Mal12345
Permabanned
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2011
- Messages
- 14,532
- MBTI Type
- IxTP
- Enneagram
- 5w4
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
"Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse."
In previous threads I have neglected the inferior function of a dominant function. But in this thread it will be necessary to consider the inferior of Te, which is Fi, because the latter is the function of inner moral values, and as a result, of moral guilt.
An inferior function is a dominant function's repressed or "shadow" side, or better, an Achilles Heel. The Te dominant has an issue with weakness, or so they say. But the purpose of strength is not to defeat weakness, it is to put down guilt. The Achilles Heel of the Te dominant is not weakness or moral values. Te dominants can spend an entire lifetime running away or hiding from feelings of guilt.
Fi, on the other hand, not only feels the guilt, but sometimes feels unearned guilt and, in the extreme, even claims to be guilty (as a form of introjection) when all the facts suggest otherwise. It is easy to find examples of couples who, one being Te-dominant and the other Fi-dominant, play a game of projection and introjection where the Te-dominant lays all his or her guilt on the Fi-dominant, and where the Fi-dominant gladly accepts all of it. In the first part, the Te-dom does not want to feel guilty because he misconceives guilt as weakness; in the second part, the Fi-dom wants to feel guilty because it fills the void standing between the real and ideal selves. Instead of confronting the fact that the real and ideal are not internally unified, the Fi-dom finds a form of security in the external locus which takes the form of accepting guilt from the outside, thus freeing the Fi-dom from experiencing the terror of that which exists inside. Fearing that which exists on the outside is, no matter how bad it may be, even if there is physical abuse involved, still preferable psychologically to facing that which exists on the inside. In the extreme you will see a sado-masochistic relationship, a mutual bond of control in which both dominator and dominated get their psychological needs met in the external realm so they don't have to face up to that which exists within themselves. (There are also cases where the dominator takes the role of the dominated, but these fall under special circumstances in which the dominator wants to feel relieved of guilt through punishment, although the guilt is indirectly felt and objectively manifested so that the Te-dom doesn't have to really experience anything internally.)
In previous threads I have neglected the inferior function of a dominant function. But in this thread it will be necessary to consider the inferior of Te, which is Fi, because the latter is the function of inner moral values, and as a result, of moral guilt.
An inferior function is a dominant function's repressed or "shadow" side, or better, an Achilles Heel. The Te dominant has an issue with weakness, or so they say. But the purpose of strength is not to defeat weakness, it is to put down guilt. The Achilles Heel of the Te dominant is not weakness or moral values. Te dominants can spend an entire lifetime running away or hiding from feelings of guilt.
Fi, on the other hand, not only feels the guilt, but sometimes feels unearned guilt and, in the extreme, even claims to be guilty (as a form of introjection) when all the facts suggest otherwise. It is easy to find examples of couples who, one being Te-dominant and the other Fi-dominant, play a game of projection and introjection where the Te-dominant lays all his or her guilt on the Fi-dominant, and where the Fi-dominant gladly accepts all of it. In the first part, the Te-dom does not want to feel guilty because he misconceives guilt as weakness; in the second part, the Fi-dom wants to feel guilty because it fills the void standing between the real and ideal selves. Instead of confronting the fact that the real and ideal are not internally unified, the Fi-dom finds a form of security in the external locus which takes the form of accepting guilt from the outside, thus freeing the Fi-dom from experiencing the terror of that which exists inside. Fearing that which exists on the outside is, no matter how bad it may be, even if there is physical abuse involved, still preferable psychologically to facing that which exists on the inside. In the extreme you will see a sado-masochistic relationship, a mutual bond of control in which both dominator and dominated get their psychological needs met in the external realm so they don't have to face up to that which exists within themselves. (There are also cases where the dominator takes the role of the dominated, but these fall under special circumstances in which the dominator wants to feel relieved of guilt through punishment, although the guilt is indirectly felt and objectively manifested so that the Te-dom doesn't have to really experience anything internally.)
