Thalassa
Permabanned
- Joined
- May 3, 2009
- Messages
- 25,183
- MBTI Type
- ISFP
- Enneagram
- 6w7
- Instinctual Variant
- sx
K you should just read this.
And compare it to this
Instead of crap about "big picture" (because Se doms are big picture too compared to Si doms) and "connecting everything" (which is actually Ne working with Si, not just Ne alone, because Si has the domino connection effect), it's best to compare the two Jungian descriptions.
For me it was easiest to see I had Si rather than Se, which always indicates Ne...because we can have "blindness" to our dom function because it is the lens through which we see the world, and just seems like "reality" to us.
I also found that a lot of the Ne dom description resonated for me.
Do you prefer to see the facts of what is right there, right now, or do you prefer to see the patterns of connection related to what is there right now instead of seeing the object itself?
The Extraverted Intuitive Type
Whenever intuition predominates, a particular and unmistakable psychology presents itself. Because intuition is orientated by the object, a decided dependence upon external situations is discernible, but it has an altogether different character from the dependence of the sensational type. The intuitive is never to be found among the generally recognized reality values, but he is always present where possibilities exist. He has a keen nose for things in the bud pregnant with future promise. He can never exist in stable, long-established conditions of generally acknowledged though limited value: because his eye is constantly ranging for new possibilities, stable conditions have an air of impending suffocation. He seizes hold of new objects and new ways with eager intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without regard and apparently without remembrance, as soon as their range becomes clearly defined and a promise of any considerable future development no longer clings to them. As long as a possibility exists, the intuitive is bound to it with thongs of fate. It is as though his whole life went out into the new situation. One gets the impression, which he himself shares, that he has just reached the definitive turning point in his life, and that from now on nothing else can seriously engage his thought and feeling. How- [p. 465] ever reasonable and opportune it may be, and although every conceivable argument speaks in favour of stability, a day will come when nothing will deter him from regarding as a prison, the self-same situation that seemed to promise him freedom and deliverance, and from acting accordingly. Neither reason nor feeling can restrain or discourage him from a new possibility, even though it may run counter to convictions hitherto unquestioned. Thinking and feeling, the indispensable components of conviction, are, with him, inferior functions, possessing no decisive weight; hence they lack the power to offer any lasting. resistance to the force of intuition. And yet these are the only functions that are capable of creating any effectual compensation to the supremacy of intuition, since they can provide the intuitive with that judgment in which his type is altogether lacking. The morality of the intuitive is governed neither by intellect nor by feeling; he has his own characteristic morality, which consists in a loyalty to his intuitive view of things and a voluntary submission to its authority, Consideration for the welfare of his neighbours is weak. No solid argument hinges upon their well-being any more than upon his own. Neither can we detect in him any great respect for his neighbour's convictions and customs; in fact, he is not infrequently put down as an immoral and ruthless adventurer. Since his intuition is largely concerned with outer objects, scenting out external possibilities, he readily applies himself to callings wherein he may expand his abilities in many directions. Merchants, contractors, speculators, agents, politicians, etc., commonly belong to this type.
Apparently this type is more prone to favour women than men; in which case, however, the intuitive activity reveals itself not so much in the professional as in the social sphere. Such women understand the art of utilizing every social opportunity; they establish right social con- [p. 466] nections; they seek out lovers with possibilities only to abandon everything again for the sake of a new possibility.
It is at once clear, both from the standpoint of political economy and on grounds of general culture, that such a type is uncommonly important. If well-intentioned, with an orientation to life not purely egoistical, he may render exceptional service as the promoter, if not the initiator of every kind of promising enterprise. He is the natural advocate of every minority that holds the seed of future promise. Because of his capacity, when orientated more towards men than things, to make an intuitive diagnosis of their abilities and range of usefulness, he can also 'make' men. His capacity to inspire his fellow-men with courage, or to kindle enthusiasm for something new, is unrivalled, although he may have forsworn it by the morrow. The more powerful and vivid his intuition, the more is his subject fused and blended with the divined possibility. He animates it; he presents it in plastic shape and with convincing fire; he almost embodies it. It is not a mere histrionic display, but a fate.
This attitude has immense dangers -- all too easily the intuitive may squander his life. He spends himself animating men and things, spreading around him an abundance of life -- a life, however, which others live, not he. Were he able to rest with the actual thing, he would gather the fruit of his labours; yet all too soon must he be running after some fresh possibility, quitting his newly planted field, while others reap the harvest. In the end he goes empty away. But when the intuitive lets things reach such a pitch, he also has the unconscious against him. The unconscious of the intuitive has a certain similarity with that of the sensation-type. Thinking and feeling, being relatively repressed, produce infantile and archaic thoughts and feelings in the unconscious, which may be compared [p. 467] with those of the countertype. They likewise come to the surface in the form of intensive projections, and are just as absurd as those of the sensation-type, only to my mind they lack the other's mystical character; they are chiefly concerned with quasi-actual things, in the nature of sexual, financial, and other hazards, as, for instance, suspicions of approaching illness. This difference appears to be due to a repression of the sensations of actual things. These latter usually command attention in the shape of a sudden entanglement with a most unsuitable woman, or, in the case of a woman, with a thoroughly unsuitable man; and this is simply the result of their unwitting contact with the sphere of archaic sensations. But its consequence is an unconsciously compelling tie to an object of incontestable futility. Such an event is already a compulsive symptom, which is also thoroughly characteristic of this type. In common with the sensation-type, he claims a similar freedom and exemption from all restraint, since he suffers no submission of his decisions to rational judgment, relying entirely upon the perception of chance, possibilities. He rids himself of the restrictions of reason, only to fall a victim to unconscious neurotic compulsions in the form of oversubtle, negative reasoning, hair-splitting dialectics, and a compulsive tie to the sensation of the object. His conscious attitude, both to the sensation and the sensed object, is one of sovereign superiority and disregard. Not that he means to be inconsiderate or superior -- he simply does not see the object that everyone else sees; his oblivion is similar to that of the sensation-type -- only, with the latter, the soul of the object is missed. For this oblivion the object sooner or later takes revenge in the form of hypochondriacal, compulsive ideas, phobias, and every imaginable kind of absurd bodily sensation. [p. 468]
And compare it to this
The Extraverted Sensation Type
No other human type can equal the extraverted sensation-type in realism. His sense for objective facts is extraordinarily developed. His life is an accumulation of actual experience with concrete objects, and the more pronounced he is, the less use does he make of his experience. In certain cases the events of his life hardly deserve [p. 458] the name 'experience'. He knows no better use for this sensed 'experience' than to make it serve as a guide to fresh sensations; anything in the least 'new' that comes within his circle of interest is forthwith turned to a sensational account and is made to serve this end. In so far as one is disposed to regard a highly developed sense for sheer actuality as very reasonable, will such men be esteemed rational. In reality, however, this is by no means the case, since they are equally subject to the sensation of irrational, chance happenings, as they are to rational behaviour.
Such a type -- the majority arc men apparently -- does not, of course, believe himself to be 'subject' to sensation. He would be much more inclined to ridicule this view as altogether inconclusive, since, from his standpoint, sensation is the concrete manifestation of life -- it is simply the fulness [sic] of actual living. His aim is concrete enjoyment, and his morality is similarly orientated. For true enjoyment has its own special morality, its own moderation and lawfulness, its own unselfishness and devotedness. It by no means follows that he is just sensual or gross, for he may differentiate his sensation to the finest pitch of æsthetic purity without being the least unfaithful, even in his most abstract sensations, to his principle of objective sensation. Wulfen's Cicerone des r¨cksichtlosen Lebensgenusses is the unvarnished confession of a type of this sort. From this point of view the book seems to me worth reading.
Upon the lower levels this is the man of tangible reality, with little tendency either for reflection or commanding purpose. To sense the object, to have and if possible to enjoy sensations, is his constant motive. He is by no means unlovable; on the contrary, he frequently has a charming and lively capacity for enjoyment; he is sometimes a jolly fellow, and often a refined æsthete. [p. 459]
In the former case, the great problems of life hinge upon a good or indifferent dinner; in the latter, they are questions of good taste. When he 'senses', everything essential has been said and done. Nothing can be more than concrete and actual; conjectures that transcend or go beyond the concrete are only permitted on condition that they enhance sensation. This need not be in any way a pleasurable reinforcement, since this type is not a common voluptuary; he merely desires the strongest sensation, and this, by his very nature, he can receive only from without. What comes from within seems to him morbid and objectionable. In so far as lie thinks and feels, he always reduces down to objective foundations, i.e. to influences coming from the object, quite unperturbed by the most violent departures from logic. Tangible reality, under any conditions, makes him breathe again. In this respect he is unexpectedly credulous. He will, without hesitation, relate an obvious psychogenic symptom to the falling barometer, while the existence of a psychic conflict seems to him a fantastic abnormality. His love is incontestably rooted in the manifest attractions of the object. In so far as he is normal, he is conspicuously adjusted to positive reality -- conspicuously, because his adjustment is always visible. His ideal is the actual; in this respect he is considerate. He has no ideals related to ideas -- he has, therefore, no sort of ground for maintaining a hostile attitude towards the reality of things and facts. This expresses itself in all the externals of his life. He dresses well, according to his circumstances ; he keeps a good table for his friends, who are either made comfortable or at least given to understand that his fastidious taste is obliged to impose certain claims upon his entourage. He even convinces one that certain sacrifices are decidedly worth while for the sake of style.
But the more sensation predominates, so that the [p. 460] sensing subject disappears behind the sensation, the more unsatisfactory does this type become. Either he develops into a crude pleasure-seeker or he becomes an unscrupulous, designing sybarite. Although the object is entirely indispensable to him, yet, as something existing in and through itself, it is none the less depreciated. It is ruthlessly violated and essentially ignored, since now its sole use is to stimulate sensation. The hold upon the object is pushed to the utmost limit. The unconscious is, accordingly, forced out of its me[accent]tier as a compensatory function and driven into open opposition. But, above all, the repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections upon the object. The strangest conjectures arise; in the case of a sexual object, jealous phantasies and anxiety-states play a great role. More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and especially compulsive symptoms. The pathological contents have a remarkable air of unreality, with a frequent moral or religious colouring. A pettifogging captiousness often develops, or an absurdly scrupulous morality coupled with a primitive, superstitious and 'magical' religiosity, harking back to abstruse rites. All these things have their source in the repressed inferior functions, which, in such cases, stand in harsh opposition to the conscious standpoint; they wear, in fact, an aspect that is all the more striking because they appear to rest upon the most absurd suppositions, in complete contrast to the conscious sense of reality. The whole culture of thought and feeling seems, in this second personality, to be twisted into a morbid primitiveness; reason is hair-splitting sophistry -- morality is dreary moralizing and palpable Pharisaism -- religion is absurd superstition -- intuition, the noblest of human gifts, is a mere personal subtlety, a sniffing into every corner; instead of searching the horizon, it recedes to the narrowest gauge of human meanness. [p. 461]
The specially compulsive character of the neurotic symptoms represent the unconscious counterweight to the laisser aller morality of a purely sensational attitude, which, from the standpoint of rational judgment, accepts without discrimination, everything that happens. Although this lack of basic principles in the sensation-type does not argue an absolute lawlessness and lack of restraint, it at least deprives him of the quite essential restraining power of judgment. Rational judgment represents a conscious coercion, which the rational type appears to impose upon himself of his own free will. This compulsion overtakes the sensation-type from the unconscious. Moreover, the rational type's link to the object, from the very existence of a judgment, never means such an unconditioned relation as that which the sensation-type has with the object. When his attitude reaches an abnormal one-sidedness, he is in danger of falling just as deeply into the arms of the unconscious as he consciously clings to the object. When he becomes neurotic, he is much harder to treat in the rational way, because the functions to which the physician must appeal are in a relatively undifferentiated state; hence little or no trust can be placed in them. Special means of bringing emotional pressure to bear are often needed to make him at all conscious.
Instead of crap about "big picture" (because Se doms are big picture too compared to Si doms) and "connecting everything" (which is actually Ne working with Si, not just Ne alone, because Si has the domino connection effect), it's best to compare the two Jungian descriptions.
For me it was easiest to see I had Si rather than Se, which always indicates Ne...because we can have "blindness" to our dom function because it is the lens through which we see the world, and just seems like "reality" to us.
I also found that a lot of the Ne dom description resonated for me.
Do you prefer to see the facts of what is right there, right now, or do you prefer to see the patterns of connection related to what is there right now instead of seeing the object itself?
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