My recommendation comes not from some disgusted, knee-jerk dissatisfaction with MBTI, but from having studied a few different systems and formulated my own worldview that hazily incorporate pieces of them. In this one particular case, an explanation from Socionics might have something to offer--"Se as role function" was especially poignant to me. But, believe you me, I know that Socionics has its own terrible problems.
This is exactly how I view things (which is part of what drove that "Bonus challenge" thread). However, we need to have some common terminology or understanding to even be able to have a meaningful discussion in the first place.
So, we've got our own personal "truths," part of which we have to compromise in order to be able to bring to the surface and share with others. Ah, well.
You're right of course.
When I first came in contact with mbti or even earlier when I read Jung, I thought that categorizing and typing people is ridicoulus and impossible. I still think that. What I was intrested in back then was the concept of Intuition. Everything else the theory presented was not too new for me, but the concept of intuition really was a missing piece to my puzzle and it made a lot of pictures clearer for the first time. At least it was a relief to me so I would knew that I am not crazy.
I lately had an introspective insight about myself. Those things are rare with me so I value em. I've before mbti always identified myself with people who left an impression with me. I did that via saying "I am totally like that guy". I even got in troubles with that later cause I found two guys hilarious, yet they contradicted each other with the things they said. I tho was very much sucked up in the process of not being me but trieing to be somebody else.
Then came mbti and after 2-3 years now, I have to say there happened another bad thing. Mbti taught me to see that basically everybody is different. Nowadays I am for example looking at my boss, thinking he's an estj and then I think with my type I'll never get into a position like his. I've totally lost it to evaluate the system on a communal level rather than on an individual level. Meaning everybody who is capable of doing the work and working his way up will get like the past does tell us, at time into the position of my boss. This has nothing to do with what kind of individual my boss is not at all.
It's a topic that is difficult to explain for me, I am an engineer, I have no clue about psychology. I know that mbti has given me something and I value that, still I will not try to relay everything that happens between humans into this system, to find any explanation. I'll try to make my own interpretation and call that my explanation. Of course this will be wrong most times but that is what makes one human.
I really like the idea of mbti being an instrument of communication and one that brings you close to other perspectives to view the world, but this has its limits. I think at one point you have to say goodbye mbti system, I'll now start to think on my own, using the ideas you gave me. If you dont do that, but instead try to relay everything forever into the system, you are living in a fantasy world. And what's even worse, you are categorizing every human being and fileing them in your cabinet and I am afraid that attitude, tho I am way outa line here, can lead you eventually worst case to become incapable of becoming close with anyone ever again.