# Please help. Ne or Ni?



## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> Ok, you and @_Kamishi_ are both using your own (sort of) Jungian theory, but I'm just saying that even if someone is an Si-dom in your theory, it's misleading to call that person an ISFJ when they quite clearly don't even remotely fit anyone else's idea of what an ISFJ is, even the more functions-centric theorists.


A few points for consideration:

One, your lumping of me and @_Kamishi_ together is interesting. I don't act as a unit with him, I happened to notice the post and find it worthy of comment.

Two, again you appeal to this need for common context. Why are you doing it? What is your insecurity around people who think differently from yourself and the system you have chosen to adopt?

Three, I don't think you can have a valid idea of whom "anyone else" really entails. It's too much of a blanket statement to really apply even to one thread, but also to the whole of this body of thought - I know a few people have been showing up doing a plurality of the external/public thinking on the forum, but this does not inherently make them a majority.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> Because those theorists who say ISFJ = Si > Fe > Ti > Ne are using definitions that are entirely different to yours, especially Si. If you compare Jung's Si description with the Si descriptions from modern theorists like Nardi or Thomson, you will find that they are describing two completely different groups of people.


Why must those groups of people be different? Can they simply not explain the same or similar facets of the same thing? 



> Jung didn't call anyone an ISFJ and, from a Jungian perspective,


No, he did not, but he did call people dominant introverted sensation types, aka Si dominants, that ISFJs are because this is the foundation Myers based her model on. 



> it doesn't make sense to call an irrational type like a Si-dom a J,


Why not? What does the letter J mean to you? 



> and I'd argue that, in Jung's model of the psyche, the Si > Fe > Ti > Ne function order doesn't make much sense either.


Then what model does make sense according to you?



> So if you're going to type someone as an ISFJ, even if it's by using the functions rather than the dichotomies, it's reasonable for that person to assume you're using MBTI's functions, not Jung's.


But functions are also a part of the MBTI system. You even mentioned Thomson and Nardi as two MBTI theorists, and both deal with functions more than they deal with the four letter code. They are clearly not Jungian ones, anyway.


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## Meadow (Sep 11, 2012)

@Teybo, another article, which I just started reading but looks interesting:

http://intpmusings.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/unresolved-issues-with-the-mbti.pdf


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

Flatlander said:


> A few points for consideration:
> 
> One, your lumping of me and @_Kamishi_ together is interesting. I don't act as a unit with him, I happened to notice the post and find it worthy of comment.
> 
> ...


I didn't say you were working together as a unit; I just noticed that you both seem to have a similar theoretical perspective. I understand that you might not agree on everything, but my comment was still addressed to both of you since you were saying similar things, and I think there are similar problems with both of your models.

I'm appealing to the need for common context, as you put it, because there are so many different function definitions floating around that I think it's worth people being clear about which version of the functions they're using, as I explained in http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/149248-what-function-4.html#post3804239 so my concern is more about clear communication than getting everyone to agree. But if you really believe I'm making these posts out of insecurity, I'm not going to bother trying to convince you otherwise.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> I didn't say you were working together as a unit; I just noticed that you both seem to have a similar theoretical perspective. I understand that you might not agree on everything, but my comment was still addressed to both of you since you were saying similar things, and I think there are similar problems with both of your models.
> 
> I'm appealing to the need for common context, as you put it, because there are so many different function definitions floating around that I think it's worth people being clear about which version of the functions they're using, as I explained in http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/149248-what-function-4.html#post3804239 so my concern is more about clear communication than getting everyone to agree. But if you really believe I'm making these posts out of insecurity, I'm not going to bother trying to convince you otherwise.


I think I'm generally fairly transparent in how I think, and I do communicate clearly. I doubt that is a misperception, but in case it is, I'm willing to explain what I think and why I think it to people who ask, unless I'm pressed for time or have something else I want to do, or for some reason I think it would be futile.

Though you can look at different definitions in a way that highlights their underlying similarities, there will always be lots of function definitions, likely as many differently written perspectives as there are thinkers, seeing as this isn't a scientific field where something can be pinpointed precisely, so I consider the effort to unify definitions externally rather futile. Ironically, this is due to part of the nature of cognition itself - we all have individual minds and find meaning in things from our own perspectives, this being the particular truth that Ni, along with general introversion, teaches. It's up to you to examine what's there and consider it to figure out what you find meaningful to understand yourself, how and why.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

Kamishi said:


> Why must those groups of people be different? Can they simply not explain the same or similar facets of the same thing?


Here's one problem with that idea: in Jungian theory, the concrete/abstract duality is part of the difference between introversion and extraversion, but in the MBTI, even the function-centric version, sensing is concrete and intuition is abstract. So if Jung and all the modern MBTI theorists are referring to the same group of people when they talk about Si-doms, is that group of people more interested in concrete facts or abstractions?



Kamishi said:


> Why not? What does the letter J mean to you?


My understanding is that the characteristics that are associated with J's and P's in the MBTI are characteristics that Jung associated with J-doms and P-doms, which creates a problem for introverts since the J/P points to the auxiliary. It's the dom/inf dynamic that's important, and within Jung's model of the psyche there's no reason to think an introvert should have an extraverted auxiliary. In fact, I'd say that contradicts the whole idea of the dynamic between the conscious and unconscious attitudes.



Kamishi said:


> Then what model does make sense according to you?


Assuming we're sticking to Jungian type rather than the dichotomies, I'd say it would make more sense to think the dom/aux are in the same attitude; if the tert/inf are rejected by the ego, I would think they should be in the rejected attitude.



Kamishi said:


> But functions are also a part of the MBTI system. You even mentioned Thomson and Nardi as two MBTI theorists, and both deal with functions more than they deal with the four letter code. They are clearly not Jungian ones, anyway.


Thomson's and Nardi's functions are, as you say, "clearly not Jungian ones." So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Kamishi said:


> It annoys me too. Or when thinkers think they are smart just because they are thinkers.


I will restrain myself from posting a link or excerpt to the comment where the thinker is running the f=emotion / t=rational stuff . 



> This woman for example:
> 
> Notice how she seems very subdued and many would probably think of her as a thinker simply because she appears emotionally subdued and "logical" because she's presenting a theory. So it looks like Te (the delivery for sure is Je), but at a closer inspection you will start notice that her delivery doesn't match that of actual Te types.


The problem for me here is I lack the reference points to make this meaningful in relation to your observations. Meaning, I don't know if I am enough like most people in how I think of thinkers, and I don't know what the usual delivery is for Te types. 



> I think this video is an even better illustration because pneumoceptor definitely showcases harsh Fe, and I do agree with those that type her as an ESFJ but very harsh variant. Now compare to Figure (LXPilot), who is most likely an ENTJ and note how they come across. Both seem harsh and logical, but Figure is clearly _categorical_. He comes across as logical. Also notice how they both ask questions and how they respond to each other.


And again I seem to lack the reference points I need to make sense of this in terms of your observations. I'm also distracted by the content, in part because they identify as INTJ and INFJ, but you type them differently. It's like .... I am taking in the data but don't have anchor points that can help me compare the data to your framework that I'm trying to understand. 



> Yes, and that makes sense because you value Fe over Ti, so there would be a less immediate need for categorization or feeling strongly that something goes against the model.


My first response on reading this was that when Ti emerges it is such a strong and urgent need for me that it's really hard for me to see it as less immediate. But on second thought, this is a really accurate way to put it. 

If it wasn't for Fe, I would never ever be able to _believe_ that some of what I experience of the operation of this cultural system could actually exist - it's that alien to me. And I have to take this stuff in, have to understand it, due to some other stuff about how I'm made. So Fe essentially forces Ni-dom me to feel through experience/internalization that the unbelievable (by the physics of my Ni landscape) does exist. Ti is my fail-safe button, keeps me from essentially going insane or self-destructing from the insanity of what I take in. 

So yeah, if there were a more immediate need for Ti, I would never be able to believe that things that are so completely and utterly mirrorworld insane in the Ni landscape can actually exist like they do. And if it wasn't for Fe the horror of my surroundings would probably either leave me catatonic or completely unable to interact with most of what passes for life here. 

Probably more than a bit of a tangent, but - your description, even though it was going off what I wrote, sparked some things into greater clarity for me. Thank you.



> I feel my model is also extremely organic and it keeps building whether I like it or not, even if I try to right-out reject some kind of data based on whatever reasoning why that is. It happens I sometimes turn 180 degrees with my understanding of things and some things I previously rejected as illogical is now something that makes a lot of sense. I have no real control over it. It just happens over time. The only way to not make it happen would be to entirely stop engaging with data, I guess.
> 
> I for example used to be a militant atheist in my teens. It's not that I mellowed out, I just started to see value in religion in a way I didn't before. I still don't like religion as an instutition and what it does to a lot of people but I will not blame religious people for being religious, either. I can just appreciate religion before in a way I couldn't.
> 
> Same pretty much goes when it comes to politics. I used to be a hardcore right-winger, supporting libertarianism and I was in retrospect probably even quite racist at least if I were to judge myself in the past, but now it's enough for people to call chocolate ball (a specific cooke in Sweden, google it, quite tasty) n* {edited this word -Aquarian} ball for me to get pissed off.


Could you possibly add to this the layer of which cognitive function plays what role and when, in this process? I'm getting a bit of a glimpse of it but I could be wrong.



> I think I partially already explained it in the above. This might also be useful for you for comparison :
> 
> Vortical-Synergetic Cognition - INFJ
> Dialectial-Algorithmic Cognition - INTJ


Normally I don't much like socionics, but those descriptions are _fascinating_. There's a substantial amount of the Vortical-Synergetic Cognition (IEI) description that I recognize as descriptive of my thinking process. 

And while the Dialectial-Algorithmic Cognition is clearly not my own thinking process, I feel like I can perceive the Ni in it quite clearly. It's like - I know this is not my thinking but recognize it as a close family member, despite our very strong differences." (if that makes any sense.) I've always assumed I'd find Te-aux thinking off-putting because I don't like the black and white deductive nature of it. But from that description, it sounds like for Te-aux Ni-doms, the black and white of Te simply feeds that dialectical oscillating process, per this description from your link:



> Dialectical cognition is born from the colliding flow and counterflow of thought, the consciousness and unconsciousness. Thinkers of this style are characterized by an express inclination towards the synthesis of opposites, the removal of contradictions, which they so keenly perceive.


So the Te rigidity serves the Ni ... what, creativity or complexity? 

Am I anywhere close to accurate here?


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## rwm4768 (Sep 9, 2011)

Flatlander said:


> How did you determine you do not relate to Si? Where did you get your information? What do you yourself conceive of as the nature, meaning, intent of the cognitive process?


I got it from the description of Si in one of this forum's stickies and from cognitiveprocesses.com. While there are aspects of it that I think I've used, I don't relate to most of the descriptions. I might be willing to accept Si tertiary or inferior but not dominant or auxiliary.



> What aspect of the world makes you feel like an alien? Forget that it's 'sensor-dominated', apply your own perspective in description.


I was always the weird kid. I didn't play the same games at recess, opting instead to sit somewhere and ponder things, or get lost in the intricate fantasy worlds I created in my head. I also learned so much more quickly and intuitively than my peers, often mastering math concepts in five minutes that the rest of the class worked on for an hour. I was a gifted child, and in the gifted program was the only place where I felt kind of normal. There I was with other kids who liked to think about things. I've always wanted to figure out how the world works.



> This hasn't necessarily anything to do with intuition at all. Anyone of any preference can describe themself as preferring the general to the specific, depending on how it is intended; anyone can enjoy discussing and learning about theories, it is a question of what purpose this serves in your mind, why you do it.


I do it because that's just the way my brain is wired. I've never even imagined a life where I don't speculate on theories or generate possibilities. As a said above, I've been like this from the time I was a kid. It's not like I developed this behavior recently, as would be indicated by the theory. I'm in my early 20s, so that's when the tertiary is supposed to start showing up.



> Overall I'd say this point seems more related to Enneagram than cognitive function - notice the emphasis on _priority_, which speaks to your _motivation_, which isn't determined by the shape of your thinking but the content.


I'll accept that. After all, I'm more sure of my Enneagram type at the moment.



> Offhand, this looks much more like Ne vs. Se than Ni at all. When possibilities are _presented_, this suggests you are looking at them as concrete data (Ne).


Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Maybe I do favor Ne. I know I favor some form of intuition.



> Why do you associate possibilities with the 'future'?
> 
> 
> > Looking at it, I can think of possibilities both in the present and in the future. As a child, I was a huge fan of "what if" questions. I wanted to know what would happen in all kinds of different situations, even outlandish ones.
> ...


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> Here's one problem with that idea: in Jungian theory, the concrete/abstract duality is part of the difference between introversion and extraversion, but in the MBTI, even the function-centric version, sensing is concrete and intuition is abstract.


They are in Jung's theory too, you know. The problem seems to be that you aren't understanding the distinction between the words. When Jung means that introversion is abstract, it means that it transforms the objective world into the subjective. This kind of concrete-abstract dichotomy is different to what is implied by sensation-intuition which refers to concrete as in being focused on the sense-world itself and abstract as in being able to identify trends and patterns. The words have completely different meanings in these contexts and this is what must be recognized.


> So if Jung and all the modern MBTI theorists are referring to the same group of people when they talk about Si-doms, is that group of people more interested in concrete facts or abstractions?


They are interested in _*concrete abstractions*_.


> My understanding is that the characteristics that are associated with J's and P's in the MBTI are characteristics that Jung associated with J-doms and P-doms, which creates a problem for introverts since the J/P points to the auxiliary.


No idea where you got this from, but I don't think Jung would ever draw such a hard line where J = ordered and P = disordered. Jung would recognize that those kinds of behaviors can be the result of many factors but most of all will play a role in what he referred to as persona. These are constructions Myers created and this is why Myers' understanding of Jung is poor. Jung never spoke of J/P in such a sense beyond irrational-rational as a dichotomy, but it doesn't mean all rationals are ordered people. No, what it means is that rationals like to structure the contents in their heads. Rationality means judgement, so what rational types like to do is to view the world through the lens of judgement. Rational therefore keep viewing the world through the lens of T and F, structuring it either according to the feeling tones they perceive or through impersonal categorizations. 

Irrational types are more focused on taking in impressions so they are unstructured only in this kind of sense. They don't tend to structure the data they take in. With that said, every person is rational and irrational to a degree because we wouldn't be able to function if all we did was judgement and all we did was taking in perception data and we can perform the basics of any function. But having perception or judgement as a dominant function perspective is different - then this is what we prefer doing. 



> It's the dom/inf dynamic that's important, and within Jung's model of the psyche there's no reason to think an introvert should have an extraverted auxiliary. In fact, I'd say that contradicts the whole idea of the dynamic between the conscious and unconscious attitudes.


No, not really, it doesn't. It entirely depends on how you actually interpret Jung, and there are many models that try to understand how he understood the psyche because he wasn't overly clear on this. Some will say that if the ego is introverted, then all differentiated functions (that is, they become a part of the egoic perspective) will be introverted, so the auxiliary will thus be introverted. But then there are those who focus more on Jung's emphasis that the psyche always strives towards balance between introversion and extroverson, and if the dominant ego perspective is introverted, then the auxiliary must therefore be extroverted in order to balance it out.

I recognize Te as my auxiliary and it's extroverted. I've seen other people where their auxiliary seems to be introverted. I don't think you can draw a hard line and there's a reason Jung only made such a passing about the auxiliary in the first place because he didn't think it was really that relevant when it comes to people's psyches. Most people will only have differentiated one function and that is the dominant, and even if you do differentiate an auxiilary too, Jung mentions how this function will be a slave or be in a slave-like position to the dominant. What he means by this is that the auxiliary will only do what is necessary in order to serve the dominant. For me for example, what this means is that if I have a model in my head, I can use Te in order to find an existing model that already exists out there that explains my model in my head, although I would refer to the word justification more. I use this data to justify what I already know, and this also reveals the auxiliary's slave-like nature. It cannot operate on its own without the dominant.


> Assuming we're sticking to Jungian type rather than the dichotomies, I'd say it would make more sense to think the dom/aux are in the same attitude; if the tert/inf are rejected by the ego, I would think they should be in the rejected attitude.


It entirely depends on what system you choose to type people in. In MBTI I can be flexible, so if someone seems to exhibit TiNi, I might consider that person an INTP although I've started to move back thinking the person as an ISTP because it fits the function model better even if it doesn't explain the egoic function preferences, but in socionics it's possible for the equivalent of an ISTP (LSI/ISTj) to be TiNi because of how subtype works. Most of all though, I might just consider the person Ti-N, and if I were to suggest a type I might suggest either INTP or ISTP depending. 

Also, there is no current model of the psyche that assumes that if the ego is introverted, then all differentiated functions will be of an introverted attitude. Beebe refers to the MBTI model, and socionics developed similarly independent of the MBTI, and Nardi operates with the MBTI model too. Thomson also operates with the MBTI model. 

I am not sure if I think this is relevant or not, but regardless, I still don't see quite a hard line being drawn by Jung on this matter. What matters is the dominant. Then we can express people's type in the various systems depending on how we operate within those systems. I don't think I've ever been unclear on that matter and if people think I am unclear they can always ask what I mean.


> Thomson's and Nardi's functions are, as you say, "clearly not Jungian ones." So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.


I didn't say that. I said that they are clearly not Jungian theorists but MBTI theorists. I can see why you read it that way though, but that was clearly not how I intended that sentence. I intended to suggest they are not Jungian theorists, so they will approach things differently because their perspective is colored by the MBTI first, not Jung. 

With that said, if you read their function descriptions you will still see a lot of overlap not only between the two, but also between Jung's. Nardi's Se items are pretty good I think, and reflects Se well at some level. Se does have an aspect to it where you are caught up in the moment, know how to go with the flow and feel at one with the environment. 

So while Jung may not use these exact descriptors or words, he very much tries to convey something similar with his Se description. I used to think the descriptions were more different than they are. Now I think they only simply try to describe the same thing but from somewhat different angles. 

If you have a pear, you can describe it many different ways. You can describe it looking at it from the top, the side or the bottom, or you can slice it two and see how it looks like from the inside. You can focus on the texture or the colors or the nutritients it contains. You can describe it through various stages of age and you can zoom in and you can describe it from far away. Yet, what you are describing is a pear. All of these descriptions therefore describe the same object, and it is when we see how all of them contain a little nugget of truth of what the pear is that we realize it is a pear and not just a pear from the side, a pear from the top or a pear from the bottom.



Aquarian said:


> I will restrain myself from posting a link or excerpt to the comment where the thinker is running the f=emotion / t=rational stuff .


LOL!


> The problem for me here is I lack the reference points to make this meaningful in relation to your observations. Meaning, I don't know if I am enough like most people in how I think of thinkers, and I don't know what the usual delivery is for Te types.





> And again I seem to lack the reference points I need to make sense of this in terms of your observations. I'm also distracted by the content, in part because they identify as INTJ and INFJ, but you type them differently. It's like .... I am taking in the data but don't have anchor points that can help me compare the data to your framework that I'm trying to understand.


Fair enough. These videos might be more useful?
















> My first response on reading this was that when Ti emerges it is such a strong and urgent need for me that it's really hard for me to see it as less immediate. But on second thought, this is a really accurate way to put it.
> 
> If it wasn't for Fe, I would never ever be able to _believe_ that some of what I experience of the operation of this cultural system could actually exist - it's that alien to me. And I have to take this stuff in, have to understand it, due to some other stuff about how I'm made. So Fe essentially forces Ni-dom me to feel through experience/internalization that the unbelievable (by the physics of my Ni landscape) does exist. Ti is my fail-safe button, keeps me from essentially going insane or self-destructing from the insanity of what I take in.
> 
> So yeah, if there were a more immediate need for Ti, I would never be able to believe that things that are so completely and utterly mirrorworld insane in the Ni landscape can actually exist like they do. And if it wasn't for Fe the horror of my surroundings would probably either leave me catatonic or completely unable to interact with most of what passes for life here.


The way I understand feeling in general, or beginning to understand feeling as, is the less immediate need to simply categorize. I am not sure how it works being a dominant feeler or an auxiliary feeler now in retrospect, the entire perspective is so alien to me, but my impression is that it's simply just being attuned to feeling tones. There's no logical categorization going on at all and whether something makes sense or not sense. If I am reading a forum post by someone, my immediate thoughts go to whether I think the forum post is logical and whether the information it presents is accurate or meaningful. I don't focus on the intent of the poster and so on that I can imagine a feeler would do (?).


> Probably more than a bit of a tangent, but - your description, even though it was going off what I wrote, sparked some things into greater clarity for me. Thank you.


No problem.


> Could you possibly add to this the layer of which cognitive function plays what role and when, in this process? I'm getting a bit of a glimpse of it but I could be wrong.


I think I know what you mean. Well, ultimately it boils down to that perception is irrational. I cannot quite say, I am now not going to perceive anything around me or I am going to perceive a lot around me. I can do it with sensation but that is simply allowing sensation as a perspective into my ego. As a rejected function, I don't want to experience sensation, I want to perceive with intuition, and as I become more aware of Ni there is just... a lot of things going on all the time. I see something, I get some abstract impression of it. Usually I can't put this into words or even remotely describe what it is. It's just that, some kind of impression. I can structure it with thinking to a degree like I look out now through the window and I see this person walking. I can infer that this person has a purpose walking somewhere, but my thoughts go to why the person is walking.


> Normally I don't much like socionics, but those descriptions are _fascinating_. There's a substantial amount of the Vortical-Synergetic Cognition (IEI) description that I recognize as descriptive of my thinking process.


I'm not surprised. Your thinking seems to be very VS-oriented to me. It's one of the reasons that make me think you're properly typed as an INFJ.


> And while the Dialectial-Algorithmic Cognition is clearly not my own thinking process, I feel like I can perceive the Ni in it quite clearly. It's like - I know this is not my thinking but recognize it as a close family member, despite our very strong differences." (if that makes any sense.) I've always assumed I'd find Te-aux thinking off-putting because I don't like the black and white deductive nature of it. But from that description, it sounds like for Te-aux Ni-doms, the black and white of Te simply feeds that dialectical oscillating process, per this description from your link:


The way I understand VS and DA is that both do the same thing but they approach it entirely differently. When I engage with VS types sometimes, it feels like the way they approach the world is just the opposite way of how I am approaching the world. I understand it, but it just feels "backwards", lol.


> So the Te rigidity serves the Ni ... what, creativity or complexity?


Why can't it be both? Complexity does not even necessarily reject simplicitly. (This sentence is a perfect example of DA.) Something can be simple but complex and I think that's how I'd understand DA. I was just thinking of a meme that I think reflects DA pretty well, and it's the hybrid between the socially awkward and socially awesome penguin meme. 










It reflects DA in how it merges two opposite perspectives and creates a new perspective with it by finding that one common denominator. For example, man and woman are both human sexes. In a way it is creative in how it transforms two opposites and finds out what those two opposites have in common, although I never saw my thinking pattern as creative necessarily.


> Am I anywhere close to accurate here?


Accurate from what perspective?



rwm4768 said:


> My points on Si are above. As for Fe, while I am considerate of other people's feelings for the most part, I know I wasn't as a kid. I used to be very blunt and argumentative. If I was right, I let people know. I've since moderated that.


I don't think kindness necessarily has much to do with Fe per se, either. Some Fe types can definitely be very blunt and even "mean". 
So how would you describe Si? 



> It means I definitely prefer some form of intuition to Se or Si. For example, when studying history, I'm not all that interested in what actually happened. I'm more interested in what could have happened, however improbable. It's kind of a "what if" game that I can then apply to my writing.


It seems Ne but again, Si always works with Ne. Focusing on what happened would probably be more of an Se perspective. 



> I have now read Jung's description of Si, and I didn't relate to it at all. Additionally, I think most people type themselves based on the MBTI descriptions of each cognitive function. Jung might have been the inspiration, but the system has been modified. That, and there's no guarantee or proof that Jung was right.


But if Jung was wrong, then what is the point and purpose of the MBTI that is entirely buit on Jung's teachings, albeit streamlined? 



> For one thing, I hate classes that are all memorization and no theory. I prefer to learn generally how something works and then apply that knowledge to specific instances. Formulas without theory mean nothing to me. That was always my biggest struggle with the more Finance-related aspects of my Economics degree.


Why must theory be indicative of intuition?



> According to the theory, which may or may not be true. Most of the studies I've read have found empirical support that the dichotomies exist, but haven't found it for the cognitive function stacking. Right now, I'm reading a journal article that was posted somewhere in this thread, and it cites quite a few studies that point to empirical questions about cognitive functions, if I recall correctly.


But what needs to be understood is that the dichotomies measure something very different than the functions. The functions attempt to describe how people think, but this has nothing to do with whether they are ordered or disordered as people. 


> I don't think that's necessarily a result of Si. It's more the fact that I'm attempting to use the theory to figure out my personality type. In that sense, it's rather important whether it fits my experiences or not. Logically, what's the use of a model if it doesn't fit you?


When I apply a theory to explain myself, I can't say I'm overly concerned in trying to figure out how it fits my experiences, no. I first look at myself, what am I? Then I look at the system, how does this apply to me the most correctly? There is no "it has to fit my experiences" logic going on. I simply understand whether the model is properly applied or not intellectually. It's more that I try to fit myself into the system than whether the system has to fit me. If I can't fit myself into the system, then I might re-evaluate whether I misunderstood it or whether it's poorly constructed. But I recognize that the aspects that the model tries to explain, these are aspects I possess innately. So if the model is decently structured, I should be able to fit myself into the system and it should be able to explain what it intends to explain.


> I really do appreciate that you're taking the time to respond to my questions in such detail, even if I disagree with some of the assumptions you make about my personality. There are obviously limitations to typing someone over the internet, however. Not only that, but the person being typed has to understand their own thought processes, which can be difficult.


I have an easier time typing people over the internet through text than I am IRL. Cognition is much clearer in text because people are forced to extravert all their content onto paper. This is not true IRL. 

Yes, it can be difficult to understand one's own processes but that's why I rather see how I fit the model than whether the model fits me. The Fe perspective in this post from you is extremely obvious, for example, and this seems to partially be why you resist the models in this way.

By the way, I'm also a social scientist but trained within anthropology and the humanities, or more specifically, I'm a culture/social anthropologist and within the humanities I have mostly focused on religious studies, philosophy and linguistics. I never liked drawing a hard-line between whether something can be proven pragmatically or not. I in fact reject such a notion and find it rather childish and silly. Statistics and such can only say so much about the reality we occupy.

This is why I prefer semiotics and symbol analysis, to a degree, discourse analysis when it overlaps with semiotics. Why? My preferences are decidedly intuition-pointed. I don't care so much about reality as is as much as I care about the meanings we can find within reality. 

I wrote this philosophy paper back in 2009 where I entirely rejected the idea of "common sense" based on that common sense is that we should trust our senses. It is interesting to go back and read what I wrote back then because it says a lot about my cognition. I don't think any scientific branch is so reflective of the various cognitive preferences than philosophy, as each philosopher decidedly attempted to prove how their thinking or in other words, their cognitive function makeup, is the best one. 

See, what makes me a dominant intuitive is because I don't like sensation. I reject it hardcore as a perspective of how to understand the world. It's this push-pull that makes me intuitive, not whether I like understanding and studying theory. I mean, of course you will favor some kind of intuition. We are all sensors and intuitives. Outside of Ni and Te, the perspective that occupies my mind the most is most likely Se, although I am often not conscious of it for most of the part and if I notice that I become consciously aware of Se it feels like I am lost outside myself and I need to get back in. It has a very strong effect on me that verges closer to panic depending on the situation. The colors are too bright and the world's too vivid. I can't handle it, it's too much information for my brain. It just feels overwhelming as a perspective. I have no control when it becomes egoic either. It more like someone hit me on the head with a hammer and woke me up except I don't want to wake up. 

It's therefore important to realize that the inferior function forms as soon as we formulate a preference towards the dominant. Conscious awareness of the inferior, or in other words, differentation, meaning acceptance of the inferior perspective into the ego, and it's different. This is what you are really referring to with function development that refers to age. As for myself, I am not sure if it would be correct to say that I even "work" or "try to" develop Fi. For most of the part Fi just seems to come out of nowhere and I'm in my mid-20s.

I don't believe in the age model in such a sense for that reason. I think our willingness to accept the inferior function perspectives into the ego depends a lot more on the individual and his or her life circumstances than it having to do anything with age. Jung treated many patients who were middle-aged and had rejected the inferior perspective to such a degree that they had issues functioning normally in society. 

Shadow and inferior acceptance comes and goes as people age. Sometimes when we are at a good spot in life it's easier to accept our inferior and shadow, other times when life's difficult it might be easier to retreat into the ego and dissociate oneself from reality. 

With that said, healthy and mature individuals will have integrated the shadow and the inferior better than those unhealthy, but I think that has again more to do with health than age.


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## sentilopis (Dec 13, 2010)

*Ni*: Intuitive function that makes sense of what's already there(Se)

*Ne*:Intuitive function that makes sense of what's not already integrated into your sensory catalog(Si); in other words, what's not there.

Ni perception would resemble a web connecting independent points of data(Se) ever more intricately.

Ne perception would resemble robots integrating unknown data into a large sensory catalog(Si).


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

Madeleine44 said:


> Maybe you could do a bit of research on Fe? For INFJs Fe is the auxiliary function so it'll be much more prominent in an INFJ than an INTP. Also because you're a teen, if you were an INTP your Fe will not or barely be developed because you're still quite young. Also do a bit of research into Ni and Ne, do you have a lot of ideas swimming around in your head or are you always dead set on one?


Some sources, such as Personality Junkie, contend the order of development goes functions 1-4-2-3 but who knows? In theory that makes sense because 1-4 work together. That is, Ti and Fe are a function pair for I_TP.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Meadow said:


> @Teybo, another article, which I just started reading but looks interesting:
> 
> http://intpmusings.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/unresolved-issues-with-the-mbti.pdf


Thanks for sharing this with me. I'm often bemused (though in some cases frustrated) when people express that they are so sure of some particular aspect of "cognitive functions". The worst culprit, both for bemusement and frustration, are the people who are just so sure they understand the inner workings of every human on the planet so well that not only can they give people trendy labels for their "cognitive processes", they can do it just by observing which way they nod their head or move their hand. It's particularly (dis)satisfying when they use Myers' interpretation of the cognitive functions while in the same breath calling her work "worthless stereotypes and misconceptions" or something like that.

Which reminds me...



Kamishi said:


> Myers understood the essence of Jung's typological system? Don't make me fucking laugh because that's so lol-worthy I am not sure you think that's actually serious or not. Based on Myers' attempts to apply Jungian typology, I think it is fair to say she did not understand Jungian typology at the core *at all*.


(emphasis in original)



Kamishi said:


> No, he did not, but he did call people dominant introverted sensation types, aka Si dominants, that ISFJs are because this is the foundation Myers based her model on.





Kamishi said:


> I wear the INTJ label because it represents Ni Te Fi Se as a function order which is pretty much the function order that correctly represents my cognition. I am still waffling a bit whether Te or Fi is my auxiliary, but in retrospect I am beginning to lean more and more towards Te rather than Fi, which means my function order is perfectly represented in the INTJ model.


If anyone can follow what it is that you actually believe about type, Jung, Myers, and the MBTI, that is a credit to them, not to you. Your writing on the subject is anything but clear, as the above quotes show. And these are but a snippet of your posts here on PerC, and only from the portion of time when you identified as an INTJ, rather than the time you identified as an "Fi-dom", or from the portion of time you identified as an INTP.

I don't care what you actually believe, Kamishi. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I just don't give a shit what it is you think about type.

But you are wrong if you think whatever tangled mess you've got for a "system" is clear enough that you can just throw around labels without defining them, and you are haughty and full of hubris if you think that you can see through someone else's "persona" (which is yet another poorly defined word you like to use) to see their "true cognitive processes", even though you seemed to have such difficulty doing that for yourself.


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Teybo said:


> If anyone can follow what it is that you actually believe about type, Jung, Myers, and the MBTI, that is a credit to them, not to you. Your writing on the subject is anything but clear, as the above quotes show. And these are but a snippet of your posts here on PerC, and only from the portion of time when you identified as an INTJ, rather than the time you identified as an "Fi-dom", or from the portion of time you identified as an INTP.


So I haven't been following the context but this caught my eye. I myself personally don't think it's useful to question or try to discredit someone's perspective or understanding based on them having an explicit process of exploration on PerC in which they identified in various ways as they were trying to figure out the most accurate cognitive function order for themselves. This can be a process and we are all here (I hope) in part to learn about and better understand ourselves, and there _are _different ways of going about that.

To my eyes, as someone who admittedly hasn't been following this specific dialogue and just had my eye caught by this comment for some reason, the above-quoted approach seems like a non-useful personal attack rather than a useful and clear response to whatever the actual disagreement is.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Aquarian said:


> So I haven't been following the context but this caught my eye. I myself personally don't think it's useful to question or try to discredit someone's perspective or understanding based on them having an explicit process of exploration on PerC in which they identified in various ways as they were trying to figure out the most accurate cognitive function order for themselves. This can be a process and we are all here (I hope) in part to learn about and better understand ourselves, and there _are _different ways of going about that.
> 
> To my eyes, as someone who admittedly hasn't been following this specific dialogue and just had my eye caught by this comment for some reason, the above-quoted approach seems like a non-useful personal attack rather than a useful and clear response to whatever the actual disagreement is.


Part of this is that you have not been witness to the ongoing dialog between myself and Kamishi (who was once known as LeaT but is no longer, and I bring this up only to clarify for those readers who missed that connection but saw the dialog between myself and the person wearing the LeaT username who is now Kamishi).

I keep saying, over and over, that I don't care what Kamishi thinks about type, and certainly not enough to try to attack him in order to "discredit" his personal understanding of type. I am not trying to discredit Kamishi's perspective or understanding based on him having identified as a variety of types in a variety of systems. I am urging him to see that whatever insights he has on type is being lost by his poor communication of his personal system. But not only that, because he is using the same labels and terms as used by other systems, but without defining them explicitly, he is sowing confusion in the minds of those he comes across, and in such a way that his communication partners will not know why they are confused.

True to my type, I just want Kamishi to be successful in his communication of his ideas with others. However, when it's impossible to tell what it is exactly that he's trying to say, how can we get any benefit: Did Myers get it right when she said that INTJ is Ni-Te-Fi-Se, for example, or did Myers "not understand Jungian typology at the core* at all*"?

Kamishi even decided to tell me that I was not the type I know I am. How am I to reasonably evaluate his claim if I have no way of establishing what his words mean?


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Kamishi said:


> Fair enough. These videos might be more useful?


I love those videos, but I don't use them as external frameworks to be applied in cases like this. Now I'm trying to remember the original question I asked, I think it was trying to understand how harsh Fe could appear like Te. Maybe I just need to put it into the back of my mind and see if I will organically recognize it at some point. I really do feel like there's something there and I think I need to have a particular kind of data or angle of data to get it, and I don't have it just yet. But - those videos are freaking fascinating to me for other reasons. 



> The way I understand feeling in general, or beginning to understand feeling as, is the less immediate need to simply categorize. I am not sure how it works being a dominant feeler or an auxiliary feeler now in retrospect, the entire perspective is so alien to me, but my impression is that it's simply just being attuned to feeling tones. There's no logical categorization going on at all and whether something makes sense or not sense. If I am reading a forum post by someone, my immediate thoughts go to whether I think the forum post is logical and whether the information it presents is accurate or meaningful. I don't focus on the intent of the poster and so on that I can imagine a feeler would do (?).


My perspective/experience, best I can put it into words right now:

From my own experience of Fe-aux, this isn't quite accurate. I think the problem (whether in what you wrote or in my understanding/interpretation of what you wrote) comes in the contrast between feeling tone and logic. 

For me, Fe is about human values. Cultural systems are a form of human values and there can also be organizational/institutional, sub-group, individual values etc etc (often showing some refracted version of cultural system materials).

So on the surface, it could be things like: What is normal and what is deviant, what is right and what is wrong, what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. Dig deeper and it's underlying assumptions, like: what is true and what is not. Dig even deeper and there is often a energy-charged core of the system. My favorite conceptual approach comes from cultural anthropologist Marimba Ani who writes about a germinating seed at the core of each cultural system that is the most basic generator of the diverse refracted yet basically consistent cultural material. 

What I'm doing above is largely from Ti: describing human values/cultural systems from the outside of them. But Fe-aux also gives me the experience of being inside external value systems - or to be more precise having them (from the outside) come inside of me for a time and thus seeing through their "eyes" along with my own.

I don't experience these value systems as feeling-tone (or at least that wouldn't be my organic name for them from my actual experience). Instead, I experience them as powerful perspectives, ways of "seeing" what is going on. Inside myself, these perspectives also sort of ... resonate, like a the kind of physical resonance you get with certain kinds of sound. 

Okay, here's my problem with the juxtaposition of F as feeling-tone on one hand, and logic on the other. To my perception, "logic" is itself a cultural product and it has its own flavor as a value system. So for example, if I was so inclined and oriented, I could internalize the cultural values associated with deductive logic as a value system. I don't want to do that, because there's no reason but even so I can feel it hovering there. 

So ... Ti in myself. I have a process of Ti categorization and analysis. I am well aware that this process has underlying assumptions about how to do analysis, and at the deeper levels, what "knowing" actually is. This is from one angle of vision a human value system. Inductive grounded qualitative etc etc approaches aren't universally accepted as the way to arrive at knowledge. Quite the contrary in the dominant cultural system in which I live, actually. I had to explicitly engage with this stuff when I was in grad school and had a deductive/quant dissertation advisor and another deductive/quant committee member and I had to be very freaking clear about how my epistemological assumptions different from theirs. And they initially unquestioningly accepted their own way as the best way - in fact the only way - to gather and analyze data to arrive at sound conclusions.

Ti (specifically, how I use it) feels physically good to me ("feeling" like basic sense-based physical pain or pleasure, not like emotion), it flows with my organic landscape and the frequency with which it resonates is in physical harmony with that organic landscape. Te, on the other hand, is in opposition in some ways. Even in the real of logic, there are cultural underpinnings. 

Or from anther perspective (keeping in mind that my experience is in the social sciences): deductive quantitative research values a particular form of researcher control and disconnection as necessary for real knowledge (for example, to be good research, it has to be replicable regardless of context). Inductive qualitative research, onthe other hand, values contextual data and for that the researcher can't control the environment of the study and have the conclusions be sound (quite the opposite). Deductive quant research calls on a researcher to have no bias and use an external "instrument", while inductive qual research calls on the researcher to understand her or his biases and use that understanding in the analysis toward greater accuracy, in part because the researcher is the instrument.



> I think I know what you mean. Well, ultimately it boils down to that perception is irrational. I cannot quite say, I am now not going to perceive anything around me or I am going to perceive a lot around me. I can do it with sensation but that is simply allowing sensation as a perspective into my ego. As a rejected function, I don't want to experience sensation, I want to perceive with intuition, and as I become more aware of Ni there is just... a lot of things going on all the time. I see something, I get some abstract impression of it. Usually I can't put this into words or even remotely describe what it is. It's just that, some kind of impression. I can structure it with thinking to a degree like I look out now through the window and I see this person walking. I can infer that this person has a purpose walking somewhere, but my thoughts go to why the person is walking.


So is this the perceptual ground of Ni? How does Te-aux interact wih this, in your experience? 

I wrote:



> So the Te rigidity serves the Ni ... what, creativity or complexity?


and you replied:



> Why can't it be both? Complexity does not even necessarily reject simplicitly. (This sentence is a perfect example of DA.) Something can be simple but complex and I think that's how I'd understand DA.


Oh, the "or" in my question wasn't because I thought it couldn't be both! It was just me trying to get the most accurate word. I don't see creativity and complexity as opposed. 



> It reflects DA in how it merges two opposite perspectives and creates a new perspective with it by finding that one common denominator. For example, man and woman are both human sexes. In a way it is creative in how it transforms two opposites and finds out what those two opposites have in common, although I never saw my thinking pattern as creative necessarily.


So what is the common denominator that emerges in that example when you attend to it? Meaning, what do the two sexes have in common (I think this will help me fully get what you're saying).

(I don't think about male and female as opposites, by the way, I see a spectrum of usually culturally constructed definitions related to gender) 



> Accurate from what perspective?


Yours. 

Oh and I almost missed this because it was in the part of your reply to someone else:



> By the way, I'm also a social scientist but trained within anthropology and the humanities, or more specifically, I'm a culture/social anthropologist and within the humanities I have mostly focused on religious studies, philosophy and linguistics. I never liked drawing a hard-line between whether something can be proven pragmatically or not. I in fact reject such a notion and find it rather childish and silly. Statistics and such can only say so much about the reality we occupy.
> 
> This is why I prefer semiotics and symbol analysis, to a degree, discourse analysis when it overlaps with semiotics. Why? My preferences are decidedly intuition-pointed. I don't care so much about reality as is as much as I care about the meanings we can find within reality.


You're a cultural/social anthropologist? Huh. Interesting that you've focused on the humanities side of that. I'm in that realm myself (though I am not connected with academia), but very much on the participant-observation side of it, which I would identify as social science. I have an allergy to the whole semiotics thing, actually. I can't stand philosophy, and I would only do discourse analysis if it linked into in-the-field data. Basically, I find those things "ungrounded" in relation to the "actual world" of human interaction. (quotes because this is my perception)

So I'm wondering, is this difference in our emphases related to differences between Fe-aux and Te-aux in Ni-doms?

Also:



> if I notice that I become consciously aware of Se it feels like I am lost outside myself and I need to get back in. It has a very strong effect on me that verges closer to panic depending on the situation. The colors are too bright and the world's too vivid. I can't handle it, it's too much information for my brain. It just feels overwhelming as a perspective. I have no control when it becomes egoic either. It more like someone hit me on the head with a hammer and woke me up except I don't want to wake up.


Just want to say that in my experience Se can be freaking wonderfully amazing as well. That vividness and brightness, combined with and in service to Ni can yield a sort of magical world of wonder in the experience of physical reality. (and no, I don't do drugs - I wonder, though, if this state is what people try to get to with certain kinds of drugs, but who knows).

But it's only now that I am reclaiming this amazing mode of perception for myself. Just wanted it out there that Ni-Se can be quite wonderful, and precisely because of that intense vividness.

Oh, and:



> As for myself, I am not sure if it would be correct to say that I even "work" or "try to" develop Fi. For most of the part Fi just seems to come out of nowhere and I'm in my mid-20s.


I would describe Ti the same way for myself, it was just ... there when it needed to be. I do, however, remember deliberately foregrounding Fe as a teen (though of course I didn't call it Fe then).


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Teybo said:


> Part of this is that you have not been witness to the ongoing dialog between myself and Kimishi (who was once known as LeaT but is no longer, and I bring this up only to clarify for those readers who missed that connection but saw the dialog between myself and the person wearing the LeaT username who is now Kimishi).
> 
> I keep saying, over and over, that I don't care what Kimishi thinks about type, and certainly not enough to try to attack him in order to "discredit" his personal understanding of type. I am not trying to discredit Kimishi's perspective or understanding based on him having identified as a variety of types in a variety of systems. I am urging him to see that whatever insights he has on type is being lost by his poor communication of his personal system. But not only that, because he is using the same labels and terms as used by other systems, but without defining them explicitly, he is sowing confusion in the minds of those he comes across, and in such a way that his communication partners will not know why they are confused.
> 
> ...


I appreciate the additional information. I myself personally am finding my dialogue with @Kamishi wonderfully illuminating and filled with clarity despite the very obvious differences in our thinking. 

And Teybo, you and I are both INFJ ... I guess I'm thinking that if you're experiencing a communication issue here, it likely goes in both directions, meaning sourced from the interaction of your communication and his.

I hesitate to do this, because I could be wrong, but I'm going to anyway. I want to highlight this:



> However, when it's impossible to tell what it is exactly that he's trying to say, how can we get any benefit: Did Myers get it right when she said that INTJ is Ni-Te-Fi-Se, for example, or did Myers "not understand Jungian typology at the core* at all*"?


I wonder if that is an example of the Dialectical-Algorithmic thinking pattern we're discussing in our conversation (in which the person is working with two apparent opposites in a movement toward something that ultimately unites them):

Dialectial-Algorithmic Cognition - INTJ

which is different from 

Vortical-Synergetic Cognition - INFJ

(and to be clear, I am NOT a fan of socionics but I find a lot of usefulness in these particular descriptions. And I actually feel like there's a Ni-dom connection between these two types of cognition ... like the Dialectical-Algorithmic is really different from my own, but I can still feel/recognize the Ni-dom in it like a close relative or something)


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

Aquarian said:


> I wonder if that is an example of the Dialectical-Algorithmic thinking pattern we're discussing in our conversation (in which the person is working with two apparent opposites in a movement toward something that ultimately unites them):
> 
> Dialectial-Algorithmic Cognition - INTJ
> 
> ...


If you're asking for my opinion (are you?), I don't think those "cognitive styles" are really all that distinct. It really sounds like you could fit whatever sentence into whatever cognitive style. That said, if you had a gun to my head and I had to choose:

"Dialectical-Algorithmic" is described as "the removal of contradictions, which they so keenly perceive." The issue I'm hounding Kamishi on is that he seems to be oblivious to the contradictions in his presentation of his thoughts. Also, "Dialectical-Algorithmic" is described as being epitomized by "if-then-else" thinking. If "If-then-else" cognition is water, then Kamishi seems to be in a drought.

Kamishi's posts seem to be better described as "Holographical-Panoramic" which is described as "mentally superimposing multiple projections of the same object." Also: "It unhesitatingly cuts away details and nuances, giving a coarsely generalized representation of the subject."

Again, my complaints regarding Kamishi's posts are that the divisions between external systems, such as the MBTI, socionics, Jung, and Jungian cognitive theory, seem impossibly mixed together as he expresses himself. Kamishi has expressed little patience for details and nuances, and has in fact chided me for posting the actual writings of Lenore Thomson after he had previously posted a giant wiki mishmash of thoughts related to Lenore's writings because 'they are obviously the same ideas, just said differently.' The detail and nuance seemed to be completely unimportant to him.

Not that I'm saying I have any insight into Kamishi's cognitive style. My opinion is that I think those cognitive styles are too vague, and that I'm not inside his head to determine how his thought process works. Again, gun-to-head scenario and what not.


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Teybo said:


> If you're asking for my opinion (are you?), I don't think those "cognitive styles" are really all that distinct. It really sounds like you could fit whatever sentence into whatever cognitive style. That said, if you had a gun to my head and I had to choose:


Eh, if the conceptual tools are that un-helpful, then I would just as soon not try to find one to fit in the gun-to-head approach. I don't have a lot of investment on this thinking styles except that the VS one fits me really well, and I see the Ni-dom in the DA one. But otherwise, totally new to me and my question was ore of an exploration than anything else.



> Again, my complaints regarding Kamishi's posts are that the divisions between external systems, such as the MBTI, socionics, Jung, and Jungian cognitive theory, seem impossibly mixed together as he expresses himself. Kamishi has expressed little patience for details and nuances, and has in fact chided me for posting the actual writings of Lenore Thomson after he had previously posted a giant wiki mishmash of thoughts related to Lenore's writings because 'they are obviously the same ideas, just said differently.' The detail and nuance seemed to be completely unimportant to him.


Well, maybe this doesn't bother me because I am less interested in things like expert-textual-analysis or what I would name as a more "academic" approach to these concepts and models. I'm more interested in just finding stuff that gives useful language and concepts/conceptual maps for my lived experience and observation and seeing how it can be of use in real ways for other people (not that it always is).

It could be that you and @Kamishi are in some sort of expert-analysis battle and I guess I don't have much interest in that side of things, so other than my very first comment, I probably don't have anything good to contribute here.


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## rwm4768 (Sep 9, 2011)

By now, I'm pretty sure we've scared the OP away from his thread. :wink:

I think the debate in this thread shows why so many people are confused about their types. There are so many different systems. Some people look only at Jung. Some people look only at Myers, who altered some of Jung's ideas. Some look at a strange combination of the two. In the end, that leaves us with an unclear picture of what exactly type is.

Not only that, but there are so many different descriptions of the cognitive functions out there. It seems that a Jungian Si-dom is nothing like an Si-dom as traditionally envisioned by the MBTI. When you add type dynamics, it only gets more confusing. Through my long perusal of threads on this and other forums, I have seen many, many people who exhibit a cognitive function stack that does not correlate to any of the types as indicated by theory.

You also have to consider just how important it is to figure out your cognitive functions. Yes, it is one of the methods of determining type, but that doesn't mean it's the best method. Also, the studies I've read don't indicate a lot of empirical evidence for the cognitive functions. By their very nature, they are difficult to measure. That's why many MBTI practitioners stick to the dichotomies and the preferences they indicate. After all, which is more useful: a difficult-to-understand cognitive function theory that leads to confusion, or a simple dichotomy-based model where the preferences correlate to relatively consistent behaviors and attitudes?

I've been studying MBTI and cognitive functions for more than four years now, and the more I study, the more confused I get, the more the model fails logically, empirically, and in personal experience. And it's not like I'm some person who is incapable of understanding a subject with intensive study. My high school and college grades would beg to differ. I recognize the strengths in the system, but it is not perfect, and there need to be a lot more studies before we can claim with certainty that the cognitive function model of personality accurately reflects reality.

Exploring your personality should be a quest to find your best-fit type, not to force yourself into a model that may or may not describe your experience. In my case, I identify most with INFJ, INTJ, and INTP. It would make no sense for me to reject the types that make intuitive sense because people typing me over the internet think I must be showing certain functions. Unless you are doing a scan of my brain, you can't determine what functions I'm using.

I think you can form a good picture of your personality through exploring a combination of the tests, theory, and descriptions of various systems. I've looked in depth at MBTI, Enneagram, and the Big Five. Together, I think these produce an accurate depiction of my personality. I don't necessarily agree with all the theory of some of the systems, especially some of the more intricate aspects of the Enneagram, but these systems can all describe a personality qualitatively. In fact, I think my favorite might actually be the Big Five. There's no theory behind it, but when I read the description of my type, I really feel like that's me. Interestingly enough, the RCOAI seems to match up with a highly intuitive and intellectual INFJ.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Teybo said:


> Thanks for sharing this with me. I'm often bemused (though in some cases frustrated) when people express that they are so sure of some particular aspect of "cognitive functions". The worst culprit, both for bemusement and frustration, are the people who are just so sure they understand the inner workings of every human on the planet so well that not only can they give people trendy labels for their "cognitive processes", they can do it just by observing which way they nod their head or move their hand.


There are people who use VI typing here and I think there is merit to that but I don't prefer typing people based on VI. I prefer typing people through text since text forces people to extrovert all their mental content. 


> It's particularly (dis)satisfying when they use Myers' interpretation of the cognitive functions while in the same breath calling her work "worthless stereotypes and misconceptions" or something like that.


What is Myers' interpretation of the cognitive functions to you?


> If anyone can follow what it is that you actually believe about type, Jung, Myers, and the MBTI, that is a credit to them, not to you. Your writing on the subject is anything but clear, as the above quotes show.


Who gave you the permission to declare that everyone finds my writing unclear? You are the only one who keeps complaining about this. I'm fairly sure that if someone else thought I was unclear they would have asked me for clarification by now. Just because you think something is unclear it doesn't mean everyone thinks it's unclear.


> And these are but a snippet of your posts here on PerC, and only from the portion of time when you identified as an INTJ, rather than the time you identified as an "Fi-dom", or from the portion of time you identified as an INTP.


And if you study those posts, you will see the content of my thoughts have not changed. I may have changed the way I understand theory but that is only to be expected, because as I learn more and understand more, my understanding of people and the theory changes and it's only natural to update your understanding accordingly. 

This is how science works too, you know.


> I don't care what you actually believe, Kamishi. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I just don't give a shit what it is you think about type.


Then why are you here and clearly attacking my person?


> But you are wrong if you think whatever tangled mess you've got for a "system" is clear enough that you can just throw around labels without defining them, and you are haughty and full of hubris if you think that you can see through someone else's "persona" (which is yet another poorly defined word you like to use) to see their "true cognitive processes", even though you seemed to have such difficulty doing that for yourself.


Again, just because you can't understand something it doesn't mean others can't understand it. 



Teybo said:


> True to my type, I just want Kamishi to be successful in his communication of his ideas with others.


There is absolutely nothing inherent about the INFJ to actually seek successful communication with other people. A lot of other types could seek successful communication too, but for their own reasons. 

Furthermore, to you, successful communication seems to have a very narrow definition that fits what you think successful communication is like which is being hung up on definitions, theories and such all having the same meaning and content. That's how Je types think. Only they would feel such a need for people to all think the same and understand things the same. 

That is not what successful communication is to me. Successful communication is when people understand each other conceptually, that if I explain something to someone else they have a vague understanding of what I mean and understand and interpret it in the way it's originally intended. Whether I call the fruit an apple or a pear is less relevant as long they understand it's a fruit that edible. 




> However, when it's impossible to tell what it is exactly that he's trying to say, how can we get any benefit: Did Myers get it right when she said that INTJ is Ni-Te-Fi-Se, for example, or did Myers "not understand Jungian typology at the core* at all*"?


Myers did not understand Jungian typology because when she created the type label INTJ (regardless of the functions the label represents), she decided that the way to measure type would be to do it through a dichotomy-based test that would test each one of these four letters that represent her types. This is entirely opposite of how Jung understood things because 1) Jung believed most people are in fact type-less; 2) what Myers measures with the MBTI assessment tool is what he calls persona. 

Persona is a very simple concept - it's the mask we wear externally. It's about how people behave, whether you are considerate, whether you are orderly or disorderly, whether you are imaginative or like working with your hands. All those things pertain to persona and none really and fully reflect Jung's definition of psychological type. This is because the reason someone is orderly can be for many reasons but the MBTI test cannot assess the cause and the reasons why people are the way they are. Therefore the MBTI can only at best measure persona, but it cannot measure psychological type with any strict accuracy.

That the MBTI tool is also self-reporting makes it even more troublesome because people will fill in how they see themselves, and this might actually not be congruent with who they _actually are_. Jung based a lot of his theories on defining unconscious content, and he believed that most human actions and thoughts are a result of the unconsciousness. Since the unconscious content possesses its own agency (we have no conscious control of it), we cannot be aware of it unless we make it known aka we make it conscious. Most people are therefore extremely unaware of who they are in a larger sense, of what Jung calls the Self, because they are only aware of their conscious content, not unconscious content.


> Kamishi even decided to tell me that I was not the type I know I am. How am I to reasonably evaluate his claim if I have no way of establishing what his words mean?


There are plenty of theories you can stick to if you want to decide what type you are. The methodology is up for you to decide when you self-type. I may not agree with it and think it is inaccurate, and this may be for various reasons e.g. you seem to lack self-awareness into your own conscious content and who you are, but to say the problem is me when you are unable to decide methodology is simply not a valid argument. It would be like blaming the teacher in school when he explains how to understand one problem several says and say that the reason why you cannot decide which theory is the best one is his fault, because he provided you with more than one theory to utilize. 



Aquarian said:


> I love those videos, but I don't use them as external frameworks to be applied in cases like this. Now I'm trying to remember the original question I asked, I think it was trying to understand how harsh Fe could appear like Te. Maybe I just need to put it into the back of my mind and see if I will organically recognize it at some point. I really do feel like there's something there and I think I need to have a particular kind of data or angle of data to get it, and I don't have it just yet. But - those videos are freaking fascinating to me for other reasons.


What I meant to show in the videos were the Fe cues compared to the Te. Some of them have a harsher Fe vibe, others softer. Harsh Fe isn't just body language of course, but also the reasoning process people utilize. My ESTP cousin has what I'd consider harsh Fe. She doesn't present her Fe in a way you'd consider "nice", rather, the delivery is very to the point. She for example sent me a text message earlier this week that if I wanted to go visit her parents during Midsummer I should take X train at Y time so they don't have to drive more than necessary. She's not cuddling you, she's telling you what is, but she's doing it from an Fe perspective because she's thinking about what's best for her parents. 

If this had been from an Fi perspective there would have been a question whether I wanted to go at all first. I can for example how some of my Fi dominant and auxiliary friends had asked me what I was doing during Midsummer and whether I wanted to tag along. Completely different perspective since the focus is on what _I want_ (Fi), rather on what they want (Fe).


> My perspective/experience, best I can put it into words right now:
> 
> From my own experience of Fe-aux, this isn't quite accurate. I think the problem (whether in what you wrote or in my understanding/interpretation of what you wrote) comes in the contrast between feeling tone and logic.
> 
> ...


That's interesting but it makes sense given it's Fe-Ti. My perspective probably came from Fi anyway. So how would you say this works with Ni, exactly? How does it build an Ni model for you?


> So ... Ti in myself. I have a process of Ti categorization and analysis. I am well aware that this process has underlying assumptions about how to do analysis, and at the deeper levels, what "knowing" actually is. This is from one angle of vision a human value system. Inductive grounded qualitative etc etc approaches aren't universally accepted as the way to arrive at knowledge. Quite the contrary in the dominant cultural system in which I live, actually. I had to explicitly engage with this stuff when I was in grad school and had a deductive/quant dissertation advisor and another deductive/quant committee member and I had to be very freaking clear about how my epistemological assumptions different from theirs. And they initially unquestioningly accepted their own way as the best way - in fact the only way - to gather and analyze data to arrive at sound conclusions.
> 
> Ti (specifically, how I use it) feels physically good to me ("feeling" like basic sense-based physical pain or pleasure, not like emotion), it flows with my organic landscape and the frequency with which it resonates is in physical harmony with that organic landscape. Te, on the other hand, is in opposition in some ways. Even in the real of logic, there are cultural underpinnings.


Interesting. I guess I wouldn't say Fi feels bad, but it feels overwhelming too at times, like, suddenly I am overwhelmed by this feeling that this just isn't right. It's usually more what is wrong than what is right. When it happens it tends to pre-occupy my entire consciousness, even though I often try to rationalize it but usually it just boils down to that it's wrong. I find it difficult to consciously rationalize with Fi. Even if I were, it tends to come from the perspective of Te anyway and what is the most fair from a utility-perspective. I always thought that Fe-Ti as a function axis tends to be internally harmonious in a way Te-Fi isn't though. There's a logical softness that I guess comes from Ti for you at least, being inductive, and how it rather sees things in a range rather than explicit dichotomies. I don't think that's necessarily the case with all Te types though. If you read the cognitive styles article again, you will see that there are 4 styles and out of the 16 types, each style is represented by 4 types. ENTJ is also vortical-synergetic for example, and to me that's so strange because I reason deductively, not inductively. DA is very much deductive.


> Or from anther perspective (keeping in mind that my experience is in the social sciences): deductive quantitative research values a particular form of researcher control and disconnection as necessary for real knowledge (for example, to be good research, it has to be replicable regardless of context). Inductive qualitative research, onthe other hand, values contextual data and for that the researcher can't control the environment of the study and have the conclusions be sound (quite the opposite). Deductive quant research calls on a researcher to have no bias and use an external "instrument", while inductive qual research calls on the researcher to understand her or his biases and use that understanding in the analysis toward greater accuracy, in part because the researcher is the instrument.


Never liked deductive quantitative research. I am not sure I would consider myself inductive in that sense either, because I know my reasoning process is deductive. I for example think it is possible to do qualitative research and do it deductively, and the way I do it is simply first study the phenomenon I wish to study and then formulate a theory why that is. I could not formulate a theory a priori without first observing the phenomenon itself.


> So is this the perceptual ground of Ni? How does Te-aux interact wih this, in your experience?


The way I understand Te working with Ni is that I can either seek for more information with Te to feed Ni more (this makes more sense in socionics where Te is described as the contact function or the function we use to interact with the world) by for example reading a source about something and I then extract something from this source, or I can also try to extrovert my Ni into the world by finding something that fits with what's already there. So for example, I have this idea of what I think Si is like, I can refer to existing sources that I used to build my Si model such as Jung's description of Si. Usually my understanding is more abstract though, I guess that's why some people are so adamant here in actually seeing the similarities between what I'm saying and what exists in the source. 

Because when I read something about Si, it can be anything really, doesn't have to be official sources, I always take something from that and builds into my own model. It's something essential because I guess one can say that I seek to create what I think is the essential nature of what Si is like. I can also define this nature to a degree (but it's much harder to untangle and define a model because over time they become so compact it's hard to know where to start because I see connections and ideas going everywhere) like I can say, "Si is concrete abstraction of sense data". To me, this kind of sentence conveys everything you actually need to know about what Si is.


> I wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hm, I am not sure either one are truly accurate although I see what you are trying to say. I would call it metamorphosis or perhaps transformative because that's what all synethetic forms of cognition do (VS and DA). You take what is there and transforms it into something new such as a new perspective of seeing things. It's about slightly changing angle of perception, but when doing so the entire meaning changes. That's why Gulenko calls them synthetic, because they synthetize different perspectives into a new perspective, but I think metamorphosis sounds better since the basic meaning actually doesn't change. It's like you have a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. Even if what we see now is actually a butterfly, the source of the butterfly will always be the caterpillar.


> I probably misunderstood what you meant.


I think the above clarified?


> So what is the common denominator that emerges in that example when you attend to it? Meaning, what do the two sexes have in common (I think this will help me fully get what you're saying).





> (I don't think about male and female as opposites, by the way, I see a spectrum of usually culturally constructed definitions related to gender)


And this is probably why you didn't understand what I meant? You see things within ranges, of more and less, but I see things as more definitive. Either something is black and white, not less black or less white. Even if there is a range, marine blue versus light blue, they are still definite in terms of definitions. If you remove marine and light as prefixes, what you get is simply blue and if we are working within a range, that is a meaningless descriptor by itself. If you are painting something and you tell me to just hand over the blue color but I have several colors to choose between, I will need to you specify if you meant the light blue or the marine blue. But what they both got in common still is that they are types of blues. This is what Gulenko means when he writes that DA types likes to remove the contradictions of opposing pairs. 

Perhaps a better example is the saying that light cannot exist without darkness and vice versa. So existentially, what is implied is that light and darkness as concepts are defined by its opposite pair. We cannot just have light. Light by itself is a meaningless descriptor if it is not opposed by darkness since light would not be able to be experienced as light if we do not experience darkness too. Yet both of them are simply eye perceptions.


> You're a cultural/social anthropologist? Huh.


Yes, I have a BA and MA in social/cultural anthropology, taken an off-course in ethnography (but my teacher was an S dominant type, I'd wager ESTP, a lot of clashes because to him good fieldwork was related to Se and I couldn't do it, it was so difficult to perform the tasks he wanted us to), studied one course in philosophy (but read outside of it too), I took one course in new religions and new religious movements including NA and some random courses in English and Swedish.



> Interesting that you've focused on the humanities side of that. I'm in that realm myself (though I am not connected with academia), but very much on the participant-observation side of it, which I would identify as social science. I have an allergy to the whole semiotics thing, actually. I can't stand philosophy, and I would only do discourse analysis if it linked into in-the-field data. Basically, I find those things "ungrounded" in relation to the "actual world" of human interaction. (quotes because this is my perception)


 Why is it ungrounded to you? 



> So I'm wondering, is this difference in our emphases related to differences between Fe-aux and Te-aux in Ni-doms?


It is possible depending on why you think semiotics and discourse analysis is ungrounded. I'm the most interested in symbol analysis and I'd like to get into literature I think, where I can perform literature analysis. It would definitely fit me considering what I enjoy doing. What I'm interested in specifically is how we ascribe meaning to culture and things through the use of symbols. So it's not just sign language I'm interested in, but also myth studies. So I'm not too different from Jung in this regard in that I too kind of look for archetypes but I wouldn't call them such. I've been specifically interested in gender studies and masculinity issues and how masculinity is symbolically expressed in Western culture, but I like to study pop culture in general. I'm one of those "lazy" anthropologists in that I'm not as interested going to a far-off land and study the natives over there, but that I rather study what we have over here. I specifically like to study various forms of subcultures that tie into my existing interests such as video game culture (extremely under-researched area, shame on us), internet culture and metal culture, especially extreme metal. 

I wouldn't say I'm specifically interested in counter-culture movements, but I do like to study cultural movements that are considered deviant by society at large.


> Also:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Not always hating on Se, but it has to be right. Sometimes it feels extremely invasive (I would say, most of the time it does), but sometimes I can enjoy it too. I had a realization the other day that the whole sense of everything is so magical and amazing right here and right now is some combination of Se and Fi through Ni. I always scored high on that question on Nardi's test, let me find it:



> 23. Engage life's magical moments and meaningful coincidences as they happen.


On Nardi's test this is supposed to define Ne but to me, this is really Se. I didn't understand it before but I did yesterday.


> Oh, and:
> 
> 
> 
> I would describe Ti the same way for myself, it was just ... there when it needed to be. I do, however, remember deliberately foregrounding Fe as a teen (though of course I didn't call it Fe then).


I can't remember when Te became a part of my consciousness, but the memories of my youth are extremely hazy. 



rwm4768 said:


> By now, I'm pretty sure we've scared the OP away from his thread. :wink:
> 
> I think the debate in this thread shows why so many people are confused about their types. There are so many different systems. Some people look only at Jung. Some people look only at Myers, who altered some of Jung's ideas. Some look at a strange combination of the two. In the end, that leaves us with an unclear picture of what exactly type is.


That leaves us with a couple of options. Either you a) decide what system we stick with and only stick with that system or b) decide what makes sense for us individually. There is no right or wrong answer, as long as people understand that this is what they are doing and are clear on that.


> > Not only that, but there are so many different descriptions of the cognitive functions out there. It seems that a Jungian Si-dom is nothing like an Si-dom as traditionally envisioned by the MBTI. When you add type dynamics, it only gets more confusing. Through my long perusal of threads on this and other forums, I have seen many, many people who exhibit a cognitive function stack that does not correlate to any of the types as indicated by theory.
> 
> 
> There are aspects of both that overlap. What one needs to figure out if one is to come up with one's own system is to find those aspects.
> ...


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

@reckful I have absolutely no reason to justify my gender identity to you. At least Teybo choose to apologize. There is a reason why some people choose to not wear a gender icon below their username. That is all.


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## Aquarian (Jun 17, 2012)

Kamishi said:


> @_reckful_ I have absolutely no reason to justify my gender identity to you. At least Teybo choose to apologize. There is a reason why some people choose to not wear a gender icon below their username. That is all.


I'm really sorry to see that you had to experience that mis-gendering comment from reckful.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> I think that's just having some critical thinking skills.


Okay, but what do you mean by critical thinking and what makes it critical to you? What kind of data does it provide that you value? Why do you value it?

This topic could be explicated a lot, it's actually rather interesting to explore in different directions, but I'm not going to talk to you anymore, though, because:



Octavarium said:


> haha nice one!
> 
> I get all the entertainment I need from reading arguments between Kamishi and Reckful.


You just got onto my ignore list, for good.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Aquarian said:


> I'm really sorry to see that you had to experience that mis-gendering comment from reckful.


As (I assume) you know, it wasn't Kamishi's gender identity I took issue with, and I don't owe him an apology any more than Teybo did.

An apology from him to Teybo would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

*Attention all readers of this thread*:

It has come to my attention that certain readers of the "Back when you were..." line in my previous post may be interpreting it as some kind of questioning (or something) of Kamishi's current gender choice.

This was not my intent, and seems a little silly to me, to be characteristically honest. But I've edited the post so that peace can hopefully reign again here in Happy Valley.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

and we can all get back to discussing Ne or Ni... or maybe not...


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## thegirlcandance (Jul 29, 2009)

rwm4768 said:


> I am definitely not an ISFJ or ESFJ. I don't relate at all to the type descriptions, and I know I'm not Si dominant or auxiliary. Of course, I'm also not sold on the cognitive function stacking for the types in general. According to that model, though, I'd be much more likely to be an INTP or ENTP than ISFJ or ESFJ. In my study of type theory, I've noticed that I relate to both Ni and Ne, though I think I prefer Ni.


Well of course you're going to relate to both Ni and Ne. Everyone (should be able to) relate to all of the processes. The typology is just a matter of which one you more habitually use. If you were INFJ, for instance, your Ne would still be fairly strong because it's your dominant function. It's just a matter of asking yourself: Am I more likely to perceive the environment based upon your own subjective nature or objective nature? Are you more focused upon reacting to the external stimuli to gain energy of your perceptions or do those ideas, connections, and energy come from within?

Nobody is 100% Ni or Ne or any function. If you were, you'd probably be really out of balance and (I hypothesize) would be more likely to express unhealthy psychological traits. If anything, it's actually better to be in a place of balancing both how much is being introverted or extraverted because then there is less being repressed into your shadow. The less that's repressed, the more "whole" you are within yourself.


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## rwm4768 (Sep 9, 2011)

thegirlcandance said:


> Well of course you're going to relate to both Ni and Ne. Everyone (should be able to) relate to all of the processes. The typology is just a matter of which one you more habitually use. If you were INFJ, for instance, your Ne would still be fairly strong because it's your dominant function. It's just a matter of asking yourself: Am I more likely to perceive the environment based upon your own subjective nature or objective nature? Are you more focused upon reacting to the external stimuli to gain energy of your perceptions or do those ideas, connections, and energy come from within?
> 
> Nobody is 100% Ni or Ne or any function. If you were, you'd probably be really out of balance and (I hypothesize) would be more likely to express unhealthy psychological traits. If anything, it's actually better to be in a place of balancing both how much is being introverted or extraverted because then there is less being repressed into your shadow. The less that's repressed, the more "whole" you are within yourself.


Thank you for that perspective. That's the understanding I'm starting to come to after reading a bit from Dario Nardi on Keys2Cognition. According to that site, we favor some functions, but it's not like we don't use all of them in a basic way. Furthermore, I think we can develop functions through conscious training and environmental pressure.

After looking more closely at the descriptions of the cognitive functions, I prefer Ni to Ne, but I still use Ne from time to time, just not in as sophisticated a manner as I use my Ni. The same goes for Fe and Fi. Fe is more natural to me, but I do occasionally form my own ethics from within, regardless of what the people around me think. Likewise, with thinking, I prefer Ti to Te. The only place where I don't follow the functional stack, now that I've researched further, is with Se. It should be fourth in my preferences, but it always comes in eighth.

I'm really enjoying this process of refining my theoretical understanding of the cognitive functions. I keep forming new intuitive understandings of the system through my Ni, then I use my Ti to figure out what maintains logical consistency.


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## thegirlcandance (Jul 29, 2009)

rwm4768 said:


> Thank you for that perspective. That's the understanding I'm starting to come to after reading a bit from Dario Nardi on Keys2Cognition. According to that site, we favor some functions, but it's not like we don't use all of them in a basic way. Furthermore, I think we can develop functions through conscious training and environmental pressure.
> 
> After looking more closely at the descriptions of the cognitive functions, I prefer Ni to Ne, but I still use Ne from time to time, just not in as sophisticated a manner as I use my Ni. The same goes for Fe and Fi. Fe is more natural to me, but I do occasionally form my own ethics from within, regardless of what the people around me think. Likewise, with thinking, I prefer Ti to Te. The only place where I don't follow the functional stack, now that I've researched further, is with Se. It should be fourth in my preferences, but it always comes in eighth.
> 
> I'm really enjoying this process of refining my theoretical understanding of the cognitive functions. I keep forming new intuitive understandings of the system through my Ni, then I use my Ti to figure out what maintains logical consistency.


Since it "always comes up eighth? I'd assume that your referring to a cognitive functions test. Personally, I just feel like there's a lot of discrepancies in any cognitive function test (and any MBTI assessment for that matter) because, though the questions strive to make the most sense possible, in order to have the most accurate result you already have to be VERY VERY self-aware of your own processes. And, realistically, who is going to be that aware of their own processes if they even have the motivation to take the assessment? The simple motivation that someone is motivated to take the assessment tells me that they have some doubt in their understanding about themselves. 

It's a good effort and works in theory to make an assessment on things like this, but at the end of the day I just don't feel like it does much service.

That being said and based upon your awareness of your dominant, auxillary, and tertiary functions I'd say its just safe to assume that you'd be in the INFJ profile. After all, according to the theory, those functions would be prevalent in your age range. Since we develop dominant function in about childhood/pre-teens, auxillary during adolescence, tertiary early adult (20s/30s) and then the inferior function often doesn't naturally come up until mid-life.


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