How can she not believe in nature vs nurture?
OK, don't quote me on that one. I'll have to find the e-mail where she mentioned that (if I can), and it was a year ago. What I had asked was something like "do you believe in blank slate?", and then she said something about nature vs nurture, which I understood as a denial, but I'd have to see again how it went. I might have misunderstood blank slate, or assumed it was the same thing as not having any preference at birth; which was what she was saying sounded like to me (maybe it's much more than that), so my question may have been off from the start.
I am eager to understand everything you wrote here, but since I am a slow learner
give me some time to process and assimilate it. That abdication stuff sounds interesting.
Lack of better terms at te moment; I was trying to shorthand high wanted Control. Will Schutz used the term "abdicrat" for low eC with high wC (In APS, a "Supine in Control", which would likely be a sort of hyper-NF), but the Sanguine in Control also has high wC, though they're not really abdicrats in the same way, because the expressed Control is high. They swing back and forth, and you can even see evidences of this is SP temperament (PUM) and some SP type descriptions.
There's the mammalian side of us that harbors our animal instincts, then there is the advanced side of us that perhaps lies in the parietal lobe (I'm not very learned on the brain yet, but I know there is an older brain in the back and a newer brain up front). When I read Jung's PT about nursing a baby, and siblings being different yet cared for by the same mother, he definitely made it sound like he was a believer in biology and innate behavior for people developing their preferences.........More so than the environment. So I was a bit confused that Thompson arrived at more of an opinion that Jung was interested in how our conditioning promoted our preferences, unless that interest of his happened after PT was written, because my feeling was he was more of a nature over nurture kind of guy. But I'm no Jungian scholar by any means.
I had meant to add this quote to further clarify:
I asked:
"Are you suggesting type is not inborn like temperament?"
She replied:
Are you serious? I'm doing more than suggesting this. I'm shouting it from the rooftops. Type is a psychological orientation. It's the OUTCOME of our life choices, not their innate source.
Research shows definitively that infants have a temperament, [note: not "the four temperaments", but again, the generic one temperament of limbic reaction]
but they don't yet have a psychological orientation. You need experience to think about the past and plan for the future. These neurological connections are made on the basis of what actually happens to you and what options you have in your specific situation. Only part of this is a matter of inborn chemistry.
So while I was greatly helped by all of her correspondance (particularly with functions and archetypes); on this point, I'll stick with what we already believe about it being inborn. I don't know enough of Jung to know if her interpretation of him on that is right, but then I have not committed myself to Jung. I think Berens has the best model in blending functions with type, temperament and Interaction Styles (the latter two as dead ringers for Control and Inclusion), though Lenore does have some excellent points about Berens' concepts of the "processes", and making the Keirseyan groups the "core needs".
What we're looking for is the prime personality factors. Like primary colors, or prime numbers; those facets of personality that are basic and cannot be broken down or described by any other means other than themselves. Some of these words flung around could be described by the I/E/N/S/T/F/J/P descriptions, imo, like reactivity (j/p), adaptability (j/p), mood(t/f), sensory sensitivity(s/n), (and to draw from your FIRO model), Inclusion(?), Control(?) and Affection(f/t), etc.
That's really the sort of thinking I'm getting away from. Tying those behaviors to functions or type dichotimies. Like sensory sensibility is S/N. I guess the sensitive ones are S, and the N's aren't; unless they "use" S; perhaps in "shadow" mode or something. But that's just not true. Hence, undifferentiated function, and anyone can see, hear, smell, taste, react, adapt, etc.
This is why the functions are better understood as perspectives. Anyone can have a mood, but the Feeler might have that as his main perspective, while the Thinker goes by logic. They both use both, but it's the perspective that is different.
Also, I, C and A aren't themselves factors, but rather the three "areas of need", which are basically separate 2 dimensional matrices of expressed and wanted. So the primary factors would be eI, wI, eC, wC, etc. I believe they do correspond to I/E, and loosely, T/F and J/P.
I extracted the idea of them being primary from reading the APS manuals and picking up the common "needs" in the matrices. (Like Melancholies and Supines are both driven by fear of rejection and they both have in common low expressed behavior, so low e is likely driven by fear of rejection, which sounded like it could be a primary factor, and I was even able to connect them to Horney's coping strategies.
I could imagine this being reconstrued so that low e is simply a product of having a dominant internal function (i.e. "introversion"), so that's why I can't be too sure.
I don't think we need worry about the chicken/egg scenario because I think both Type theory and Temperament Theory are trying to say the same thing, or at least I see them being the same thing; that some basic personality traits are inherent in us as humans.
That's how I see it also.
Where they convolute and travel in the brain is another story. Animals, for example, would be basically be all S's. We've evolved the N ability. Depending on our environment, some preferences might be turned off or turned on, based upon internal and external conditioning. Humans are much more susceptible to conditioning than animals in this regard, and have many more choices. So, I might have been meant to be an Ni dom from birth, but if my environment resulted in being raised by wolves, then I might have very well become Se dom in that process.
Animals aren't S's, because they do not have any "Se" or "Si" cognitive
perspective. They do not "
prefer" any functions like we do. So their "sensory" skills are just natural, limbic and undifferentated, and functional perspective is from the frontal cortex and unique to humans.
I guess in dogs there is some differentiation in the limbic system; enough to give them enough of a combination of expressed and wanted behavior to form at least one matrix they can be grouped into the four temperaments in; but it's not as developed as us, with the cortical functions.
Even the Big 5 basically say the same thing Jung already pointed out/discovered. And even if we find other prime personality factors, they are all basically arguably important, and would be on the same level as the others already discovered.
What is interesting are those which remain undifferentiated or unconscious, that which causes them to remain so, and how our environment plays a roll in this. I disagree with Thompson (if I understood her correctly) that to individuate you must bridge the gap into the unconscious functions via dreams and subconscious work. I've heard that Jung, and I believe, that it is through healthy living that we can begin to, over our lifetime, encounter those scenarios such that we will become more intimate with our less-preferred functions and in that process eventually individuate, with ego being key for this process to occur. If the ego is unhealthy, and one remains stagnatically (haha made that up sorry) attached to his dominant preferences, then it is unlikely, no matter how much he dreams or ponders his dreams, to individuate.
What do you think?
Again; I'm slowly coming to understand more of Jung through her. She sees dreams and such as the vehicles the larger Self uses to get our attention. The Self (containing the unconscious) is the true center of the psyche, and the ego (the conscious area) falsely believes it is. That sounds like it makes sense.
Since differentiation is a process where we choose one thing and suppress the others (into the unsconscious), then individuation brings those things back out of the unconscious. We have come to call this process "developing the functions", and that was another thing Lenore pointed out a lot.
Oh!! Also, why do we always just say NF, NT, SJ, and SP? I think the archetypes of NJ (logicians), NP (mediators), ST (fixers), and SF (homemakers) are equally valid and valuable.
Keirsey got his temperaments from the ancient ones, and then traced them through Kretschmer's character styles, to the S/N division to the groups he identified.
I think all letter combinations have some merit. What you described would be called "mirror temperaments".
Keirsey's Mirror Temperaments
If you take those and divide them by I/E, and then pair the directive (ST/NJ and informative (NP/SF) ones together, you have the Interaction Styles. So they are basically represented in the "Multiple Models" of Berens.