Thank you for bringing folk 'typology' to the attention of the forum, hopefully more of our thoughtful members shall become aware of my contention. Please see my discussion with simulatedworld in the post below for a clarification regarding the term definition of 'folk typology'.
http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/1065694-post51.html
To dispell further confusions and complications inflicted upon the term by gossipers and propagandists, I'll render the definition clear and simple one more time. Folk typology is a method of drawing inferences about people or human nature that has no grounding in rational thought or authoritative research. In most cases, people who indulge in a superficial, unempirical, behavioristic study of the subject are branded folk typologists. Simulatedworld once asked if that is the definition of folk typology and the answer was a definitive 'no'. A folk typologist could be an occultist who believes that his tarrot card games lead to important insights about people. Although many folk typologists of this site have a strong behavioristic thrust, there is no reason to conclude that anyone who abuses the enterprise is a behaviorist.
I'll discuss the conceptual background in which the mordacious 'folk typology' epithet has emerged. Hopefully this will bring clarity to my method of doing typology.
Typology can be used interchangeably with personality theory; it is the activity of discovering character features of people and underlining how they differ from the fundamental traits of other individuals. On that note, similarly to MBTI, OCEAN AND Enneagram are typological systems.
However, many interpretations and applications of many personality series do not meet the standard of rigorous scientific inquiry or even less critical conceptual scrutiny. Modern psychologists who are working in the personality theory typically provide a great deal of empirical support for their conclusions. They actively perform experiments that involve observations of many people from different cultural and social backgrounds. When they make a conjecture about a person's nature, they do not merely assume that because he or she engaged in a certain behavior, it follows that this person's core personality qualities compel them to behave in a way that they do. They are cognizant of the fact that the behavior could have been caused by a variety of circumstancial influences such as for example their social obligations, personal idiosyncrasies and so on. For this reason, the claim that carefully controlled empirical studies are necessary in order to corroborate conclusions about the nature of persons is regarded as a truism.
Many online expositions regarding MBTI and other personality theories lack such support and do not cite any research where the relevant empirical inquiry has been done. As a student of philosophy with no experience in scientific research, I found it impossible to contribute to the study of personality and was thereby confronted with a task of reconstructing typology to the end of creating a system that allows one to make insights into human nature without requiring empirical support.
The only way this goal could be accomplished is by removing typology from the study of persons. Essentially, the enterprise deals not with the qualities that people have, but rather with their cognitive tendencies. I do not need to study thousands of introverts to claim that they have a tendency to be overwhelmed by excessive interaction than extroverts. Similarly, I do not need to study thousands of intuitives to conclude that their minds are more easily stimulate to exercise imagination than that of sensors. However, I would indeed need to study hundreds if not thousands of people to determine how exactly they will behave in one particular situation or in order to determine the nature of some other qualities that are fundamental to their personality. For example, arm-chair reasoning could never tell me how likely a person is to be a criminal, an athlete, a college professor and so on. In effect, my reconstructed study of typology included a step away from personality theory and a step towards an inquiry into mere cognitive tendencies of people. The former does not purport to have deep insights into the nature of persons, yet the latter does and that is the salient distinction between my work on the subject and that of folk typologists. Although numerous legitimate and empirically supportable studies on personality theory have been performed, most forum members are unenlightened by the insights such studies have led to.
A conclusion on personality theory can be justified in one of the following two fashions.
1. Supported by the requisite empirical research.
2. Couched within the context of a study of cognitive tendencies or other phenomena that do not require empirical support.
Hopefully the explanation above has helped.
OK, thanks for responding.
I just wanted to start by trying to clarify this distinction between "Typology" and "Personality Theory". I would have thought personality theory would simply be a broader term for any theory dealing with personality, including type, temperament, mainstream psychologcal concepts of personality, etc. You're saying they are interchangeable, but then you mention removing typology from the "study of persons" such as studying people by MBTI preference. So is that what you mean by "personality theory"? Typology, on the other hand; or at least your version of it, you seem to associate with the cognitive aspects.
So the four letter MBTI code is "Personality Theory" and cognitive processes are "Typology". (I guess you're speaking of "
Jungian type").
In the context of the discussion that you seem to have in mind, the reference was made neither to Beebe himself or other eminent authors cited in your post. The 'Beebean Eight-function model' is commonly given the following folk typological interpretation. We have four functions that are our primary functions and the remaining four follow the exact sequence of the first four, however, their attitude changes. In other words, if they were introverted in the first group, they shall become extroverted in the second and vice versa. For example.
Ni
Te
Fi
Se
Ne
Ti
Fe
Si
Many followers of Beebe such as Lenor Thomson for example chose not to endorse that model and it is a mistake to suggest that every Neo-Bebean is a folk typologist.
Actually, Lenore has pretty much added discussion of Beebe's order to her teaching since writing her book (even moving away from her lasagna order and ship analogy); though she does not agree with everything about his theory. She for one, does not believe the shadow archetypes come up every day, as some of us following the "Neo-Beebeans" often describe them.
John Beebe Archetypes | Lenore Thomson Bentz
The caustic reference targeted only those who dogmatically adhered to the thesis that functions must proceed in that exact order. The assertion that they do follow the sequence listed above is not in itself problematic, but the dogmatic assertion that no other pattern is possible honors the 'folk' methodology that is most commonly seen in religious ideologies and spiritual mysticism.
I guess that would mean people, such as those who misinterpret Nardi's test, and ask why their functions don't come out in that order. I even once thought they were supposed to, but then realized that the order is about the
archetypal roles at the heart of Beebe's model, and not about relative strengths. Beebe, of course, took about seven of Jung's archetypes (four of them consisting of male/female versions, and a fifth being separate respective male and female archetypes combined into the same role), and added two of his own to fill in the eight.
Hence, people who will argue over another's type, because they "use" a particular function "too much" that lies in the "shadow" of the type they are professing. This is what I had experienced, and also saw earlier on in the Mistyped Members thread. And it really makes it hard to find a best fit type.
It makes sense that some of the "other" functions might be stronger than the tertiary and especially inferior (though they are considered "ego-syntonic"); which is the basis of Lenore's lasagna/ship model, and also the similar Socionics order.
I see no reason why we must continue using these 'general layman's terms' when instead of saying that a person's type causes him to have a certain characteristic, we could say that at best it develops a tendency to develop the personality feature in question. For example, instead of asserting that Fe makes one display emotion, we should maintain that Fe is merely a tendency to activate one's emotive faculties in response to external stimulation rather than internal. As a result, in the context of the Western culture, people of this type are often inclined to develop personality features associated with being highly emotionally expressive.
Yeah; that's the best way to consider it, even though we forget when we get hung up in focusing on the outward behaviors themselves.
I am not suggesting that the entire enterprise of drawing connections between Jungian type and personality theory should be abandoned, but rather that typological entities should be interpreted as cognitive tendencies rather than ineradicable behavioral habits.
Embracing this method will help us avoid many conceptual confusions and misapplications of the system that unduly place people into vaguely defined arbitrary categories. For conceptual confusions resultant of folk typology, please see my essay on typology as a philosophical discipline.
http://www.typologycentral.com/foru.../23728-typology-philosophical-discipline.html
To me, what I had in mind reagarding "folk typology" was stuff such as this:
(Fe users would struggle to write a letter to ask Santa for what they want)
Fi, after all, is the one dealing with "
knowing what we want for ourselves", as you can see in Berens' literature (Which I first turned to in trying to understand the functions).
This is also actually one of the questions on Nardi's test, which I believes raises Fi scores way high. Most people probably put "exactly me". My wife did, and she's obviously Fe dom, and it made her come out as an ISFP (with high Fe) even though she's obviously E and J. So this is a blatant Forer effect that this site defines cognitive preference with.
The end result is that Fi becomes associated with
"self-involved" behavior, while Fe is more "selfless". This also seems to point that way:
Beebe On Fi
(Beebe "wonders" if Anxiety might altogether be a form of Fi; symptoms of integrity issues include depression and anxiety).
So according to this, do only FP's become depressed or anxious, because Fi is the one that deals with "integrity"? (which BTW, is also associated as the NF
temperament need, and that would include both Fi and Fe types). Or if FJ's and TP's do become depressed and anxious, are they in "shadow mode", and TJ's in "child/anima" mode, while FP's are in their normal mode?
These were the types of things that made it hard to figure, as it was now impossible to tell what was what. And this influential version of the theory also seems to be heavily tied to the kind of statements people made, which you dubbed "folk" typology.
>The other person who references Beebe's model is Lenore Thomson, and she has her own semi-archetype system, with a different order, based on a ship crew analogy. She also aims to clarify Beebe's model, and point it back to its Jungian moorings
The Jungian underpinnings of Thomson's system safeguards her work from the charge of folk typology.
The question of how certain features of a person's brain influence him to engage in a specific set of behaviors is much more complicated than Thomson seems to believe. For one, it is not a scientific discovery that all behaviors that are linear and sequential have been inspired by the left hemisphere only and likewise, there is no scientific support for the assertion that all non-sequential behaviors where we tackle all things at once are supported by the right-hemisphere. Contemporary researchers are inclined to claim that both hemisphere are in an intimate partnership, to the point where it is difficult to claim that a certain faculty is right-brained or left brained only. For that reason, I doubt that this move will allow Mrs. Thomson to procure the support of neuroscientists and other researchers working in the study of the brain.
Her claim is based on reasearch done with PET scanning, which causes glucose to be emitted, which the researchers can measure to tell which side of the brain is working hardest when functions are being used.
This now reminds me of creation-evolution debates, where the two sides will both claim to have research that proves their view, while the other side does not. So I don't know anything about the research, or which studies are more valid. Perhaps the PET scanning is something that does not yet have enough accepted evidence, or something like that, but maybe one day will?
Furthermore, her assertion that Introverted Judging functions and right brained and that introverted perceiving faculties are left brained contravenes the Jungian principles that she has implicitly endorsed throughout her work. Unlike Keirsey, she did acknowledge the existence of functions and regarding the former as judging functions and the latter as perceiving. Predictably, she deemed extroverted judging functions as left brained and extroverted perceiving as right-brained because the former seemed to lead to sequential behaviors and the latter, respectively to non-sequential. She thereby identified judgment with left-brained activity and perception with right-brained. With this conceptual framework, it is impossible for her to assert that introverted judging faculties are right-brained and introverted perceiving functions are left-brained.
So you're saying that Ji=right/Pi=left contradicts T,F="J"=left/S,N="P"=right?
I don't see that as a contradiction at all, though I can see where you might think it is when looking at the four functions as whole concepts apart from the i/e orientation.
I believe it jibes with the fact that J/P would be deemed a standalone factor in its own right in the first place. J/P refers to the
extraversion of the preferred function, so even though T/F are "Judging" functions; they are not necessarily "J" in that sense; only if they're externally based. So while there is really one Thinking function, and one Feeling function, whether the person prefers it internally or externally will depend on his brain orientation.
I am apt to suspect that this is where Thomson's theory has been infected with a germ of Keirsey's typology who opined that Judgers or people whose strongest judging faculty is extroverted are generally sequential as well as organized and people whose prevalent extroverted function is a perceiving one are non-sequential as well as disorganized. Thomson's attempts to align her work with science achieved an outcome that was virtually the opposite of the one intended: she rendered her typology more remiscent of Keirsey than that of researchers who are committed to incorporating empirical methodology and discoveries into typological inquiry.
I do believe that Thomson is not a folk typologist, but not for the reason that you've suggested.
So that raises the issue of temperament. I take it you would categorize that as "personality theory" as well. I notice that you do not mention temperament (at least as far as I can remember). That too, of course is not from Jung. Keirsey basically took the ancient temperaments, traced them down through various theorists such as Kretschmer, and then determined the MBTI groups they fit with. Then, you have the Interaction Styles, which stem from the same temperaments, but trace down to another set of groupings. I believe this results in basically a "blended-temperament" system, like you would find used by Tim LaHaye and others, with one set of temperaments dealing with "social" skills, and the other as "leadership" skills, and each of the 16 types being a combination of both.
This does seem to be accurate from what I see. But of course, temperament is often called "behavioral", and thus contrasted with Jung's cognitive theory. (It's also called "affective"; though according to Berens, only Interaction Style is affective, while the Keirsey temperaments are "conative").
Lenore even rejects temperament for that reason. She doesn't seem to mention it in her book, but in other places does openly disagree with it; seeing it as tied more to stereotype, such as what you're addressing.
I tend to see all three models (conative, affective, cognitive) as just looking at the same things from different perspectives.
Like I even suggested to her in an email conversation, the ancient "Melancholic" temperament was defined by being introverted [not yet tied to any cognitive functions of course] and task-focused. (to Galen, it was "cold" and "dry"). In the version of temperament theory I represent (based on FIRO), this means that they do not readily approach people for interactions, and do not want to be approached by others. Now in the conative area (leadership), it would mean that they do not want to control others, and do not want to be controlled by others either. So what does the person trust for in his decision making? He relies on an internal sensory storehouse of data. Hence Hence, he will cognitively prefer "introverted Sensing" and bear an S and a J in his type code. Keirsey said this was a kind of Melancholic, but called it "Epimethean", and later, "Guardian". Depending on internal sensation will lead him to be both "cooperative" (slower to pragmatically initiate action that affects others) and "structure-focused" (trust systems and not more personal things such as motives); which are the original factors translated into the conative model.
You could lodge this criticism against the Myerrs-Briggs system that has been popularized on countless personality theory blogs and the one that underpins only MBTI tests. However, I am not certain if the same characterization applies to all personality systems that bear the name of 'MBTI'.
Well; "MBTI" really refers to the official instrument based on the original work of Myers and Briggs. All those others are basically copycats, and really cannot legally use the term MBTI; but only the type code and functions. Many will realize that most of those blogosphere "quizzes" are not really worth much of anything (such as the ones on Facebook, as have recently been discussed). Other tests using the types vary in reliability.
I was wondering if you believed the original work of Myers and Briggs itself was folk typology.
Appreciate the complexity of personality and its relationships with circumstancial variables. In other words, be humble to the fact that empirical investigation and a careful conceptual analysis of acquired data is necessary in order to appropriately comment on the nature of persons.
OK; that I aim to do. I basically learn this stuff by trying out different ways of looking at it, and seeing which runs into the least amount of assumption. It's just easy to fall into short, quick descriptions that are made to try to simplify it, but then end up negating the complexity of personality
Another viable option involves retiring from the study of personality theory and focusing on an evaluation of cognitive tendencies which are much less complex than the study of persons.
Meaning to focus on the cognitive processes rather than the other models (temperaments, type letters, etc)?
Although I share most of Jung's methodological assumptions and characterizations of the cognitive faculties that he has discovered, I've prounded ideas that are not to be found in Psychological Types. Furthermore, I am open to questioning his methodology.
OK, thanks again!