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Jung on Ni-doms: "y'all a bunch of crazies."

T

The Iron Giant

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Welcome. Looks like my inflammatory click-bait thread title worked. I kid because I love.

Jung's meticulous and dense description of Ni doms follows.



Focal point for my post:

Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life. But, since he tends to rely exclusively upon his vision, his moral effort becomes one-sided; he makes himself and his life symbolic, adapted, it is true, to the inner and eternal meaning of events, but unadapted to the actual present-day reality. Therewith he also deprives himself of any influence upon it, because he remains unintelligible. His language is not that which is commonly spoken -- it becomes too subjective. His argument lacks convincing reason. He can only confess or pronounce. His is the 'voice of one crying in the wilderness'.

To summarize, he says Ni-doms normally are not concerned with the moral implications of what they've drawn as a "mystical dreamer and seer," and when they are, they're generally too removed from the reality of the object cognitively to act on this. In other words, the Ni dom may come to understand the deep principles underlying reality but lacks the ability to connect these to real world events or express the importance of this understanding, so cannot act upon these practically. This would be, as far as I'm concerned, an example of how Jung saw Ni doms as the superstitious ones (crying in the wilderness... picture the disheveled guy holding a "the world is ending" sign), though I certainly see similar conclusions about detachment from the object in his text about Si doms. Both Si doms and Ni doms are acting upon an imagined reality due to the introverted attitude of their perception...

Disclaimer: Jung's focus was on the deeply troubled people who he saw in his practice, so his type descriptions are all about people who are varying levels of unhealthy. Still, I agree with Jung's assessment of Ni and Si, and think they are structurally valuable at levels Briggs-Myers' revisions don't address in Gifts Differing.

So, Ni-doms, can you give examples from your experience that reflects or contradicts Jung's analysis? Do you think you see things very deeply, but in ways that feel impossible to express, and maybe make no practical sense once they're out in the open?
 

hornet

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Well I'm no Ni dom, but I can relate to seeing underlying principles of "reality".
My attitude is that it isn't real and these visions are only potential lenses to view the world trough.
Sort of like switching the lenses on modern smart camera.
Getting different kinds of abilities for your camera.
I'm always quick to go back to the objective Se cause that is more real to me.
Having these visions let me see potential paths I could take if I wanted certain results.
I trust the vision enough to throw myself into the fray of action with that as the only guiding star.
If something goes wrong I can always improvise. ;)
 

iNtrovert

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To summarize, he says Ni-doms normally are not concerned with the moral implications of what they've drawn as a "mystical dreamer and seer," and when they are, they're generally too removed from the reality of the object cognitively to act on this. In other words, the Ni dom may come to understand the deep principles underlying reality but lacks the ability to connect these to real world events or express the importance of this understanding, so cannot act upon these practically. This would be, as far as I'm concerned, an example of how Jung saw Ni doms as the superstitious ones (crying in the wilderness... picture the disheveled guy holding a "the world is ending" sign), though I certainly see similar conclusions about detachment from the object in his text about Si doms. Both Si doms and Ni doms are acting upon an imagined reality due to the introverted attitude of their perception...

Disclaimer: Jung's focus was on the deeply troubled people who he saw in his practice, so his type descriptions are all about people who are varying levels of unhealthy. Still, I agree with Jung's assessment of Ni and Si, and think they are structurally valuable at levels Briggs-Myers' revisions don't address in Gifts Differing.

So, Ni-doms, can you give examples from your experience that reflects or contradicts Jung's analysis? Do you think you see things very deeply, but in ways that feel impossible to express, and maybe make no practical sense once they're out in the open?

I can relate to a cetain extent. It's like haveing a coclusion without a pratical explination. It's very annoying.The experiences I have had that would explain it are even difficult for me to articulate....
 

valaki

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So, Ni-doms, can you give examples from your experience that reflects or contradicts Jung's analysis? Do you think you see things very deeply, but in ways that feel impossible to express, and maybe make no practical sense once they're out in the open?

How is that different from Ti-doms?

I'm genuinely curious
 
T

The Iron Giant

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How is that different from Ti-doms?

I'm genuinely curious

I think that's outside the scope of this thread, but I could do one about the introverted thinking type too. My expectation would be that since Ti is a judging function and Ni a perceiving function, the challenge for an Ti dom would be in expressing the rationale for their choices. You know, the end result may appear the same from the outside... though I'd think it would be something of a different experience from within.

Damn, that's a cool question. I want to make that thread. I need to do some research first.
 

valaki

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I think that's outside the scope of this thread, but I could do one about the introverted thinking type too. My expectation would be that since Ti is a judging function and Ni a perceiving function, the challenge for an Ti dom would be in expressing the rationale for their choices. You know, the end result may appear the same from the outside... though I'd think it would be something of a different experience from within.

Damn, that's a cool question. I want to make that thread. I need to do some research first.

:) I'll be interested to see the thread. This has been intriguing for me for a while (Ni vs Ti)
 

iNtrovert

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I think that's outside the scope of this thread, but I could do one about the introverted thinking type too. My expectation would be that since Ti is a judging function and Ni a perceiving function, the challenge for an Ti dom would be in expressing the rationale for their choices. You know, the end result may appear the same from the outside... though I'd think it would be something of a different experience from within.

Damn, that's a cool question. I want to make that thread. I need to do some research first.
That sounds NiTi loopish....so cool you have to!! lol
 

Coriolis

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So, Ni-doms, can you give examples from your experience that reflects or contradicts Jung's analysis? Do you think you see things very deeply, but in ways that feel impossible to express, and maybe make no practical sense once they're out in the open?
Not so much. This is where the other functions come into play. I see plenty of things that, in raw form, would be hard to express, wouldn't make much sense to others if I tried, and may not be practical. Through application of Te, Fi, Se, however, they get vetted, organized, and translated into coherent form for external viewing. Those that are shown to be impractical or useless through this process generally don't see the light of day, though they linger somewhere in the background in case they become important later.

I think that's outside the scope of this thread, but I could do one about the introverted thinking type too. My expectation would be that since Ti is a judging function and Ni a perceiving function, the challenge for an Ti dom would be in expressing the rationale for their choices. You know, the end result may appear the same from the outside... though I'd think it would be something of a different experience from within.
The highlighted is often said about Ni-dom, though: that we can't explain what we claim "to just know". I suspect the challenge for Ti-dom is more along the lines of using Ne to see that there may be value/truth outside their own mental frameworks.
 

reckful

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To summarize, he says Ni-doms normally are not concerned with the moral implications of what they've drawn as a "mystical dreamer and seer," and when they are, they're generally too removed from the reality of the object cognitively to act on this. ...

Both I and (as Myers acknowledged) the vast majority of Jung scholars believe that Jung thought the auxiliary function would have the same attitude as the dominant function, not the opposite attitude, and you can (in case you're interested) read more about that in this PerC post and the posts it links to.

And Myers' idea that the introverts who tested J on the MBTI would be introverts with judging functions as their auxiliary (hence extraverted) function went hand in hand with her mistaken interpretation of Jung on the attitude of the auxiliary function.

Although Jung didn't exactly describe a separate J/P dimension of personality, he did make a strong distinction between the "rational types" (the J-doms) and the "irrational types" (the P-doms) and, if you read through Psychological Types looking for two-kinds-of-people-in-the-world descriptions that seem to line up reasonably well with the MBTI J/P dimension, you'll mostly find them in Jung's descriptions of the J-doms and P-doms. Jung said P-doms "find fulfilment in ... the flux of events" and are "attuned to the absolutely contingent," while J-doms seek to "coerce the untidiness and fortuitousness of life into a definite pattern." He said a J-dom tends to view a P-dom as "a hodge-podge of accidentals," while a P-dom "ripostes with an equally contemptuous opinion of his opposite number: he sees him as something only half alive, whose sole aim is to fasten the fetters of reason on everything living and strangle it with judgments."

So... the people who Jung considered "Ni-doms" were more likely people who would have tested IN_P on the MBTI than people who would have tested IN_J on the MBTI.

Disclaimer: Jung's focus was on the deeply troubled people who he saw in his practice, so his type descriptions are all about people who are varying levels of unhealthy.

One of the canards I periodically encounter in internet forum posts is the one that says that Jung's type descriptions in Chapter 10 of Psychological Types were extreme or "unhealthy" portraits that wouldn't much resemble typical people of the applicable type. And really, when you think about it, WTF sense would that have made? Jung spent most of Psychological Types talking about the things he saw as common to all introverts and all extraverts. Chapter 10 is the only place where he gave us anything like in-depth descriptions of his eight functions. Why on earth would he not have described what he viewed as the more or less typical characteristics of his types?

And he did. There's certainly some inconsistency among the portraits in terms of the ratio of the more ordinary stuff and the here's-what-happens-when-they-get-neurotic stuff. But his general approach in the eight type portraits is to first describe the more-or-less ordinary version of the type, which means what the type is like when the unconscious is supplying enough ordinary day-to-day "compensation" to prevent the person from becoming too "one-sided" — and then to go on to describe the neurotic version of the type that results if the unconscious functions are overly suppressed and end up wreaking more havoc.

In my experience, the notion that Chapter 10 only described extreme or psychologically disordered versions of the types is most often encountered in the posts of Jung defenders who don't want to own up to the fact that Jung actually got quite a bit wrong in coming up with his typological concepts — and who therefore brush off some of the more cartoonish stuff in Chapter 10 by saying, oh, well, you know, Chapter 10 isn't really about what the functions are like in normal people.

The Jung passage that such defenders most often point to is this one:

Jung said:
In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that these types occur at all frequently in such pure form in actual life. They are, as it were, only Galtonesque family portraits, which single out the common and therefore typical features, stressing them disproportionately, while the individual features are just as disproportionately effaced. Closer investigation shows with great regularity that, besides the most differentiated function, another, less differentiated function of secondary importance [— i.e., the auxiliary function —] is invariably present in consciousness and exerts a co-determining influence.

What Jung is saying in this passage is that his eight portraits are artifically "pure" portraits in the sense of leaving out the "individual features" that tend to distinguish, say, one Ni-dom from another Ni-dom —and, most notably, an Ni-dom with a T-aux from an Ni-dom with an F-aux. But when it comes to the characteristics that derive from Ni, and will therefore tend to found in all Ni-doms, Jung says that his portraits concentrate on "the common and therefore typical features" of the type. So it makes no sense to claim that the features Jung described as "common" and "typical" were features he thought would only show up in extreme or "unhealthy" cases.
 
T

The Iron Giant

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Not so much. This is where the other functions come into play. I see plenty of things that, in raw form, would be hard to express, wouldn't make much sense to others if I tried, and may not be practical. Through application of Te, Fi, Se, however, they get vetted, organized, and translated into coherent form for external viewing. Those that are shown to be impractical or useless through this process generally don't see the light of day, though they linger somewhere in the background in case they become important later.

The highlighted is often said about Ni-dom, though: that we can't explain what we claim "to just know". I suspect the challenge for Ti-dom is more along the lines of using Ne to see that there may be value/truth outside their own mental frameworks.

Great stuff. This is where I tripped myself up... I omitted the aux-function dynamic in drawing that divide. Between Ti-doms and Ni-doms then, we'd draw a distinction on where their perception is oriented, and how that presents to others. It becomes easier to explain when we grind it down further and are specific with what the aux function would be... I would expect people would be more interested to hear the differences between INTP and INTJ, then INFP and INFJ. I think it's fair to say the INxP's Pe means they're making judgments on the object or external world (through Ne or Se) while the INxJ's Pi is focused inward and would manifest more in a "between the lines" or "behind the scenes" kind of a way.

What do you think?

I'm working on conceiving a concrete example of an INTP and an INTJ addressing a common, real-world issue in different ways.
 
Last edited:
T

The Iron Giant

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What Jung is saying in this passage is that his eight portraits are artifically "pure" portraits in the sense of leaving out the "individual features" that tend to distinguish, say, one Ni-dom from another Ni-dom —and, most notably, an Ni-dom with a T-aux from an Ni-dom with an F-aux. But when it comes to the characteristics that derive from Ni, and will therefore tend to found in all Ni-doms, Jung says that his portraits concentrate on "the common and therefore typical features" of the type. So it makes no sense to claim that the features Jung described as "common" and "typical" were features he thought would only show up in extreme or "unhealthy" cases.

That was a great post, thanks for this. I'm inclined to agree. I often find myself, when talking about Jung, sliding backward and sideways into other people's Internet interpretations of what I've read in the Psychological Types text.

I'll add to those who are interested that one of the purposes behind Socionics is to better represent Jung's concepts into a more modular system along the lines of MBTI, correcting for those misinterpretations (of Jung's ideas) in terms of function attitude that the Instrument introduced.
 

Mal12345

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Great stuff. This is where I tripped myself up... I omitted the aux-function dynamic in drawing that divide. Between Ti-doms and Ni-doms then, we'd draw a distinction on where their perception is oriented, and how that presents to others. It becomes easier to explain when we grind it down further and are specific with what the aux function would be... I would expect people would be more interested to hear the differences between INTP and INTJ, then INFP and INFJ. I think it's fair to say the INxP's Pe means they're making judgments on the object or external world (through Ne or Se) while the INxJ's Pe is focused inward and would manifest more in a "between the lines" or "behind the scenes" kind of a way.

What do you think?

I'm working on conceiving a concrete example of an INTP and an INTJ addressing a common, real-world issue in different ways.

I'm a concrete example, assuming you're not literally talking about concrete here.
 

chubber

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To summarize, he says Ni-doms normally are not concerned with the moral implications of what they've drawn as a "mystical dreamer and seer," and when they are, they're generally too removed from the reality of the object cognitively to act on this. In other words, the Ni dom may come to understand the deep principles underlying reality but lacks the ability to connect these to real world events or express the importance of this understanding, so cannot act upon these practically. This would be, as far as I'm concerned, an example of how Jung saw Ni doms as the superstitious ones (crying in the wilderness... picture the disheveled guy holding a "the world is ending" sign), though I certainly see similar conclusions about detachment from the object in his text about Si doms. Both Si doms and Ni doms are acting upon an imagined reality due to the introverted attitude of their perception...

Disclaimer: Jung's focus was on the deeply troubled people who he saw in his practice, so his type descriptions are all about people who are varying levels of unhealthy. Still, I agree with Jung's assessment of Ni and Si, and think they are structurally valuable at levels Briggs-Myers' revisions don't address in Gifts Differing.

So, Ni-doms, can you give examples from your experience that reflects or contradicts Jung's analysis? Do you think you see things very deeply, but in ways that feel impossible to express, and maybe make no practical sense once they're out in the open?
:thinking:

I feel like I relate to the mystical dreamer and seer as also the fantastical crank and artist. When I am in a conversation, I usually fade out and try to track my thoughts in parallel to see if I can predict where the end would be. Sometimes with a disastrous outcome, because it offshoots without any concrete reality checks. I like to delve into deep thought most of the time. Hmmm part of it, is to slice a potato as thin as possible to see if the next slice is where you thought it would be in size and shape. Hunting for contradictions.

As for the specifics about this part:
Jung said:
Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life. But, since he tends to rely exclusively upon his vision, his moral effort becomes one-sided; he makes himself and his life symbolic, adapted, it is true, to the inner and eternal meaning of events, but unadapted to the actual present-day reality. Therewith he also deprives himself of any influence upon it, because he remains unintelligible. His language is not that which is commonly spoken -- it becomes too subjective. His argument lacks convincing reason. He can only confess or pronounce. His is the 'voice of one crying in the wilderness'.
I think this happens when information was presented as a negative and no alternative was presented at the time as the absolute. Leaving his mind to fill in the blanks. Happened to me as I entered high school.

Great stuff. This is where I tripped myself up... I omitted the aux-function dynamic in drawing that divide. Between Ti-doms and Ni-doms then, we'd draw a distinction on where their perception is oriented, and how that presents to others. It becomes easier to explain when we grind it down further and are specific with what the aux function would be... I would expect people would be more interested to hear the differences between INTP and INTJ, then INFP and INFJ. I think it's fair to say the INxP's Pe means they're making judgments on the object or external world (through Ne or Se) while the INxJ's Pe is focused inward and would manifest more in a "between the lines" or "behind the scenes" kind of a way.

What do you think?

I'm working on conceiving a concrete example of an INTP and an INTJ addressing a common, real-world issue in different ways.

Isn't that Pe actually Pi?
 

Mal12345

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In reality, Ni-dom and Ti-dom debating a concrete topic look very, very different.

Ni-dom makes a bizarre claim.
Ti-dom knocks it down logically.
Ni-dom doesn't see his or her claim as "bizarre," but sees logic as a less important than 'reality.'
Ti-dom gets annoyed and starts badgering Ni-dom.
 

Mal12345

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Ti reaction to Ni picture:

Ni - "The myths are an storehouse of infinite knowledge. They speak of the Midgard Serpent lying at the bottom of the see. He encircles the globe and when he moved great earth trembles cause terrible convulsions. Most believe this is just a tale, but the ancient knew of his existence at the bottom of the oceans. Now, with modern technology, we can see for ourselves that the Myths were true--he does exist. But how did primitive Norsemen know of this great belt of fissions at the bottom of the oceans? Perhaps they were not primitive as most people think they were? Did they have knowledge passed down to them from thousands of years earlier, in a time when their ancestors had built an advance civilization, more advance than ours' today? But when it collapsed, their knowledge were encoded in Myths passed down from generation to generation? Take a look at the maps once more and think about it."
72939_528476090528095_54038079_n.jpg


Ti - "It is funny and might be an interpretation of the myth into modern cosmology we can use today, but the thing about “advance civilization, more advance than ours' today” are at best silly and a little insulting to our ancestors, who did amazing things with the technology available to them. Notice that the map is manipulated. The ridges at the west coast of Greenland are very small and not active anymore and in the pacific there is no ridge along the Californian coast and along Aleutian Islands. If they decided to take island arcs at destructive plate boundaries, then there are plenty of more places that need to be included in the serpent.
 

Mal12345

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My own response to this: Someone is taking this picture seriously enough to analyze? LOL.
 

Mal12345

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For me, as a Ti-dom (INTP or INTj, depending on which theory you masturbate to), a response would depend on the context. I consider my audience. With an Ni-dom, especially one who has a sense of humor, I would deflect the whole thing into the realm of levity - because that's where it logically belongs, and because I like getting along with my Ni friends who amuse me with their antics
 

valaki

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Ti reaction to Ni picture

My reaction... Wtf, such biased illogical thinking full of baseless assumptions and logical jumps.

Sure you could imagine it as a possibility but exactly just how unlikely it would be?

I will give you a more plausible alternative, say the Norsemen just tried to explain some local earthquake with this myth. It's easy to see that the source of an earthquake is somewhere "below". Not hard to make up a myth like that one from that.

Also, a serpent-like drawing on a map of the globe isn't a serpent. It's simply a serpent-shaped drawing, no more no less.

PS: I didn't know that the serpent wasn't even drawn right if destructive plate boundaries are all taken into account, though it may not be too relevant, could be dismissed as just nitpicking...
 

Mal12345

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My reaction... Wtf, such biased illogical thinking full of baseless assumptions and logical jumps.

Sure you could imagine it as a possibility

That's the point: imagination!

but exactly just how unlikely it would be?

I will give you a more plausible alternative, say the Norsemen just tried to explain some local earthquake with this myth. It's easy to see that the source of an earthquake is somewhere "below". Not hard to make up a myth like that one from that.

Also, a serpent-like drawing on a map of the globe isn't a serpent. It's simply a serpent-shaped drawing, no more no less.

PS: I didn't know that the serpent wasn't even drawn right if destructive plate boundaries are all taken into account, though it may not be too relevant, could be dismissed as just nitpicking...

If you can't understand it, then I can't explain it!
 
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