Looking over all these posts, speculations, interactions, and guesses its hard to find anywhere to lay my input. I expected to find a lot more questions than fact based responses. Gods know why. I'm on a forum dedicated to MBTI after all. However in all of this, Ive yet to really see anyone just up and use a "personal" opinion sans the MBTI perspective. I guess you could say I'm honestly perturbed that I'm seeing virtually everyone allow themselves to be "classified" in such broad sweeping terms. Especially given that theoretically there are only sixteen confirmed "ways" to think according to this thing.
Please dont take this as I dont enjoy it here or take anything I say from a negative perspective. MBTI is a wonderful way to help us better understand ourselves, but am I the only one who finds that using the MBTI as a primary way to identify oneself a bit....odd?
My point being is that all of this feels personally impersonal to me. I see a bunch of people connecting one on one with each other, but its fueled with "my NF clashes with your NT" and "this INFP works well with my ENTJ".
There are only three official "ways" to be with respect to gender, but most of us have no problem identifying with one of them. We all classify each other and let ourselves to be classified in many ways: gender, marital status, sexual orientation, race, religion, occupation, age group . . . the list goes on. Some of these classifications are more helpful than others, in various contexts.
The utility of MBTI classification is just what you wrote: it helps us understand ourselves. You are also correct that anything worth understanding about each other can be understood independent of MBTI or any other classification scheme. For those familiar with the system, though, it can be a convenient shorthand, even when used with an exception or qualification. Yes, I can observe to a coworker that, "usually when we disagree, it's because I am focused on objective factors and asking what will work, while you are focused on personal factors and asking what everyone will prefer". Or, I can summarize this as an NT/NF disconnect. Either way, we can and should discuss further.
Many communications here are thus not MBTI perspectives instead of personal perspectives, they are personal perspectives conveyed using MBTI terminology. Yes, some people stereotype and get one-dimensional about it, and of course there is plenty of joking around, but serious, realistic comments predominate, at least on the threads I follow.
(Then again, as an INTJ, I do tend to prefer impersonal systems, even for people, so my perspective is biased.)