# Cognitive Functions when Undeveloped and Developed



## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

Turns out that socionics and the MBTI have different definitions for similar cognitive functions...

That being said what does undeveloped and/or unhealthy cognitive functions look like compared to healthy and developed functions?


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

which tri types are you referring to ?
if you go to the tri types section of PerC it has a break down of healthy/unhealthy types


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@vinniebob

I'm not talking about tritypes: I'm talking about MBTI functions, like this...

Fe
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Fi
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Ne
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Ni
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Se
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Si
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Te
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:

Ti
Developed/Healthy:
Undeveloped/Unhealthy:


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## StunnedFox (Dec 20, 2013)

I really don't like the idea of personality as a prescription, so the "healthy"/"unhealthy" split, essentially diagnosing some aspects of personality as "right" and others as "wrong", really isn't something I take to. But probably the easiest way to examine what is considered "developed" or "undeveloped" when it comes to functions would be to compare descriptions of a function as dominant vs. descriptions of the same function as inferior, and to assume that most fall somewhere in between the extremes. Often, I think people look for something else when they talk of function development - "unhealthy"/"undeveloped" Fe tends to be talked about as manipulative and controlling, which is quite unlike descriptions of inferior Fe, for instance - but that seems to me to be defining function development in terms of some criteria external to type (essentially just "likeable use of function" vs. "dislikeable use of function"), such that the healthiness/development attaches to the person as a whole rather than the individual function...


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

StunnedFox said:


> I really don't like the idea of personality as a prescription, so the "healthy"/"unhealthy" split, essentially diagnosing some aspects of personality as "right" and others as "wrong", really isn't something I take to. But probably the easiest way to examine what is considered "developed" or "undeveloped" when it comes to functions would be to compare descriptions of a function as dominant vs. descriptions of the same function as inferior, and to assume that most fall somewhere in between the extremes. Often, I think people look for something else when they talk of function development - "unhealthy"/"undeveloped" Fe tends to be talked about as manipulative and controlling, which is quite unlike descriptions of inferior Fe, for instance -* but that seems to me to be defining function development in terms of some criteria external to type* (essentially just "likeable use of function" vs. "dislikeable use of function"), such that the healthiness/development attaches to the person as a whole rather than the individual function...


Exactly!! If you're going to create scale of healthy/unhealthy, or developed/undeveloped then you're going to have to *discard all external judgement* in order to objectively understand the scales that these functions contain. In order to understand the development or healthy level of cognitive functions you would need to focus on how each type uses each function, then you have to compare and contrasts the differences and similarities of how the same function is used in each function spot, then you're going to have to see how each age group uses the same functions, then you're going to have to average the users of each cognitive function based on the functions spot in their psyche, along with their age group. When this is done then you can determine the average use of each function, in each function spot, in every age group. From there you can understand what is considered developed/undeveloped, or what is healthy/unhealthy for each function on average per age group.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

Okay, let's go with undeveloped/mature


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@Shadow Logic



> If you're going to create scale of healthy/unhealthy, or developed/undeveloped then you're going to have to discard all external judgement in order to objectively understand the scales that these functions contain.


Explain?


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

RobynC said:


> @Shadow Logic
> 
> Explain?


Ne's healthiness isn't determined by Te's judgement, because Te doesn't contain the tools to assess Ne, and any assessment Te makes will be biased in favor of Te which will cloud the assessment of Ne. Now think about the same concept but with all the functions being considered: the healthiness of all the functions differ, and no function outside of another can determine what is healthy in the other. 

Society also has its own image that it tries to fit on others that may or may not be in line with all the cognitive functions. What society deems as healthy could actually be an unhealthy attribute of another function. If society deemed Te as default healthiness, then it is inevitable that society would deem Fi as unhealthy because it doesn't resemble Te which would be societies image of healthy. You can't judge functions based on external conditions or external guidelines. What is healthy for a function is determined by properties of the specific function, not what it can do for society or how productive it is or how it comes off to others.

For example, if society deemed that the characteristics of Ne is unhealthy, this doesn't make Ne or its use unhealthy but nevertheless people would judge Ne as unhealthy because society deemed it so. This type of judgement doesn't take into account what is healthy for Ne but instead what is healthy for society, which in this scenario judges Ne as unhealthy for its society. This external standard completely strips away what Ne is, and replaces it with how Ne is viewed. How a function is viewed doesn't determine its scale of healthy/unhealthy, the actual properties of a function determines its healthy/unhealthy levels.

External standards don't govern the scales of the properties of things, people can state something is unhealthy when it is actually healthy. The modern day pharmaceutical companies do it everyday. 

The quote Albert Einstein presented fits this very well: "You can't judge a fish off of its inability to fly". Basically if you're going to judge a fish, then you have to judge it based on its individual properties that it contains, not the standard that is external to it.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@Shadow Logic

Okay, then as I said earlier: Can we talk about the following functions

Fe
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Fi
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Ne
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Ni
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Se
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Si
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Te
Developed:
Undeveloped:

Ti
Developed:
Undeveloped:

From the standpoint of being merely developed/undeveloped?


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

Healthy and developed are related but different things. A function may be undeveloped because of the user's age but it may be perfectly healthy, nevertheless, because it works normally for its stage of development. Otoh, a function may be developed but unhealthy if it is used abnormally, say, to perform functions that are better performed by other functions. So an INTP may have well developed Ti but it may be unhealthy if it uses it in place of perception, say, so that rather than just look outside to acertain facts it tries to deduce what they should be in its own mind.

So development depends on the age of the user and the placement of the function in his stack. Health depends on how the function is used and a healthy function is one that does what it is supposed to do, no more and no less, and does it well.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Shadow Logic said:


> Exactly!! If you're going to create scale of healthy/unhealthy, or developed/undeveloped then you're going to have to *discard all external judgement* in order to objectively understand the scales that these functions contain. In order to understand the development or healthy level of cognitive functions you would need to focus on how each type uses each function, then you have to compare and contrasts the differences and similarities of how the same function is used in each function spot, then you're going to have to see how each age group uses the same functions, then you're going to have to average the users of each cognitive function based on the functions spot in their psyche, along with their age group. When this is done then you can determine the average use of each function, in each function spot, in every age group. From there you can understand what is considered developed/undeveloped, or what is healthy/unhealthy for each function on average per age group.


Isn't that what socionics did with their dimensionality theory?



RobynC said:


> @Shadow Logic
> 
> Okay, then as I said earlier: Can we talk about the following functions
> 
> ...


What you seem to be looking for is really just how people who are healthy/unhealthy as individuals and who may possess these functions as their dominant. From a strict Jungian viewpoint, your question makes little sense because the answer is already inherent in the system; undeveloped Se is the Se you see in the Ni dominant, because their Se is the most archaic in nature compared to that of other types, and similarly, the most developed Se will be seen in the Se dom because it is their dom and will therefore also manifest the highest level of sophistication. It does not, however, say anything about the actual maturity of the individual which is a very different thing from mature use of Se. Your question is simply solved with the answer that developed = dominant, undeveloped = inferior.


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

Entropic said:


> Isn't that what socionics did with their dimensionality theory?


Yes they did, and its one of the facets of socionics that I love the most, their ability to recognize how each function is used in each function spot.




> What you seem to be looking for is really just how people who are healthy/unhealthy as individuals and who may possess these functions as their dominant. From a strict Jungian viewpoint, your question makes little sense because the answer is already inherent in the system; undeveloped Se is the Se you see in the Ni dominant, because their Se is the most archaic in nature compared to that of other types, and similarly, the most developed Se will be seen in the Se dom because it is their dom and will therefore also manifest the highest level of sophistication. It does not, however, say anything about the actual maturity of the individual which is a very different thing from mature use of Se. Your question is simply solved with the answer that developed = dominant, undeveloped = inferior.


 @RobynC,

Entropic is making a great point, in order for you to understand how a function is when developed in contrast to underdeveloped then you would need to start with those who use it as their first function in contrast to those who use it as their weakest function. The dominant user has an already developed form of the function, while the inferior user has an underdeveloped form of the function. This will give you the idea of what is developed and undeveloped, and categorizing it by age groups would give you a much more accurate representation of what is developed and undeveloped.


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

@RobynC

I posted a thread too long of trying to describe each function with one word, along with trying to point out their content of focus with one word: http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-functions/415762-one-word.html

If I was to go off of their content of focus using my one word approach then I would categorize develop/undeveloped forms of the functions by seeing their relation to their content of focus. A developed function has a positive relation with their "content of focus", while an undeveloped function has a negative relation with their " content of focus". 

Jung's definition of differentiation may help explain it better:



> . 14. DIFFERENTIATION means the development of differences, the separation of parts from a whole. In this work I employ the concept of differentiation chiefly with respect to the psychological functions (q.v.). *So long as a function is still so fused with one or more other functions— thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, etc.— that it is unable to operate on its own, it is in an archaic (q.v.) condition, i.e., not differentiated, not separated from the whole as a special part and existing by itself*. Undifferentiated thinking is incapable of thinking apart from other functions; it is continually mixed up with sensations, feelings, intuitions, just as undifferentiated feeling is mixed up with sensations and fantasies, as for instance in the sexualization (Freud) of feeling and thinking in neurosis. As a rule, the undifferentiated function is also characterized by ambivalence and ambitendency, 34 i.e., every position entails its own negation, and this leads to characteristic inhibitions in the use of the undifferentiated function. *Another feature is the fusing together of its separate components; thus, undifferentiated sensation is vitiated by the coalescence of different sensory spheres (colour-hearing), and undifferentiated feeling by confounding hate with love. *To the extent that a function is largely or wholly unconscious, it is also undifferentiated; it is not only fused together in its parts but also merged with other functions. Differentiation consists in the separation of the function from other functions, and in the separation of its individual parts from each other. Without differentiation direction is impossible, since the direction of a function towards a goal depends on the elimination of anything irrelevant. *Fusion with the irrelevant precludes direction; only a differentiated function is capable of being directed.*


In other words, the less differentiated a function the more undeveloped it is, and the more fused it becomes to other elements that are irrelevant to its "content of focus".


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Shadow Logic said:


> In other words, the more differentiated a function the more undeveloped it is, and the more fused it becomes to other elements that are irrelevant to its "content of focus".


Do you mean to say that "the *less *differentiated a function the more undeveloped it is?"


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

PaladinX said:


> Do you mean to say that "the *less *differentiated a function the more undeveloped it is?"


Yea, thanks for noticing the flaw in my post, I'll correct it now.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Shadow Logic said:


> Yea, thanks for noticing the flaw in my post, I'll correct it now.


lol I honestly thought I was missing something!


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

PaladinX said:


> lol I honestly thought I was missing something!


Ha no, it wasnt a mistake on your part, I just happen to make grammatical mistakes when using a phone or tablet, and I tend to bypass the mistakes sometimes which can lead to problems of understanding which you presented.


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

Shadow Logic said:


> Ha no, it wasnt a mistake on your part, I just happen to make grammatical mistakes when using a phone or tablet, and I tend to bypass the mistakes sometimes which can lead to problems of understanding which you presented.


That is exactly why I don't like writing long theoretical posts on the phone lol. Also, not efficient.


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

Entropic said:


> That is exactly why I don't like writing long theoretical posts on the phone lol. Also, not efficient.


I agree, but its very convenient especially for someone as lazy as me lol.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@Shadow Logic

For godssake, I'm just trying to get a simple, easy to understand examples of how these functions can look. They don't have to be one word, they can be a paragraph if you like.


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