SolitaryWalker
Tenured roisterer
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 3,504
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
In my previous thread on how "not to do typology", I outlined several core beliefs that lead people to arrive at radically false conclusions about typology. One of the most fundamental of such beliefs was the premise that if a person displays a certain behavior, they must belong to a particular type. Although this is clearly an important reason why people often believe in absurd notions about typology, it may not be the most fundamental one. The cardinal notion of folk typology is anthropomorphism or the assertion that a person is a certain type. The key implication of typological anthropomorphisms is that if a person belongs to a certain type, he is extremely unlikely to display behaviors that are associated with another type.
For example, if a person is an intuitive type, it stands to reason that they are not a sensor and therefore lack all deficiencies that are associated with the sensing type. Another common example of a typological anthropomorphism is the association of the person's identity with their principal cognitive function. In light of this observation, it is often claimed that "Fi" is sensitive by definition, "Ti" is sharp or the "Fe person" is gracious.
As anyone who read Jung's psychological types is well-aware, there is no such thing as a "pure type" and Jung himself claimed that a person who is completely Introverted can be found only in a madhouse. Throughout his descriptions of types, Jung referred to the behaviors of the person who possesses certain dominant functions, but he never equated the identity of the described person with the function itself.
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I invite all of you to cite instances of typological anthropomorphism and explain how and why such utterances speedily degenerated into absurdities. To protect the guilty, do not reveal the identity of the authors whose posts you will cite here.
For example, if a person is an intuitive type, it stands to reason that they are not a sensor and therefore lack all deficiencies that are associated with the sensing type. Another common example of a typological anthropomorphism is the association of the person's identity with their principal cognitive function. In light of this observation, it is often claimed that "Fi" is sensitive by definition, "Ti" is sharp or the "Fe person" is gracious.
As anyone who read Jung's psychological types is well-aware, there is no such thing as a "pure type" and Jung himself claimed that a person who is completely Introverted can be found only in a madhouse. Throughout his descriptions of types, Jung referred to the behaviors of the person who possesses certain dominant functions, but he never equated the identity of the described person with the function itself.
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I invite all of you to cite instances of typological anthropomorphism and explain how and why such utterances speedily degenerated into absurdities. To protect the guilty, do not reveal the identity of the authors whose posts you will cite here.