# Fe+Ti masquerading as Te?



## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

In the thread http://personalitycafe.com/whats-my...05-whats-my-type-based-off-natal-chart-6.html , @myjazz and I branched off into an unrelated discussion about "faking Te." I'd like to bring it to a larger audience and see if anyone has an opinion.

You'll need some personal background for context. I'll try to make it concise. I'm a 40 year old software engineer with significant work experience in natural science and electrical/mechanical engineering. Until a few months ago, I was sure that I was INTJ. I tested unambiguously that way on both the Keirsey and MBTI type tests, and I acted that way in real life. Then, an MBTI consultant rocked my world by insisting that I was INFJ. I thought he was nuts, but he irritated me into a deep dive on Jung/Myers. I eventually came to the conclusion that he was right. I was not NiTeFiSe (INTJ). I was NiTiFeSe, which is INFJ misspelled.

Alarm bells went off in @myjazz 's head when I posted a passionate plea for designing experiments in a way that counteracts bias and produces results with statistical significance. I wore an INFJ label but sounded like an INTJ. Indeed. I had adapted to my environment and had learned to behave like my Te colleagues, but I wasn't really using Te. I was using Ti expressed through Fe. The giveaway was my lack of endurance in long brainstorming or experimentation sessions. I needed to return to my desk to think. If I didn't I would blurt out truly stupid things.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I enjoy teaching and mentoring, but I have trouble thinking and teaching at the same time. As long as we stick to material that I have already processed, we're fine. If I need to process on the fly, we're in trouble. It happened just a few days ago. During a mentoring session, we encountered an unexpected technical problem. It wasn't all that difficult, but I struggled to talk the student through the problem solving process. After a few minutes of frustration, I had to excuse myself, return to my desk, discover the solution, and bring it back to him. I'm sure that my dominant Ni plays a role in this dance as well. It works better when I'm alone, _but _my INTJ colleagues are also Ni dominant and don't have this kind of problem. They're able to think effectively while interacting with others.

I realize that I'm on the high end of the age curve for this forum, and that might have something to do with my tertiary function development. As far as I can remember, I extraverted Feeling in a pretty conventional way until around age 20 when an intellectual crisis drove me into the arms of Ti. I didn't emerge from my introverted shell until around age 25. That's when I started hanging around scientists and engineers and, over the years, learned to talk like them. I'll repeat. My theory is not that I adopted Te. My theory is that I learned to fake it, and that it's not all that difficult to detect the ruse if you know what you're looking for.

I'd appreciate your thoughts.


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## Acerbusvenator (Apr 12, 2011)

Sounds like Ti.
Te usually works while talking and Ti needs time processing (thus the thing about people with Ti making pauses whereas people with Te just keep going grew quite accepted)


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Acerbusvenator said:


> Sounds like Ti.
> Te usually works while talking and Ti needs time processing (thus the thing about people with Ti making pauses whereas people with Te just keep going grew quite accepted)


Not to counter argue but I believe Fi can do the same thing also. Actually most Introverted functions will be prone to a pause affect due to the Introverted Abstraction process.
But an Fi dom input would be nice as well.
For Ni though there definitely can be a pause that can turn into a break if you don't watch out .


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## drmiller100 (Dec 3, 2011)

could be.

I might be doing the same. as an ENTP, I think I have a bit of Te. But I might really have Ti/Fe pretending to be Te. 

FWIW, Ni drains me. I can do it, but it sucks energy from me. 

I look forward to this discussion.


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## SharkT00th (Sep 5, 2012)

drmiller100 said:


> could be.
> 
> I might be doing the same. as an ENTP, I think I have a bit of Te. But I might really have Ti/Fe pretending to be Te.
> 
> ...


Could you explain how you utilize Ni?


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

SharkT00th said:


> Could you explain how you utilize Ni?


You need to learn to change mental perspective. Ask yourself, "what does this symbolize/mean" rather than "how does it relate to something else?"

Take a moment of your time everyday to study objects in your environment. Try to unearth what they symbolically represent to you and to others who might see them. You might be interested in looking into interpretive and symbol analysis also. 

Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologies - Anthropological Theories - Department of Anthropology - The University of Alabama

I also highly recommend reading Clifford Geertz' "Deep Play" (notice the pun!) to gain a deeper understanding of how this kind of analysis is applied.

http://fassp.univ-lyon2.fr/IMG/pdf_geertz.pdf

The reason why I mention symbol and interpretive anthropology is because I think the analysis largely depends on an Ni perspective. The scope is narrow as it chooses to examine one particular phenomenon rather than many and link these events together. It also attempts to offer a universal explanation as to why things are. Consider Geertz' perhaps most famous quote to understand what I mean:

“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” 

Or consider:

“One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.”

Now, Geertz is known for his well-articulated and formulated language and this alone does not indicate Ni. What instead is important to take note of is how Geertz tends to have a penetrating insight into one particular occurrence or phenomenon and then tries to say something more fundamental, or as Jung would put it, archetypal, about said occurrence/phenomenon.

I would also recommend anyone who is wiling in trying to develop more of an Ni perspective to study literature analysis/critique, as literature analysis is also largely dependent on symbol interpretation e.g. what does rain symbolically represent in this particular scene? What does it say about the people present in it? Once you've figured that out, you might ask yourself, how does this relate to people as a whole?


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## emerald sea (Jun 4, 2011)

i've been teased in regards to having Te traits, in my job setting as an engineer, and i'm an INFJ also. 

the demands of engineering can draw out of you certain combinations of traits that appear like Te, but are not actually...a lot of "Thinking" function usage is required for that job, both in the work itself and for the interactions with others. often you find that you have to justify your point of view logically to others who validate only Ti-based explanations, and when you are held responsible for the results of your project, you have to enforce the way it is done by those working with you, which, due to their preferred interaction style, looks Te-ish. 

Fe would sense what sort of approach would work best with each individual and tailor its approach accordingly, so in that sense i could see this being the combination of Fe with Ti.

in summary...the most immediate explanation that comes to mind is that you're being practical - you do what you have to do, to perform your job, determining your chosen interaction-style in each circumstance via Fe, even if that style doesn't come naturally to you - but if there is a more sophisticated cognitive-function-theoretical basis behind it, i would love to understand that as well. 

your desire to understand how this works, and label it by cognitive function, is an example of Ti in action. your innate drive to uncover the meaning these surface behaviors may imply about your type could be Ni in action. 

this thread is interesting, *subscribes to gain more insight*!!


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## Sinthemoon (Jan 9, 2013)

NighTi said:


> Unlike many of my colleagues, I enjoy teaching and mentoring, but I have trouble thinking and teaching at the same time. As long as we stick to material that I have already processed, we're fine. If I need to process on the fly, we're in trouble. It happened just a few days ago. During a mentoring session, we encountered an unexpected technical problem. It wasn't all that difficult, but I struggled to talk the student through the problem solving process. After a few minutes of frustration, I had to excuse myself, return to my desk, discover the solution, and bring it back to him. I'm sure that my dominant Ni plays a role in this dance as well. It works better when I'm alone, _but _my INTJ colleagues are also Ni dominant and don't have this kind of problem. They're able to think effectively while interacting with others.


Check out if this thread covers how your introverted functions work together.

http://personalitycafe.com/articles/25205-dominant-tertiary-loops-common-personality-disorders.html


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## drmiller100 (Dec 3, 2011)

SharkT00th said:


> Could you explain how you utilize Ni?


I really suck at all this function stuff and socionics stuff compared to so many on this site. 

To me, a great example of using Ni/Te is reading the socionics definitions and functions, and assimilating it. to me, it is boooooooring, but the RESULTS are VERY useful.

And once you have assimilated the information (I think I use Ni/Ti to dig deep into the depths of it all) I use Te to categorize people. 

So, for those snipists out there. Feel free to jump me as being wrong, because although I struggle with digging into the boooooooooooooring reading of it all, a great argument brings it together for me.

Please.


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

@Sinthemoon, thank you for the reference. That was helpful. Fortunately, I never sank all the way into a schizoid disorder. I admit to having some close scrapes in my early 20s when I might have earned the label but the episodes didn't last more than a few weeks at a time. My Fe kept bouncing back despite my ill-advised attempts to repress it.


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## Sinthemoon (Jan 9, 2013)

NighTi said:


> @Sinthemoon, thank you for the reference. That was helpful. Fortunately, I never sank all the way into a schizoid disorder. I admit to having some close scrapes in my early 20s when I might have earned the label but the episodes didn't last more than a few weeks at a time. My Fe kept bouncing back despite my ill-advised attempts to repress it.


Yeah, of course I wasn't suggesting you have a personality disorder. 

Btw I've spent many years corresponding to that profile too, but I think it's for very different reasons. Due to value conflict with my whole family and the absolute impossibility to have a fight with them (they are ridiculously joyful people), I think I've spent my teenage years in shadow mode, i.e. INTP-like - hence the schizoid behavior. When I started to really socialize and read about how to flirt and make friends, I got out of my shell spectacularly. Now I'm much more obsessive about my environment when stressed - and to be honest, it helps me tremendously when I don't wait too long to start putting things in order.Anyway, I really like cognitive functions theory. I'm looking forward for more research data!


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Even Jung said he used Te and Ti....just sayin


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Not sure I would even compare this to type for the most part. I mean, the intellectual crisis thing might reflect someone who is "at risk" of downplaying thinking, if they don't already do this (tertiary would be "at risk, but not necessarily problematic," inferior would be downplayed as a rule), but then again, it depends on your circumstances and might have nothing to do with type at all (e.g. "imposter syndrome" based on feeling unqualified to be in your position, or something of that sort). And if your "INTJ colleagues" behave a certain way, that probably wouldn't be type (what do you mean by this?) - were you trying to be more objective and factual in your interactions (which is just the Te/Fi, Fi/Te communication style in general, generally speaking), rather than focused on establishing a kind of social hierarchy with them or creating a kind of personal atmosphere around them (more Fe/Ti and Ti/Fe interaction style)?


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## mental blockstack (Dec 15, 2011)

I started learning how to think out loud, aka speak my thoughts aloud close to the speed at which I'm thinking them.
There might be a lot going on with that, especially since I'm still processing the environment before speaking. It might just be an optimally quick version of all the mental functioning.
Still don't think I could do it for hours upon hours consecutively, but it's a muscle which can be exercised.

Maybe I developed Fe to above tangible amounts, and am now able to glimpse that first outer planet (shadow function Te)
or maybe it's all the 4 functions in unison to create that effect? Whatever the theory's take on that is, I'm open to considering


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

When I use Te I find it difficult to push back Ni or Ti and sometimes Fe to allow me to actually engage to much into Te processing.
What would be a helpful way to actually stop this blocking of sorts? Allowing the Te to participate


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## nonnaci (Sep 25, 2011)

I'll speak from a programming/coding perspective as a Ti user. The code bases that I develop (for personal projects) tend to be bottom-up in the sense that I write fragmented solutions that will get a job done but is only local to problem at hand. As I work with more problems and see commonalities form, I'll abstract the code base into forms that can be applied elsewhere (e.g. templates, wrappers, shared libraries, etc). The process takes on a life of its own depending on whether problem(s) expands in scope or gets resolved (sufficient to get the job done). The Te "top-down" approach would have naturally systemized the problem from the get-go under some paradigm (e.g. software life-cycle) and establish the structure (albeit possibly overcomplete) as to lay out a path as to how the process (development) will evolve (guarantees).

Now if I were working in a company and had to present my ideas, it would be difficult to iterate from the bottom-up as the causal relations are too plentiful + "subjective priors" and so extra work is needed to convey to the audience the logos. In such a case, I'd have to present stuff from the Te perspective of established conventions (i.e. standards) in order to make an impact in a timely manner. This usually comes across as diagrams/flow charts/graphs/"assurances" but there's always this Ti "ad-hoc balk the conventions" undercurrent that's extant.


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> I mean, the intellectual crisis thing might reflect someone who is "at risk" of downplaying thinking, if they don't already do this (tertiary would be "at risk, but not necessarily problematic," inferior would be downplayed as a rule),


This particular crisis put my auxiliary Fe at risk. Understand that I knew very little about type at the time and never would have put it that way. In fact, I'm not sure that I would have called it a crisis. It's obvious now with the benefit of hindsight. At its essence, the crisis pitted my cultural identity against my reason. My reason (Ti) planted a knock-down punch on my identity (Fe), which got all wobbly and confused and took at least five years to recover. This created a vacuum for my tertiary Ti to assume the secondary position where it got all kinds of love and attention and, most importantly, rigorous training. By the time my Fe peeled itself off the floor, my Ti had the benefit of five years worth of development. Their relationship would never be the same.

Don't you love cartoons?



JungyesMBTIno said:


> (e.g. "imposter syndrome" based on feeling unqualified to be in your position, or something of that sort). And if your "INTJ colleagues" behave a certain way, that probably wouldn't be type (what do you mean by this?) - were you trying to be more objective and factual in your interactions (which is just the Te/Fi, Fi/Te communication style in general, generally speaking), rather than focused on establishing a kind of social hierarchy with them or creating a kind of personal atmosphere around them (more Fe/Ti and Ti/Fe interaction style)?


That's a pretty apt characterization. I'm impressed. Of course, I had feelings of inferiority. Would you believe that I never even learned calculus? Neither could anyone else, not that they would notice because we use it so infrequently. On the other hand, I did actually become quite the capable engineer, well above average in some respects. One nice thing about engineering is that success is hard to fake for long. You flip the switch and either the machine runs or it doesn't. 

The fakery concerns process more than outcome. I didn't have to fake being a geek with a love for technology. I could wax poetic about 1200 baud modems and single-sided 5.25 inch floppies with the best of them. I could make sarcastic comments about how the emacs editor was a crime-in-progress against Unix. I could even recite assembly language instructions and Hayes modem commands, which went out of style before many in this forum were born. My inadequacy relates purely to being able to engage in real-time problem-solving sessions. I can fake it until I run out of energy. Then, I turn into a blubbering idiot. It's frustrating being so capable in private and so clumsy in public (where "public" is defined as three introverted geeks and a whiteboard).


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

@NighTi

Why do you feel as if Fe is to be and is ostracized in the way that it is?


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

NighTi said:


> This particular crisis put my auxiliary Fe at risk. Understand that I knew very little about type at the time and never would have put it that way. In fact, I'm not sure that I would have called it a crisis. It's obvious now with the benefit of hindsight. At its essence, the crisis pitted my cultural identity against my reason. My reason (Ti) planted a knock-down punch on my identity (Fe), which got all wobbly and confused and took at least five years to recover. This created a vacuum for my tertiary Ti to assume the secondary position where it got all kinds of love and attention and, most importantly, rigorous training. By the time my Fe peeled itself off the floor, my Ti had the benefit of five years worth of development. Their relationship would never be the same.
> 
> Don't you love cartoons?
> 
> ...


In a type sense, tertiary would probably just make you a little unsure of how much you can see yourself as (for Ti) logical - nothing to do with cultural programming or a personal identity crisis (unless this question actually did come up for you, which I wouldn't know, of course). It would be just a question of cognition and how you prioritize your ideas about who you are in terms of your cognition. It's moreso a metric of the ego - where you hold ego pride and confidence and where you don't consciously realize it (dominant would be so first nature, that you might not realize either - that's common anyway). I get the idea from what you're saying that you're probably the type you think you are though (sounds like issues rationalizing thinking toward objective ends - stuff outside of personal concerns, like problem solving for the sake of it).


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

What I meant was it seems as if you view your Fe as an enemy


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

myjazz said:


> What I meant was it seems as if you view your Fe as an enemy


There is some truth to what you say, but "enemy" is the wrong word. I'm not at war with myself. I see it as more of a disappointing family member, or an unreliable but essential part of my team. It this were basketball, my Fe would be that star center who has "off-field issues" and occasionally gets thrown out of the game due to too many personal fouls. I can't play without a center and he's the best I have or can hope to have. When he's good, he's brilliant, but he often exercises poor judgment and gets me into trouble.

By contrast, my Ti has proven his judgment steady and reliable, but he makes a dreadful center. He can't motivate his team-mates and the fans hate him.

I think I've been trying to use the two of them as an awkward tandem. To switch metaphors, Ti constructs the songs and Fe sings them. The material comes from the boss, Ni. Usually it works, but sometimes, it's a disaster. Ti throws in a big word that Fe can't pronounce properly. Ti gets uptight and yells. Fe breaks down and cries. If you hear me stutter (which is often), you can bet that something like this is going on inside.

If I shut Ti up and let Fe sing the song his own way, I wouldn't stutter, but I'm afraid of what might come out. Fe has done some really stupid things in the past, and he could ruin what I've worked so hard to build.

It's easy to misinterpret this little cartoon as Fe being my emotions, but that's not true at all. I have poured at least as much emotional commitment into Ti. Fe makes judgments based on what he thinks would please others. I'm all for pleasing others. I just don't trust my own judgment in the area.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

NighTi said:


> There is some truth to what you say, but "enemy" is the wrong word. I'm not at war with myself. I see it as more of a disappointing family member, or an unreliable but essential part of my team. It this were basketball, my Fe would be that star center who has "off-field issues" and occasionally gets thrown out of the game due to too many personal fouls. I can't play without a center and he's the best I have or can hope to have. When he's good, he's brilliant, but he often exercises poor judgment and gets me into trouble.
> 
> By contrast, my Ti has proven his judgment steady and reliable, but he makes a dreadful center. He can't motivate his team-mates and the fans hate him.
> 
> ...


If Fe is the center all star or core of who you are then how can Fe be your downfall and be the ruin of what you built up?


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

myjazz said:


> If Fe is the center all star or core of who you are then how can Fe be your downfall and be the ruin of what you built up?


To put it crassly, Ti is how I make my living. I'm an engineer, and I've built a career and reputation on dispassionate analysis. If the senior VP comes up with a faulty design, it's still a faulty design.

Also, Fe is not the core of my being. It's not even my dominant function. I'm an Ni dominant through and through (as you might guess from the mental function cartoons). That's what makes the dance so dangerous. I can limp along with a damaged or disrespected Fe. Lose my Ni, and (at least by the book), I become a half-witted imitation of an ESTP. _That_ is something that others would notice.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

The part I am slipping or maybe not seeing is, It was your workplace that put Fe in crisis thus allowing Ti to step up, aka fake Te later, since your identity was Fe this in some way allowed Ti become new identity in accordance produced fake Te to create a new identity.
So are you now trying to recreate your Fe identity or comfortable with the fake Te one?
What or how does Fe make you feel now or relate to others?


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

@myjazz , thank you for being patient.

The crisis occurred right around age 20, in my second undergraduate year. I'm 40 now. It was literally half a lifetime ago. I was a social science major. I got angry at some course material. My anger spilled over to the course, then to the professor, then to the department, and finally to the whole associated culture. It doesn't matter whether I was right or wrong. I still think I was right and that the emperor was conducting court in his birthday suit, but it's immaterial. This was _my _culture, and I hated it.

Lenore Thomson's characterization of this type of event is starting to grow on me. My immature, water-skiing Ti jumped aboard my boat and heaved the stunned co-pilot Fe over the starboard bow.

I changed my major to philosophy, the quintessential Ti discipline. As providence would have it, logicians and philosophers of science dominated this particular department. I spent the next three years gorging myself on introverted thinking. My bookshelf still displays Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_ as a memorial and trophy. (An old priest told me that he understood that book once in his life, and he happened to be drunk at the time.) 

That's how my Ti became so strong. Fast forward a couple of years. I emerged from graduate school just as the dot-com bubble was forming. I had accidentally picked up some computer programming skills over the years, and companies were hiring anyone who could write a "for" loop. They scooped me up and I became an engineer. The subsequent bust culled much of the non-science major herd, but I survived. I survived because I adapted. I think the "fake Te" was part of the adaptation. The word "survive" is important here. It's amazing what you can do when you absolutely need to.


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## NighTi (Jan 1, 2013)

myjazz said:


> So are you now trying to recreate your Fe identity or comfortable with the fake Te one?
> What or how does Fe make you feel now or relate to others?


I missed this earlier. I apologize.

On an intellectual level, I've accepted the truth. I'm not an INTJ. I'm a distorted INFJ. Now, I'm trying to become comfortable with it. I'm trying to give myself permission to use Ti rather than Te -- and not apologize for it. I'm trying to strengthen my Fe and leverage it. It sets me apart from my colleagues and provides me with perspectives and talents that they lack. I'm giving a presentation at a technical conference in a couple of weeks and very much look forward to it.

Bottom line: I'm learning to be who I am, and to stop pretending to be who I am not.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Good luck with the Conference and the redevelopment of Fe


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