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If you were free to choose any auxilary function

Ilah

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Sometimes if in my journey of self discovery/self understanding I like to do a mental exercise called "What would I choose if I were free to make any choice?" In other words I allow myself to concider all choices, not just the ones that are approved, (socially) accepted, allowable, etc.

So now I am doing this with MBTI. In MBTI you can freely choose any fuction as your dominant function, but you only get two choices as your auxilery function. Using myself as an example: I freely choose Ni as the function that most describes me. Now I am forced to choose between Te and Fe as my auxilary. Ne, Se, Si, Ti, and Fi are not "allowed" as my auxilary, even if they may be my second strongest trait.

I test fairly consistently as INTJ, however my function order is all over the place depending on whose descriptions I use. Two things seem to be fairly constant though which is why I always score INTJ. It is not that Ni is always highest and Te is always second highest. It is that Ni is always highest and Fe is very low, which means that Te must be my auxilary, because Fe and Te are the only allowable choices.

Reading the descriptions from Jung that were posted last week, I would rate myself as NiTi. Ti seem more like me that Te. Fi and Si also seemed more like me that Te.

From my results on the cognative processes website, I would be NiNe. Comming in close second (only 1.1 % behind Ne) are Te and Fi which are almost tied at 41% and 40.8%. So if I disgard NiNe, both NiTe and NiFi seem equally likely, but only NiTe is a valid choice under MBTI.

I may go back and do this for other function decription I have read earlier. I think in deciding Te was second I was subconsciously telling myself, "if you are sure your dominant function is Ni, it has to be Te or Fe."

How many of you would still pick the same top two if you didn't have to limit yourself to only two choices?

Ilah
 

entropie

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Well I like NeTi. I test always high on Se, Ne and Ti, but a SeNe combination is not reasonable. One of the function pairs, like S and N are ways of aquiring sensory or intuitive data about the world. These two are input funtctions. T and F are processing traits. So T and F are output functions.

You cant say someone is for example NeNi, cause those function are only perceptional they do not do work they just measure data. So you need a combination of N/S and T/F, if you want the whole idea still to make sense.

I cant really say what else function pair, I would like to have because I cant imagine what this would be like. It is like to explain the color blue, to a blind man. I guess the whole idea between the test is less about choice more about understanding, how the system "human" works. There is no pair of functions that is bad or good. There is no pair that gives you an advantage.

If you for example want to be socially more assertive, but you are toughly introverted. Than this does not mean that you are forever domned and just by switching your functions or your idea of yourself, you try to overcome that. If you want something, but you do not have the means to get it, you are mostly looking on things from the wrong Point of View. A social introverted person for example, who wants to become more assertive and extroverted will not become happy with that in the long run. It would be better to take a step-by-step approach and test out for oneself how war one wants to go.

I myself for example am so long intrested in intensively studying a project until it gets boring. Then I draw my line. I will not go further from this point, except I could motivate me in other ways. Like "if you do not do this now, you will fail your exam and 3 years of university studies will be in vane". But if I have no pressure of that kind, I just quit it and find something new.

The same thing counts for an introvert, who wants to become more assertive. You should search for hints from the masters and watch what they do. Then you can try do understand that and use it for yourself. If you realize that is not what you want, dumb it. Introverts sometimes tend to the fact that they can solve any problem they face with themselves. But sometimes you reach a point, where you need new input and then it is good to talk to people and if you dare, to present your own ideas aswell.

You Ilah are in my opinion far away from Te. But we have talked about that already. You concern yourself very much with how things work and you find mistakes in the system and question them. That qualifies you mostly as Ti. Furthermore the way you generate new threads in this forum is pretty much Ni to me. You always come up with a new idea, but you do it out of the nowhere. That is pretty introverted Intuiting.

That's good I like your style. And it would make you first of all NiTi. That would make you an iNTp.

I have got a hunch about you though, partly influenced by my life experience and from that I would say, you are dominant Fe. You are very firm in your posts and you react to people friendly and understanding. There are those minor details that lets your Fe shine.

That makes you in my opinion NiFe with TiSe, what is iNFj.

But to repeat my self, I told you so already :).

From my experience iNFj have always a hard time to see Fe in themselves. The very close iNFj I know always tries to rationalize things, to overthink problems and he is really not in the mood to see himself as a feeling type. But he so is and mostly only a very rational person will notice. My iNFj friend tends to make valued judgements not factual. And he tends furthermore to collapse, when he thinks too much. He is driven in any way he uses thinking by a hard time Fe, but because of the very nature of Fe being so extroverted, he hardly notices that nearly all of his ideas and implications or decisions are based on a feeler's fundament. What is very nice and what makes him a perfect psychatrist.
 

Metis

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I don't see why someone couldn't be primarily Ni and Ne. He might need a decently strong judging function as well to get by.

It doesn't fit into the construct. So what? Nature is nature, and the construct is still useful.

But this is more about introversion than perceiving, and Ilah, I agree you come across more Ti than Te, but what do I know?


I think I'd prefer to balance Ti, Ne, Fe, and Ni and have someone else take care of the other stuff.
 

entropie

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Well it is only interpretated according to the concept. To this there are those two S and N functions that enable you to gather information about your environment. They act like sensors. A photodiode that reacts to light or not, in case of S. Or a photodiode information from other light sources. Like it does not see the white light, but it notices that red light travels slower than blue light (N).

Then you have T and F as actors, who process information. Like the CPU of the PC.

In my opinion N can easily be mistreated as an active function. I am probably more of a professional to talk about that, because I have experienced it often.

You get a person to know and you instantly have after some minutes a clue about her/him that comes from an idea (not from experience) and you totally think you are right. So you act with that person on your impulse just to get to know that you tripped into a dog's mess and that you were totally wrong.

Furthermore according to the theory, the first 2 functions are those you can use without the need of much energy. The 3rd and 4th require high energy levels. That make them logical sensor / actor pairs. To go on F and T is always the 1st extroverted function of a J-Type. So according to theory it is what makes the judgement call or what processes the information.

It is those sensor/actor pairs that make the theory work.

If we put MBTI theory aside and you think about a Ne/Ni construct, you definitly need to add a third processing point, because those two are not supposed to act like CPU's. That would mean you have to widen your primary functions by a third one. Cause you need in your primary function pair something that acts like an actor and that you can use without much energy. But this would totally bend the theory.

To not get to fixated onto MBTI theory, I want to clear here that I am speaking out of this theory.

Any other approach would need a new start of thinking on that. You can not bend an existing theory, you can refine it. And because MBTI is just hypertheorethical almost religious bullshit, then at least let us obey it's physical rules :)
 

entropie

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No, you got me wrong. I really need to take courses in english.

The MBTI theory is not taken from nature. It is all derived from a perception of a human brain of reality.

Nature as, we do understand it till this point today, can be explained through mathematical and logical connections of various things. That approach is the attempt understand the world from a human point of view. logic and Mathematics is the best weapon we have at the present moment to understand our world and there will be better I bet.

The MBTI is not of physics nature. It comes out of a perception. But when dealing with it, I would like to stick to its principles. If you start bending it then you derail the concept. Concept's are important, because to much chaos in thought, wont bring you to answer, but only to new conclusions to things you do understand, but noone else because you can not put the concepts you got to know in the first place in the right words.

Any theory can be wrong, but it has to be proven as to be wrong and then you can start working on a new one or refine an old one. But you just can not randomly bend a theory with elements that contradict the ideas of the theory itself. That is not only not physics that is unfair :).

My approach on this, is not because I am an eSTj. But I have come to learn structured thinking in university. that you inevitably need, if you want someone to understand you.
 

Metis

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That's what I'm saying. Nature is nature; MBTI is a construct. Who said anything about physics?

It isn't a threat to the MBTI construct that we want to use it creatively.
 

Jack Flak

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MBTI as we use it (or should anyway, imo) isn't really a theory anyway. It's a method of categorizing and generalizing, hopefully followed by understanding. It can't be proven wrong, but it can be abandoned if you choose.
 

Usehername

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I'd take Ni with Si.

Can you imagine the superpower THAT would be? With a 'lil Te and hopefully some Fe in there? Wow.

I have no Si. :( (Or, at the CP test labels it, my Si is "unused.")
 

entropie

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But Ne/Ni is funny creative, but has no logic in it, according to my understanding.

Could have said from the beginning that you were kiddin, than I would not have taken it seriously

Guess I need to figure out some parts about my approach, myself ...
 

Ilah

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The assumption from MBTI is that our functions are balance and compliment each other, but not everyone is balanced. These are people who may excell in one area, at the expense of others. TiTe (TeTi) could be great philosphers, scientists or scholars. NiNe (NeNi) could be visionaries or shamans. SiSe (SeSi) could be great athletes or artists. FiFe (FeFi) could be great diplomats and mediators. On the other hand, not having a balancing function makes life more difficult so they also stand a good chance of being people with "great potential" that never seem to make anything of their life.

If your dominant and auxilary are both i or both e, than you may simply be very introverted or very extroverted, but otherwise balanced.

It could also be that people who are "unbalanced" in their two strongest are more pressured to develep their 3rd and 4th function, perhaps developing them at an early age out of necessity.

Moving to my cognative processes test as an example:
Going purely by the two highest I am NiNe. However, I scored "excellent use" in four functions: Ni, Ne, Te, Fi. So I am not relying just on N, I have a strong Te and Fi to back it up.

Unlike hard sciences, such a physics, in social sciences like psychology, an exception does not make the theory invalid. Take the theory of child development (stages, time tables for development, etc). Child geniuses violate the theory. So do children who don't develop normally due to mental retardation. But the theory is still true for most children, so it is still a valid theory.

So a handful of exceptions do not necessarily invalidate the theory, they just remind us that some of us may be "exceptional" (i.e. an exception) people. Now if 300 people posted to the thread saying they were also exceptions to the rule, that could be cause to question the theory.

Ilah
 

Kora

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I'd like some Fi help, so I could understand a little bit what I'm feeling and not swallow it just for blow up in the worse moment. Aside that, I'd like more Ni.
But I'd choose TiNe, which is what I have. I noticed before discovering MBTI that I usually 'mimmick' feelings based on what I see on other people, and I think it's thanks to my Ne.
 

entropie

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I meant, if you have in 1st and 2nd function for example NeNi or TeNe, the whole theory collapses into itself.

It is as if someone would say that the planck wavelength is not the shortest length. It would collapse a whole system of theories.

To make an exception to a rule is surely great, but as it goes with my understanding it is necessary to have an input and output function at all for the MBTI personality, which are accessible through low energy consumption, what puts them in 1st and 2nd position. It is like a brain and a heart that is needed for a human being to be alive. A genius for example could according to the logic not live with a TeTi construct, cause he has no eyes and ears to actually recognize the world around him.

What you are talking about, according to "social science". 1st of all, it is no science at all. :) And secondly, you were talking about probability. And that always includes randomn mistakes in measurement. Like exceptions or mistakes of measurement.

But I am talking about a working idea of a system. That is not measured, it is postulated. You cant measure a car for example, you just can take it apart and watch how it works. But you will see, if you strip it off its tires, it will stop working.

Maybe we have different approaches in our thinking on that and my thinking is to conceptual. I like the idea of a system making sense in itself, at this point I start to think about the validity of the system. A NeNi or TeNe combination would ruin my understanding of the MBTI.

Maybe we can arrange in saying that the MBTI is highly theorethical at all. And that validity of any sort is not to be given to it, yet.
 

Little Linguist

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I meant, if you have in 1st and 2nd function for example NeNi or TeNe, the whole theory collapses into itself.

It is as if someone would say that the planck wavelength is not the shortest length. It would collapse a whole system of theories.

To make an exception to a rule is surely great, but as it goes with my understanding it is necessary to have an input and output function at all for the MBTI personality, which are accessible through low energy consumption, what puts them in 1st and 2nd position. It is like a brain and a heart that is needed for a human being to be alive. A genius for example could according to the logic not live with a TeTi construct, cause he has no eyes and ears to actually recognize the world around him.

What you are talking about, according to "social science". 1st of all, it is no science at all. :) And secondly, you were talking about probability. And that always includes randomn mistakes in measurement. Like exceptions or mistakes of measurement.

But I am talking about a working idea of a system. That is not measured, it is postulated. You cant measure a car for example, you just can take it apart and watch how it works. But you will see, if you strip it off its tires, it will stop working.

Maybe we have different approaches in our thinking on that and my thinking is to conceptual. I like the idea of a system making sense in itself, at this point I start to think about the validity of the system. A NeNi or TeNe combination would ruin my understanding of the MBTI.

Maybe we can arrange in saying that the MBTI is highly theorethical at all. And that validity of any sort is not to be given to it, yet.

Hey, now! Of course, social science is a science....science is knowledge, and knowledge does not have to be about natural science. So :harhar:. You're just grumpy because you have to take a test.
 

Ilah

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Just a clarification on the term social science. Maybe the terms are not common in other countries.

Sciences are divided into two classifications. The first is hard science, which includes things like chemistry, biology, physics, math. The second is soft science or social science, which includes things like socialogy, psychology, history.

Hard science has absolutes. Example: 2+2 is always 4. It does not depend on what kind of 2 you have.
Soft science/social science does not. Example: Ususally ESTP and INFJ are not a good match for each other, but it depends on the people, sometimes you find two that really get along well.
 

entropie

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Hey, now! Of course, social science is a science....science is knowledge, and knowledge does not have to be about natural science. So :harhar:. You're just grumpy because you have to take a test.

Hehe you are right xD.

@Ilah: yes of course, I see that, too. Otherwise I wouldnt be posting here being intrested in the MBTI after all.

The tough things about pseudo social science he summed up pretty good xD:

YouTube - Richard Feynman on "Social Sciences"
 
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