# Are the Four Functions just different means of ESCAPE?



## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

First off, let it be clear that this is a thinking-aloud on my part. Second, as I'm a Keirseyan, as opposed to a Jungian, Myersian, Socionicist, etc., by "the four functions" I mean Perceiving, Judging, Feeling, and Thinking. A little history:

Jung himself did not explicitly list Judging and Perceiving in the type codes. What he did was, he called iNtuition and Sensing the Perceiving functions, and Thinking and Feeling the Judging functions. Later, Myers chose to explicitly list them, though she meant the same thing by them. For Myers, J means that the Judging function is extroverted. For an INTJ, for example, this means that the order of importance of the functions is NTFS (I leave the lowercase Es and Is out, because I don't remember whether the order is NiTeFeSi or NiTeFiSe, and I think concepts like "introverted Sensing" are nonsensical, anyway).

Keirsey rejected all this stuff. For Keirsey, Sensing and iNtuition are not functions, whereas Judging and Perceiving are. Though as far as I know he never explicitly said so, we may say that for him, Thinking and Feeling are the iNtuitive functions whereas Judging and Perceiving are the Sensing functions. N means that the iNtuitive function in the type code is the primary function. So we may say that an INTJ is a TJI.

Now as for my idea: What if the four functions are just different means of _escape_? Consider the following passage:



> And you, too, for whom life is furious work and unrest--are you not very weary of life? Are you not very ripe for the preaching of death? All of you to whom furious work is dear, and whatever is fast, new, and strange--you find it hard to bear yourselves; your industry is escape and the will to forget yourselves. If you believed more in life you would fling yourselves less to the moment. But you do not have contents enough in yourselves for waiting--and not even for idleness. [Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, "On the Preachers of Death", trans. Kaufmann, as found in a transcript of Leo Strauss's 1959 lectures on the book.]


This strongly reminds me of Keirsey's description of what he calls the "Artisan" temperament, i.e., the SP types, i.e., the PXX types---the types whose dominant function is Perceiving. As Strauss goes on to say after quoting the quoted passage, "To believe in life does not mean what is vulgarly [i.e., commonly, popularly] considered zest for life. To believe in life is the opposite of forgetting oneself. For, life, if it is to be truly human, is to be a rope over an abyss." I will say more about this abyss shortly.

It's not only the Artisans' "zest for life", i.e., what Keirsey calls their stimulation-seeking, that may well be just a means of escape; the same goes for what characterises the other three temperaments, which Keirsey calls the Guardian, the Idealist, and the Rational temperaments. By explicitly identifying the four temperaments with the four _humours_, the tradition, including Keirsey, implicitly identifies them with the four classical elements---with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, respectively. Now what is it that the four temperaments each seek to escape, according to my idea? Above, it was called an "abyss". But what is this "abyss"? I will hereby suggest that it's nothing less than reality itself. As Aldous Huxley writes:



> Following Boehme and William Law, we may say that, by unregenerate souls, the divine Light at its full blaze can be apprehended only as a burning, purgatorial fire. An almost identical doctrine is found in _The Tibetan Book of the Dead_, where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the Clear Light of the Void, and even from lesser, tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as a beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality---anything! [Huxley, _The Doors of Perception_.]


And indeed, whereas Thales conceived of reality as water, and Anaximenes as air, Heraclitus conceived of it as fire. And we may say that Democritus conceived of it as earth (little clumps of earth, "atoms"). But what I'm suggesting is that none of this is right; at the root of the four elements lies a fifth element, the "quintessence" of the four, which can be called light, or love (_erôs_!). It is _erôs_ or, as Nietzsche called it, the will to power that solely constitutes reality; and the "seekings" of the four temperaments are just escape attempts from that insight, even though they are themselves forms of it (desires, power-wills): stimulation-seeking, security-seeking, identity-seeking, and---knowledge-seeking...

What? How can knowledge-seeking, which surely seeks to know _reality_, be an escape attempt from insight into reality? And does this mean my thinking-aloud here is itself _also_ such an escape attempt?

As for knowledge-seeking being an escape attempt from insight into reality, I will again quote Nietzsche. But first, note that Keirsey identifies what he calls the Rational temperament especially with the type of the scientific man.



> What is the meaning of [...] the Socratism of morals, of the dialectic, complacency and cheerfulness of the theoretical man---what? could not precisely this Socratism be a sign of decline, of weariness, sickness, of anarchically dissolving instincts? [...] And science itself, our science---yea, what is at all the meaning of all science, regarded as a symptom of life? Whither, or, worse still, _whence_---all science? What? Is scientificity perhaps just a fright and subterfuge before pessimism? A subtle emergency-defense against---the _truth_? And, morally speaking, something like cowardice and falseness? Immorally speaking, a slyness? [Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism", section 1, my trans.]


The way in which knowledge is at odds with the truth is this: in "knowing" reality, we always impose an illusion of being on the flux of becoming. It is insight into the flux of Becoming, into the fact of universal transience, from which SPs attempt to escape by seeking stimulation, SJs by seeking security, NFs by seeking identity, and NTs by seeking knowledge.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

In a way...but not really.

I mean you have to understand functions from the Jungian standpoint of methods of information sorting. Myers et al added components to the functions that Jung did not intend. To Jung functions were just that, functions of the ego complex, that allowed in or rejected content that was either ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. Now since the ego itself is not the Self, but rather a part of the Self, you can say by indulging the conscious aspects (ego and persona) through the functions, without paying attention to the shadow, is a form of escapism (because by indulging the ego/persona you are also choosing to downplay the shadow and thus the whole Self). In that way the ego/persona is something of a charade that the functions help in facilitating.

Consciousness as Jung describes is something of a form of escape (if you want to conceptualize it that way) in that personality is how we repress innate tendencies. This is the marked difference between temperament theorists like Kiersey and Jung. Temperament theory is just that; it holds that people have innate temperamental tendencies (in the same way that certain dog breeds have certain innate temperaments) that then cause them to fall in to a number of basic groups (Kiersey is really more of a social psychologist who uses temperament to explain social roles -- note Kiersey is not really dealing with psychology so much as he as dealing with the social implications of how he interprets personality type). 

Jung, though he acknowledged that people do have innate temperamental tendencies, downplayed this by explaining them away as artifacts of the collective unconscious/archetypes and also by saying humans consciously do not seek to align themselves with their own biological tendencies. In fact quite the contrary, the more civilized man is the man who has disconnected from his biological tendencies. So to Jung the idea that people are trying to be natural to their innate tendencies (which is what temperament science seems to advocate) is an erroneous idea. If I run and scare you, you do not thank me for having a moment of authenticity (even though in that moment of fear you were acting in accord with your natural instincts). In fact, quite the contrary, you become consciously angry because of the momentary loss of control. Temperament science doesn't really address this aspect of being human, where Jung builds an entire model around why people repress their innate tendencies and what the effects of this will be.



> Jung himself did not explicitly list Judging and Perceiving in the type codes. What he did was, he called iNtuition and Sensing the Perceiving functions, and Thinking and Feeling the Judging functions. Later, Myers chose to explicitly list them, though she meant the same thing by them. For Myers, J means that the Judging function is extroverted. For an INTJ, for example, this means that the order of importance of the functions is NTFS (I leave the lowercase Es and Is out, because I don't remember whether the order is NiTeFeSi or NiTeFiSe, and I think concepts like "introverted Sensing" are nonsensical, anyway).


Myers does not mean the same by Judging and Perceiving as Jung. In fact the Myers J/P paradigm is one that is completely made up and problematic because it describes an attitude or behavioral disposition (and if the functions are as intended simply methods of information sorting, then how is that having a function oriented one way or the other will produce a behavioral affect or overall disposition?). In Jungian psychology J/P as defined by MBTI will decided by the persona. The reason is because in MBTI J/P basically mean "likes things decided," (by others in the case of Extraverted Judgment) or "likes things left open," in the case of Extraverted Perception. But again what does this have to do with information sorting? 

The problem is in attempting to improve on Jung, they actually made it worse. By adding the the J/P component what happens is you create a false paradigm that has the latent effect of disregarding the functions. In MBTI if you have a P (no matter the fact that in introverts it is an auxiliary function, which is not the dominant function and therefore should not be used to describe someone typologically) the P basically means "likes things open ended." But the problem is everyone has both J and P functions (and of course it only deals with Extraverted Functions, so INFJs are erroneously marked as J's even though they lead with Ni a perception function). An ENFP's tertiary function is Extraverted Thinking (which is usually what gets confused for J casually), so what happens if you have an ENFP whose Extraverted Thinking is fairly pronounced? Their outward disposition would reflect, what MBTI would refer to as J, meaning that on an MBTI test they will be mistyped as ENFJs, which of course is impossible because ENFJ and ENFP share no functions in common and are not even typologically similar (ENFJ is a Feeling type, ENFP is an intuitive). 

This same thing happens all the time with INFPs and INFJs. What happens when you get an INFP whose Inferior Te is raging (because the inferior function will be nearly as strong as the dominant function, just not as strong in consciousness, meaning you will not be aware of the influences of it). A highly unconscious INFP in the grip of Inferior Te will undoubtedly have his MBTI test sorted into the J column on those questions and score as INFJ, but again this is impossible as INFJ and INFP have no common functions. So the issue here is that the MBTI as it was constructed by Isabel and Katherine Myers is inconsistent within itself. On the one hand it professes the dominance of the cognitive functions, but then disregards them with tests dichotomies and describing someone adjectivally as J/P (which should just be redundant). 

The MBTI is really a super oversimplification of Jung and the letter codes (INFP, ENFJ, etc) really can't be taken all that seriously because 1) the credibility of MBTI type dynamics is dubious from a statistical standpoint (that is an INTJ will likely have a Ni-T-F-Se variation as their functional makeup as Jung indicates, not a Ni-Te-Fi-Se makeup as MBTI dictates because the auxiliary functions serve a minority role and it is less critical for them to be fully differentiated into attitudes). And 2) Jung's overall theory is far more substantial in describing the totality of the psyche, not just from an ego or persona perspective (Kiersey is just describing someone's persona, the role they play or the mask they wear, whereas Jung is describing the total Self -- this is why people who adhere to Kiersey will undoubtedly keep coming back to test after test as everyday life forces them to adapt their outward presentation and impression management -- to Jung identifying with the persona like this is one of the most dangerous things a person can do because it denies the whole self, especially the darker aspects and pretends they do not exist). The Kiersey types are not personality types at all but persona roles (Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, Rational). These are personas that someone of a certain typological orientation might fall into (say you're a Se-dominant, the tendency might be to build an Artisan persona -- but this makes a lot of assumptions, and certainly more than just Se-doms could fit that role, especially as they are described in _Please Understand Me_). 

Now I also understand that Jungian psychology is really deep stuff and most people do not get that deep into it. MBTI and Kiersey (or Socionics or whatever) are about as deep as many are willing to go because after all if you were learning this in a university it would be Graduate Level. So there is some benefit to Kiersey and MBTI (which in some ways end up being the same thing under different guises, because by adding the erroneous dynamics that it does MBTI really often only ends up typing persona as well). The simplicity of these ideas is what many people are after, trying to figure out how to fit in to society, how to get a date, deal with their parents, etc, and getting into a big dialogue on an idea like the personal unconscious or complexes (even though this is where the real meat and potatoes is) will usually just turn most off.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

LiquidLight said:


> I mean you have to understand functions from the Jungian standpoint of methods of information sorting. Myers et al added components to the functions that Jung did not intend. To Jung functions were just that, functions of the ego complex, that allowed in or rejected content that was either ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic. Now since the ego itself is not the Self, but rather a part of the Self, you can say by indulging the conscious aspects (ego and persona) through the functions, without paying attention to the shadow, is a form of escapism (because by indulging the ego/persona you are also choosing to downplay the shadow and thus the whole Self). In that way the ego/persona is something of a charade that the functions help in facilitating.


Yes, I think this is quite compatible with what I mean.




> Consciousness as Jung describes is something of a form of escape (if you want to conceptualize it that way) in that personality is how we repress innate tendencies. This is the marked difference between temperament theorists like Kiersey and Jung. Temperament theory is just that; it holds that people have innate temperamental tendencies (in the same way that certain dog breeds have certain innate temperaments) that then cause them to fall in to a number of basic groups (Kiersey is really more of a social psychologist who uses temperament to explain social roles -- note Kiersey is not really dealing with psychology so much as he as dealing with the social implications of how he interprets personality type).


But isn't that right? Don't certain dog breeds have certain innate temperaments? And if dogs do, why shouldn't people?

Also, doesn't how we repress innate tendencies tell us something about ourselves? 




> Jung, though he acknowledged that people do have innate temperamental tendencies, downplayed this by explaining them away as artifacts of the collective unconscious/archetypes


But surely different natural temperamental tendencies are artifacts of different collective unconsciouses, for otherwise all people would have the same natural temperamental tendencies. Jung actually said that there are multiple collective unconsciouses, and I think there are many layers of unconsciousness, from the collective unconscious that we share with all beings, through the collective unconsciouses that we share with all _living_ beings, all human beings, all people that belong to our race or culture, our nation or tribe, etc., to our own personal unconscious, which we share with no other beings. Likewise, I think there's a pattern we share with _all_ MBTI codes, a pattern we share only with our Keirsey temperament, and a pattern we share only with our specific MBTI code.




> and also by saying humans consciously do not seek to align themselves with their own biological tendencies. In fact quite the contrary, the more civilized man is the man who has disconnected from his biological tendencies. So to Jung the idea that people are trying to be natural to their innate tendencies (which is what temperament science seems to advocate) is an erroneous idea. If I run and scare you, you do not thank me for having a moment of authenticity (even though in that moment of fear you were acting in accord with your natural instincts). In fact, quite the contrary, you become consciously angry because of the momentary loss of control. Temperament science doesn't really address this aspect of being human, where Jung builds an entire model around why people repress their innate tendencies and what the effects of this will be.


Exactly.




> Myers does not mean the same by Judging and Perceiving as Jung. In fact the Myers J/P paradigm is one that is completely made up and problematic because it describes an attitude or behavioral disposition (and if the functions are as intended simply methods of information sorting, then how is that having a function oriented one way or the other will produce a behavioral affect or overall disposition?).


Yes, this is what Keirsey accuses Myers of. Instead of sticking with the complexity of Jung's theory or explicitly simplifying it, Myers explicitly uses Jung's terminology while meaning something much simpler by it. Thus for example she retained the notion that Sensing and iNtuiting were Perceiving functions whereas Thinking and Feeling were Judging functions, yet at the same time she treated Perceiving and Judging as functions in their own right, like Keirsey does.




> in MBTI J/P basically mean "likes things decided," (by others in the case of Extraverted Judgment)


An a-propos question here: is that all what Extraverted and Introverted mean in phrases like "Extraverted Judgment"? "By others" and "by oneself", respectively? I tried to get simple definitions of those terms in those contexts for a while, but none of the Socionicizationists I asked were able to give me such definitions (by "Socionicizationists" I mean all those MBTI-style personality theorists who think they're being profound when overcomplicating and confusing what, as Keirsey shows, is really a very simple personality theory).




> Now I also understand that Jungian psychology is really deep stuff and most people do not get that deep into it. MBTI and Kiersey (or Socionics or whatever) are about as deep as many are willing to go because after all if you were learning this in a university it would be Graduate Level. So there is some benefit to Kiersey and MBTI (which in some ways end up being the same thing under different guises, because by adding the erroneous dynamics that it does MBTI really often only ends up typing persona as well). The simplicity of these ideas is what many people are after, trying to figure out how to fit in to society, how to get a date, deal with their parents, etc, and getting into a big dialogue on an idea like the personal unconscious or complexes (even though this is where the real meat and potatoes is) will usually just turn most off.


Yes. According to Freud, after all, society is essentially neurotic. Perhaps what I've tried to say in my opening post is simply that stimulation-seeking, security-seeking, identity-seeking, and knowledge-seeking are just four different kinds of neurotic behaviour.

By the way, I do not think that neurosis is necessarily a bad thing. I think it's probably as important as its opposite, the non-sublimated expression of what you call our biological tendencies. In Nietzschean terms, I think we might call these things the Apollinian and the Dionysian, respectively.


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## TaylorS (Jan 24, 2010)

I think Keirsey and MBTI suck. Then again, I'm a Jung purist.

The 4 functions are lenses with which we interpret reality:

Sensation = sense data
Intuition = "gut" inspiration
Thinking = conceptualizations and categories
Feeling - evaluations

Under Kiersey I am an "INFJ" because I score as introverted, agreeable, conscientious, and open. But my actual Jungian psychological type is Introverted Sensation with Thinking, with a function order of Si-T | F-Ne.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

One more thing. You wrote:



> people who adhere to Kiersey will undoubtedly keep coming back to test after test as everyday life forces them to adapt their outward presentation and impression management


I don't think this is true, though I do not attach much value to tests. I think it goes deeper than the persona, at least in the sense of "mask". I think the temperaments, even more than the type codes, really tell us something about the person in question. Thus Keirsey's descriptions of the Rational really applies to me, in general, whereas his descriptions of the other temperaments do not; and among his descriptions of the various Rationals, that of the INTP really applies to me whereas the others do not.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

I'm very wary of intuition in the popular sense, of "gut" inspiration. I didn't think that was what Jung meant by it; doesn't he in his _Psychological Types_ refer to the Latin verb _intueri_, and to Kant's concept of _Anschauung_? The way I understand iNtuition, as distinct from intuition, is as _introspection_, as Keirsey calls it: e.g., "making inferences, imagining, daydreaming, musing, or wondering about things not in our presence." (Keirsey, _Please Understand Me II_, page 333.) In doing such things, the Thinker seeks to establish "a conceptual coherency", whereas the Feeler accepts and rejects the things she beholds in introspection not depending on whether they cohere with each other, but on whether she likes them or not (Jung, _Psychological Types_, chapter XI, section 22).

Also, what do the lowercase i and e mean according to you? More specifically, what the hell is introverted Sensation? Even Jung more or less admitted that that was a contradiction in terms.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Sauwelios said:


> I'm very wary of intuition in the popular sense, of "gut" inspiration. I didn't think that was what Jung meant by it; doesn't he in his _Psychological Types_ refer to the Latin verb _intueri_, and to Kant's concept of _Anschauung_? The way I understand iNtuition, as distinct from intuition, is as _introspection_, as Keirsey calls it: e.g., "making inferences, imagining, daydreaming, musing, or wondering about things not in our presence." (Keirsey, _Please Understand Me II_, page 333.) In doing such things, the Thinker seeks to establish "a conceptual coherency", whereas the Feeler accepts and rejects the things she beholds in introspection not depending on whether they cohere with each other, but on whether she likes them or not (Jung, _Psychological Types_, chapter XI, section 22).
> 
> Also, what do the lowercase i and e mean according to you? More specifically, what the hell is introverted Sensation? Even Jung more or less admitted that that was a contradiction in terms.


He does use the term _intueri_ but he means gut feelings. It becomes clear when the contrast is drawn between Sensing types and Intuitive types. Actually the daydreaming, musing, wandering about things not seen part could be related to more than just one function (this is more how MBTI interprets intuition -- creativity, abstraction, etc). But Jung drew a contrast between Sensing which is the ultimate empiricism (again in MBTI empiricism gets sent over to Thinking), thus relying on a hunch or a gut would be the direct counter. 

With Jung introversion and extraversion simply refer to subject and object and specifically which way the libido (neutral cognitive energy flows, toward the subject or toward the object). So essentially all introverted functions are self-referencing and subjective and you probably add on abstract even though this, again, counters MBTI, self-referencing functions have no objective empirical model, therefore they become abstract as your intuition and my intuition will be inherently different. 

To that end Introverted anything is simply the referencing of the self first. With the perception functions it is inner archetypal content that is being referenced. Introverted Sensing is the projection of your own manifestation of an archetype onto an object so that in essence your own personal perception of the object (the fire is inviting - an archetypal reference relating your own manifestation of what _inviting_ is) becomes more important than the intrinsic qualities of the object (the fire is hot or orange). Extraverted Sensing simply sees the object as it is, without projecting anything more into it. So introverted sensing becomes a highly impressionistic perception, wherein how an object comes across to you takes precedence. So for example Ansel Adams would likely be a Se-type capturing the object as is, where Monet or Van Gogh would most certainly be Si-types (in fact Jung uses Van Gogh as a reference for Introverted Sensing).

Now the MBTI folks do not recognize Si as such (choosing to relate it to memories and all other kinds of stuff) and would probably call Van Gogh some sort of Intuitive, but to Jung, Van Gogh's abstraction was just a function of his own interpretation of sensory stimuli. The N and S functions in MBTI meanings are very, very different from Jung's original meanings. Si can be just as abstract as what we think of when say Intuition, because it is about what _you_ get out of a sensory experience, thus the term introverted. 

It's also why the functions don't exist independently, thinking must be paired with feeling, intuition with sensation. I/E only become a contradiction if the function isn't considered with its counterpart. You can't just look at Introverted Feeling without looking at Extraverted Thinking, for example. If you understand one, you understand the other. Too often people try to look at say just Ni without considering Se, and this creates all kinds of problems because N and S function like two sides of a see-saw, unable to be disconnected pulling and pushing on one another. You can't just ignore one side.

Introverted Intuition 'sees' the contents of the unconscious and then projects that content onto the object (but without Se, there would be no object for Intuition to project onto). So the Introverted Intuitive must have Extraverted Sensing simply because that sensing mindset does not add or subtract anything from a sensory experience (if Ni had Si, you would have no sense of perceptual empiricism - of whether something your senses brought in was to be believed as true or not). 

One of the things that Jung says about Introverted Sensing types is they can often live in something of a fantasy world in their own minds, because to them no object has intrinsic qualities, everything is a matter of perception because Si types are the ultimate perception is reality types (in the extreme this mindset might say, "the apple is red, only because you see the apple as red, but what if I choose to see it as pink?"). 

Se types would be the ultimate "it is what it is," types. It is then Extraverted Intuition or perception of the object as is, but with the extra component that it could be more, that keeps the Si type grounded by reminding them that their impression of the object may not be all there is (but of course this will be the inferior function in a Si-dom who egocentrically wants to accept their impression as real and downplay the fact that their impressions might be wrong or narrow). The Extraverted Intuitive then would downplay their own personal impressions because they would not want to limit the possibilities of what the object could be with a subjective impression. Dominant Extraverted Sensing types being so oriented to the object as is, would downplay any intuition or gut feeling that suggests that the object may have a significance or implication beyond that which is observable, thus N is initially opposed by S, but also needs S to function correctly.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

LiquidLight said:


> He does use the term _intueri_ but he means gut feelings. It becomes clear when the contrast is drawn between Sensing types and Intuitive types. Actually the daydreaming, musing, wandering about things not seen part could be related to more than just one function (this is more how MBTI interprets intuition -- creativity, abstraction, etc). But Jung drew a contrast between Sensing which is the ultimate empiricism (again in MBTI empiricism gets sent over to Thinking), thus relying on a hunch or a gut would be the direct counter.


Hm, yes, I do seem to remember now that according to Jung, Sensing is basically perceiving things directly, whereas iNtuition is perceiving it indirectly, by way of the subconscious.




> With Jung introversion and extraversion simply refer to subject and object and specifically which way the libido (neutral cognitive energy flows, toward the subject or toward the object). So essentially all introverted functions are self-referencing and subjective


Well, I've heard this before, but it means nothing to me. For one thing, where does the "neutral cognitive energy" flow _from_?




> and you probably add on abstract even though this, again, counters MBTI, self-referencing functions have no objective empirical model, therefore they become abstract as your intuition and my intuition will be inherently different.
> 
> To that end Introverted anything is simply the referencing of the self first. With the perception functions it is inner archetypal content that is being referenced.


This still means hardly anything to me. Do you mean that perceiving by extroverted perception compares what is perceived to other things that are being or have been perceived, whereas perceiving by introverted perception compares what is perceived to inner archetypal content? If so, I think the fundamental difference is between referencing memetic memory (no matter how short-term) and referencing genetic memory.




> Introverted Sensing is the projection of your own manifestation of an archetype onto an object so that in essence your own personal perception of the object (the fire is inviting - an archetypal reference relating your own manifestation of what _inviting_ is) becomes more important than the intrinsic qualities of the object (the fire is hot or orange). Extraverted Sensing simply sees the object as it is, without projecting anything more into it. So introverted sensing becomes a highly impressionistic perception, wherein how an object comes across to you takes precedence. So for example Ansel Adams would likely be a Se-type capturing the object as is, where Monet or Van Gogh would most certainly be Si-types (in fact Jung uses Van Gogh as a reference for Introverted Sensing).


Well, this has to be the most lucid explanation I have yet heard of this. A couple of things, though. There is of course no such thing as "seeing the object as it is": for instance, "hot" is a relative term, and the light from the fire is not orange, but only affects our eyes in a way that our brain interprets as "orange". So the difference between introverted and extroverted Sensing cannot be a difference between objective and subjective. Instead, it appears to be a difference with regard to _mood_: a wholly extroverted Sensor will perceive the fire in the same way regardless of his mood, whereas a wholly introverted Sensor will perceive it essentially differently depending on his mood.

An introverted Sensor will surely only perceive the fire as inviting if there is not some grave danger near it. For instance, I could place visible booby-traps all around it without obstructing the view of the fire. In doing so, the fire remains the same: "in itself", it is still as inviting or as uninviting as it was before, just as it's still as hot and as orange as it was before. But things like visible booby-traps tend to determine moods. Compare:

"Imagine that you are walking down an unfamiliar alley, enjoying the tranquillity of a dark night, when suddenly you hear a rustling noise behind you, followed by urgent approaching footsteps. You feel certain bodily changes, although you are probably not distinctly aware of them: a quickening of the pulse, a tensing of your muscles. You pick up your pace, glance around for other people or for ways to escape the alley. You become focused on the end of the alley, and start to anticipate possible responses to a potential assailant. Everything looks different than [sic] it did a moment before, and you suddenly notice things to which you hadn't previously paid attention (you see distinctly a side alley as a possible escape route, you strain to discern noises that you had been completely unaware of a moment before). By the same token, things you had previously been attending to disappear. In a moment, your pleasant recollections of the evening have been swept away as you feel yourself threatened." (Mark Wrathall, _How to Read Heidegger_, page 33.)

It seems Van Gogh was usually in a mood of feeling threatened, like a bad trip...




> Now the MBTI folks do not recognize Si as such (choosing to relate it to memories and all other kinds of stuff) and would probably call Van Gogh some sort of Intuitive, but to Jung, Van Gogh's abstraction was just a function of his own interpretation of sensory stimuli. The N and S functions in MBTI meanings are very, very different from Jung's original meanings. Si can be just as abstract as what we think of when say Intuition, because it is about what _you_ get out of a sensory experience, thus the term introverted.
> 
> It's also why the functions don't exist independently, thinking must be paired with feeling, intuition with sensation. I/E only become a contradiction if the function isn't considered with its counterpart. You can't just look at Introverted Feeling without looking at Extraverted Thinking, for example. If you understand one, you understand the other. Too often people try to look at say just Ni without considering Se, and this creates all kinds of problems because N and S function like two sides of a see-saw, unable to be disconnected pulling and pushing on one another. You can't just ignore one side.
> 
> ...


Well, one cannot _choose_ to see a fire as purple instead of as orange, of course, just as little as one can choose to see it as uninviting instead of as inviting. One can choose neither one's mood nor the physical make-up of one's nerves and brain.




> Se types would be the ultimate "it is what it is," types. It is then Extraverted Intuition or perception of the object as is, but with the extra component that it could be more, that keeps the Si type grounded by reminding them that their impression of the object may not be all there is (but of course this will be the inferior function in a Si-dom who egocentrically wants to accept their impression as real and downplay the fact that their impressions might be wrong or narrow).


Yes, exactly, Si is informed by Ne: by objects that are subconsciously perceived, like my booby-traps, which inspire the sensation of the fire as uninviting.




> The Extraverted Intuitive then would downplay their own personal impressions because they would not want to limit the possibilities of what the object could be with a subjective impression. Dominant Extraverted Sensing types being so oriented to the object as is, would downplay any intuition or gut feeling that suggests that the object may have a significance or implication beyond that which is observable, thus N is initially opposed by S, but also needs S to function correctly.


Yes. It seems to me that Se-doms will then typically be the voice of reason, like in the passage quoted above: no need to panic, there is no evidence of the footsteps' belonging to an assailant!


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

> Well, I've heard this before, but it means nothing to me. For one thing, where does the "neutral cognitive energy" flow from?


from Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology


> *Libido*
> Psychic energy in general. (See also final.)
> Libido can never be apprehended except in a definite form; that is to say, it is identical with fantasy-images. And we can only release it from the grip of the unconscious by bringing up the corresponding fantasy-images.["The Technique of Differentiation," CW 7, par. 345.]
> 
> ...





> Do you mean that perceiving by extroverted perception compares what is perceived to other things that are being or have been perceived, whereas perceiving by introverted perception compares what is perceived to inner archetypal content?


Introverted perception projects archetypal content (it may be comparing in some way, but really comparison would fall under the category of Thinking and Feeling - the rationalization of what you perceive). The reason Jung called Perception irrational is because it's just that, perception. Simply a way of looking at things that carries no evaluative weight of its own. Perception doesn't even identify (that's thinking) nor does it evaluate (that's feeling) it just perceives. Now in Myers Briggs, comparing what is perceived to what has been perceived would fall under the auspices of Introverted Sensing (but I'm not sure if this holds up vis-a-vis Jung, but its definitely how JCF and MBTI conceptualize Introverted Sensing). 



> There is of course no such thing as "seeing the object as it is": for instance, "hot" is a relative term, and the light from the fire is not orange, but only affects our eyes in a way that our brain interprets as "orange".


But from the standpoint of perception on its own, we do not know this. That's thinking. Thinking tells us that the low frequency EM wavelengths produce reddish colors. Perception = it is. Thinking = what is it? With Si its a little deeper than mood, because, you're right that situationally, when we're engaging all four functions we know that fire can be dangerous or provide warmth. Maybe that was a bad example. But in an oversimplified sense, a Si-type might see a house and say that house looks like a 'home,' home being some inner image of domicile or protection or safety or whatever, where the Se-type would just see the house (and maybe say that looks like my house or the house I grew up in, but again not projecting the inward image onto the outer image). I say oversimplified because obviously concepts of house and home bring other functions into play along with memories, emotions and other stuff that aren't function related. It's tough for me to explain because i'm not a Si-type and generally see things very plainly as they are, so for me the idea of something having a meaning other than object's outer qualities is tough (I as a Ni-dominant would actually ascribe implication or significance to the object through perhaps a gut feeling about it rather than relying on a sensory impression of the object). Yukawa's thread on Si at Personality Nation does a much better job of summarizing the function. 



> Well, one cannot choose to see a fire as purple instead of as orange, of course, just as little as one can choose to see it as uninviting instead of as inviting.


At the end of the day this would still end up as Thinking. Because while the wavelengths that hit the rods and cones of the eye may be the same for everyone there is no rationalization going on, just an object. Thinking (specifically Extraverted Thinking which appeals to objective agreed-upon norms) would say the fire is orange basically because we all agreed that that's the color of fire - adding a component of identification and categorization. But sensing (and certainly not intuition) doesn't rationalize it into the concept of color on its own (sure you may see red vs. blue, but knowing its red vs. blue will be the result of thinking. The underlying component to Si is that the individual's own perception takes precedence, so whatever the objective color of the object, Van Gogh painted from the standpoint of how _he_ saw things - so to him fire may very well have more congruence with an internal image if he represented it as the color violet, even if the real fire isn't objectively violet). 

It's sort of how like in art, vertical lines indicate power. Now this is a projection of archetypal implication onto an object (because tall buildings in and of themselves as brick and mortar don't mean anything) but because there is some quasi-universal understanding on some level of the connection between height and power that internal image gets projected onto the structure based on its physical features with Si or Ni which might project 'power' as something of a gut feeling about it. (Again its really hard to get down to the essential components in these examples because its hard to differentiate pure perception from rationale. No one uses perception or judgment in a vacuum). 

Perception does not care whether or not the fire is dangerous (remember the Ego functions outside of innate tendencies, so fight or flight or danger or self-preservation are much more automatic than can be described by a function). If there is a flight or flight response to immediate danger that is generally not related to Ego or Persona or any other aspect of the conscious self, but automatic. (Now if the threat is realized well ahead of time and the person chooses to stick around, that is probably the functions, because you are repressing the automatic tendencies - most of us are rarely in true fight or flight scenarios in the modern world unless something completely unexpected happens, meaning that in many cases what we call fight or flight is actually a conscious choice based largely on Feeling or Thinking evaluations of the situation not an automatic instinctual response). Because the conscious self (ego) tries to be so far away from the instinctual self (which falls under the shadow), the instinctual self often appears as an eruption or loss of control (which is why the inferior function and the shadow are perceived as negatives, even though they technically are not negatives, they just are closer to the shadow, or the unpolished, uncivilized part of the Self, and thus the ego tries to shut that down as much as possible). 

But if you had no _concept_ that a fire was dangerous, simple perception will not tell you otherwise (babies might walk right up to a hot flame and burn themselves if they didn't have parents watching them. Perhaps the infant wouldn't see the fire as 'inviting' but there's nothing to say simple perception alone -- beyond the getting burned -- would stop the child). Perhaps you might have a gut-feeling about it (Ni) or perceive something in the flames themselves that gives you pause (which would be more like Si), but that's about it. 



> Yes. It seems to me that Se-doms will then typically be the voice of reason, like in the passage quoted above: no need to panic, there is no evidence of the footsteps' belonging to an assailant!


Sometimes. Sometimes they're worse than everyone else, because if they do have a gut-feeling about it, because their perspective is one that is so driven toward the empirical and observable, their intuitions can be really off the mark and whacky. It's why Se-doms often turn normal stuff into things that have magical powers (like talismans, or magic dice, or rabbits feet - different from Si because this isn't an archetypal representation but rather just deputizing a random object as "magical") especially in more tribal cultures where Se is the norm because of just plain survival. (Again not saying everyone in tribal environments is a Se-type but Se would be the preferred perspective in such an environment because if you're going to live in the jungle you need a good realtime physical sensibility - spending all day pondering greater implications will likely get you eaten). 

Se-doms are notorious for having terrible intuitions and when they do use them they're often in the form of conspiracy theorizing or catastrophizing because of the slant toward sensing there is a disconnect in the power to make accurate assumptions Se-types are very good at reading cues and signals, like body language or tone-of-voice, but in the absence of that, if its just pure speculation with no evidence the results are often much more dubious -- usually worst-case scenario type stuff because Se-doms rarely trust what they can't see (Intuitives rarely take anything at face value but a dominant Intuitive would have a more nuanced approach to the possibilities, or underlying implications, but have a terrible sense of the in-the-moment sensory components). 

Si-doms because of Inferior Ne will have a myriad of negative possibilities erupt (because again their focus is generally on the internal, perceptual and internally consistent, the external and ideational will be somewhat uncharted territory and thus not nearly as robust and nuanced as say an ENFP, who has come to rely on their Extraverted Intuition as an effective way of navigating through life).


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## LotusBlossom (Apr 2, 2011)

@_LiquidLight_ - would you add Matisse as your example of a Si-type too? I've been ogling at his works a lot lately.
Thanks for explaining how NeSi work in tandem to me, it's something I still have a bit of a difficulty with.
Wonderfully intelligent and insightful posts as always.

another edit: here's a half-formed question based on half-formed thought: where does the archetypal content of Pi come from? I think Sauweilos asked the same thing (that genetic vs. memetic memorty thing I think..) but looking through your posts I don't think it's clear. Perhaps I should let it sink in and read again.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

LiquidLight, I still have some questions. I do think that, thanks to you, I finally understand the basics of introverted and extroverted Sensation and iNtuition, though I may still draw very inaccurate conclusions from those basics. But I don't seem to understand introverted and extroverted Feeling and Thinking yet. More precisely, how do they complement one another? At this point, I want to present here the one passage I saved from Jung's _Psychological Types_ when I lent that book from someone a year or so ago:



> Feeling is [...] also a kind of _Judging_, which however is distinct from intellectual judgment [i.e., from Thinking] insofar as it occurs not with a view to establishing a conceptual coherency, but with a view to a first of all subjective accepting or rejecting. [Jung, _Psychological Types_, chapter XI, section 22, my translation.]


I take it we can judge only what we (have) perceive(d), regardless by which Perceiving functions. Now let's suppose I'm looking for a painting to hang above the mantlepiece. While browsing a gallery, I perceive a painting. I like it, but it would not fit well within the room---not because of its size, but because of the picture itself. I take it that a dominant or secondary Feeler would then accept it because he or she likes it, whereas a dominant or secondary Thinker would reject it because it does not fit well within the room (or perhaps accept it and reject the room, i.e., give it a complete overhaul to make it fit well with the painting). But now you seem to say that, in the context of the Judging functions, "extroverted" and "introverted" mean that the judging is done on the basis of what others think or feel or of what the judge himself thinks or feels, respectively. So what I've described above are Fi and Ti (a Feeler who would accept the painting because _he or she_ likes it, and a Thinker who would reject it because _he or she_ feels it does not fit well within the room). An Fe would then be a Feeler who would accept the painting because _others_ likes it, and a Te would be a Thinker who would reject it because _others_ feel it does not fit well within the room. But now the question is: why or how do Fi and Te on the one hand, and Fe and Ti on the other, necessarily complement one another? I can understand why Si and Ni need Ne and Se, respectively, in order to perceive anything at all to then project their archetypal content on. But what is the Judging equivalent to this?


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

The four functions are quite the contrary of "just different means of escape," due to the fact that they serve as *ego syntonic* filters/sorters of information, as @LiquidLight pointed out. They *prevent* a person from escaping their ego, for better or for worse (for better, this helps maintain a consistent mode of functioning/personality, sense of self trust/reliance, maintains sanity, conscious cognition, significant control over one's "free will," etc., while for worse (or neutral), the functions filter instincts to the point of resulting in projection (this isn't always bad (it's a powerful determinant and protectant of what's ego-syntonic/dystonic to a person), but it definitely can be, if one doesn't acknowledge that their biases are just biases, or lets their biases take over their life/hold them back from introspection, harm others for no good reason other than to defend their insecurities, results in being too egotistical and reluctant to look into the shadow "meat and potatoes" of personality, etc.), narrow-mindedness to explore what's foreign to you in others, over-doing one's persona in trying to avoid the darker aspects of the self, etc. The fact that projection results from them is indicative of the fact that the functions keep people within the confines of their ego, rather than allow people to "escape" them naturally, since we project what the ego doesn't consciously identify with. If functions were a means of escape, this would probably result from engaging in the unconscious ones, which would involve escaping FROM the ego, causing a person to be a hot mess of dysfunctionality and escape of reality via a shitload of projection. The only way that you can legitimately say that the functions serve as a means of escape would be relative to the shadow of personality, since the conscious functions repress this (they can be used to help a person escape the shadow to some extent). Otherwise, the conscious functions allow us to interpret reality compatibly with our egos. 

On a side note, based on LL's info on Si, wow, I couldn't be more confident that Si is very much the "anti-me," thus, making me an Ni dom. I'm really unwilling to settle with the "perception is reality" mentality. 8S I view perception as a "state of mind" and live to alter my perceptions of reality via Ni.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> The four functions are quite the contrary of "just different means of escape," due to the fact that they serve as *ego syntonic* filters/sorters of information, as @LiquidLight pointed out.


Well, you should note that I was talking about Keirsey Temperament theory (i.e., basically Myers' implicit theory), not about Jungian typology. I understand now that I was wrong in rejecting Jung. I now reject Myers, but not Jung or Keirsey. I reject Myers because her theory is basically implicitly what Keirsey's is explicitly, but explicitly claims to be Jungian. Jung's and Keirsey's theories are fundamentally different, and Myers' is an impossible hybrid of the two, which is now only interesting _historically_.




> They *prevent* a person from escaping their ego, for better or for worse


Well, I never said that the four Keirseyan functions were just different means of escape from the _ego_. In fact, I rather think they're just different means of escape from the _libido_, which in my opening post I called _erôs_. What's interesting is that the term _erôs_, like the term _libido_, has an inherent sexual connotation, though neither is necessarily or fundamentally sexual (Platonic love is Platonic _erôs_).




> (for better, this helps maintain a consistent mode of functioning/personality, sense of self trust/reliance, maintains sanity, conscious cognition, significant control over one's "free will," etc., while for worse (or neutral), the functions filter instincts to the point of resulting in projection (this isn't always bad (it's a powerful determinant and protectant of what's ego-syntonic/dystonic to a person), but it definitely can be, if one doesn't acknowledge that their biases are just biases, or lets their biases take over their life/hold them back from introspection, harm others for no good reason other than to defend their insecurities, results in being too egotistical and reluctant to look into the shadow "meat and potatoes" of personality, etc.), narrow-mindedness to explore what's foreign to you in others, over-doing one's persona in trying to avoid the darker aspects of the self, etc. The fact that projection results from them is indicative of the fact that the functions keep people within the confines of their ego, rather than allow people to "escape" them naturally, since we project what the ego doesn't consciously identify with. If functions were a means of escape, this would probably result from engaging in the unconscious ones, which would involve escaping FROM the ego, causing a person to be a hot mess of dysfunctionality and escape of reality via a shitload of projection. The only way that you can legitimately say that the functions serve as a means of escape would be relative to the shadow of personality, since the conscious functions repress this (they can be used to help a person escape the shadow to some extent). Otherwise, the conscious functions allow us to interpret reality compatibly with our egos.


The thing is, what I'm suggesting is basically that the ego is the original "escape".


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

> I reject Myers because her theory is basically implicitly what Keirsey's is explicitly, but explicitly claims to be Jungian.


Yes exactly. MBTI and Kiersey are basically two interpretations of the same thing, and to be honest, Kiersey probably gets it more right in his descriptions of how the MBTI types might manifest. (That being said MBTI has a full concept of how it interprets the psyche, but it has to work within its own conception because again to Jung, the functions were simply a process of the ego, where MBTI turns them more into the centerpiece of psyche).

The Five Levels of Understanding


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## Eric B (Jun 18, 2010)

Sauwelios said:


> But isn't that right? Don't certain dog breeds have certain innate temperaments? And if dogs do, why shouldn't people?


Pavlov did assign the temperaments for dogs, but it is not the same as the Keirsey temperaments. It would likely correspond more to E/I (Passivity) and he other factor was extremeness, which would correspond more to directing/informing of the Interaction Styles. Or, perhaps, J/P, since E/I and J/P are the letters that develop in really young children, before the functional preference becomes evident. 

So it is the cognitive area animals do not have. As was mentioned before, the functions are basically interpretations of data. Animals experience things, but do not cognitively interpret them. They just react according to the limbic system of instinct and emotion. So while they experience sensation, they are not even "Sensors" under this definition.

So animals do not possess any of the dichotomy preferences beyond E and I. 
So they can be seen as having somewhat of an Interaction Style, with E/I, and the other factor; which for us is connected to T/F or J/P; but for them stands alone. 
So they will not have a whole type, or even a Keirseyan temperament. (Which are determined by functions, despite Keirsey's claim to the contrary). They won't even have the other Keirseyan factor of "cooperative/pragmatic", or the cross-factor of "structure/motive". All that stuff is covered by their instinct.


TaylorS said:


> Under Kiersey I am an "INFJ" because I score as introverted, agreeable, conscientious, and open. But my actual Jungian psychological type is Introverted Sensation with Thinking, with a function order of Si-T | F-Ne.


 Those are Big Five categories.


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## TaylorS (Jan 24, 2010)

Sauwelios said:


> LiquidLight, I still have some questions. I do think that, thanks to you, I finally understand the basics of introverted and extroverted Sensation and iNtuition, though I may still draw very inaccurate conclusions from those basics. But I don't seem to understand introverted and extroverted Feeling and Thinking yet. More precisely, how do they complement one another? At this point, I want to present here the one passage I saved from Jung's _Psychological Types_ when I lent that book from someone a year or so ago:
> 
> 
> I take it we can judge only what we (have) perceive(d), regardless by which Perceiving functions. Now let's suppose I'm looking for a painting to hang above the mantlepiece. While browsing a gallery, I perceive a painting. I like it, but it would not fit well within the room---not because of its size, but because of the picture itself. I take it that a dominant or secondary Feeler would then accept it because he or she likes it, whereas a dominant or secondary Thinker would reject it because it does not fit well within the room (or perhaps accept it and reject the room, i.e., give it a complete overhaul to make it fit well with the painting). But now you seem to say that, in the context of the Judging functions, "extroverted" and "introverted" mean that the judging is done on the basis of what others think or feel or of what the judge himself thinks or feels, respectively. So what I've described above are Fi and Ti (a Feeler who would accept the painting because _he or she_ likes it, and a Thinker who would reject it because _he or she_ feels it does not fit well within the room). An Fe would then be a Feeler who would accept the painting because _others_ likes it, and a Te would be a Thinker who would reject it because _others_ feel it does not fit well within the room. But now the question is: why or how do Fi and Te on the one hand, and Fe and Ti on the other, necessarily complement one another? I can understand why Si and Ni need Ne and Se, respectively, in order to perceive anything at all to then project their archetypal content on. But what is the Judging equivalent to this?


"I don't like it" is Fi, while "It doesn't fit right into the room" can be either Fi or Fe depending on if the person's underlying reason for thinking that. Both are EVALUATIONS, which is the domain of F.


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

TaylorS said:


> "I don't like it" is Fi, while "It doesn't fit right into the room" can be either Fi or Fe depending on if the person's underlying reason for thinking that. Both are EVALUATIONS, which is the domain of F.


But though Thinking is perhaps not evaluation, it too is judging. In what way, then, do Ti and Te judge what is perceived? (Jung seems to say that they judge it as being conceptually coherent or not. If that is the case, what are the introverted and extroverted varieties of such judgment?)


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## Sauwelios (Aug 15, 2010)

Sauwelios said:


> But though Thinking is perhaps not evaluation, it too is judging. In what way, then, do Ti and Te judge what is perceived? (Jung seems to say that they judge it as being conceptually coherent or not. If that is the case, what are the introverted and extroverted varieties of such judgment?)


I really want to know this, guys... Perhaps I should summarise what I think I understand, and then explain what I know I don't yet understand. I will not go into the introverted and extroverted varieties of the Perceiving functions at this point, since those have already been treated pretty clearly and elaborately in this thread.

The Sensation function works as follows. One perceives things with one's senses, and one's senses then immediately present the things perceived to one's consciousness.
The Intuition function on the other hand works like this: one perceives things with one's senses (i.e., not with ESP or anything), but one's senses don't present the things perceived directly to one's consciousness; instead, they present it to one's personal unconscious, and this in turn presents them to one's consciousness. This is why Intuitors perceive information about things as hunches and the like.

Now the Judging functions are the functions by which one pronounces judgments on things perceived, regardless of how they are perceived (i.e., by which Perceiving functions). By the Feeling function, one judges things perceived based on likes and dislikes: one's own personal likes and dislikes in the case of Fi, and others' likes and dislikes in the case of Fe.
But what about the Thinking function? All I know at this point is that it's concerned with "establishing a conceptual coherency". I suspect it's ironic that I'd consider the Thinking function the only function I don't understand, since what I'm probably above all doing here is using that very function!

Sonionics calls Thinking and Feeling "Logic" and "Ethics", respectively. Perhaps an example of a clash between the two will clarify things. Modern natural science is mechanistic, i.e., it regards the universe as a mechanism. But this means that human beings, who are after all part of the universe, are themselves mechanisms. And this, in turn, means they are entirely deterministic; they do not have free will. But though modern Western society embraces modern natural science in general, it rejects it at this particular point, because without belief in free will there can be no ethics: people cannot be held responsible for their actions. A Thinker would demand conceptual coherency: either regard the whole universe, including human beings, as mechanistic, or none of it. But modern Western man wants to do neither, since that would mean either no ethics or no modern natural science. Apparently the Feeling function of modern Western man embraces both the notion of moral responsibility and modern natural science, even though the two are logically irreconcilable; apparently modern Western man likes both the yields of belief in moral responsibility and the yields of modern natural science.

My question: Is the demand that one regard either the whole universe as mechanistic or none of it an example of Te or Ti? And if it's an example of Te, what would the corresponding Ti example be? And if it's an example of Ti, what would the corresponding Te example be?


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Sauwelios said:


> I really want to know this, guys... Perhaps I should summarise what I think I understand, and then explain what I know I don't yet understand. I will not go into the introverted and extroverted varieties of the Perceiving functions at this point, since those have already been treated pretty clearly and elaborately in this thread.
> 
> The Sensation function works as follows. One perceives things with one's senses, and one's senses then immediately present the things perceived to one's consciousness.
> The Intuition function on the other hand works like this: one perceives things with one's senses (i.e., not with ESP or anything), but one's senses don't present the things perceived directly to one's consciousness; instead, they present it to one's personal unconscious, and this in turn presents them to one's consciousness. This is why Intuitors perceive information about things as hunches and the like.
> ...


Well Feeling is at its core simply the rationalization of emotional content. Many people get confused for Feeling being the emotions themselves (probably because of the word Feeling) but Feeling really refers to how you judge those emotions and is the genesis of those judgments rooted in the objective or subjective. Thinking seeks to downplay the evaluative aspects and simply attack it from its technical or logical standpoint (so Thinking = does part A and part B fit together, if so then good, if not then bad. Feeling doesn't care whether or not the two parts fit together, but rather is focused on whether you prefer part A over part B). This is why you can't really do both because you're either judging from a more humanistic consideration wherein value is considered, or you are removing the human equation altogether.

The thinking/feeling dynamic is often played out socially in the stereotypical men versus woman argument. Men always complain that women's arguments don't make sense but really what this is, is that often the man is arguing from a conceptual or logical thinking framework and the woman from a Feeling standpoint (i'm speaking broadly and generalizing here not all women are feeling types). So each finds the other irrational. The Thinking type says "We can't consider the needs of everyone so we need to judge or apply objectivity to leverage this situation," where the Feeling type would say "how can you apply any leverage to a situation in which the people involved aren't being considered?"

One of the things that gives away the Feeling types is their sensitivity toward people who seem to be cold and don't take the real-world human dilemmas into consideration. Thus

_Thinking type "do you know how fast you were going?"

Feeling type "sorry Officer I know I was speeding, but I got a phone call from home that my kid got hurt and I need to see whats going on." (value judgment)

Thinking type "Doesn't matter the law is the law and you were going 20 miles over." (removing human consideration)

Feeling type "Yea but my kid is going to the hospital in critical condition! I'm not going to just coast along like nothing's wrong."

Thinking type "Ma'am I understand and I'm sorry, but I still have to give you this ticket, you broke the law and the longer you argue with me the longer it will take you to get to your child."
_​This is sort of the classic thinking vs feeling dialogue and you can see how each sees the other as irrational because they are not judging from their own point of view. The Thinking type, though he recognizes on some level the plight of the woman, defaults to a perspective of impersonal dispassionate judgment attacking the issue from the standpoint of concept (or in this case, the law). The Feeling type, understanding the need for laws, still made a value judgment that her needs (or the child's needs) in the moment were paramount to some objective law that obviously was not written with her current predicament in mind. This is essentially Thinking vs. Feeling (and specifically its Extraverted Thinking vs Introverted Feeling).

Extraverted Feeling then would be enacting judgment based upon the evaluations of the group. In much the same way as Extraverted Thinking an outside, objective standard is being applied to evaluation (the car is nice because everyone else says its a nice car). So if you are going to be pointed toward the dispositions of everyone else, that naturally means you are not Thinking for yourself (Ti). You are subverting your own personal conceptualization in favor of group evaluation in the case of a dominant Fe-type. And this is why intellect does not equal Thinking. Because Feeling types might be quite intelligent, but the perspective is always one of humane rationalization over concept in applying that intelligence. This is where the classic groupthink comes from where someone might know something to be intellectually true or false (Ti) but choose to go along with the norms of those around them, placing more weight on the considerations of others (or their own considerations relative to the considerations of others). In the same way the Extraverted Thinking type rejects Introverted Feeling by saying "how I feel is unimportant, the only thing that is important is duty or the law or whatever," the Extraverted Feeling type says "what I think is unimportant, harmonizing my values with those around me is what takes precedence." Again thinking would find this ridiculous, and Feeling would find downplaying ones own evaluations ridiculous. Introverted Thinking downplays the evaluations of the group by saying "what I think is much more important than how everyone else feels," thus the coldness and indifference that Ti-types have toward other people in many instances (Jung, himself a Ti-type, basically says strong Thinking types who haven't rationalized their inferior Feeling have a tendency to be misanthropic). 

So everyone knows the stereotypical Te-type father who tells his son to get a job, and the Feeling-type son says "yes but I don't want to do that" (value judgment). How does the father then strike back? With Te "I don't care whether or not you like something, you need to go out and make some money. It's called work for a reason. It's not about liking it, its about paying bills." To which the Feeling type son says "yes but if I don't like doing it I won't be any good at so why bother," (essentially I won't be good at it if I'm not _feeling_ it). And the fight goes on and on.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

> So everyone knows the stereotypical Te-type father who tells his son to get a job, and the Feeling-type son says "yes but I don't want to do that" (value judgment). How does the father then strike back? With Te "I don't care whether or not you like something, you need to go out and make some money. It's called work for a reason. It's not about liking it, its about paying bills." To which the Feeling type son says "yes but if I don't like doing it I won't be any good at so why bother," (essentially I won't be good at it if I'm not feeling it). And the fight goes on and on.


Hmm...In this situation, I would be the feeling type - at least if it came to working for the rest of my life at a job I'd hate (if it were unsatisfying to my conceptual interests)...So, would that be my F function supporting my T function? Doesn't this sort of go into the territory of desires? I mean, this example kind of implies that high Ts don't have F motives behind what they do, or am I missing something?


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