Sim is spot on on this!
His basis of speaking against "using" fuctions is that functions are perspectives or "world-views". the example he used that made it click for me was that instead of "using Te" to organize a desk, you see he desk through the lens of Te, which then seeks to create maximum external efficiency.
From here, I saw how this works with the archetype theory, and extended it as such:
If the person has Te as the "hero" function (ETJ), then organizing the desk might be his way of "saving the day". If it's "parent" (ITJ), organizing the desk might tend to come out more in the form of instructing the other person who left it messy. If Te is child or inferior (FP's), the act of straightening the table may be more like a good deed, done innocently, perhaps to win approval, or just because they gain some relief doing so. If it's shadow (TP/FJ), the circumstances surrounding organizing might tend to be more negative, and they likely won't even be conscious of this.
An ITP might become stubborn about external order (matching an internal blueprint) if the ego feels threatened in any way by some other order, and externally setting and maintaining that order will end up coming off as "oppositional". An ETP will tend to be even more critical of others concerning the order. An IFJ might tend to make mistakes, such as throwing out important papers. An EFJ might work up a frenzy and totally wear themselves out organizing the desk for others, when the others might not even care. The need to organize stems from their extraverted Feeling, but if they are under stress, the perspective changes, and they over-focus on the impersonal logic aspect of the ordering. The normally less relevant functional perspective ends up surfacing in a "huffy" manner that we can loosely associate with an archetypal manifestation.
So looking at them as perspectives made it all finally fall into place for me. And both of us were influenced by Lenore, so while we might not agree with everything she says, she has been an invaluable additional perspective to understanding the eight functions.
It's the other way of seeing it people have fallen into, of treating the functions as behaviors or skills sets (hence, "using" them), that has lent itself to what has become called "folk-typology". Even Lenore will sometimes say "use". It's easier to say, in passing. But she is the one who points out that they are the ways we build neurological connections, and that the "product", as she terms it, of an undifferentiated (basically, "shadow") function can come into consciousness as good as anything else, as long as it's going along with the ego and not triggering a complex from the unconsciousness. Hence, it's not really about "using" the function; it's anout consciousness or unconsciousness.
