You can't learn how to do something by looking exclusively at how not do it, but that is the first step towards developing a competency.
I disagree. I think it's a later step, once you've mastered the basics, but this isn't going to be a productive line of discussion.
There are a few problems here. First of all, you misjudge your audience. At most 1% of the membership is capable of / interested in reading and understanding Jung.
This is a pop psych site which doesn't take itself too seriously. I think there are common mistakes people make which make typology more curse than blessing, largely to do with establishing and reinforcing stereotype, prejudice and illusory superiority, rather than deviating from some imaginary standard of academic excellence. I mean, honestly, who cares? Typology is folk science, not real science. Folk typology is a still less rigorous discipline, let's not pretend that what any of us is doing here is important work. Lest we choke on our own hubris.
That is not true, the fallacies of most forum members can be reducedto a very small number of dubious principles or false premises because their ideas are founded on similar sources.
Both things are in fact true. The point is, there are more ways to get it wrong than to get it right.
But given that you are a self-proclaimed expert on this "very small number of dubious principles and false premises", why not just elucidate them in a single post, instead of constructing this elaborate means of humiliating and alienating the membership under the guise of instructing them?
Very few MBTI folks began dabbling in the art of "typism" without reading Keirsey or one of the countless internet sites on typology that were heavily influenced by his two volume piece "Please Understand me". Admittedly, Keirseyisms constitute only one source of abuse of typology, but other sources are few in numbers and much less influential. Although the fallacious typological assertions that forum users make are truly countless, their underlying rationales tend to be strikingly similar and that is what I aspire to evince in this thread.
I think the problems run deeper than simply an adherence to authors with a less than perfect understanding of typological principles. All too often, even these "dumbed down" works are badly misinterpreted by the lay person.
However, if the former is the aspect that most troubles you, why not just provide a critique of the work of authors like Keirsey? Surely you will be able to point out exactly where it is he is going wrong without enlisting numerous examples from his disciples? If he is wrong on principle, you ought to be able to prove that using just the original text, no?
For example, a teacher of a 100 level Composition class can compose a list of common fundamental errors that would include grammatical mistakes, well-known logical fallacies, failure to organize a paper in a way that includes the introduction, the body and the conclusion, failure to include a thesis statement and so on.
Again, why not compose such a list for our edification? Because the format of this thread is much too loose to allow anything useful to crystallise, and it will simply be used to make oblique attacks on other members.
I am not looking for converts, but in a nutshell, the abuse of typology is essentially a deviation from the original principles Jung laid down in Psychological Types.
But Jung didn't endorse using his typology as a tool for categorising individuals. He intended it to be used by trained psychotherapists treating patients, not lay persons on themselves. The very existence of a popular typology is an abuse of Jung. Perhaps we should all just give up and go home?
In seriousness, I don't think such a rigid adherence to Jung will benefit typology at all. He wasn't infallible, he got many things wrong. His approach was unscientific, his theories pure speculation. His text may have provided a foundation and some fascinating insights, but bible of type it is not. Some of Jung's writings are indistinguishable from the rantings of a lunatic, indeed, he was mad for a time. To critique others insofar as they depart from Jungian dogma, doesn't seem like a very rational approach.
