Something so simple to understand, and yet people still don't realize the FAs are expressed differently - even with those of the same type.
This is why it's reckless to make claims about people's "strengths" and "weaknesses" within an alleged type.
In each type group, the function development can vary to such a degree that the people don't even look alike.
Some people can develop their Aux and Tert to such a degree they can have more strength than their Dom.
I am not saying Beebe's model is necessarilly true, because like oyu I have yet to see how it works in reality (though I am still open as the theory is new to me).
However the highlighted bit wouldn't necessarilly be incompatible, as the "opposing personality" as I understand it would tend to be our most developed shadow function.
Also to be fair to Beebe he doesn't say that he is listing the fucntions in terms of frequency usage, but rather in a more "qualitative" way, i.e. the role we take on when using them. This is what I am still trying to envisage in practice.
He said himself he was trying to get away from a "heirarchy of functions" and instead concentrate on them more qualitatively.
According to Mark Hunziker and Leona Haas
Building Blocks of Personality Type (Unite Business Press, a division of Telos, 2006):
Actually, the shadow encompasses all processes that are primarily unconscious in an individual. Which processes these are will depend on that person'a type development and can even include all eight in a very young child. Note also, that the normal hierarchy of preference for processes five through eight has not yet been empirically established, and in practice is likely to vary from person to person. Beebe cautions us not to assume too much on the basis of his numbering, which in many ways is simply for convenience in identifying the various positions. He simply puts it forth as a tool that he has found useful and informative and which at least for the first four functions seems to reflect the order of conscious cultivation of the functions that he has observed. The numbers for the shadow functions are identified merely to mirror the ordering of the first four.
(Glossary: "Shadow", p. 215, emphasis added)
Regarding the issue of Thompson, what I always found hard to accept from some of her biggest admirers on the forum, is the idea that the introverted function is a "compeltely different" one to its extraverted coutnerpart. Beebe's idea that a function can express itself in extraverted or introverted "attitudes", and that in doing so it casts a shadow of the opposite atittude, makes much more sense to me.
the other model seems much more arbitrary, i.e. to completely seperate Ti and Te rather than seeing a "unity of opposites", within which one pole "negates" the other (but that's my marxism showing I guess).
I've
never gotten that sense from her.
She in fact is the one who got me to see it in its original Jungian conception, as only four functions, and that the ego orients them in an inner or outer way (generating eight FA's). This is what really helped me finally understand it all a year ago, allowing for a lot more fluidity in type behavior.
It's the Berens camp, including the host of the link in your post #2 that make "Xe/i" into hard, fixed things that are totally opposed to one another. That was what threw me and so many others off.
By the way, I actually disagree with Eric about Thomson.
She makes way too many assertions about types as if they are absolute.
It was the first thing I noticed about her. Her thinking is too rigid for my taste.
I don't see what you're saying there. But then, perhaps you're going by the book, yet she has modified some of her views since that was published. She has been pointing out to me, that the cognitive preferences (which determine type) are simply the ways that we build neurological connections between the limbic system and the frontal cortex. She criticizes the behavioral focus shaping much of type discussion, which is actually influenced by temperament theory, and basicaly focuses on the limbic system of emotional reaction. Again, I think it is other theorists (especially those using temperament) who make type sound more absolute, and that she has been clarifying it.
My feeling is that trying to create a whole shadow type of the "unused" bottom four functions is a wash. I mean, this is just smoke and mirrors, isn't it? A fairly arbitrary system created on mostly a theoretical basis?
I can see where particular functions might be "shadow functions" -- if you are really good at one thing, it's because you spent a lot of energy and focus developing it to the exclusion of its opposite function -- but a whole discernible type? It seems quite the stretch.
For an example, my shadow type here is supposedly ENTJ. I don't see myself as having ENTJ weaknesses any more than any other type, it's very much a Forer effect (IMO). THe big problem? My Te is pathetic. ENTJ type weaknesses revolve around having a too-dominant Te at the exclusion of Feeling-style functions. ENTJ might be considered my "shadow" by Beebe, but I have a pathetic Te and don't prefer it in the least! Therefore any weaknesses that are related to Te in a typical personality will not be manifest by me. What typically happens is that when Ti+Ne fails, I'll try to drop into an F function as a complete "change out" and because I haven't had much practice with it, that's where I can show ill-use of a function... an F function.
I never drop into Te functionality unless F is irrelevant.
Iroincally, the few times I've had to use Te functionality on a personal level, it's actually been positive.
I have not abused it or overused it, I've used it just enough to fix the problem.
The only issues I've seen with Te has been in social situations where I am in a position of authority, where I can try to apply a rule to enforce over the behavior of others but then feel bad about it because I feel like it is not being applied consistently or fairly, or that not all considerations are being taken into account. That's probably the strongest support I can offer for the sort of reasoning shown in this thread... but I do not feel it is very compelling.
Fair enough. I have only read the works by Beebe which I posted here (kind of why I was asking for more reading or examples
) and here he doesn't really mention a "shadow type", rather different
qualitative roles which we assign to each of the functions.
I have not seen anyone really make much of "shadow type". (And no; I've never even seen Beebe mention it). That seems to be something derived from sources like Team Technology, who, using the old four function model, declare the type with all letters opposite, (whose dominant is your inferior), as the "shadow type", and I and others using the eight functions model pointed out that the true "shadow" is the other four functions.
So for us, it could be either ENTJ
or ISFP. (About a year ago, under unusual stress, I recognized myself going into a freaky ISFP mode one day, and I was clearly not myself). You may not even be conscious of it unless looking for it. It is something that erupts under stress, and would have nothing to do with how "strong" your Te or any of the other functions normally is.
Indeed. I do find it wearying sometimes when people insist on trying to make deductions about someone's thinking processes based purely on the theoretical function orientation of their Mbti type. Mbti doesn't tell us a whole lot about relative function strengths in individuals, because it doesn't assess them, it infers them from other information, and this inference is rather weak because it has no basis beyond overall function preference and a somewhat speculative theory of opposites, which need not hold true in any individual case. 
