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Deficits

heart

heart on fire
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
I have a thought that function deficits attract many people to MBTI in a desire to understand because of the difficulties they face in dealing with life under their own deficits.

And when we have these deficits, we tend to view that function we lack comfort with in a negative light. I see in others here and in myself as well. Many thinkers feeling very negative about feeling, N's feeling negative about sensing and vice-versa on all accounts.


I do think that people who either have an unbalance in one of their congitive function aspects or have had to deal closely with others who had them are very attracted to MBTI.

For myself, I feel that I have very little Se or Fe and the being balanced away from these functions created/creates friction in my life that I've had trouble understanding and MBTI has helped me understand why better, but I still do get negative about the functions themselves without always realizing why the negativity is there.

I see many of the other types negative about other cognitive functions, threatened by them, perplexed by them.

I don't know what my point is in posting this aside from wanting to discuss the apsect of being balanced too far in favor of some cognitive functions might make a person more attracted to type theory in order to understand their difficulties in life and that might highly affect the mix of people on a board like this and would also create the different kinds of conflict seen.

It just seems like a topic that ought to be discussed. :cheese:
 

Geoff

Lallygag Moderator
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
5,584
MBTI Type
INXP
I think people are also attracted to MBTI to allow those weaker functions to be an excuse. It validates laziness in a P and so on.

It's the "I have poor Fi/Fe and MBTI therefore explains why I dont need to care about how people react to me" validations that worry me. That's just an example, pretty much any function in its absence is an excuse for poor behaviour.
 

heart

heart on fire
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
I think people are also attracted to MBTI to allow those weaker functions to be an excuse. It validates laziness in a P and so on.

It's the "I have poor Fi/Fe and MBTI therefore explains why I dont need to care about how people react to me" validations that worry me. That's just an example, pretty much any function in its absence is an excuse for poor behaviour.

A person could have difficulty changing or even seeing it in themselves and still care about what was happening with other people.
 

INTJMom

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 28, 2007
Messages
5,413
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w4
I think people are also attracted to MBTI to allow those weaker functions to be an excuse. It validates laziness in a P and so on.

It's the "I have poor Fi/Fe and MBTI therefore explains why I dont need to care about how people react to me" validations that worry me. That's just an example, pretty much any function in its absence is an excuse for poor behaviour.
I was attracted to MBTT because it helped me understand why I was the way I was,
but I try not to use my type as an excuse for bad behavior.
I also wanted to understand my children better so that I could be a better mother to them.
I needed help understanding why they were behaving in certain ways,
and I learned to appreciate the ways they were different from
the way I wanted them to be or thought they "should" be.
 

Simplexity

New member
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
1,741
MBTI Type
INTP
Not to take the cocky route but I think I was more attracted to MBTI because of how it made me view how some of the natural traits I have could be considered skills. Before Knowledge of personality types I always had the notion that some of my greatest skills were deficits because they always seemed to cause some sort of conflict, or at least seemed fundamentally different to those I interacted with on a daily basis.

While I did obviously lack skills in certain areas I didn't necessarily view that as a draw to MBTI, those were things I already realized and was in the process of painfully changing. To me it was more akin to redistributing and refocusing my skills to better effect. I'm not much of an enthusiast for remediation or over-compensation( to a certain extent) so I believed that by better understanding my main strengths or dominant functions I could lead a more fulfilling life. It seemed like earlier on I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and I could only have consistent energy to do things if I had a passion or comfort level with them. MBTI was sort of a guide that allowed me to realize how I could "change" aspects of myself to better accentuate my preferred functions, which ultimately is what allows me to be productive and happy.
 

Venom

Babylon Candle
Joined
Feb 10, 2008
Messages
2,126
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
1w9
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I would definitely say that the theory of functions has done the most for me. Regardless of types, the ability to define functions makes it easier to actively try and improve in weak areas. If one can't define the goal, its pretty hard to achieve the goal. For instance, I am terrible at Fe. however, I now have an idea of what good Fe might one day look like if I ever need to deploy it.
 
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