I've been trying to figure out the purpose of each functional orientation.
Like Ji seems to help define your identity and know what is truly important to you.
Pe seems to help explore new avenues and learn and act as you go without prior experience
Je is proactive and helps get control of situations to get the desired goal/outcome and implement frameworks in objective terms.
I have a harder time understanding Pi, but it seems to be something you can anchor yourself to, experience/insights that is very reliable, something you can trust. I wish I could write more about what each of them means.
ditto. Pi (this would be like introverted intuitives and sensors right?) i have more difficulty understanding versus any other functions.
Despite being an IJ, I confess that Pi was also one of the hardest function types for me to understand as well. I'll share what I understand of it now, but first it helps to understand it relative to the other functions.
The judging functions are all prioritising in nature. Pi does indeed help you determine what is important... but so does Je. They just do it differently. Ji more concerned with ideas of
worth and enrichment while Je is concerned with
utility and necessity. If you like, Ji assesses by personal values, while Je asses by what the external world needs.
The percieving functions are non-prioritising, in and of themselves. They are more to do with the balance between action and restraint, spontinaity and planning ahead. Pe users feel an urge to explore and experiment. Pi users spend much more time planning things out and simply considering things to see if they really are certain of what they know/understand. Thus IJs send a lot of time considering the boundaries of their plans and capabilities. Strong Pi users have well developed sense that self control, understanding before you act and knowing yourself is very important.
Both functions gain some measure of direction from whatever judging functions they are hooked up to.
A lot of IPs will be shouting "But I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff too!" and indeed they do. Recall that IPs have Ji in the tertiary position, which is expressed frequently, often more than the auxillary.
As an aside, looking at the functions this way helped me understand a problem that used to bug me - why are ESFPs sociable? It confused me because they are not strong Fe users. Once I understood that Fe wasn't about social interaction so much as social necessity it became easier to understand its abscence from the ESFPs concious functions. Their socialability comes from Se and Fi. Se seeks experience, and Fi channels it towards things of social, moral or emotion significance. In other words, Fi guides Se towards people and all the stimulation thay can provide.
