# Connecting my interests to every conversation. Ne or NI?



## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

I notice that when I am very interested in something, in this case it's mbti and cognitive functions, it shows in my conversations to all my friends. I have been very interested in the cognitive functions lately and I have been expressing that to people when I talk to them. For example, yesterday a friend asked me for advice with a relationship problem. I answered him by talking about how his girlfriend is an introverted feeler. This means that he should understand that she is not going to show all her emotions which means she will be hard to read. But it doesn't matter what the conversation is about, I will relate cognitive functions to the topic because I am so interested in it and I see how it relates to a lot of things in life. 

What is this cognitive function that I am displaying? I do this very often whether I am interested in cognitive functions or maybe something else that I am into, during some other time in my life, like healthy living. Maybe if I am into healthy living, at some time, I will constantly bring up exercising and eating right in conversations and draw a connection from that to the topic at hand because that is what my mind is thinking of most of the time, for that period of interest. 

I'm positive this is Ne or Ni but I am not sure which since, unfortunately, intuition is still confusing to me.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Actually might be closer to Fe than Ne. Feeling, in the most simple terms tells us what we like or don't like and extraverted feeling measures that against the real world. 

But again what interests you is a very deep and complex subject. It's not just that you are interested in something because of any function, interest in something can come from imagination, desire, aspiration, fear, and a bunch of other places, its not always just 'x function.'


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

Hmm Fe, never thought about it in that sense since I'm pretty reserved but maybe I really am showing my feelings. Maybe I should instead think about the real reason why I get into a specific subject.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Fe doesn't mean feelings. Fe is how you evaluate your feelings. If you like or dislike something it often comes with a feeling-tone or an emotional response. Fe (and Fi) are how you translate or rationalize those tones or emotions into good/bad, like/dislike, worthwhile/meaningless, etc. The only difference is that with Fe, you are rationalizing it against an external standard and with Fi you are judging these feeling-tones against an internal standard. 

So for example, you see a car and like it. Fe might like the car, basically because everyone else does. Because Car and Driver magazine said it was the newest hottest car, because everyone at your job or school is driving one and so on. Basically you look externally to validate your opinions. So if you are interested in something, Fe may have a tendency to want to run that interest against the opinions of the people around you. To make sure that thing or interest is truly worthwhile or worth pursuing. The example Jung used for Fe is the woman who marries the right man, not necessarily the man who is the best for her. She looks to see how well he would fit in with the family, his economic status, social standing, potential -- all things that are evaluated by the outside world and then based on that makes the decision that this is the man to marry. it's not that she doesn't have her own opinions on the matter, but rather that the opinions of those around her become her opinions. If they say he's acceptable, then he's acceptable to her (because extraversion always downplays the self). For the Fe-type interested in MBTI or typology, if everyone around them finds it acceptable and interesting then great, and if not, there may be the potential for some conflict (the person might turn to a type forum full of like-minded people instead of turning to their peers or parents, but understand this is still validating against an external ideal). 

The functions do not drive you. Your ego drives you. Your ego, or the 'you' is what decides what it wants to do and how to do it. The functions are just the mechanisms to accomplish that. So if you desire to learn MBTI or typology, then Fe is just a way of helping you accomplish that, but understand that Fe is not the end-all/be-all. It doesn't mean that you'll adapt to everything around you, just means that when you are looking to validate a like or dislike you will look around you rather than inside of you.


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

Okay I get it. For things such as clothes or even my choice of guitars, the people around tend to not like those things I choose but I like them very much because they fit me. So when I wear my golfer's cap or lame scarf around, people around me usually say things like "take that thing off" but I love it and it feels me so I wear it. This seems very Fi. That's probably why some of my values, like how a relationship must be 50-50 instead of the traditional man pays for woman, are a lot different from the norm. 

For my interest in mbti and how I express it to others in every conversation, I am not looking for their opinions on the cognitive functions. I am expressing my opinions on it because I want them to understand what I understand. I am kind of selfish because I just want to talk about my interests. Maybe that's why I relate my interests to every conversation...so I can talk about my own interests somehow. 

So in terms of finding myself and figuring out my type, I turn to my close friends or parents so they can tell me in an objective way who I am and what my tendencies are so I can get a better sense of myself. Then I come here to the forums and state my tendencies so I can see which functions I am using. 

Seeing the functions as a way of executing my desires is a new concept to me. Thank you. I will ponder how I execute my desires.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Well one of things you can try to figure out is just how you appeal to the world around you. Is it in a thinking type of way, like making sure you are doing the right thing or that your concepts or ideas are intellectually sound (like asking experts or teachers or trusting people who know what they're talking about for example) or is it more to help you evaluate whether things are good or bad? It sounds like you maybe Fi/Te, having your own sensibilities about things that sort of burns from within, but when it comes to intellectual matters checking them against the world around you (Te).


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

Definitely about doing the right thing and making sure my actions reflect my ideals/values. I don't care if my values sound a little "out there" to an intellectual. Honestly, most of the time they do but I will still want that intellectual's input so I can have a good direction in setting out to make those values real. 

For example, I want a career as a park ranger. Most people I tell this to laugh at me but I really want to do this and I always have. But I will still want to know what I have to do to get my goal so I am going to be asking questions like "which classes should I take" or "should I take this internship?" Once I have those answers, I am going to do everything I can to make those answers a reality and usually, nothing stops me from getting what I want so I don't really ever worry about getting A's in my classes or fulfilling other goals. I will just get the A because I know I have to in order to get the career I want. This sometimes is my downfall because I just don't worry enough, as my friends/parents have said. This also leads to procrastination because "I'm going to get it done eventually so why worry now? I always get things done because I have to." 

So if I do have Fi and Te, where does Se fit in this? Te cannot be my secondary since Fi seems to be my primary. How can my Te be so apparent if it is most likely my inferior?


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## Elvira (Dec 1, 2011)

mell said:


> I notice that when I am very interested in something, in this case it's mbti and cognitive functions, it shows in my conversations to all my friends. I have been very interested in the cognitive functions lately and I have been expressing that to people when I talk to them. For example, yesterday a friend asked me for advice with a relationship problem. I answered him by talking about how his girlfriend is an introverted feeler. This means that he should understand that she is not going to show all her emotions which means she will be hard to read. But it doesn't matter what the conversation is about, I will relate cognitive functions to the topic because I am so interested in it and I see how it relates to a lot of things in life.
> 
> What is this cognitive function that I am displaying? I do this very often whether I am interested in cognitive functions or maybe something else that I am into, during some other time in my life, like healthy living. Maybe if I am into healthy living, at some time, I will constantly bring up exercising and eating right in conversations and draw a connection from that to the topic at hand because that is what my mind is thinking of most of the time, for that period of interest.
> 
> I'm positive this is Ne or Ni but I am not sure which since, unfortunately, intuition is still confusing to me.


I tend to do this too and I"m INFJ. I'm actually trying to stop, because my brother said it was really annoying. I never really realized it before, but he says I tend to guide the conversation towards my interests and it gets frustrating to the other person. Sometimes it gives the impression of "I don't care what you have to say, I just want to talk."

When I'm interested in something, I could go on for hours and talk about it all the time  But I realized that this only works if the other person is genuinely interested in the topic as well. It seems like most of my interests aren't mainstream so I don't usually get to talk about them that much.

I admittedly have no idea what cognitive function this is  Sorry. But just try to be conscious that trying to divert every conversation to your topic of interest can be frustrating for other people. (I don't know if you do this or not, please don't be offended  hehe)


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

In short Se would probably orient you more to the here-and-now where Ne would send you more into the realm of possibilities or of what could be. In your case it sounds like you are Introverted Feeling+Sensation (not sure how many INFP park rangers there are). You seem much more oriented to practicality and the real world than up in the clouds of 'what ifs' and 'what mights.' (some of that is more ENFP than INFP though). You seem to be a person of deep passion about what you want to do that fuels how you go about doing it, which is sort of the classic Fi>Te pattern (where the thing you value is what drives the process rather than the other way around which would be more like ExTJ).

I would guess that ISFP is probably your best fit.


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Sounds to me like Ne, because it's basically what I do. Look at an external object, like other people, and the topics of the advice they are asking for, and connect it to different possibilities, using your interests.
And this sounds like there is a "parental" complex involved, where you like to help people with it, and they even know to come to you for such advice.

So you might be an INFP (aux. Ne). It can help if you just focus on S vs N now, since you already have ISFP.


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## Yedra (Jul 28, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> So for example, you see a car and like it. Fe might like the car, basically because everyone else does. Because Car and Driver magazine said it was the newest hottest car, because everyone at your job or school is driving one and so on. Basically you look externally to validate your opinions. So if you are interested in something, Fe may have a tendency to want to run that interest against the opinions of the people around you. To make sure that thing or interest is truly worthwhile or worth pursuing. The example Jung used for Fe is the woman who marries the right man, not necessarily the man who is the best for her. She looks to see how well he would fit in with the family, his economic status, social standing, potential -- all things that are evaluated by the outside world and then based on that makes the decision that this is the man to marry. it's not that she doesn't have her own opinions on the matter, but rather that the opinions of those around her become her opinions. If they say he's acceptable, then he's acceptable to her (because extraversion always downplays the self). For the Fe-type interested in MBTI or typology, if everyone around them finds it acceptable and interesting then great, and if not, there may be the potential for some conflict (the person might turn to a type forum full of like-minded people instead of turning to their peers or parents, but understand this is still validating against an external ideal).


 @LiquidLight you are an INFJ, does the above apply to you?

In my opinion Fe and Te are merely tools for actions. Thus, if the woman in Jung's example married a man who is acceptable according to social standards than this is more due to Si-Ti than Fe. Si internalizes the environment and social rules and Ti decides, yes, this is the way every respectable man should be and therefore her Fe acts out on this and she marries a certain type.

Si-Fi-Te would do the same but for other reasons maybe.

An xSTJ leads or sets an example by upholding the norm and making sure everyone else does, an xSFJ leads or connects by preaching the norm.
For these types to make a change a better use of Ne is necessary, I suppose.

Ni-Ti-Fe might reevaluate the existing norms and propose and preach new ones that will find their application by consensus in the external world eventually.

Ni-Fi-Te will rebel against the system.

But that Fe somehow just conforms doesn't make sense to me and I don't like it when functions are being evaluated in isolation anyway.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

yedra said:


> @_LiquidLight_ you are an INFJ, does the above apply to you?
> 
> In my opinion Fe and Te are merely tools for actions. Thus, if the woman in Jung's example married a man who is acceptable according to social standards than this is more due to Si-Ti than Fe. Si internalizes the environment and social rules and Ti decides, yes, this is the way every respectable man should be and therefore her Fe acts out on this and she marries a certain type.
> 
> ...


The functions are not tools the functions are mechanisms for the ability to perceive and judge the outside world and yourself. Without this ability you would have no self-awareness. You would have no way of measuring who you are against the world, in much the same way a dog has no sense of self-awareness they are, in a sense completely extraverted because they lack the ability to make themselves the object. They literally cannot perceive or judge themselves (introversion). 

Functions do not make you do anything. They simply provide a mechanism to accomplish what you want to do. It is your ego complex that drives you not functions. If your ego and its corresponding persona, desire (which correlates to libido in Jung's term) leads you in the direction of being something of a humanistic person, looking out for the interests of people, then it will employ the functions in service of that. If for whatever reason you desire to go off and be a terrorist, your ego will employ functions in service of that. 

Whether or not the OP uses Ne or Fe or whatever to share her opinions and interests is besides the point. She has a psychological disposition in which she desires to share her interests and can employ any function in service of that. A lot of times we look at it backwards (this is largely due to Myers-Briggs) where we say "because the person is Fe, they will desire harmony or structure or whatever." But this is not so, Extraverted Feeling just evaluates feeling-tones and emotions against an established standard. Introverted Sensation just looks at the world through a subjective lens (and most certainly doesn't care anything about any 'rules' of the outside world as an introverted perception function). Fe isn't conformity, conformity might be an effect of Fe, but the desire to conform comes from your ego and persona largely (and perhaps some shadow tendencies) and Fe or Te are employed in service.

I'm pointing this out because it is critical to understand the difference between MBTI and Jung which is a major philosophical distinction. In Jungian psychology (and really most psychoanalysis) it is the ego that is the center of the conscious sphere. When you speak of 'you' you are speaking of your ego. When someone says "I am," they are either speaking of ego, or in the case of someone really un-self-aware their persona (this would be the person who says "I am a preacher," or "I am a teacher," or "I am an INTP." etc. These are largely personas given by the outside world and adopted by you, but not necessarily reflective of who you are psychologically). So it is your ego that dictates whether or not you are a nice person, or a jerk, someone who wants to conform to your surroundings or not and so on. And your ego has four mechanisms, functions, perspectives if you will that it employs to accomplish this. The one in which it employs the most often is known as your dominant or main function and thus creates what we call personality type. 

Understand that I am arguing a different perspective than Myers-Briggs which basically teaches that the functions are the center of the psyche and that it is the functions that motivate everything we do. That someone is conscientious and closure-seeking not because it is the result of a vast series of experiences, conditioning, socializing, influences from the world around you and the world within you, but rather simply, because the person has a strong preference for Te and Fe. One of the reason I think the Beebe shadow model caught on is because he recognized that it is not that simple as an analyst himself. That there are forces beyond our simple conscious orientation (MBTI) that are at work as well. That you have unconscious complexes motivating what you do, just as much as you consciously are motivated by what you do and to only focus on the conscious sphere, as MBTI does, only gets at a small part of the picture. So when someone like the OP says "I do x and y," one might conclude initially that it is Fi>Te, but this is just a guess (as I said earlier). Because honestly I have no idea _why_ she wants to be a park ranger (and she may not either), I just assumed it had something to do with a sensation preference, but it could be because she was raised by a pack of bears and now wants to give back to those who gave to her. I'm being silly, but what I'm try to prove is that underlying motivation is never as simple as "I do this because of x function or functions." If we took that to its extreme, all Te types should be entrepreneurs or cops, all Ni-doms should be soothsayers, all Se-doms should be adrenaline junkies and athletes and every politician and preacher should be a Fe-type. But the world of course is not that simple. 

One of the problems I have with how people try to use MBTI is that they ignore the fact that MBTI doesn't deal with things from the standpoint of 'what I don't want to be.' People are motivated just as much by fear, guilt, shame, avoidance of pain, emotionalism, memories as they are by desire and in fact 'desire' is often informed by these things. The person may not be a conscientious duty-bound moral figure because of Te or Fe but rather because he says to himself "my dad was an abusive alcoholic and I will be damned if my life has the same kind of chaos that I came out of." It would very irresponsible to try and tie this 100% of type. Rather such a person could employ his cognitive energy, the ways in which he judges and perceives the world in service of this goal which comes from a very different place than typological disposition. 

If the person wants to share her ideas or interests and create nodes of conversation around them, then all the functions would tell us is perhaps how the person goes about doing this. The Extraverted Intuitive might be able to sniff out some sort of underlying subtext or context in a conversation. The Extraverted Feeling type might try to appeal to commonly shared interests, values, perhaps even disguise it in terms of fellowship, or sharing of self. The Extraverted Thinking type may appeal to widely held conceptual truths and the Extraverted Sensation type might try to bring it into an experiential realm. Of course these are all over-simplified because in any case all four functions are being employed at once in various degrees. The Te type who shares his ideas by appealing to conceptual truths is also using Sensation, Intuition and Feeling to provide a context and a good sense of timing perhaps to bring it up in conversation.

The reason people think that, for example, an ESFJ connects by preaching norms is because there forms a symbiotic relationship between the wants or desires of the ego and its habitual appeal to the dominant function. Sort of like a person who wants to write letters or communicate may habitually, or even be disposed to use his or her right hand. But this doesn't mean that the right hand is dictating what the person writes, just that it is the primary mechanism or function employed when writing or communicating is desired. In my opinion, when people speak of this relative to an MBTI vernacular understanding, they confuse the two. They think the tail is wagging the dog. That the hand is what's writing the letter rather than the person. But this is not so, your ego dictates whether or not you want to preach at all in the first place and for the Fe-type, Fe will be the go-to way of accomplishing this. This is why you see people of similar upbringing, character, conditioning, who appear to be very similar despite having very different typological makeups. It likely isn't that 60% of the country are SJs typologically (a serious statistical study would likely find outlier numbers like that problematic especially when SJ seems explicitly related to cultural norms). Rather that 60% of the country _looks-like_ SJs (their upbringing, conditioning, world-views, ideas, produce a type of person who fits, say the Kiersey SJ archetype, but the individuals themselves may be typologically all over the map). This is clearly evidenced in families where everyone has the same general disposition despite every single family member being a different type. The need to conform to the environment, to fit in, is much more ingrained than simply saying "Fe" or "Te". These are imperatives for human survival and the character of our relationships to ourselves and the world around us is a primary factor in determining the quality of our lives. Jung devised the functions as ways of observing and processing these things. Ways of directing our libido (desire or conscious cognitive energy) so that we might be able to understand both ourselves and the world around us, and though we might prefer that energy to go in an a particular direction, say the outside world (extraversion), this is not the end of the story. In some ways it wouldn't matter if all your functions were introverted (you'd be someone completely disconnected from the physical world) but you would still have motivation, desires, things you want to be, and things you absolutely do not want to be. In fact in the orignal Myers-Briggs, all the other functions went the opposite way so originally an ENFP was Ne-Fi-Ti-Si, which was trying to be more Jungian in his view that the dominant holds sovereignty.


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## Coyote (Jan 24, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> The functions are not tools the functions are mechanisms for the ability to perceive and judge the outside world and yourself. Without this ability you would have no self-awareness. You would have no way of measuring who you are against the world, in much the same way a dog has no sense of self-awareness they are, in a sense completely extraverted because they lack the ability to make themselves the object. They literally cannot perceive or judge themselves (introversion).
> 
> Functions do not make you do anything. They simply provide a mechanism to accomplish what you want to do. It is your ego complex that drives you not functions. If your ego and its corresponding persona, desire (which correlates to libido in Jung's term) leads you in the direction of being something of a humanistic person, looking out for the interests of people, then it will employ the functions in service of that. If for whatever reason you desire to go off and be a terrorist, your ego will employ functions in service of that.
> 
> ...


And _that_ is why you are my favorite PerC poster.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

mell said:


> I notice that when I am very interested in something, in this case it's mbti and cognitive functions, it shows in my conversations to all my friends. I have been very interested in the cognitive functions lately and I have been expressing that to people when I talk to them. For example, yesterday a friend asked me for advice with a relationship problem. I answered him by talking about how his girlfriend is an introverted feeler. This means that he should understand that she is not going to show all her emotions which means she will be hard to read. But it doesn't matter what the conversation is about, I will relate cognitive functions to the topic because I am so interested in it and I see how it relates to a lot of things in life.
> 
> What is this cognitive function that I am displaying? I do this very often whether I am interested in cognitive functions or maybe something else that I am into, during some other time in my life, like healthy living. Maybe if I am into healthy living, at some time, I will constantly bring up exercising and eating right in conversations and draw a connection from that to the topic at hand because that is what my mind is thinking of most of the time, for that period of interest.
> 
> I'm positive this is Ne or Ni but I am not sure which since, unfortunately, intuition is still confusing to me.


Seems the questions are you looking for is... Te or Ti and which Function is correlating with this. Fe doesn't primary spotlight this even though you mention about giving advice on a relationship note, which can be for any type the key part is how do you give this advice. Since you mentioned you like to discuss what interest you it doesn't really matter if there is typical feeling concept there or not. To keep this short have you thought about ISTP instead of ISFP?


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

I am a guy not a girl but that is beyond the point! There is a ton of information going around right now. I see people saying ISFP, INFP, ISTP. I'll try to respond to as much as I can.

So, when I talk about my interests, whatever they may be, I am pretty sure I communicate with feeling. I repeat a lot of the same things to really emphasize that point. This may sound like Fe from the surface but most of the things I communicate from my interests to people are definitely not from the conventional norms around me.

Let's take for example my belief that relationships should be 50 50. When I explain this to someone I am going to explain it with how I personally feel on the subject, drawing from my tendency towards individualism. I am not going to care at all what everyone else around me feels on the subject and I'm probably not going to be able to tell what their opinion is, unless they tell me. I am just going to say what I want to say and communicate my point of view with feeling drawn from my interests/values. This is probably annoying to a lot of people. 

Now for my tendency to guide the conversation towards my subjects of interest, it is honestly probably because everything other than my own interests bores me. I also understand the things I am interested in more because I have spent more time dealing with them. So this will then lead me to maybe give better advice, when it's asked for. This also combos with my passion for the subjects I am interested in. So I am going to give better advice because I understand my interests more, and I am going to communicate it with more passion. 

For everything else outside my interest, I am not going to care about them. I know this is self centered and I come across as a jerk but that is really how I naturally act.

The reason why I want to be a park ranger is not because I was raised by bears but that is a funny thought. I want a simple life, a career that is aligned with my interests, and I want to help sustain this planet. Of course there may be unconscious reasons why I may want to do this and I'm probably not going to know those unconscious reasons because, well, they are unconscious. Maybe its because my parents always took me on camping trips all around the states as a kid and I had a chance to live around the finer things in life (subjective opinion). 

How I go about achieving this career is most likely by practical means. I don't want to just sit around fantasizing how great of a life that is. That's not to say I don't dream, I do dream often but I am motivated to make those dreams a reality. I want to actually live it out.


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## Yedra (Jul 28, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> The functions are not tools the functions are mechanisms for the ability to perceive and judge the outside world and yourself.


Okay, mechanism it is.



LiquidLight said:


> Understand that I am arguing a different perspective than Myers-Briggs which basically teaches that the functions are the center of the psyche and that it is the functions that motivate everything we do. That someone is conscientious and closure-seeking not because it is the result of a vast series of experiences, conditioning, socializing, influences from the world around you and the world within you, but rather simply, because the person has a strong preference for Te and Fe. One of the reason I think the Beebe shadow model caught on is because he recognized that it is not that simple as an analyst himself. That there are forces beyond our simple conscious orientation (MBTI) that are at work as well. That you have unconscious complexes motivating what you do, just as much as you consciously are motivated by what you do and to only focus on the conscious sphere, as MBTI does, only gets at a small part of the picture. So when someone like the OP says "I do x and y," one might conclude initially that it is Fi>Te, but this is just a guess (as I said earlier). Because honestly I have no idea why she wants to be a park ranger (and she may not either), I just assumed it had something to do with a sensation preference, but it could be because she was raised by a pack of bears and now wants to give back to those who gave to her. I'm being silly, but what I'm try to prove is that underlying motivation is never as simple as "I do this because of x function or functions." If we took that to its extreme, all Te types should be entrepreneurs or cops, all Ni-doms should be soothsayers, all Se-doms should be adrenaline junkies and athletes and every politician and preacher should be a Fe-type. But the world of course is not that simple.


Okay, but that doesn't make MBTI wrong, maybe just incomplete.
Just because not all Te-doms are cops or entrepreneurs it doesn't mean that all people of this type won't display the basic tendencies and traits of said type. In this case it isn't the problem of stereotypes among types but stereotypes about careers the respective types should supposedly pursue.



LiquidLight said:


> One of the problems I have with how people try to use MBTI is that they ignore the fact that MBTI doesn't deal with things from the standpoint of 'what I don't want to be.' People are motivated just as much by fear, guilt, shame, avoidance of pain, emotionalism, memories as they are by desire and in fact 'desire' is often informed by these things. The person may not be a conscientious duty-bound moral figure because of Te or Fe but rather because he says to himself "my dad was an abusive alcoholic and I will be damned if my life has the same kind of chaos that I came out of." It would very irresponsible to try and tie this 100% of type. Rather such a person could employ his cognitive energy, the ways in which he judges and perceives the world in service of this goal which comes from a very different place than typological disposition.


Yet you see people become alcoholics like their parents, others don't, some help their parents, some turn their back on them. Sure, you can't connect it to types completely but you can't exclude it either.



> The reason people think that, for example, an ESFJ connects by preaching norms is because there forms a symbiotic relationship between the wants or desires of the ego and its habitual appeal to the dominant function. Sort of like a person who wants to write letters or communicate may habitually, or even be disposed to use his or her right hand. But this doesn't mean that the right hand is dictating what the person writes, just that it is the primary mechanism or function employed when writing or communicating is desired. In my opinion, when people speak of this relative to an MBTI vernacular understanding, they confuse the two. They think the tail is wagging the dog. That the hand is what's writing the letter rather than the person. But this is not so, your ego dictates whether or not you want to preach at all in the first place and for the Fe-type, Fe will be the go-to way of accomplishing this.


 Are you saying that the desires of the ego coincide with the functions best for accomplishing those and one happens to have them at their disposal from the beginning or are you saying that the ego dictates which functions are going to be developed? Or are you saying that any function can do the preaching (I don't agree with this, if that's what you're saying)? There is a reason for stereotypes, so if the ExFJ is connecting by preaching norms it's because of Fe conveying the product of Ne/Se-Si/Ni-Ti(imo), because Fe is the mechanism for that. And if another type that doesn't have Fe does the preaching it is most likely going to resemble and emulate the style of Fe (politicians, for example).




LiquidLight said:


> This is why you see people of similar upbringing, character, conditioning, who appear to be very similar despite having very different typological makeups. It likely isn't that 60% of the country are SJs typologically (a serious statistical study would likely find outlier numbers like that problematic especially when SJ seems explicitly related to cultural norms). Rather that 60% of the country looks-like SJs (their upbringing, conditioning, world-views, ideas, produce a type of person who fits, say the Kiersey SJ archetype, but the individuals themselves may be typologically all over the map). This is clearly evidenced in families where everyone has the same general disposition despite every single family member being a different type. The need to conform to the environment, to fit in, is much more ingrained than simply saying "Fe" or "Te".



I don't think that's likely. One can act like an SJ but it doesn't mean someone else can't tell they're not one. People can fit in and their type will still be evident. If that weren't the case we would all be the same and typology would be futile.


And as for the definition of Fe, I don't agree with the widely accepted one. You said that Fe is rationalizing things against an external standard and I say it creates the external standard based on the observation of the perceptive functions and the judgments of Ti. Sometimes it coincides with the already existing standards, sometimes it introduces new ones. You don't need Fe to weigh your opinions against an external standard. Everybody can do that, it's how much it impacts one's decisions.


I agree with the rest you wrote.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Hello, Mell
My purpose wasn't to type you even though i did add that towards the end. What i was saying towards the OP is that your looking towards Ne or Ni which is a perceiving function a way we store and gather information. True a store house can be overfilled but it is still just a store house, that holds the food for your Ti or Te. Yes an perceiving function can seem or be as if it is that the OP speaks of but that's because your Ti or Te function is hungry. The thing with Thinking functions is kinda like the saying you are what you eat. I don't know if this clarified any at all as to what my first post meant and i have a feeling this one might also need some clarification.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

> Are you saying that the desires of the ego coincide with the functions best for accomplishing those and one happens to have them at their disposal from the beginning or are you saying that the ego dictates which functions are going to be developed? Or are you saying that any function can do the preaching (I don't agree with this, if that's what you're saying)? There is a reason for stereotypes, so if the ExFJ is connecting by preaching norms it's because of Fe conveying the product of Ne/Se-Si/Ni-Ti(imo), because Fe is the mechanism for that. And if another type that doesn't have Fe does the preaching it is most likely going to resemble and emulate the style of Fe (politicians, for example).


The ego will choose the function that comes closest to the person's natural talents. This is the only real place where Jung really says goes down the biological or innate disposition wormhole. He basically argues that everyone has a particular predisposition toward S-N-T-F that he couldn't really explain. He assumes that it's potentially a biological predisposition, but also cautions that this isn't etched in stone. That there are people who can be coerced by the circumstances of their upbringing and formative experiences to develop in a way that runs contrary to their innate disposition (sort of like making a left-handed person write with their right hand). 



> Although nothing would induce me to underestimate the well-nigh incalculable importance of parental influence, this experience compels me to conclude that the decisive factor must be looked for in the disposition of the child. The fact that, in spite of the greatest possible similarity of external conditions, one child will assume this type while another that, must, of course, in the last resort he ascribed to individual disposition. Naturally in saying this I only refer to those cases which occur under normal conditions. Under abnormal conditions, i.e. when there is an extreme and, therefore, abnormal attitude in the mother, the children can also be coerced into a relatively similar attitude; but this entails a violation of their individual disposition, which quite possibly would have assumed another type if no abnormal and disturbing external influence had intervened. As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of external influence, the individual becomes neurotic later, and a cur can successfully be sought only in a development of that attitude which corresponds with the individual's natural way.
> 
> As regards the particular disposition, I know not what to say, except that there are clearly individuals who have either a greater readiness and capacity for one way, or for whom it is more congenial to adapt to that way rather than the other. In the last analysis it may well be that physiological causes, inaccessible to our knowledge, play a part in this. That this may be the case seems to me not improbable, in view of one's experience that a reversal of type often proves exceedingly harmful to the physiological well-being of the organism, often provoking an acute state of exhaustion.


So under normal circumstances a person's ego will gravitate toward that function, mechanism, perspective -- whatever you want to call it, that comes most naturally to them. But the development of that into the type of well differentiated usage that we are talking about when we talk about type will of course be profoundly influenced by the development of the individual. It is the habituation of appealing to this function that defines one's type. For example with extraverts


> Everyone is, admittedly, orientated by the data with which the outer world provides him ; yet we see that this may be the case in a way that is only relatively decisive. Because it is cold out of doors, one man is persuaded to wear his overcoat, another from a desire to become hardened finds this unnecessary; one man admires the new tenor because all the world admires him, another withholds his approbation not because he dislikes him but because in his view the subject of general admiration is not thereby proved to be admirable; one submits to a given state of affairs because his experience argues nothing else to be possible, another is convinced that, although it has repeated itself a thousand times in the same way, the thousand and first will be different. The former is orientated by the objective data; the latter reserves a view, which is, as it were, interposed between himself and the objective fact. Now, when the orientation to the object and to objective facts is so predominant that the most frequent and essential decisions and actions are determined, not by subjective values but by objective relations, one speaks of an extraverted attitude. When this is habitual, one speaks of an extraverted type. If a man so thinks, feels, and acts, in a word so lives, as to correspond directly with objective conditions and their claims, whether in a good sense or ill, he is extraverted. His life makes it perfectly clear that it is the objective rather than the subjective value which plays the greater role as the determining factor of his consciousness. He naturally has subjective values, but their determining power has less importance than the external objective conditions. Never, therefore, does he expect to find any absolute factors in his own inner life, since the only ones he knows are outside himself.


The type is the end-result of the habituation of appealing to that dominant process. This person has made a habit of first considering the outside world and leading with this process or perspective to accomplish ego desires and thus we refer to him as an extravert (literally means _turned outward_ or _turned beyond_). Now this doesn't mean that the ego will always choose the best function to accomplish a task from an objective standpoint (like I'm building a house so I'll use Sensation now, and I'm doing my tax returns so I'll lead with Te). The person will still tend to, at least consciously, appeal to their main function. It doesn't matter really what the person is doing, because their ego is still appealing to their most differentiated function (or in reality the top-two functions so lets say Sensation+Thinking). If the person is working on homework, Sensation+Thinking will be the go-to functions if those are the most differentiated, if the person is walking the dog it's still Sensation+Thinking. It's not that Feeling and Intuition aren't there its just that being in the lower realm, closer to the endopsyche and the shadow, when they are appealed to you will be less conscious of it. You'd probably feel sort of odd the more unconscious or inferior the function was (not inferior in strength just inferior in comparison to the conscious adaptability of your main function). 

Appealing to an inferior function might likely feel like something of an out-of-body experience because you are so used to _consciously_ using it's opposite (doesn't mean you haven't used the inferior just that you haven't been as consciously aware of its influence). So what happens is that real type revolves around dominant/inferior. It's not inappropriate to do as MBTI does and focus only on the top two functions primarily, but understand this provides an incomplete picture. Just because in our example, the person appeals primarily to Sensation+Thinking does not mean that there is no Feeling+Intuition just that these process are largely operating out of the person's awareness, which is why to the person, appealing to them will take on something of a negative or archaic character. (Beebe said that a complex that manifests around the third function will often be 'childish.' Lenore Thomson piggybacking on this called the third function a troublemaking function and the inferior downright mutinous, and yet all are operating in concert at all times. The only difference is how aware of this you are). Sensation+Thinking would only be the two strongest functions in consciousness, but according to Jung everything revolves around a tension of opposites, so the more differentiated the dominant or main function, the more influential the inferior function. So what happens is you have a tug-of-war between dom/inferior (Jekyll/Hyde) so the overall disposition of a person is really influenced more by dom/inferior. The person just isn't aware of just how influential their inferior function is (especially if they are low in self-awareness). But we've all seen people who behave in ways that run counter to how the person sees themselves. Because MBTI is a self-report test, unless the person is very self-aware, MBTI types are often at best only a metric of how a person sees themselves (which is why I contend there are not as many SJs as are claimed, because the SJ is a cultural ideal in the US that runs very deep). MBTI practitioners are not psychologists and therefore not really equipped to tell a person, they're full of shit when someone who thinks he's an INTP is clearly an ESTJ, they simply can try to steer you to a best-fit type but this is largely based on how aware of yourself you are. Most people taking an MBTI test for the first time are often very un-self-aware so the process can be an exercise in futility or superficiality. (It's not surprising how many people jump around types until the right one just sort of 'hits' them).

As far as your preaching example wanting to share an idea or a philosophy or a worldview, yes any function can work in service of this. There are churches with Thinking type preachers (probably people like John Hagee and Jack Graham) Feeling types (Jerry Fallwell, Martin Luther King, Jimmy Swaggart, perhaps Joel Osteen), Intuitives (I'd count Bishop TD Jakes as a Intuitive+Feeling type and maybe Rick Warren) and Sensation types (Bishop George Bloomer, perhaps Ed Young and Benny Hinn). They all have a desire to preach to the masses but all go about it in very, very different ways. Hagee rains down fire from an authoritarian 'this is what the rules are' standpoint (probably influenced heavily by his Southern firebrand upbringing), where Jakes is much more psychological and sociological (but can still come across every bit as authoritative when he wants to). They all just simply do it in their own ways. Now given the way that Extraverted Feeling works, and the idiosyncracies of American culture, are you more likely to see Fe-ish preachers? Probably. But whether or not this is actually statistically an inevitability is probably dubious.

Same goes with politicians. Mitt Romney is clearly an extraverted thinking type and there's a good chance his running-mate may be as well to a degree and yet they come across very differently. I would think David Plouffe, Obama's senior strategist is probably an ENTJ or something similar, and yet I think so is Karl Rove. Te and Ni don't make them what they are, they are just people who likely appeal to Te+Ni to go about doing what they desire do to. A lot of MBTI folks think Hillary Clinton is an INTJ (there's even an article on _Huffington Post_ about this), but there's a good chance that so was Dick Cheney. One could make a case that both Jack Kennedy and George W. Bush are ESTPs (I'm not sure I buy this personally but it gets thrown out there on the web a lot). But again, we can't really know simply from identifying functions what motivates a person. The functions just tell us how the person tends to go about doing what they desire. 

A lot of good arguments have been made for Adolph Hitler as someone who appealed heavily to his intuition (though its debatable whether or not this was his dominant or inferior function). Marie-Louise Von Franz writes



> If you read the records of his speeches, you will see that he talked quite differently to the different groups which he addressed, and he knew very well how to wake up their inferior functions. A man who had been present at several of his speeches told me that Hitler did it through his own intuition, or his ability to feel into a situation. At times, HItler would, at first be quite uncertain. He would try out his tehems like a pianist, mentioning a little of this and a little of that, and he would be pale and nervous, and his SS men would get all worked up because the Fuhrer did not seem to be in form. But he was just trying out the ground, and then he would notice that if he brought up some particular theme that would arouse emotion, so then he would just go full for that! That's the demagogue! When he feels that inferior side, he knows that the complexes are there and that is waht to go for, and one must argue in a primitive emotional way, the way in which the inferior function would argue. Hitler did not think that out, it was the fact that he was caught in his own inferiority which gave him that talent, but such examples are not all in the past!


But here we don't want say that all of the atrocious things Hitler is responsible for are because of his intuition. Only that, as Von Franz points out, he would turn to his intuition (maybe unconsciously, maybe not) in service of what he desired to do. 

So to the OP (who I apologize for thinking was female)... 



> Let's take for example my belief that relationships should be 50 50. When I explain this to someone I am going to explain it with how I personally feel on the subject, drawing from my tendency towards individualism. I am not going to care at all what everyone else around me feels on the subject and I'm probably not going to be able to tell what their opinion is, unless they tell me. I am just going to say what I want to say and communicate my point of view with feeling drawn from my interests/values. This is probably annoying to a lot of people.


I personally wouldn't relate this to type. Certainly people try to and it very well may relate to Fi, but this is a very, very complex thing going on here. Your ideas about relationships and interpersonal issues are not simple. Not for anyone. So complex that there are people who have spent entire careers trying to make sense of them. We could be super reductionist and say 'this is Fi,' but honestly that'd be something of a lie at worst and guess at best. If you are really interested in this I can point you to some psychological literature by people like John Money who have spent their careers studying this, but we could honestly use the entire forum just talking about this one point. 



> The reason why I want to be a park ranger is not because I was raised by bears but that is a funny thought. I want a simple life, a career that is aligned with my interests, and I want to help sustain this planet. Of course there may be unconscious reasons why I may want to do this and I'm probably not going to know those unconscious reasons because, well, they are unconscious. Maybe its because my parents always took me on camping trips all around the states as a kid and I had a chance to live around the finer things in life


Exactly. Not type related. You can do all of these things you desire with any combination of functions. There are intuitive rangers who live the life you want, there are sensation types, feeling types and so forth. What it really gets down to is what do you really want to know? Is it simply what's my type? Because we could just all give you best guesses, which we've done, but that doesn't really tell you anything. It's like asking someone what type of literature do you like to write, and being given the response 'well you're left handed.' What does that have to do with what you like to write? That just tells you what hand you use when you write. And yes there is some overlap with regard to type, but its often not as dramatic as people make it out to be. If you were to go be analyzed by a Jungian psychoanalyst, your type might never even be brought up. It might just be something the analyst notices and keeps to himself, because it isn't the primary factor (in psychoanalysis) in determining who you are. 

If you know what it is you desire (or more importantly, don't desire, because our shadow probably tells us more about ourselves) then you can begin to figure out how you typically tend to tackle that. Beebe called the dominant function, _the hero function_. The function that 'saves the day.' Your go-to process. The captain of the ship, in Lenore's analogy. And the inferior function, more like the thing you'd really hate to be if you had to, the mutinous function that the captain would much rather just throw off the boat if he could and send on his merry way. The perspective of last-resort typically projected onto others as stuff you hate to see in them rather than the ability to see them in yourself, or viewed as something of an inferiority complex. If you can identify your hero and your 'goat' (or perhaps think of it as your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) then you basically have a good idea of your type. 

Someone might say "I trust the world as I see it and as I've experienced it. The only thing that matters is what's in the here and now, what's right in front of me and what I know to be true. I hate people who are all up in the clouds with crazy ideas and fantasies about things that are completely impractical. I don't trust hunches or gut-feelings I want proof!" We might very well say such a person is probably a Sensation type _IF_ we are able to remove conditioning and social upbringing from the equation, which a good analyst or doctor should be able to. So find your hero, Thinking, Feeling (or the evaluation or rationalization of emotions and feeling-tones), Sensation (appealing to the physical world as perceived via the five senses), or Intuition (reading into a situation, peering behind the curtain, looking between the lines, notions, hunches, gut-feelings typically without any physical evidence to back them up).


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

LiquidLight said:


> Someone might say *"I trust the world as I see it and as I've experienced it. The only thing that matters is what's in the here and now, what's right in front of me and what I know to be true. I hate people who are all up in the clouds with crazy ideas and fantasies about things that are completely impractical. I don't trust hunches or gut-feelings I want proof!"* We might very well say such a person is probably a Sensation type _IF_ we are able to remove conditioning and social upbringing from the equation, which a good analyst or doctor should be able to. So find your hero, Thinking, Feeling (or the evaluation or rationalization of emotions and feeling-tones), Sensation (appealing to the physical world as perceived via the five senses), or Intuition (reading into a situation, peering behind the curtain, looking between the lines, notions, hunches, gut-feelings typically without any physical evidence to back them up).


Funny, because this is just how I am, when it comes to "faith". (And there is the "Calling all Christians" thread going on right now, where I mentioned some of my experience).
I at first avoided faith, because there is so much counter-intuitive about it, and to a young NT, it just comes off as a bunch of nonsensical limiting rules. But due to frustration by late teens/early adulthood, when noticing the more abstract and symbolic aspects of it (prophecy, and an overall meaning ascribed to life), then it became appealing. 
However, when it didn't solve life problems, and then teachers began using it as a sort of coping method ("God is testing you, have 'faith' that He is doing it for your good, and then have a better attitude about your disappointments, and _this_ is how He heals you" -yet they often made it sound like an instant, special work of God rather than my own effort), then it came off as a pacifier, that was trying to bind my behavior, and this I believe, constellated the Trickster, and I now try to reverse the expectation by demanding immediate hard tangible evidence (Se), before I will be able to have this "faith". (This is what I'm going through now, in counseling, during a difficult midlife crisis). 
In Lenore's old model, it's also the right-brain alternative to Ne. Ne views faith as a possibility or hypothesis, but when it makes demands without any solid incentive to choose a way to go, Ne (emergent conceptual data) can no longer really help with that, so the P (right-brain) perspective shifts to emergent tangible experience.

So this shows another context where an unconscious functional perspective (and in the opposite attitude from normal at that) can surface. If a person isn't aware of this, they might remember demanding tangible evidence in that situation, and think they are an S. (My wife thought I was for exactly that reason when I first explained the letters or functions to her).


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

One of the best examples of unconscious motivation was one I remember @Eric B brought up about Jimmy Swaggart and his daimon Te. The sort-of blatant rejection of the intellectual establishment (going as far as to establish his own school), his disregard of psychology and the like. My point to the OP was just that we can really only begin to figure these things out if we 1) recognize the complexes in ourselves and when they are constellated (no easy task I've found personally - it takes a while to separate anger or frustration from "feeling opposed") and 2) separate the wheat from the chaff. Conditioning, upbringing, socialization, perhaps even temperament, instinct, biology, etc., to clearly see type. I know on this forum there are a lot of people who basically disguise their sensitivity and low self-esteem as type (most claiming to be introverts with a feeling preference) when likely, this is just sensitivity and low self-esteem and self-image issues that have crystallized for a variety of different reasons over the course of their life. People don't have low self-esteem because they're a thinking introvert or feeling introvert (that's people trying to draw their outer behavior into the mix which should probably better be dealt with by other metrics like Beren's work and behavioral theories). Rather feeling in the introverted expression or thinking in the introverted expression are the person's tried and true mechanisms or perspectives for accomplishing what the ego wants.


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> One of the best examples of unconscious motivation was one I remember @_Eric B_ brought up about Jimmy Swaggart and his daimon Te. The sort-of blatant rejection of the intellectual establishment (going as far as to establish his own school), his disregard of psychology and the like. My point to the OP was just that we can really only begin to figure these things out if we 1) recognize the complexes in ourselves and when they are constellated (no easy task I've found personally - it takes a while to separate anger or frustration from "feeling opposed") and 2) separate the wheat from the chaff. Conditioning, upbringing, socialization, perhaps even temperament, instinct, biology, etc., to clearly see type. I know on this forum there are a lot of people who basically disguise their sensitivity and low self-esteem as type (most claiming to be introverts with a feeling preference) when likely, this is just sensitivity and low self-esteem and self-image issues that have crystallized for a variety of different reasons over the course of their life. People don't have low self-esteem because they're a thinking introvert or feeling introvert (that's people trying to draw their outer behavior into the mix which should probably better be dealt with by other metrics like Beren's work and behavioral theories). Rather feeling in the introverted expression or thinking in the introverted expression are the person's tried and true mechanisms or perspectives for accomplishing what the ego wants.


Okay I see how that can definitely influence many people's view of themselves. How would I go about separating my upbringing and conditioning from my personality without the help of a professional?


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

LiquidLight said:


> One of the best examples of unconscious motivation was one I remember @Eric B brought up about Jimmy Swaggart and his daimon Te. The sort-of blatant rejection of the intellectual establishment (going as far as to establish his own school), his disregard of psychology and the like. My point to the OP was just that we can really only begin to figure these things out if we 1) recognize the complexes in ourselves and when they are constellated (no easy task I've found personally - it takes a while to separate anger or frustration from "feeling opposed") and 2) separate the wheat from the chaff. Conditioning, upbringing, socialization, perhaps even temperament, instinct, biology, etc., to clearly see type. I know on this forum there are a lot of people who basically disguise their sensitivity and low self-esteem as type (most claiming to be introverts with a feeling preference) when likely, this is just sensitivity and low self-esteem and self-image issues that have crystallized for a variety of different reasons over the course of their life. People don't have low self-esteem because they're a thinking introvert or feeling introvert (that's people trying to draw their outer behavior into the mix which should probably better be dealt with by other metrics like Beren's work and behavioral theories). Rather feeling in the introverted expression or thinking in the introverted expression are the person's tried and true mechanisms or perspectives for accomplishing what the ego wants.


I never tried to type Swaggart, though I think I remember mentioning something about him in passing; though not about functions/archetypes. Seeing you mention him as a feeler (along with some of the other typings of preachers) made me wonder, this morning. I usually assume fiery “in your face” preachers like that are ExTJ, but I guess I could see him being ENFJ, which is still “In Charge” or Choleric like the other two.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Eric B said:


> I never tried to type Swaggart, though I think I remember mentioning something about him in passing; though not about functions/archetypes. Seeing you mention him as a feeler (along with some of the other typings of preachers) made me wonder, this morning. I usually assume fiery “in your face” preachers like that are ExTJ, but I guess I could see him being ENFJ, which is still “In Charge” or Choleric like the other two.


I may have remembered the quote you posted incorrectly. I have been watching his TV network out of fascination (and probably morbid curiosity as it is something of a train wreck at times) and he just comes across as very Fe to me and sometimes in bad ways. It all has that us vs them dynamic going on (essentially calling people like Rick Warren heretics and saying Ron Paul isn't a Christian because of his political leanings and the like - it may have been his son who said the latter quote however). I think ENFJ, at least in MBTI, would probably be a good fit for him. He definitely fits the "in charge" model. I think his son Donnie might be an ESTJ and grandson probably an ESTP. I don't know why I know this much about that family lol. Must be some shadow tendency of my own.



> How would I go about separating my upbringing and conditioning from my personality without the help of a professional?


For me the thing that helped was just reading. You know little things like what @_Eric B_ wrote above about faith is a great example of something I would use to see if that applied to myself. What areas in my own life would my trickster rear up? In what ways do I feel opposed? The people around you and who you communicate with are treasure troves of experiences, behaviors and information. Sometimes you can learn a lot about yourself just by people-watching and people-listening. 

For example my father, who I don't know his type but he's very much a moral majority crusader, I'd place him closer to ESFJ with healthy Ne is very much my own shadow (probably explains my morbid curiosity with Son Life Network). I'm just not the person for whom everything revolves around values, i don't flip out everytime someone does something that I don't agree with or I find immoral in the way he does. He goes crazy over stuff that to me is just silliness (because in my estimation there's no reason to give yourself a heart attack over something you have no control over). But the beauty in Jung's tension of opposites is the recognition that everything I dislike about my dad at times are tendencies I probably have in myself. Just because I've rejected it from my own persona does not mean its not there, its just repressed and feels shadow or 'not me.'

So one of the easiest ways to figure out who you are is not to focus on your strengths and desires, because those things are usually well locked behind your persona and self-image and the expectations of others and so forth. But rather to pay close attention to what frustrates you or gets your blood boiling. Those are things that you may consciously say "I am not!" (but probably could be if we were honest) and often the opposite of those things is who you present yourself to be consciously. Marie-Louise Von Franz, who I quoted earlier was an ardent believer in typing by inferior function. That the inferior function, being raw, emotional, slow, potentially projected onto other people or romantic partners, and so on, would often be less protected by the ego and thus easier to spot than the well polished, well crafted dominant function. 

You say you want a relationship to be 50/50 and I would ask, why? What would happen if one wasn't? And why is this undesirable? Now I'm not actually asking you, those are question to ask yourself. What is it about inequality that you fear or move against? See a lot of people just stop with the obvious. They say "i hate people who are superficial" (that's a common one you hear around here), and my question to them is always "why?" "What business is it of yours how they value things?" You see when we begin to deconstruct ourselves we begin to see that many of our beliefs and dispositions that seem so ironclad might be for reasons for which we are unaware. The person who doesn't like superficiality may have some issue where she doesn't think people see him or her as valuable or deep and thus projects her own insecurity onto others as "i hate superficial people." 

You kind of have to become your own analyst. Fortunately there are people out there like Beebe who with his shadow function model gives us at least a semblance of a way to begin to identify the various complexes that are often at work in individuals without them recognizing it. The Opposing Personality, the bad parent witch/senex, the trickster and the daimon. You have to really work to figure out "whoa what is it that makes me feel opposed," or "when am I a critical 'parent' or something of a set-in-his-ways stick in the mud?" And so on. Similarly with our conscious functions we can ask "what things about other people do I hate or do not want to be and why?" And sometimes "what things about my own personality am I trying to compensate for in a romantic partner?" Often you'll see people who are withdrawn with people who are socially outgoing as a compensation mechanism. Thinkers with Feelers or Sensation types with Intuitives are common as well. People looking for balance. So its when you begin to deconstruct your life in this type of methodical, thoughtful and serious fashion that you can begin to make some sense of what's really going on. Read a lot of literature, not just Jungian, but there's a lot of good stuff out there on self-discovery beyond MBTI and Jung. And then if you are the perceptive type, pay attention closely to the people around you, and what they move toward and against (you may not know why, but you can turn that back at yourself and ask 'am I doing the same thing?')


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## Metanoia (Nov 21, 2011)

@mell

everything @LiquidLight says above is exactly what you need to do to find your type.

also, and _you don't realize this yet_, but what you're looking for and will TRULY HELP YOU as a person isn't your type, but everything LL states above. as with the popular axiom about travel, "half the fun is getting there," it is everything you'll learn along the way to discovering your type that will serve you, more so than whatever four letter code you end up deciding for yourself.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

mell said:


> Okay I see how that can definitely influence many people's view of themselves. How would I go about separating my upbringing and conditioning from my personality without the help of a professional?


Is there something wrong with your personality?


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## Inguz (Mar 10, 2012)

mell said:


> I notice that when I am very interested in something, in this case it's mbti and cognitive functions, it shows in my conversations to all my friends. I have been very interested in the cognitive functions lately and I have been expressing that to people when I talk to them. For example, yesterday a friend asked me for advice with a relationship problem. I answered him by talking about how his girlfriend is an introverted feeler. This means that he should understand that she is not going to show all her emotions which means she will be hard to read. But it doesn't matter what the conversation is about, I will relate cognitive functions to the topic because I am so interested in it and I see how it relates to a lot of things in life.
> 
> What is this cognitive function that I am displaying? I do this very often whether I am interested in cognitive functions or maybe something else that I am into, during some other time in my life, like healthy living. Maybe if I am into healthy living, at some time, I will constantly bring up exercising and eating right in conversations and draw a connection from that to the topic at hand because that is what my mind is thinking of most of the time, for that period of interest.
> 
> I'm positive this is Ne or Ni but I am not sure which since, unfortunately, intuition is still confusing to me.


Fi perhaps, I do the exact same thing. I've completely given up on using any terms related to it and explain it the easy way instead. Like when I was thinking about my SO's fathers possible MBTI type I temporarily assumed Te dominant, he's very efficient, task- and goal-oriented but has a lack of expressed emotions in the way that an ESTP would do, so I asked my girl if he's sensitive to criticism from the family, and she replies that he's probably the most sensitive person she knows when it comes to criticism like that and not being competent. I got to witness that sensitivity the next day, where my girl, her mother and me took a wrong path in the forest for just a bit, where as he shouts at us asking where we're heading. Her mother thought he was close behind, so she just asked why he didn't say anything, to which he replies "It's you who took the wrong path and I'm the one getting a scolding!", it was like watching a child, it was hard to miss just how offended he got from that misunderstanding. It helped my theory about him being Te, and gave lots of hours of discussion with my girl about that, and all this effort from me was of course because I am interested in this topic and brought it up even in such possibly sensitive situations, however my girl being an ENFP and having a genuine interest in psychology I feel lucky as she's really willing to listen and discuss matters like this.

I mean, what else would you talk about? I start to actually get a little bit interested in the weather with age (dunno why lol) and current state of things. Thinking about it, how can you discuss something that you're not even the slightest interested in? How can you talk about something that you feel nothing for? Or think nothing of?


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

I don't think there is anything wrong with my personality. I am pretty happy with it but sometimes I just get too into whether I am truly expressing my true personality or not. 

LiquidLight, you are awesome. I really appreciate the amount of effort and insightful content you poured into your posts. You really dug down deep into the real reasons behind our personalities. I did not expect such comprehensive posts when I made this thread and I am quite pleasantly surprised. 

I came into this thread with a pretty mediocre understanding of functions and personality and I learned quite a bit. I am very impressed with the community that makes up this forum so thank you everyone! ^^


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

mell said:


> I don't think there is anything wrong with my personality. I am pretty happy with it but sometimes I just get too into whether I am truly expressing my true personality or not.


Cognitive Functions isnt your personality, if you are expressing yourself then you are expressing your personality


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## Owfin (Oct 15, 2011)

mell said:


> I don't think there is anything wrong with my personality. I am pretty happy with it but sometimes I just get too into whether I am truly expressing my true personality or not.
> 
> LiquidLight, you are awesome. I really appreciate the amount of effort and insightful content you poured into your posts. You really dug down deep into the real reasons behind our personalities. I did not expect such comprehensive posts when I made this thread and I am quite pleasantly surprised.
> 
> I came into this thread with a pretty mediocre understanding of functions and personality and I learned quite a bit. I am very impressed with the community that makes up this forum so thank you everyone! ^^


Oh, and another thing; I too connect my interests to conversations extensively, particularly to my family. I'm a Si dominant, which is kind of in another universe from a Fi dominant. But as to why I don't do this as much with my friends... that's one of those societal influences outside of type. roud:


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## Knight_In_Rags (Mar 11, 2012)

mell said:


> What is this cognitive function that I am displaying?


Fi+Ne. By the way, Fi doesn't conceal emotions. Where do people get this idea anyway? -.-


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Eric B said:


> Funny, because this is just how I am, when it comes to "faith". (And there is the "Calling all Christians" thread going on right now, where I mentioned some of my experience).
> I at first avoided faith, because there is so much counter-intuitive about it, and to a young NT, it just comes off as a bunch of nonsensical limiting rules. But due to frustration by late teens/early adulthood, when noticing the more abstract and symbolic aspects of it (prophecy, and an overall meaning ascribed to life), then it became appealing.
> However, when it didn't solve life problems, and then teachers began using it as a sort of coping method ("God is testing you, have 'faith' that He is doing it for your good, and then have a better attitude about your disappointments, and _this_ is how He heals you" -yet they often made it sound like an instant, special work of God rather than my own effort), then it came off as a pacifier, that was trying to bind my behavior, and this I believe, constellated the Trickster, and I now try to reverse the expectation by demanding immediate hard tangible evidence (Se), before I will be able to have this "faith". (This is what I'm going through now, in counseling, during a difficult midlife crisis).
> In Lenore's old model, it's also the right-brain alternative to Ne. Ne views faith as a possibility or hypothesis, but when it makes demands without any solid incentive to choose a way to go, Ne (emergent conceptual data) can no longer really help with that, so the P (right-brain) perspective shifts to emergent tangible experience.
> ...


This feels like my bitchy inferior function side (Se) - where I have these episodes of thinking the formatting of stuff like MBTI is too weird and out-there for seemingly no reason under enough frustration (I suck with rationalizing why though, other than it "looks weirder than the reality," which I'm beginning to suspect is "primitive sensation" reasoning - it sounds like something an elementary schooler would say, LOL). It's rather hilarious to me, because then, I'll just BS a bunch of reasons from intuition why it's still so viable anyway (until the problems subside). Do you think this sounds like "inferior reasoning" from the sensation perspective?


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Could be, but not sure. Inferior Se would probably feel worried about the theory you've accepted needing to have more concrete evidence, so I guess it could come out the way you've described.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Okay, that seems quite true (my drive for evidence seems rather unconscious anyway most of the time).


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

I think that people who have a core ego enneatype (4, 5, 9) are more likely to just talk about themselves and make the topic focus about them in general. I am very self-focused in conversation. I rarely ask other people questions in actually trying to get to know them. But I also think this is MBTI-related in the sense that I think it's just my conversation style. I prefer to inform and then I expect the other person to do the same. I think people who record the conversations I have with say, @_Brainfreeze_237_ or my ENFP friend would think the conversations are actually rather funny because we seem to talk about two completely different things for most of the part, and then we suddenly converge and agree or disagree about one specific topic, and then we talk about different things again. 

So let's say, I am talking about why I think cars are pointless to own, then maybe Brainfreeze is talking about the pointlessness of the current economic system, and then we can suddenly converge and agree that owning cars are bad for the economic system because of how it promotes oil consumption. I just think that's Ne though lol.


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## Cellar Door (Jun 3, 2012)

LiquidLight said:


> The functions are not tools the functions are mechanisms for the ability to perceive and judge the outside world and yourself. Without this ability you would have no self-awareness. You would have no way of measuring who you are against the world, in much the same way a dog has no sense of self-awareness they are, in a sense completely extraverted because they lack the ability to make themselves the object. They literally cannot perceive or judge themselves (introversion).
> 
> Functions do not make you do anything. They simply provide a mechanism to accomplish what you want to do. It is your ego complex that drives you not functions. If your ego and its corresponding persona, desire (which correlates to libido in Jung's term) leads you in the direction of being something of a humanistic person, looking out for the interests of people, then it will employ the functions in service of that. If for whatever reason you desire to go off and be a terrorist, your ego will employ functions in service of that.
> 
> ...


**Starts a slow clap**

That's one of the best forum posts I have ever read.


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## uncertain (May 26, 2012)

mell said:


> I notice that when I am very interested in something, in this case it's mbti and cognitive functions, it shows in my conversations to all my friends. I have been very interested in the cognitive functions lately and I have been expressing that to people when I talk to them. For example, yesterday a friend asked me for advice with a relationship problem. I answered him by talking about how his girlfriend is an introverted feeler. This means that he should understand that she is not going to show all her emotions which means she will be hard to read. But it doesn't matter what the conversation is about, I will relate cognitive functions to the topic because I am so interested in it and I see how it relates to a lot of things in life.
> 
> What is this cognitive function that I am displaying? I do this very often whether I am interested in cognitive functions or maybe something else that I am into, during some other time in my life, like healthy living. Maybe if I am into healthy living, at some time, I will constantly bring up exercising and eating right in conversations and draw a connection from that to the topic at hand because that is what my mind is thinking of most of the time, for that period of interest.
> 
> I'm positive this is Ne or Ni but I am not sure which since, unfortunately, intuition is still confusing to me.


Since you type yourself as ISFP (shown on your info section under your user name (whatever that section is called)), theoretically it should be *Ni* rather than Ne and Fe as some of the responders suggest here, unless you have mistyped yourself.
According to my understanding of Ne, not very good at this actually, Ne doesn't sound quite right to me in your case, regardless of your type.
Not much understanding of Fe either, but it doesn't sound like the function here.

How about Te, anyone?? I'm kind of making trouble, I know.

Up to this last moment, I think it is Ni+Te/ Ne+Te: First you connect your interest to the topic in your mind (Ni/Ne not sure, but again if you are ISFP it should be Ni), and you speak it up (Te). Expressing your thought to the outside world is a Te thing, in my opinion.

Ni+Te type: ISFP/INTJ
Ne+Te type: INFP/ENFP
(probably more types with these combinations)

In my case I don't do this very often because usually I'm not the one who initiates or leads conversation. Rather, during the conversation I bring up my knowledge that is relevant to the topic. Of course the things I bring up is also my interest because I mostly learn about what I'm interested in, and as a result, most of my knowledge is within the area of my interest.

For example, I'm interested in art, so I research this subject, and as a result I have knowledge about art. On the other hand I'm not interested in astrology, so I never learn much about it, and as a result I don't have knowledge in astrology. Then in conversations, I have a much bigger chance of bringing up art rather than astrology simply because I know something about the former and nothing about the latter


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## mell (Aug 9, 2012)

uncertain said:


> Since you type yourself as ISFP (shown on your info section under your user name (whatever that section is called)), theoretically it should be *Ni* rather than Ne and Fe as some of the responders suggest here, unless you have mistyped yourself.According to my understanding of Ne, not very good at this actually, Ne doesn't sound quite right to me in your case, regardless of your type.Not much understanding of Fe either, but it doesn't sound like the function here.How about Te, anyone?? I'm kind of making trouble, I know.Up to this last moment, I think it is Ni+Te/ Ne+Te: First you connect your interest to the topic in your mind (Ni/Ne not sure, but again if you are ISFP it should be Ni), and you speak it up (Te). Expressing your thought to the outside world is a Te thing, in my opinion.Ni+Te type: ISFP/INTJNe+Te type: INFP/ENFP(probably more types with these combinations)In my case I don't do this very often because usually I'm not the one who initiates or leads conversation. Rather, during the conversation I bring up my knowledge that is relevant to the topic. Of course the things I bring up is also my interest because I mostly learn about what I'm interested in, and as a result, most of my knowledge is within the area of my interest.For example, I'm interested in art, so I research this subject, and as a result I have knowledge about art. On the other hand I'm not interested in astrology, so I never learn much about it, and as a result I don't have knowledge in astrology. Then in conversations, I have a much bigger chance of bringing up art rather than astrology simply because I know something about the former and nothing about the latter


My best guess of my type is ISFP. I am not completely sure of it. I wrote that post when I was just getting into cognitive functions so I have a little more knowledge of them now. I kind of see how everyone of all types does the connecting interests to conversations thing. I know more about functions now and since all types do the connecting interest thing, the functions are used to convey it in different ways. I am still very confused with some functions (like introverted sensing).


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