you habituate your thought processes, either at the outer world or at the self (and actually its easier to figure this out in reverse -- which scares you more? Where does the threat come from? The outer world threatening to swallow you up, or the inner world which is a huge mystery?) In Extraverts its the inner world that is often the great mystery, they often don't really know who they are or what they want deep down and on some level may actually concerned by this saying things like "i honestly don't know what I'd do in x situation," or "I can't believe I did that." Generally with introverts its the opposite, its the outer world that to them seems unwieldy and impossible to control thus they retire inward. In both cases this is the result of their lack of preference of their inferior function which in extraverts will be introverted and in introverts will be extraverted.


This part is priceless. I think that question is very good in determining introversion or extraversion for someone. Inner world - huge mystery to me. Though I like to try and explore parts of it.

I can't imagine the world as threatening in general. Maybe if I'm very stressed out. But even then not the whole world is threatening. Just some things in it.


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## Narcotic (Jun 20, 2012)

Extroverts are all like "HEY".

Introverts are all like "hey".

...Sorry.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

reckful said:


> The idea that Jung is all about _how you think_ and Myers (or "the MBTI") is mostly about _behavior_ is one of those ever-popular internet forum memes with little basis in the facts. Jung described lots of behavior in Psychological Types, and Myers' descriptions include the essential internal attitudes/values/focus/worldviews/etc. that form the core element of the MBTI preferences.
> 
> You criticize MBTI sources for relating introversion/extraversion to being shy or outgoing. Well, here's a little dose of Jung for you on that subject:
> 
> ...


You can throw out all the individual quotes you want but the difference here is intent. Jung is describing types as part of a larger psychological phenomenology. Of course when making examples he's going to have to use behavioral or situational illustrations. By that metric he also says women are more likely to be Extraverted Feeling types and prone to suffer from hysteria. But to cherry pick passages like that is to miss the point. The MBTI is, by its own admission trying to do something different than what Jung was attempting to do. The MBTI is a tool to try and codify or concretize what was meant to be ideational. The analogy I'd use is that the MBTi is the equivalent of trying to create a metric of determining how "American' someone was culturally. Where Jung is describing the phenomenon of different cultural expressions, continuing the analogy, in reference to a larger picture, the MBTI is attempting to place those things on a metric. To say these effects can not only be reproduced but can be quantified. 

So my issue isn't so much with MBTI because I understand its purpose, and I understand that many of the misconceptions are not generated themselves from MBTI (for example they do not preach that shyness is a necessary component of introversion, I should've clarified that many of those things have been picked up virally elsewhere or exist in a cultural vernacular apart from MBTI), but if you are going to try to present something as a 'science' on science's terms (again big difference, Jung really stands on the left-wing of the science of his day) it should hold up to scientific scrutiny. 

The ironic thing about the MBTI is that it does exactly what Jung said that people would try to do when he talks about Extraverted Thinking, which is to try and objectify (or perhaps concretize) what should be subjective. It's never to simply accept a subjective idea for what it is but always "what can we do with this?" For example, at what point is someone oriented to Sensation enough to become a Sensation-type? Jung only says that such a person is subject to sensation (in the extraverted form) but how do we define being 'subject' to sensation? How do you really create a metric that says at such-and-such point on a scale X person will use sensation enough to be considered a Sensation type that is accurate across all of humanity? That's why I contend that Jung's is much more of a heuristic model not an objective model. 



> This difference is perceived most clearly when extraverted thinking is engaged upon material, which is specifically an object of the subjectively orientated thinking. This happens, for instance, when a subjective conviction is interpreted analytically from objective facts or is regarded as a product or derivative of objective ideas. But, for our 'scientifically' orientated consciousness, the difference between the two modes of thinking becomes still more obvious when the subjectively orientated thinking makes an attempt to bring objective data into connections not objectively given, i.e. to subordinate them to a subjective idea.
> 
> ...whenever thinking is brought, to any great extent, under the influence of objective data, since it becomes degraded into a mere appendage of objective facts; in which case, it is no longer able to free itself from objective data for the purpose of establishing an abstract idea.


He's basically saying that whenever Extraverted Thinking (which is the predominate mode of thinking of our day) is given the priority that it will try to objectify everything. That everything must be measurable, categorical, able to be experimented on, able to be reproduced, able to be proven and disproven, that there can be no room for subjectivity in the extraverted thinking disposition. Myers an Introverted Feeling type by her own admission (meaning she has a Te-preference) embodies this in her intent and approach. On Myers-Briggs.org the first sentence says their intent is to turn Jung's theories into something 'useful,' as if to suggest that his simply throwing out his ideas wasn't useful enough. This is sort of like trying to take the Biblical idea of 'redemption' and devise a method to make, what is essentially an esoteric concept open to interpretation, 'useful' in people's lives. There's a conflict here from the get-go, because there's a chance your interpretation is either too limited or not broad enough to really capture the intent of the author, translator or misses the point altogether by focusing on an aspect that wasn't meant to be focused on -- this is what happens, again with Jung is that everyone got all caught up in the types, again because of the categorical thinking of our day, and missed the point he was trying to make about the duality of man, ego/shadow, conscious/unconsciousness and the challenge of the ever constant splitting/coming together of the psychic experience. The types are just one small aspect, only important because they embody the conscious expression of personality, but to only pay attention to the types is to miss the greater person.

For example, Myers-Briggs assigns J/P to its typology. They write


> This fourth preference pair describes how you like to live your outer life--what are the behaviors others tend to see? Do you prefer a more structured and decided lifestyle (Judging) or a more flexible and adaptable lifestyle (Perceiving)? This preference may also be thought of as your orientation to the outer world.


Right here this contradicts Jung because again this might not always be related, in his view, to someone's type. These aspects would almost certainly be traced back to the influences of the complexes, the persona and perhaps the anima/animus primarily. 

They continue


> Everyone takes in information some of the time. Everyone makes decisions some of the time. However, when it comes to dealing with the outer world, people who tend to focus on making decisions have a preference for Judging because they tend to like things decided. People who tend to focus on taking in information prefer Perceiving because they stay open to a final decision in order to get more information.


Here a crucial component of Jung's ideas is missed, and its really interesting that not many people have really brought this up. This, at best would only describe the conscious orientation of the individual. But in Jung's typology there will always be an unconscious counter-reaction via the inferior function. So just because a person, say introverts their Intuition, doesn't mean that their Extraverted Sensation won't have an effect. To say that people who prefer perception, operate from the standpoint of taking life as it comes, is sort of true, and doesn't contradict Jung. But where they screw up is when they apply this to an auxiliary function, in the case of Introverts, where in Jung's typology it is always the dominant/inferior that carry the expression of the unconscious/conscious personality. 

For example Marie-Louise Von Franz opens up her lecture on the inferior function with


> Jung first differentiated two attitudinal types: the extravert and the introvert. In the extravert, the libido habitually flows consciously toward the object, but there is also an unconscious secret counteraction back toward the subject. For the extravert the hidden move toward the subject is usually an unconscious factor. In the case of the introvert, the opposite occurs, for he feels as if an object would constantly overwhelm him, so that he has to continually retire from it, for everything is falling upon him, he is constantly overwhelmed by impressions, but he is unaware that he is secretly borrowing, or lending, psychic energy to the object through his own unconscious extraversion.


So what happens with introverts in the MBTi is that I think Myers assumed that because the function opposite the dominant was inferior in consciousness, it wasn't that important and this is a gross mistake (as both Von Franz and Quenk have written extensively on the influences of the Inferior function). Even Beebe contends that the 'spine' of self revolves around the dom/inferior function. This is where you get all kinds of misinterpretations or derivations of ideas from the plague people's understanding of this stuff, on the one hand claiming for example that Si equals memories (which is does not) and on the other hand quoting, usually haphazardly from Psychological Types without understanding the greater contrast.

Let's look at Introverted Sensation for a second:

Jung spells out that Introverted Sensation
• In the introverted attitude sensation is definitely based upon the subjective portion of perception.
• Sensation is related primarily to the subject, and only secondarily to the object.
• It always looks as though objects were not so much forcing their way into the subject in their own right as that the subject were seeing things quite differently, or saw quite other things than the rest of mankind.
• It is concerned with presuppositions, or dispositions of the collective unconscious, with mythological images, with primal possibilities of ideas. (this is basically true to a degree of all introverted functions)
•The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor
• Introverted sensation conveys an image whose effect is not so much to reproduce the object as to throw over it a wrapping whose lustre is derived from age-old subjective experience and the still unborn future event. Thus, mere sense impression develops into the depth of the meaningful, while extraverted sensation seizes only the momentary and manifest existence of things. 

(by age old he's speaking primarily ontologically, though as a subjective preference, personal images can be brought to mind as well. But he's basically saying Si is a 'perception-is-reality' way of processing your five senses.

Contrast this to MBTI


> *Introverted Sensing: Compares present facts and experiences to past experience. Trusts the past. Stores sensory data for future use.*


This is like something else completely. Where are they getting this from? Trusts the past? Stores sensory data?

Jung opens up The Introverted Sensation type with _It is an irrational type, inasmuch as its selection among occurrences is not primarily rational, but is guided rather by what just happens. _Again, this contradicts J/P which says that people will be guided in the outer world by their Extraverted orientation. The reason for this misconception is because they are ignoring the Si-dom's Ne and only paying attention to what they think is the strongest function, which for them would be Fe or Te, when in Jung's typology the conflict is between conscious/unconscious or dominant/inferior. His whole treatise on the Introverted Sensation type revolves around the type's unrelatedness to the object. How their whole mindset of things only being as subjectively perceived gives them a certain aloofness and tendency to have _an amazing flair for every ambiguous, gloomy, dirty, and dangerous possibility in the background of reality,_ when under the influence of their inferior function.




> Actually he moves in a mythological world, where men animals, railways, houses, rivers, and mountains appear partly as benevolent deities and partly as malevolent demons. That thus they, appear to him never enters his mind, although their effect upon his judgments and acts can bear no other interpretation. He judges and acts as though he had such powers to deal with; but this begins to strike him only when he discovers that his sensations are totally different from reality.


 

In contrast the MBTI definitions 



> *ISTJ*
> Quiet, serious, earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Practical, matter-of-fact, realistic, and responsible. Decide logically what should be done and work toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Take pleasure in making everything orderly and organized – their work, their home, their life. Value traditions and loyalty.
> 
> *ISFJ
> ...



..run almost completely counter to how Jung described this types. It's as if they saw people who were like this, conscientious, unassuming, with a tendency to stick to what know they and made Si (one of the more esoteric of the functions) encapsulate this. Jung's Si as the misunderstood, lives-in-his-own-world artist, who always expects the worst, is actually closer to MBTI's xNFP. His example of Si is Vincent Van Gogh! (Again I think what happened is that they saw the influence of Si+Inferior Ne and the influence of its reactive negative possibilities and assumed that was Si rather than seeing it as conscious/unconscious aspects of an individual). 

So my point is not really to bash MBTI so much as to point out that they want to have it both ways. They want to be 'reverent' to Jung when it is convenient for their ideas, and disavow him when it isn't or doesn't meet their criteria. On the hand they agree that, for example, the dominant function reigns supreme, but on the other, say that it is the dominant extraverted function that really matters since (in their view) that represents how you approach the world, where Jung would likely have pointed to persona first, in how we manage ourselves outwardly before functions. But at its best, it is my contention that MBTI, because of its emphasis on the outer presentation is a metric of a person's persona, not their psychology.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Ya know, that reference about the Si of the Si doms being more similar to that of INFPs got me thinking about a certain INFP book character who I think people tend to assume is more famous for her Ne side than her Si side, while I actually am beginning to see it as the other way around. I brought up "Anne of Green Gables" in another thread once for some reason, and now that I think about it, I think what makes her so quirky and memorable in literature would not so much manifest from her Ne side (other than her preaching of "exploring possibilities" every once in a while), but mainly manifest from her tert. Si side (for a long time, I wasn't sure, since Si is so foreign to me, but now that I'm getting Si more, I definitely think that is a lot closer to her seat of famous creativity than Ne, since she's famous for being a very subjective and rather eccentric character). Sorry to derail the thread, but if anyone here has ever read that book, I think she represents a fantastic example of the true subjective nature of Si (e.g. "the haunted woods," she tends to have vivid "visions" of a concrete nature (not intuitive visions like Ni), etc.), mixed in with a lot of Fi, of course. Modern MBTI would call this "Ne," since it represents "imagination," but actually, since Ne is objective, this wouldn't be the case, really (imagination is not Ne - it's not any function). That all sounds very much like Jung's Si. I've had Si tert. and dom. friends before, and they all definitely have some kind of esoteric concrete perception going on (my twin included), which I can often see in their reactions to movies that have a "bad atmosphere," etc.


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## MooseAndSquirrel (Apr 10, 2012)

Wow, I feel like I need a serious frickin' nap after wading through all this! I'm not sure if I'm any more enlightened on the matter than I was before :laughing:... :blushed:.


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> Ya know, that reference about the Si of the Si doms being more similar to that of INFPs got me thinking about a certain INFP book character who I think people tend to assume is more famous for her Ne side than her Si side, while I actually am beginning to see it as the other way around. I brought up "Anne of Green Gables" in another thread once for some reason, and now that I think about it, I think what makes her so quirky and memorable in literature would not so much manifest from her Ne side (other than her preaching of "exploring possibilities" every once in a while), but mainly manifest from her tert. Si side (for a long time, I wasn't sure, since Si is so foreign to me, but now that I'm getting Si more, I definitely think that is a lot closer to her seat of famous creativity than Ne, since she's famous for being a very subjective and rather eccentric character). Sorry to derail the thread, but if anyone here has ever read that book, I think she represents a fantastic example of the true subjective nature of Si (e.g. "the haunted woods," she tends to have vivid "visions" of a concrete nature (not intuitive visions like Ni), etc.), mixed in with a lot of Fi, of course. Modern MBTI would call this "Ne," since it represents "imagination," but actually, since Ne is objective, this wouldn't be the case, really (imagination is not Ne - it's not any function). That all sounds very much like Jung's Si. I've had Si tert. and dom. friends before, and they all definitely have some kind of esoteric concrete perception going on (my twin included), which I can often see in their reactions to movies that have a "bad atmosphere," etc.


this was interesting. it kind of reminds me of my own experiences with misconstruing Si... there was this guy in one of my art classes--very tall, very gangly, died his hair jet black and let it hang across his face... he was very much into anime and it seems like he was almost dressing the part in a way, or presenting himself like that. after talking to him for a while i told him about the test and he took it. i thought he would have been an INTP (this is when i first got into it), but he was an ISTJ (and the person who i thought was an ISTJ was actually an INTP, lol, typing by persona). he was incredibly quirky/eccentric, and hearing him talk about writing essays and what not--it was all about how "one thing is very similar to another in just how you view it, and even then the connections between them are not only endless, but there existence is only reliant upon whether you see them or not"--(that was actually me trying to translate him, could be way off the mark) meaning that your ability or ease with writing essays is in how malleable your own perception is(?). 

and people are always saying that Si doen't equate to memory, but it seems as if (and this could be a falsehood created by MBTI) most Si-types have a knack for not needing to study. the class we were in was ran by a lady who gave out conflicting information but expected intricate knowledge and detail when it came to tests, but he was able to do well without studying at all--he just payed attention in class... i wonder, if there is something to Si being indirectly related to memory in such a way that their recall about a certain subject (that has "importance" to them) is better than other types who have Si in a lower range or not all, could it be something like "having a subjective form of sensing acts/can act as a 'good median range' between mediums of objective/subjective & sensing/intuiting, being that 'concrete recall' would fall onto or could be plotted on a graph in a curve, or any other form with Si being the 'most proficient'?". the only reason i ask is because even though Jung didn't speak of it (?--did or would he have had reason to?), it does seem to be a trend. maybe sensing-dominants might be better in general because they perceive and focus (consciously) in a way that takes in information in a way that is easier to translate back to its original form, where as N's seem reject the original form, causing a gap between where the info sprang from how they see it in their own mind? either there is something to it, or it's a "fluke" caused by MBTI.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

celticstained said:


> and people are always saying that Si doen't equate to memory, but it seems as if (and this could be a falsehood created by MBTI) most Si-types have a knack for not needing to study. the class we were in was ran by a lady who gave out conflicting information but expected intricate knowledge and detail when it came to tests, but he was able to do well without studying at all--he just payed attention in class...


Nah, I didn't pay attention in classes and spent minimal time studying at home but I still got the best grades and I'm not Si... just to give you a counter-example.




> maybe sensing-dominants might be better in general because they perceive and focus (consciously) in a way that takes in information in a way that is easier to translate back to its original form, where as N's seem reject the original form, causing a gap between where the info sprang from how they see it in their own mind? either there is something to it, or it's a "fluke" caused by MBTI.


OK I'm sensing dominant (Se), but when a topic is abstract, I change the data into my own format (Ti? Ni?). I do feel there is a gap then. It's definitely harder to process then, but it still works fast and good. Anyway, the point is that I think that memory depends on the nature of the input data too.

Overall... I really don't think memory should be equated with any function. Long term memory isn't located in one place anyway (in the brain), each neuronal network has their own; so if we really must try and link memory with MBTI, then, at best, each function would have their own memory.


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## illicit iridescence (Dec 31, 2011)

itsme45 said:


> Long term memory isn't located in one place anyway (in the brain), each neuronal network has their own; so if we really must try and link memory with MBTI, then, at best, each function would have their own memory.


S has Si, F has Fi, T has Ti, N has Ni? Just throwing up a ball.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

eyenexepee said:


> S has Si, F has Fi, T has Ti, N has Ni? Just throwing up a ball.


No...

Memory is memory, not functions.


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## illicit iridescence (Dec 31, 2011)

Seeing that the introverted functions use an inner frame of reference, doesn't that imply some use of memory?


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

eyenexepee said:


> Seeing that the introverted functions use an inner frame of reference, doesn't that imply some use of memory?


Extraverted functions need memory to operate just as much as introverted ones. You are trying to link too much to the concepts of functions.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Yea memories are a separate component of the psyche pretty much in most theories. Its just that somehow Si got colloquially confused as being memory or sense memory or what have you along the way when really it isn't (Si, in particular gets confused as a lot of things from sense memory to being conscientious). Because memories are 'inner images' so to speak, introverted functions will _typically_ be the vehicle through which they are processed (because that is the purpose of introverted functions -- to filter information from the inner world), so its not inappropriate to say, one of the things Si could do is process a memory a certain way, but so could any other introverted function.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

MooseAndSquirrel said:


> Wow, I feel like I need a serious frickin' nap after wading through all this! I'm not sure if I'm any more enlightened on the matter than I was before :laughing:... :blushed:.


Too much Liquid and not enough Light? I felt the same way. :tongue:



LiquidLight said:


> You can throw out all the individual quotes you want but the difference here is intent. Jung is describing types as part of a larger psychological phenomenology...
> 
> Let's look at Introverted Sensation for a second:...


Wow, LiquidLight. Introverted sensation? Really? Your aim is to cast a negative light on some of Myers' departures from Jung and you want to focus on _introverted sensation_?

Well, before I get to that, let me first say more generally that I agree with you that, in developing the MBTI typology, Myers departed from Jung in many ways, both large and small. Where I guess we mainly differ is that I believe the great majority of her additions, corrections and other changes were improvements (including appropriate _expansions_), whereas you seem more inclined to take the perspective, much in vogue on internet forums, that the Myers-Briggs typology, to the extent that it departs from Jung, mostly represents an oversimplified dumbing-down of Jung and/or a misunderstanding of Jung and/or an attempt to do something very different than what Jung trying to do — e.g., "to try and objectify (or perhaps concretize) what should be subjective" (one of several straw-man characterizations in the first half of your post).

In any case, there's no denying that one of the results of Myers' changes to Jung is that each of her 16 type descriptions differs (to varying degrees) from Jung's description of the cognitive function (and function-dom) that purportedly corresponds to that type. And if I wanted to pick a single cognitive function where Myers' conception of the corresponding types departed the most from Jung, I'm pretty sure I'd pick introverted sensation.

To Jung, as you noted, Si-doms were awkward, touchy eccentrics, detached from reality, who inhabited "a mythological world, where men, animals, railways, houses, rivers, and mountains appear partly as benevolent deities and partly as malevolent demons." Not only does Jung's portrait bear little resemblance to a typical IS_J, I think anyone not inclined to treat Jung with too much reverence would have to agree that Jung's portrait bears little resemblance to _any_ significantly numerous group of normal-range people who've ever walked the face of the earth.

In describing what he referred to as "the reality-alienating subjectivity of this type," Jung said that an Si-dom "has an illusory conception of reality," and that the relation between the actual physical world and the Si-dom's perceptions of it is "unpredictable and arbitrary." Both because of that and because, in Jung's view, the Si-dom's thinking and feeling functions "are relatively unconscious and, if conscious at all, have at their disposal only the most necessary, banal, everyday means of expression," Jung said that not only is it typical for Si-doms to be unable to really communicate their views to the world in understandable ways — an Si-dom also typically "fares no better in understanding himself."

Jung said the main hope for an Si-dom to be able to communicate his thoughts to others was through art — in which case, although others would then be able to get a better glimpse of the Si-dom's soul, it would also be "strikingly clear" how "irrational" the Si-dom's perspectives were — but, alas, Jung also noted that artistic Si-doms were the exception rather than the rule, with the result that, "as a rule, [the Si-dom] resigns himself to his isolation."

Myers, as you correctly noted, abandoned the vast majority of Jung's strange, collective-unconscious-dominated conception of what Si involved and, for ease of reference, I'll repeat the summary ISTJ and ISFJ descriptions you already quoted from the myersbriggs.org website:



> ISTJ
> Quiet, serious, earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Practical, matter-of-fact, realistic, and responsible. Decide logically what should be done and work toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Take pleasure in making everything orderly and organized — their work, their home, their life. Value traditions and loyalty.
> 
> ISFJ
> Quiet, friendly, responsible, and conscientious. Committed and steady in meeting their obligations. Thorough, painstaking, and accurate. Loyal, considerate, notice and remember specifics about people who are important to them, concerned with how others feel. Strive to create an orderly and harmonious environment at work and at home.


My parents are both IS_Js, LiquidLight, and I've dealt with quite a few others, and I have to say that I find that Myers' take captures them far better than Jung's. Have you known many IS_Js and, if you have, do you disagree?

And the thing is, not only am I far from alone in finding that Myers' (and Keirsey's) IS_J — and SJ — descriptions are more accurate, and richer, and more insightful than Jung's, but the people who agree with me (on the accurate part at the least) include every reasonably well-known _cognitive functions theorist_ I've ever read — including Thomson, Berens, Nardi and Quenk. And let me emphasize that, when I say I find Myers' (and Keirsey's) SJ descriptions richer and more insightful than Jung's Si descriptions, I'm talking about richness and insight that includes the _internal characteristics_ that make up (or should make up) the heart of any temperament typology — how they think, what they value, what aspects of the world seem meaningful, etc. — contrary to all that hand-waving you did in the first half of your post about the MBTI just being concerned with "external" and "concretized" descriptions that would be "useful" in some narrow sense. FYI, the main _usefulness_ Briggs and Myers had in mind for their typology, right from the beginning, was simply helping people understand themselves and others better. And in typological terms, I'd say that was very much consistent with Myers' INF type, notwithstanding your attempt to support your straw-man characterization of the MBTI's "purpose" by saying, in effect, "Aha! Isabel's tertiary Te was running the show!" (Can your Ni picture my eyes rolling, LiquidLight? That's good.)

Anyway, getting back on track, and because I'm new at this forum and nobody should be expected to take my damn word for anything: In her description of Si-doms, Lenore Thomson notes that they excel at "accumulat[ing] information — names, dates, numbers, statistics, references, guidelines, and so forth" — not "for its own sake" but to the extent that it's "useful to them and directly related to what they like to do" — and Si "prompts us to reconcile our new impressions with the ones we've already stored." Thomson says Si-doms "count on established facts and concrete results"; "consider it a point of honor to discharge their responsibilities, to be on time, and to keep their word"; and are "reassured by a defined place in a larger group." They "make it their business to know how things are supposed to work ... and they're concerned that others take these operating standards seriously as well." So Thomson's Si-doms are basically Myers' IS_Js, not Jung's Si-doms.

Similarly, Naomi Quenk (who you mentioned) explains (emphasis mine): "Introverted sensing types are careful and orderly in their attention to facts and details. They are thorough and conscientious in fulfilling their responsibilities. ... They are *typically seen as well grounded in reality*, trustworthy, and dedicated to preserving traditional values and time-honored institutions. *With their focus on the reality of the present, they trust the evidence of their senses*, and rely on carefully accumuated past and present evidence to support their conclusions and planned courses of action. ... They tend to take a skeptical, critical attitude to information that has not been verified by the senses and are likely to distrust people who are careless about facts, sloppy about details, and favor imagination and novelty over accuracy and solid substantiation."

Again, Quenk's Si-doms are basically Myers' IS_Js. In terms of the relationship of an Si-dom to sensory data and reality in general, Quenk's conception of introverted sensation, like Myers' and Thomson's, comes closer to resembling the _opposite_ of Jung's Si-dom than matching Jung's conception.

Berens (who also makes use of Keirsey's SJ descriptions in her multifaceted approach) and Nardi also describe Si-doms in ways that are essentially consistent with Myers and inconsistent with Jung.

And again, as you know, Thomson, Quenk, Berens and Nardi are the most well-known MBTI theorists whose approaches are centered more around the cognitive functions than the dichotomies. I assume it goes without saying that all the well-known authors who follow the MBTI's dichotomy-centric approach (like Keirsey and Kroeger & Thuesen) offer IS_J profiles that match Myers' IS_J descriptions far more than Jung's Si-dom description, so I'll spare you quotations from them.

But never mind all that. You look at the MBTI Si description and you compare it to Jung's Si-dom description and you say, "This is like something else completely. Where are they getting this from? Trusts the past? Stores sensory data?" You note that the MBTI IS_J descriptions "run almost completely counter to how Jung described this type" — but instead of concluding, like Keirsey, Thomson, Quenk _et al._, that this is a case where Myers improved on Jung (and very dramatically at that), you point to the discrepancy as part of your _criticism of the MBTI_. It's evidence that those MBTI folks are "'reverent' to Jung when it is convenient for their ideas, and disavow him when it isn't or doesn't meet their criteria" — not to mention more evidence that the MBTI is focusing on people's "outer presentation" (their "persona") and missing what's really going on deep down underneath.

"Where are they getting this from," LiquidLight? Isabel Myers came to her conclusions about IS_Js partly by way of observing and talking to people, just like Jung — although Myers was much more methodical and thorough in her approach, devising type questionnaires that were used to test thousands of subjects during her lifetime. Where would you think she would have "gotten it from"? Would you rather that she'd cloistered herself in her den, reading and rereading Jung like some medieval Biblical scholar? And what would you have had her do after her own observations led her to disagree with Jung in various respects and note characteristics that he hadn't? Close her eyes and ignore the differences?

Jung himself broke with Freud in part because he viewed Freud as trying to turn his theories into a kind of religion, immune from criticism and change. Just sayin'.

2nd-to-last note: You say Jung typed Van Gogh as an Si-dom. ("His example of Si is Vincent Van Gogh!") Although, given Jung's conception of Si, it wouldn't exactly surprise me, I believe that's just another one of those memes that gets passed around in internet forums and other shady places. Do you have a respectable source?

Final note: Here's a bit more of you, from the same post:



LiquidLight said:


> The MBTI is, by its own admission trying to do something different than what Jung was attempting to do. The MBTI is a tool to try and codify or concretize what was meant to be ideational. ...
> 
> The ironic thing about the MBTI is that it does exactly what Jung said that people would try to do when he talks about Extraverted Thinking, which is to try and objectify (or perhaps concretize) what should be subjective. It's never to simply accept a subjective idea for what it is but always "what can we do with this?" ...
> 
> [Jung noted that,] whenever Extraverted Thinking (which is the predominate mode of thinking of our day) is given the priority, ... everything must be measurable, categorical, able to be experimented on, able to be reproduced, able to be proven and disproven, that there can be no room for subjectivity in the extraverted thinking disposition. Myers an Introverted Feeling type by her own admission (meaning she has a Te-preference) embodies this in her intent and approach. On Myers-Briggs.org the first sentence says their intent is to turn Jung's theories into something 'useful,' as if to suggest that his simply throwing out his ideas wasn't useful enough.


And here's INFP Isabel Myers — a pretty far cry, I would submit, from Jung's conception of a Te-dom — from Gifts Differing:



Myers said:


> Since [1942] the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has yielded a wide range of information about the practical bearings of type. The implications of the theory, however, go beyond statistics and can be expressed only in human terms. ... In this material I hope parents, teachers, students, counselors, clinicians, clergy — and all others who are concerned with the realization of human potential — may find a rationale for many of the personality differences they encounter in their work or must deal with in their private lives. ...
> 
> Since the more superficial aspects of type are often the easiest to report, many trivial reactions are useful for identification, but these are merely straws to show which way the wind blows. They are not the wind. It would be a mistake to assume that the essence of an attitude or of a perceptive or judging process is defined by its trivial surface effects or by the test items that reflect it or by the words used to describe it. ...
> 
> Whatever the circumstances of your life, whatever your personal ties, work, and responsibilities, the understanding of type can make your perceptions clearer, your judgments sounder, and your life closer to your heart's desire.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

@celticstained

Very interesting. I think there might be something to Si being linked to a good detail-specific memory. The dom/aux/tert Si types tend to be pretty good with just absorbing detail and being able to spit it out in the sequence that the detail was received (the Si tert. types are a little stiffer with this though). This is rough for me. However, the Se types tend to be better at recalling external details of the moment something was taught, etc. and sort of just state information at face value (e.g. Like so-and-so said this, etc.) with little regard for information sequence beyond what connection can be drawn between bringing one thing up and then another with regards to the external situation.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

reckful said:


> Too much Liquid and not enough Light? I felt the same way. :tongue:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I think @_LiquidLight_ is right, because what you're not realizing is that MBTI doesn't really focus on introversion - it sort of pretends introversion is extraversion, due to its irresponsible disregard for the subjective nature of introversion and the objective nature of extraversion. So no, Si is pretty weird because it is subjective. None of the cognitive functions are anything other than cognitive functions, such as memory. The MBTI was not meant to be a psychological tool, so obviously, it took the underlying psychology (e.g. subjectivity) out of the cognitive functions. Jung was describing the nature of the functions, while MBTI meant to make this practical, which only works toward the goal of making this practical, not capturing the accuracy of the nature of this stuff in psychology. Of course there's plenty of evidence out there that Myers didn't have reputable sources to back up so many of her claims - that's one of the major criticisms launched against her by the psychological community - all you have to do is the research to figure out that MBTI isn't taken seriously as a psychology for a reason. You do realize that Jung was being more specific than Myers about the functions, correct?

Also, Myers actually fits Jung's description of a very black-and-white Te type (inferior, so that explains that) very well - I was reading a book at the library which painted her to be rather authoritarian and "my-way-or-the-highway" with her conceptualizations and tests (she was stubborn about letting anyone criticize her works and make suggestions).


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

@_Reckful_ I'm not going to continue this only because these arguments are well-covered in http://personalitycafe.com/cognitiv...inferior-functions-only-functions-matter.html and http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/84760-mbti-types-illusion.html and I just keep saying the same thing over and over again. That and I don't think we're in as much disagreement as the tone of this discussion might indicate. 

Also I'm going to look for that Van Gogh reference I remember reading it somewhere, I have a suspicion its in one of Von Franz's lectures.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> 1) How did you determine those people were IS_J's, that is, Si doms before defining Si from the Myers standpoint? Circular reasoning... Do not try to use J/P as argument because that is often proven to be unreliable in predicting the dominant and auxiliary functions for introverts.
> 
> 2) You still did not address how come that those IS_J descriptions are Ji dom + Se auxiliary people in Socionics which is another Jungian spin-off.


When I say IS_J, I mean people who test as IS_Js when they take the official MBTI and similar dichotomy-based tests.

That's also what Keirsey, Thomson, Berens, Quenk _et al._ mean when they refer to IS_Js, regardless of the extent to which they do or don't also believe that those dichotomous preferences correspond to particular functions with particular attitudes in particular priority positions.

So, for example, the IS_Js who Thomson writes about are people who type that way on the MBTI (and Thomson's own dichotomy-based test) and _also_ people who she characterizes as having Si as their dominant function. And, as I said, her descriptions of those people strongly resemble Myers' IS_J descriptions and bear little resemblance to Jung's portrait of an Si-dom.

And I have no interest in getting into the J/P can of worms here, and I'm not really interested in discussing Socionics anywhere.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

reckful said:


> When I say IS_J, I mean people who test as IS_Js when they take the official MBTI and similar dichotomy-based tests.
> 
> That's also what Keirsey, Thomson, Berens, Quenk _et al._ mean when they refer to IS_Js, regardless of the extent to which they do or don't also believe that those dichotomous preferences correspond to particular functions with particular attitudes in particular priority positions.
> 
> ...


Right, so you rely on the dichotomies, well that will not verify any kind of function definition at all. It seems like you are aware that there are studies showing the disconnect between the 4-letter dichotomy and the functional analysis, it points even beyond the J/P issue, it is not just "a J/P can of worms". 

Anyway, I have a question to you as I don't know all these theories in such deep detail; what made the authors mentioned by you compelled to just use the IS_J's common trait patterns to define Si, even if they can't/don't try to prove that IS_J's have this Si as dominant? 

Or did they use some other method to define Si?

I'm asking because here's an easy alternative: defining J/P differently, defining the Si function differently, defining function dynamics differently, and as a result we can still end up at IS_J's with their common patterns of thinking and behaviour. (Duh I'm not supposed to mention that another theory already did just that.  But any other theory could do it in another different way again.)

Also, did these authors rely on Myers stuff to any degree when working out their own theories?

I brought up socionics because it's a spin off just like any of the other ones you mentioned, so it is not quite true there is full agreement on the Si definition. I wasn't intending to make a deep discussion on that theory in particular.

Btw, I'm sorry if I sound too relative for you, but I try to see all these theories standing back a bit further, detached from all of them as much as possible and that's why I see this as a subjective decision whether the Si definition of Myers is an improvement or not.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> Right, so you rely on the dichotomies, well that will not verify any kind of function definition at all. It seems like you are aware that there are studies showing the disconnect between the 4-letter dichotomy and the functional analysis, it points even beyond the J/P issue, it is not just "a J/P can of worms".
> 
> Anyway, I have a question to you as I don't know all these theories in such deep detail; what made the authors mentioned by you compelled to just use the IS_J's common trait patterns to define Si, even if they can't/don't try to prove that IS_J's have this Si as dominant?
> 
> ...


In terms of the point I was making, I don't really see the relevance of most of what you're asking. All those leading cognitive functions theorists we're talking about have tested and interacted with many real world individuals and present IS_J portraits that, although they're undoubtedly _theory-based_ to some extent, are also portraits that they've found actually match up well with the people who test IS_J on the MBTI and similar dichotomy-based tests. And they "use the IS_J's common trait patterns to define Si" (as you put it) because they're working with a functions model (which I don't really subscribe to, but they do) which says that IS_J = Si-Je-Ji-Ne.

You could use a different model that said Si corresponds to IS_P, for example, but in that case those same theorists would presumably be using a substantially different Si description that matched what they'd found to be the common/dominant characteristics of IS_Ps. Given that Thomson's current description of ISFPs, for example (presumably based, again, in substantial part on her own interactions/interviews/etc. with ISFPs), strongly resembles Myers' description (and doesn't really resemble Jung's Si-dom description any more than her ISFJ description does), I can only assume Thomson's revised Si description (under that hypothetical different model), like her current one, would similarly resemble the corresponding Myers descriptions substantially more than Jung's Si-dom description.

I don't really understand how you can say they're all just theories and it's a totally "subjective decision whether the Si definition of Myers is an improvement or not" after multiple independent theorists have gone out there and tested/interviewed/etc. large numbers of subjects and concluded that there's a quite-numerous group of real-world people who match up quite well with Myers' portraits and that there doesn't seem to be a notably numerous group of real-world people who match up well with that strange Si-dom portrait Jung gave us.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

reckful said:


> In terms of the point I was making, I don't really see the relevance of most of what you're asking. All those leading cognitive functions theorists we're talking about have tested and interacted with many real world individuals and present IS_J portraits that, although they're undoubtedly _theory-based_ to some extent, are also portraits that they've found actually match up well with the people who test IS_J on the MBTI and similar dichotomy-based tests. And they "use the IS_J's common trait patterns to define Si" (as you put it) because they're working with a functions model (which I don't really subscribe to, but they do) which says that IS_J = Si-Je-Ji-Ne.
> 
> You could use a different model that said Si corresponds to IS_P, for example, but in that case those same theorists would presumably be using a substantially different Si description that matched what they'd found to be the common/dominant characteristics of IS_Ps. Given that Thomson's current description of ISFPs, for example (presumably based, again, in substantial part on her own interactions/interviews/etc. with ISFPs), strongly resembles Myers' description (and doesn't really resemble Jung's Si-dom description any more than her ISFJ description does), I can only assume Thomson's revised Si description (under that hypothetical different model), like her current one, would similarly resemble the corresponding Myers descriptions substantially more than Jung's Si-dom description.
> 
> I don't really understand how you can say they're all just theories and it's a totally "subjective decision whether the Si definition of Myers is an improvement or not" after multiple independent theorists have gone out there and tested/interviewed/etc. large numbers of subjects and concluded that there's a quite-numerous group of real-world people who match up quite well with Myers' portraits and that there doesn't seem to be a notably numerous group of real-world people who match up well with that strange Si-dom portrait Jung gave us.


Alright, but the thing is whether the function model is good enough. What is the evidence to prefer the model of IS_J being Si dominant over the model assigning the Si dominance of IS_P instead, thus requiring a different definition of Si? (I know you don't like Socionics for some reason (?), but I'm not specifically talking about Socionics.) This is why I am saying this seems to me a subjective decision. Unless there is actual evidence, which I do not know of. Note, interviewing people in a qualitative way is not evidence for a model.

Btw which function model do you subscribe to, if any?

Anyway, I can see your last sentence is your real point here and it does make sense, I do agree that Jung's portrait does not seem to be common in real life.  So yes I suppose it's an improvement if MBTI describes a group of people better. The question however is, what is behind the concrete description? A model, and you can already guess the rest of my argument here.

I was not claiming though that Jung's Si was such a great definition, I more wanted to hear an argument about how the MBTI Si definition makes sense beyond just those observed common patterns. To me it doesn't make a lot of sense because from the general concept of Sensing and Introversion I would not see a good way to derive such a concept of Si.

Also, I would still like to know if those authors you listed were influenced by Myers' original work to any heavy degree. I assume they already knew about Myers' MBTI Si definition so they chose to build from this existing concept after doing those interviews; instead of trying to make a different and possibly better model. Let me know if I'm wrong and they've come to their conclusions completely independently of Myers' stuff, though I see this as highly unlikely as you yourself mention they were dealing a lot with observing the Myers portraits in people.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

reckful said:


> This is the kind of horseshit that it's not uncommon to find on internet forums, posted by people who are clearly not familiar enough with Jung, Myers or the history of the MBTI to be making these sorts of assessments.
> 
> Briggs and Myers developed the MBTI with the same basic aim as Jung — namely, to help people understand themselves and others in terms of certain dimensions of personality. Jung's descriptions are full of "surface" behavior in addition to descriptions of the core underlying attitudes and values and other internal elements — and Myers' descriptions reflect a similar mix of internal and external elements.
> 
> ...


I've been studying this stuff straight for 3 years, so I do believe I know very well what I'm talking about. I'm very familiar with the MBTI, and yes, her system didn't go past the surface level enough for me, because unlike Jung, I quickly got to a point with MBTI where I wasn't asking many questions anymore - it was all self-explanatory and left more questions along the lines of "why does she word this that way? - why does it have to be? - what does it imply or mean?" You're argument about Jung said nothing, because duh, that's only a small part of Jung, while MBTI is meant to be surface level in painting the manifestations of the functions onto the types since it is a behavioral theory more than it is a psychological one (it strictly adheres to bits and pieces of Jung in the psychology department). Jung was the psychologist - they weren't - it's that simple.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> Note, interviewing people in a qualitative way is not evidence for a model.


Personality is a soft science and how an analyst seeking insight should go about it is a very complicated issue. I'd certainly hope and expect that any leading theorist's approach would include quite a bit of interviewing people, in addition to testing, etc.



itsme45 said:


> Btw which function model do you subscribe to, if any?


Like Myers (who mostly just paid lip service to Jung as far as the functions were concerned), I think the dichotomies, rather than the functions, are the central building blocks of temperament and, as I've said, I think the four MBTI dichotomies are tapping into the same real underlying human temperament dimensions as four of the Big Five factors. I don't really subscribe to any "function model," although I'm open to the idea that people theorizing about, e.g., Fe and Fi (and talking to and observing people with the corresponding dichotomy combinations), may have insightful things to say about those people that in some cases go beyond what Myers or Keirsey or other more dichotomy-centered sources have described.



itsme45 said:


> Anyway, I can see your last sentence is your real point here and it does make sense, I do agree that Jung's portrait does not seem to be common in real life.  So yes I suppose it's an improvement if MBTI describes a group of people better. The question however is, what is behind the concrete description? A model, and you can already guess the rest of my argument here.
> 
> I was not claiming though that Jung's Si was such a great definition, I more wanted to hear an argument about how the MBTI Si definition makes sense beyond just those observed common patterns. To me it doesn't make a lot of sense because from the general concept of Sensing and Introversion I would not see a good way to derive such a concept of Si.
> 
> Also, I would still like to know if those authors you listed were influenced by Myers' original work to any heavy degree. I assume they already knew about Myers' MBTI Si definition so they chose to build from this existing concept after doing those interviews; instead of trying to make a different and possibly better model. Let me know if I'm wrong and they've come to their conclusions completely independently of Myers' stuff, though I see this as highly unlikely as you yourself mention they were dealing a lot with observing the Myers portraits in people.


Since modern conceptions of Si correspond to IS_J (and, to a significant extent, SJ) rather than IS, I'd expect an MBTI Si description to make sense more in terms of a combination of S and J than a combination of I and S, and I think it does.

In any case, though, at the end of the day, I'm interested in preference/type descriptions that are as accurate and rich as possible in terms of how they correspond to real world people's temperaments (as manifested in both internal and external terms), regardless of whether those descriptions can somehow be made to fit together into some tidy model. If they find that NFs, for example, tend to exhibit certain characteristics that seem to have a "greater than the sum of the parts" quality when compared to N characteristics and F characteristics, that doesn't bother me.

To answer your last question, I'd assume all the leading MBTI authors were "influenced by Myers' original work" (and Jung's) to a substantial degree, but I'd also hope that each of them cast an appropriately critical eye on their predecessors' work and ultimately came to their own conclusions (at least in part) about what worked and what didn't


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

reckful said:


> Personality is a soft science and how an analyst seeking insight should go about it is a very complicated issue. I'd certainly hope and expect that any leading theorist's approach would include quite a bit of interviewing people, in addition to testing, etc.


Yes it's a soft science but people here seem to forget that when trying to explain things. The models out there are not suited for any kind of real explanation due to the nature of the thing. Still a long way to go, basically. =P

Btw, IMO, an analyst in research science shouldn't be seeking insight as the goal, they should be seeking to make and improve models. Insight is something personal - that may aid in understanding of course and it does feel great.




> Like Myers (who mostly just paid lip service to Jung as far as the functions were concerned), I think the dichotomies, rather than the functions, are the central building blocks of temperament and, as I've said, I think the four MBTI dichotomies are tapping into the same real underlying human temperament dimensions as four of the Big Five factors. I don't really subscribe to any "function model," although I'm open to the idea that people theorizing about, e.g., Fe and Fi (and talking to and observing people with the corresponding dichotomy combinations), may have insightful things to say about those people that in some cases go beyond what Myers or Keirsey or other more dichotomy-centered sources have described.


What are these "real underlying human temperament dimensions"?

Nice btw.  I also don't "believe" in any function model.




> Since modern conceptions of Si correspond to IS_J (and, to a significant extent, SJ) rather than IS, I'd expect an MBTI Si description to make sense more in terms of a combination of S and J than a combination of I and S, and I think it does.


This is again just circular logic. Says nothing. -.-

But okay I'll rephrase my question: why should it be S+J and not S+I?




> In any case, though, at the end of the day, I'm interested in preference/type descriptions that are as accurate and rich as possible in terms of how they correspond to real world people's temperaments (as manifested in both internal and external terms), regardless of whether those descriptions can somehow be made to fit together into some tidy model. If they find that NFs, for example, tend to exhibit certain characteristics that seem to have a "greater than the sum of the parts" quality when compared to N characteristics and F characteristics, that doesn't bother me.


Type descriptions can never be accurate or rich. How can you even hope that? They are just concrete stereotypes. What use are you seeking in that?




> To answer your last question, I'd assume all the leading MBTI authors were "influenced by Myers' original work" (and Jung's) to a substantial degree, but I'd also hope that each of them cast an appropriately critical eye on their predecessors' work and ultimately came to their own conclusions (at least in part) about what worked and what didn't


About what worked and what didn't... well. What do you mean by "it works" in this context? Being able to stereotype people?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

itsme45 said:


> Btw, IMO, an analyst in research science shouldn't be seeking insight as the goal, they should be seeking to make and improve models. Insight is something personal - that may aid in understanding of course and it does feel great. ...
> 
> What are these "real underlying human temperament dimensions"? ...
> 
> ...


Personality psychologists, over a period of many years, have gathered lots of data in support of the idea that there are a handful of "real underlying human temperament dimensions" — personality characteristics (or, really, clusters of characteristics) — that are substantially genetic and tend to be relatively stable through a person's life. Decades of twin studies have demonstrated that, with respect to introversion (for example), identical twins separated at birth and raised in separate households are substantially more alike than non-identical twins (to say nothing of two random people).

You say a type description "can never be accurate or rich." I would say, on the contrary, that a statement with respect to introverts (for example) — which, in an area like personality, should virtually always be a statement that speaks in terms of _tendencies_ and _probabilities_, rather than 100% predictable certainties — is "accurate" to the extent that it's consistent with the data (and doesn't claim more certainty than the data will support). And I would tend to describe one description of introverts as "richer" than another to the extent that the former includes a greater number of accurate (and reasonably significant) statements about what introverts are like.

If you consider that "stereotyping," then I'd say you're using the term in a non-negative way. I generally use "stereotyping" to refer to a case where someone errs in terms of, e.g., overstating the prevalence of the relevant characteristics ("All introverts..." or "An introvert will always...") or describing overly-specific characteristics that don't meaningfully correlate with the applicable dimension.

I also disagree with what seems to be your overly black/white-ish suggestion (if I'm understanding you correctly) that there's really no room in the world of personality psychology for someone to make insightful statements based on introspection or interviews or observations or other sources that fall outside the bounds of "scientific" data collection. Jung's Psychological Types was barely based on any scientifically-gathered data at all (especially by modern standards), and that's certainly a relevant shortcoming for various purposes, but I don't think it means that Psychological Types has nothing to contribute to the field of personality typology, or that people interested in understanding themselves and others can't benefit in a meaningful way by reading Jung's insightful (and often colorful) takes on various of the personality characteristics he described, based on many years of thoughtful observations.

Jung, Myers, Keirsey and all the other reasonably popular MBTI-related sources go well beyond strict scientific data-reporting as they seek, among other things, to understand and describe what it's like to be an introvert or an NT or an INFJ in what you might call _human terms_ — and, as long as there's no misunderstanding about the nature of what they're doing, I see that as a good thing.


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## itsme45 (Jun 8, 2012)

reckful said:


> Personality psychologists, over a period of many years, have gathered lots of data in support of the idea that there are a handful of "real underlying human temperament dimensions" — personality characteristics (or, really, clusters of characteristics) — that are substantially genetic and tend to be relatively stable through a person's life. Decades of twin studies have demonstrated that, with respect to introversion (for example), identical twins separated at birth and raised in separate households are substantially more alike than non-identical twins (to say nothing of two random people).


Have they tried gathering data that is NOT in support of the idea? 

Also, this is worded very relative, while the word usage "dimension" refers to something actually existing, that is, not in just a relative way but in a directly accessible way too. The simple fact that we have genes and thus can inherit tendencies does not necessarily imply such a thing. Clusters of characteristics isn't necessarily it.

Also, as for which characteristics can stay stable over the whole life of a person, can this even be predicted or can it be non-random at all (without taking into account the environment)? People can change a surprising lot over a longer time period; one trait may change and another may stay the same.




> You say a type description "can never be accurate or rich." I would say, on the contrary, that a statement with respect to introverts (for example) — which, in an area like personality, should virtually always be a statement that speaks in terms of _tendencies_ and _probabilities_, rather than 100% predictable certainties — is "accurate" to the extent that it's consistent with the data (and doesn't claim more certainty than the data will support). And I would tend to describe one description of introverts as "richer" than another to the extent that the former includes a greater number of accurate (and reasonably significant) statements about what introverts are like.


Yes I said a description can't be accurate and rich. By "accurate" I mean how much it can be applied to actual people. "Rich" is clearly subjective, but I wouldn't expect a few sections of text to be richly describing one single person.




> If you consider that "stereotyping," then I'd say you're using the term in a non-negative way. I generally use "stereotyping" to refer to a case where someone errs in terms of, e.g., overstating the prevalence of the relevant characteristics ("All introverts..." or "An introvert will always...") or describing overly-specific characteristics that don't meaningfully correlate with the applicable dimension.


What is "meaningful correlation"? Statistically significant or what?

I used "stereotyping" in the negative way. Quite a few descriptions are like that because obviously that is their goal, that is, zooming in on some characteristics and that requires overstatement of them.




> I also disagree with what seems to be your overly black/white-ish suggestion (if I'm understanding you correctly) that there's really no room in the world of personality psychology for someone to make insightful statements based on introspection or interviews or observations or other sources that fall outside the bounds of "scientific" data collection. Jung's Psychological Types was barely based on any scientifically-gathered data at all (especially by modern standards), and that's certainly a relevant shortcoming for various purposes, but I don't think it means that Psychological Types has nothing to contribute to the field of personality typology, or that people interested in understanding themselves and others can't benefit in a meaningful way by reading Jung's insightful (and often colorful) takes on various of the personality characteristics he described, based on many years of thoughtful observations.
> 
> Jung, Myers, Keirsey and all the other reasonably popular MBTI-related sources go well beyond strict scientific data-reporting as they seek, among other things, to understand and describe what it's like to be an introvert or an NT or an INFJ in what you might call _human terms_ — and, as long as there's no misunderstanding about the nature of what they're doing, I see that as a good thing.


_"...but I don't think it means that Psychological Types has nothing to contribute"_ - this is not a real argument, because: basically, you said fact X doesn't mean that Y is true. However, the problem with that is, fact X also doesn't mean that Y is not true. No proof for either case... Another argument against yours: yes there can be benefit but there can also be disadvantages. E.g. someone claimed that his friend went too deep into Jung and it brought out some neurosis of the guy so strongly that he had to be hospitalized. That's one argument for leaving it up to the experts (psychologists). I suppose MBTI itself doesn't go that deep so that can actually be considered as an advantage (eliminating some risky disadvantages) but it may lose other advantages in that simplifying process. Anyway, going slightly off-topic here.

What is your overall stance on this topic though? Do you just want nice descriptions and summary of a lot of gathered data on people and then having some personal intuitive idea inside your mind about all that? Or something else too? I suspect our attitudes in terms of this are very different.

I suppose that shows in how I don't like to discuss this sort of subjectivity where you talked about "human terms". By this I mean, I think this sort of stuff can be so easily misunderstood because it's hard to explain the ideas, so again we're back to how there can be disadvantages of the qualitative approach as well as advantages. I see more disadvantages than advantages in terms of the goals of researching subjects.

So this is why I say there is no room in psychology for this, except for the personal use of the researcher. I'm sorry if you call that an overly black-white suggestion. People like to try and use this as a last resort when they don't know how to argue for their statements; calling something "black-white" is not a proper argument at all.

Also, you didn't answer why one should prefer S+J over S+I when defining Si.  But I'm not going to nag you, I guess it's an unanswerable question anyway as it's a subjective decision at this point at researching the mind. Which you didn't agree with, for some reason... even though now you do admit to it by referring to the "human terms".


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## Toroidal (Apr 14, 2016)

reckful said:


> The idea that Jung is all about _how you think_ and Myers (or "the MBTI") is mostly about _behavior_ is one of those ever-popular internet forum memes with little basis in the facts. Jung described lots of behavior in Psychological Types, and Myers' descriptions include the essential internal attitudes/values/focus/worldviews/etc. that form the core element of the MBTI preferences.


You are wrong.

Jung was about how people thought and used that thinking to explain behavior. Myers Briggs is about measuring behavior and using the functions as buckets for their survey. With Jung the focus is on explaining behavior, with MBTI the focus is on measuring behavior.



reckful said:


> Like Myers (who mostly just paid lip service to Jung as far as the functions were concerned), I think the dichotomies, rather than the functions, are the central building blocks of temperament and, as I've said, I think the four MBTI dichotomies are tapping into the same real underlying human temperament dimensions as four of the Big Five factors. I don't really subscribe to any "function model," although I'm open to the idea that people theorizing about, e.g., Fe and Fi (and talking to and observing people with the corresponding dichotomy combinations), may have insightful things to say about those people that in some cases go beyond what Myers or Keirsey or other more dichotomy-centered sources have described.


The dichotomies come from the model. If you do not believe in the model than you have no basis for trusting the dichotomies. This is the same problem as Big 5.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Toroidal said:


> You are wrong.
> 
> Jung was about how people thought and used that thinking to explain behavior. Myers Briggs is about measuring behavior and using the functions as buckets for their survey. With Jung the focus is on explaining behavior, with MBTI the focus is on measuring behavior.
> 
> ...


I've put some recycled reckful for you in the spoiler.


* *






ae1905 said:


> Is Jung's book about behavior? Or cognition?


Very much both. Jung's descriptions are full of contrasting behaviors that he believed were typical of the various types, and this post includes a collection of passages in which Jung associates extraversion and introversion with lots of behaviors.

And you know what else? In one very significant sense, Jung thought that _behavioral results_ was really what type was about. Jung believed that extraversion and introversion were products of _evolution_, and had evolved as two opposing psychological orientations for the purpose of producing two different types of people who pursued two opposing _survival strategies_ — i.e., two different _sets of behaviors_.

Here's part of what Jung said:

There are in nature two fundamentally different modes of adaptation which ensure the continued existence of the living organism. The one consists of a high rate of fertility, with low powers of defense and short duration of life for the single individual; the other consists in equipping the individual with numerous means of self-preservation plus a low fertility rate. This biological difference, it seems to me, is not merely analogous to, but the actual foundation of, our two psychological modes of adaptation. ... [T]he peculiar nature of the extravert constantly urges him to expend and propagate himself in every way, while the tendency of the introvert is to defend himself against all demands from outside, to conserve his energy by withdrawing it from objects, thereby consolidating his own position. Blake's intuition did not err when he described the two classes of men as "prolific" and "devouring."​
Evolution results from _actual reproductive success_ — and that's a product of how the organism _behaves_. So as Jung saw it, introversion didn't evolve because Mother Nature wanted a substantial chunk of the human race to _think a certain way_. Introversion evolved because Mother Nature wanted a substantial chunk of the human race to _act a certain way_. And so it's hardly surprising that Psychological Types is full of vivid descriptions of many ways Jung said his types tended to differ in their behaviors.

In any case, and as I said in my last post: at the end of the day, Jung's original typology and the MBTI (in both its dichotomy-centric and function-centric forms) all deal, at their core, with _internal_ temperament dimensions and the various ways they end up being typically manifested _both_ internally (by way of values, motivations, thinking processes, attitudes, emotional responses, etc.) and externally (through speech and behavior).



You accuse me of not believing in "the model." Well, if you're interested, you can read quite a bit more about the MBTI "model" that deserves your attention and respect in this post. And it's a model that is very much centered around the dichotomies, and not the functions.


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## PiT (May 6, 2017)

Toroidal said:


> The dichotomies come from the model. If you do not believe in the model than you have no basis for trusting the dichotomies. This is the same problem as Big 5.


I would think that the empirical research done on the basis of the dichotomy system would form a much stronger basis for trusting it than a theoretical model that ultimately de-values said dichotomies. The Big 5 does not claim to relate to functions and works very well for it, so I do not know why you are bringing it up here.


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## Toroidal (Apr 14, 2016)

reckful said:


> I've put some recycled reckful for you in the spoiler.
> 
> 
> * *
> ...


There are a lot of problems with your post. You seem to be misunderstanding everything.

1. Jung was focused on cognitive functions first and then using them to explain behavior. He was typing based on cognitive functions. MBTI is focused on typing based on behavior (do you like talking to people) and they use the dichotomies, not the functions, as buckets. It's not the same. I agree with you that Myers Briggs did a lot of lip service to Jung because her work is fundamentally not the same. 

2. Jung original model had 4 functions. The 3 less differentiated functions were in opposite extraversion/introversion from the superior function.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Toroidal said:


> 2. Jung original model had 4 functions. The 3 less differentiated functions were in opposite extraversion/introversion from the superior function.


That's incorrect. Jung's function model for what he viewed as a _typical_ Ti-dom with an N-aux (for example) was Ti-Ni-Fe-Se.

Long explanation (with many Jung quotes, including the one I assume you're thinking of) here.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

@LiquidLight


Where did you find those MBTI definitions?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

The Penguin said:


> @LiquidLight
> 
> 
> Where did you find those MBTI definitions?


LiquidLight last posted here in February 2014.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

reckful said:


> LiquidLight last posted here in February 2014.


Do you know where I could find those definitions?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

The Penguin said:


> Do you know where I could find those definitions?


If you're talking about post 7, several of his official quotes come from this website.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

reckful said:


> If you're talking about post 7, several of his official quotes come from this website.


Thank you :happy:


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## Toroidal (Apr 14, 2016)

reckful said:


> That's incorrect. Jung's function model for what he viewed as a _typical_ Ti-dom with an N-aux (for example) was Ti-Ni-Fe-Se.
> 
> Long explanation (with many Jung quotes, including the one I assume you're thinking of) here.


This was the worst example of speculation that I have ever seen. 

You confirmed that in Psychological Types that Jung believed the 3 less differentiated functions were unconscious. Then you confirmed that Jung changed his model to be 2 conscious and 2 unconscious functions. Instead of stating that Jung changed his model, you made a bunch of baseless speculation to reinterpret the original quote. 

With that said, thank you for doing that work because I was wondering where the idea that the dominant function = ego came from. I couldn't find the work where Augusta mentions it.


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