Oh, and the real $40 million question:
- If, for example, an INTJ believes he uses both Ti and Ne in relative abundance (as in, equal to or greater than his tertiary function), then what of the relationship(s) between Ni and Ti and Ne and Te...
- Also, necessarily unhealthy and unproductive? Or potentially healthy and productive?
This is where it gets funky.
I'm still fairly sure that I use Ne with Fi and Ti, not Ni. It comes out, however, as "TiNe" and "FiNe", not "NeTi" or "NeFi". With Fi > Ne, for example, it isn't that I see patterns in the world and the patterns make me feel. Rather, I feel, and the feelings generate patterns, that I then express to the world. E.g., I play improv piano. Similarly, with Ti > Ne, Ti logically puts things together, and then Ne expresses it, but the expression is seemingly random: it touches on logically true statements in the internal Ti construct, but not in any particular order, but in an associative, pattern-matching kind of way. When I am
figuring out logic, I'm in a mode where it becomes difficult to say what I think with any clarity: it all makes sense, but my statements are random. I have to change gears (to NiTe presumably) to order my thoughts in a coherent way that is understandable to others.
To compare with NiTe, Ni randomly matches patterns and finds something useful, then Te objectifies it, organizes it, edits out some Ni nonsense, and then proceeds to state the Ni-based truths with remarkable clarity.
In each of the cases of FiNe, TiNe, and NiTe, the energy flow is from inside to outside oneself.
To compare with NeTi, Ne sees external patterns and Ti parses through them and gradually makes logical sense of them. Similarly, for NeFi, Ne takes external patterns and Fi processes them in its own unique way.
For completeness, the case of TeNi, Te takes external logical arrangements and Ni stores them as patterns for future reference.
In these cases, the energy flow is from outside to inside.
For all individuals using any of these function pairs, the energy flows in
both directions, but the
predominant flow is based on one's extroversion/introversion.
Of course, people's opinions on this differ, mostly because some people regard the MBTI as more or less immutable, that one uses one perceiving and one judging function predominantly, and that usage precludes using the others with much facility. I think that such views contradict what we see in real life. Not only is it often difficult to classify an individual as any one particular type, it is also the case that as people get older, they generally become more adept at various cognitive skills and become increasingly difficult to type. Given the hypothesis that, for example, the INTJ just learns to use Ni/Te really well to emulate the other functions, and the alternative hypothesis that the INTJ gradually learns to use the other functions, I find the latter to be more credible and more in line with Jung's thinking.
I would agree, however, that for a single thought process, the process would either be NiTe or TiNe, for example, but not both simultaneously. For an individual, thought processes might be 90% NiTe, and thus one is an INTJ, but that does not preclude the other 10% being NeTi. I believe that it is a gross error to assert that Jungian functions (and by derivation, MBTI) are binary, black-and-white affairs, and not continuous shades of gray from one polarity to the other.
