# (Meta-MBTI) Lacanian/Sartrian perspective



## EagleOfTooting (Apr 1, 2021)

Hello everyone! This is my first post here so I thought to introduce myself a little, maybe about my history with mbti and typology.
I have been interested in the theory for quite some time now (at least 10 years). The last couple of years I've been active in the CSJ community. Though I still think CSJ has the best grasp on the theory, I have lost touch with the community because I have (finally, afters years of needlessly struggling to type myself) dismissed the theory in general.
However, this doesn't mean I'm done with typology in general. It's only since a couple of months since I figured out why exactly I could never bring myself to fully embrace the theory. I’m just going to throw some things out there.

(My main concern comes after this middle part - put it in bold. What follows are just my own observations):

It started when I got into Zizek and Lacan. In one of his books Zizek writes about Lacan's graph of desire. In its simplest form the graph talks about how meaning (in an endless stream of signifiers) is constituted retroactively through quilting (by means of a process of designation – in the case of ideology this quilting comes about by reference to some kind of abstract, mythic concept that serves as the ultimate signifier through which all other signifiers become fixed).

So this is one of my sources from which I started to put the mechanisms behind typology into perspective. The second source was an article by a guy named Stefano Micali, an Italian philosopher who specializes in phenomenology. He wrote an essay about stupidity and reached an interesting conclusion about how stupidity often comes about through over-identification. He refers to Sartre’s book ‘The Transcendence of the Ego’ in which Sartre argues in favour of the notion that ego’s are more secondary in nature – the ‘I’ is not the central agent of consciousness.

This makes me think that, contrary to what people like CSJ like to claim, types are not innate or natural things. We never ‘are’ a certain type, we just identify as a certain type. Types are constructed outside of us, there is nothing inside of us that corresponds to what we would call a type. This kind of fixing in a meaningful way only happens outside of us and only retroactively does this constitute or affirm a sense of identity (our idea of who we truly are. But we experience this identification with a type as if this type is something innate, something natural, something fixed inside of us, something necessary – as if it was an ‘I’). This of course is not a shocking or original conclusion to reach. Yet I have the feeling that most people would disagree with this conclusion.

It would also explain certain types of behaviour often to be observed in mbti communities (such as viewing certain types as inferior, bias towards intuitive types, stereotyping, etc). It also explains the need to incorporate accidental traits as part of the meaningful constituted whole of typology – things like the infamous ‘INTJ death stare’ and other phrenology-like assumptions (about how Fi-types have a different smile than Fe-types, etc). This is where the essay on stupidity and overidentification comes into play. So the whole endeavour of typology seems to be driven by a desire for wholeness, righteous self-expression.

Because types are constituted outside of us, they are also constituted in relation to others (the symbolic/language and its social nature). So we create an image of who we are and this image, through typology, is automatically verified through this gaze of the other – the other has to recognize us as such, the other poses no threat to our idea of self anymore. I think an important part of Jung’s work was to show how these social constructions of types manifested themselves throughout history in similar ways.

This social character of typology as a reason why we cling to it for self-identification can also be theorized from Lacan/Freud’s notions of Ideal-Ego (identification with the image in which we appear likeable to ourselves) and Ego-Ideal (identification with the place from where we are being observed) – typology constitutes both fields (the personal and the social).
I know I'm all over the place, but does anyone else feels this way about the theory?

*My problem is that it seems like typology/mbti/depth psychology is like an island unto itself. From both directions there is a lack of engagement:
1) People into typology don’t seem interested in seeking interaction with other theories through which certain presuppositions and concepts from typology can be critically evaluated. 
2) At the same time there is also a lack of engagement in typology from people (philosophers mainly) who, in the first place, are not interested in typology. The only people who engage with typology are the sceptics who seek to evaluate typology in terms of scientific validity – they like to label it as a pseudoscience, but I’m not interested in this kind of positivist evaluation of typology since I believe that the theory has merit as long as it can serve as a framework through which one can make sense of reality.

As you can see, my take on the theory is very rough, very incoherent. So, the essence of it all is the following question – does anyone know about a community, a book, an essay, or whatever where this kind of critical engagement takes place? In particular I’d like to see philosophical interpretations of typology (or psycho-analytical interpretations outside of Jung – like Lacan). I guess you can call it meta-mbti or meta-typology.*


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

The personality theories circle is a clusterfuck of morons in quest of an identity and mutual validation. They seek a strong sensation of themselves, or what they wish to be. Identity is the conundrum of sensors. Why? Because the most frequent stimulus serves as their reference point. And since they are the most frequent thing that happens to them, they can't be at peace until they put a very special word on that, or when they realize that they aren't as definitive or specific as they want to be. And it gets even worse when introversion uses the expectation for reference point instead of the object of expectation.

They aren't interested in what happens only once, the "faint stimuli" as Jung called it. Otherwise they would be interested in that description Jung used only once in his book. But instead, they drown themselves into what he repeats the most frequently, the most frequent word, example or analogy. Then, they quickly forget that to drown themselves in a much larger sea, that of stereotypes and portrayals people invent and repeat on the internet. Or worse, they start in the larger sea, and approach Jung's book with this filter on their eyes.

The problem sensors have with the MBTI starts with how Jung spent more time waffling on his analysis and conclusions than on his observations. Hence the vast majority of MBTI community, sensors, will never use the observations as reference point to try and understand 1) What was really observed, in the light of all what we know about human beings now, 2) how relevant is the theory that is grounded on those observations, 3) how consistent are the supposed examples of a personality type based on the theory.


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## EagleOfTooting (Apr 1, 2021)

IDontThinkSo said:


> The personality theories circle is a clusterfuck of morons in quest of an identity and mutual validation. They seek a strong sensation of themselves, or what they wish to be. Identity is the conundrum of sensors. Why? Because the most frequent stimulus serves as their reference point. And since they are the most frequent thing that happens to them, they can't be at peace until they put a very special word on that, or when they realize that they aren't as definitive or specific as they want to be. And it gets even worse when introversion uses the expectation for reference point instead of the object of expectation.


Well, that sort of is the point of what I'm saying about overidentification and the Lacanian/Sartrian notions of lack of ego and the processes that help us form an ego. What I want to point out is how this ego formation only happens retroactively after identifying with a type (something outside of us, something artificial) in which our own experiences of self become fixed (get a fixed meaning, which the stream of signifiers (experience) is quilted).

I'm not sure if you disagree with me. I don't want to make it into a sensor vs intuitive kind of thing - since that would put us in with the kind of essentialism that I'm arguing against. But this desire to identify yourself against something else (and the superior and inferior connotations that terms like intuitive and sensor have in this community) is very telling, also very natural probably.

EDIT: So I'm not so much interested in the theory of mbti, but more in this meta-perspective (if I'm allowed to call it such), in which we try to understand why we want to define ourselves or understand reality through types.


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

EagleOfTooting said:


> But this desire to identify yourself against something else (and the superior and inferior connotations that terms like intuitive and sensor have in this community) is very telling, also very natural probably.


In a world that is too complicated to be anticipated from te get go, using the most frequent stimulus as a landmark for one's prognosis is heuristically inferior to favor the less frequent simulus.

I am only interested in how deficient heuristics affect one's biological consistency. I don't care about what I am, but if it works or not. And it occurs that among the things that don't work, one has been rebranded by Jung : "sensing".

But you had to stick to the usual boxes in which you put those who display an anti-sensor bias. You used them as landmark to predict where I belong and.. overidentificated me to them. What is very telling is the many facts that you had to jump over to conclude that. Because you're yet another of those who have a statistical approach of right and wrong.


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## EagleOfTooting (Apr 1, 2021)

IDontThinkSo said:


> I am only interested in how deficient heuristics affect one's biological consistency. I don't care about what I am, but if it works or not. And it occurs that among the things that don't work, one has been rebranded by Jung : "sensing".


You need to elaborate on that, since to me it seems like you are the one sticking to "the usual boxes". I even argue in favor of such a pragmatic - heuristic - approach to typology in the last part of my opening post. I even said that I dislike those 'positivists' who like to label typology as a pseudoscience. I argue in favour of multitudes.

"What is very telling is the many facts that you had to jump over to conclude that. Because you're yet another of those who have a statistical approach of right and wrong." Again, you need to elaborate. If you want to comment on my text, please quote me. Because, right now you're the one making assumptions about me without further clearification to what points you're argueing against.

EDIT: Also on my part. I was reacting to your 'The problem sensors have with the MBTI' part of your first text. Was it so unfair of me to assume you make use of the sensor/intuitive division in a bit of an essentialistic manner? I'm merely calling out this phenomenon I have observed in all mbti communities - so from what perspective am I putting people into boxes? One that is undefined probably, which is the whole point of my post. I feel like there exists a lack of critical self-reflection in mbti communities, a lack of perspective about why and how we come to identify ourselves with types. I feel like Lacan and Sartre have formulated theories that can help us understand this need to identify and the mechanisms behind constructing types.


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