Jung's System Is Flawed - Rip My Theory To Shreds Please

[reckful]

2) That the most faithful interpretation of Jung or the most popular interpretations are the best.
- Well, I find this illogical. The most faithful and popular are not necessarily the most reasonable or what shows up in reality. I think MBTI is a more logical and realistic system, which is probably why it is aligning with the real world data. But to say its system is totally divorced from Jung is not accurate either, IMO.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but as a just-in-case clarification: it sounds like you may have thought I was suggesting that Jung was right about the orientation of the auxiliary and Myers was wrong to make the change. But that's not my position. I don't believe in an auxiliary function with an attitude at all. That two-part post of mine is about what Jung's model involved, and explains why I think Myers' interpretation was wrong as an interpretation of Jung — not "wrong" in terms of what the auxiliary's attitude is. Again, I don't believe in "auxiliary functions."

What you seem to be suggesting here is that the only difference between, say, an ISTP and ISTJ is J/P mentality, separate from the other dichotomies.

But that is not what Myers suggests, otherwise she would’t group ISTPs and INTPs together in Gifts Differing and group ISTJs and ISFJs together, etc. She is clearly grouping them according to what she sees as their dominant preference, and for ISTPs that is T, whereas for ISTJs that is S. Her explanation to classify introverts on the J/P dimension is using their extroverted, secondary preference, although I don’t think that the J/P dimension aligns with Jung’s use of “rational” or “irrational”.

On the significance of the "grouping" of ISTP and INTP in Myers' profiles — just about the only place where she ever talks about those two types together — we're probably just going to have to agree to disagree here. But I think that long piece of recycled reckful in the spoiler of my previous post makes it abundantly clear that that pairing was pretty much just part of the "lip service" to Jung. Myers couldn't have been clearer that she thought that the types that had the most in common were the ones that shared the middle preferences — and each of those groups consists of four types with four different dominant functions. And she also thought the S/N preference was the single greatest factor that divided the types. And Myers clearly didn't use Jung's original versions of the eight functions, and yet Myers never created updated versions that fit her conceptions of the types.

And there's much more in that spoiler. The entire second half of Gifts Differing barely includes any references to any of the eight functions. It's virtually all about the dichotomies — and dichotomy combinations that don't correspond to the functions.

Not only didn't Myers think somebody's supposed "dominant function" was anything like the main event when it came to their personality; I wouldn't even say she treated it as a co-star.

So... for all those reasons and more, I don't think it really makes sense to assign much (if any) significance (beyond, as I say, Jungian lip service) to those type pairings. Myers certainly didn't think INTPs were more like ISTPs than any other type. She thought the three other NT types were the INTPs' closest cousins.

Myers was essentially a four function believer; not an eight function believer — with the four functions consisting of two judging functions and two perceiving functions, and corresponding to the two poles of the S/N and T/F dichotomies.

And hopefully needless to say, that doesn't mean she didn't think INTPs and ISTPs had a great deal in common, given that they were alike on three of the four dimensions, and therefore shared the characteristics associated with (in Real MBTI Model terms) I + T + P + IT + IP + TP.

Again, that would mean she sees each dichotomy as its own separate trait, as opposed to indicating preferences which are more than the sum of their parts.

If this were the case, then we should expect her to describe the appearance of Feeling for all IxFx types the same way. Yet, only with IxFPs does she echo Jung’s words that their Feeling is often not outwardly visible. Why would that be if J/P is not indicating something more than being it’s own preference?

What is it about IFP compared to IFJ that produces a notable difference in the way the feeling preference comes out in the personality?

The explanation is that the P/J dichotomy is affecting the other preferences, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This now becomes an issue of semantics where you either call it FJ and FP preferences or Fe and Fi preferences. The differences in these seem to line up suspiciously well with Jung’s Fe and Fi types though…

I said that Myers "understood that the dichotomies were the essential components of Jungian/MBTI type — and also that dichotomy combinations were associated with many noteworthy aspects of personality, but that there was nothing particularly special about the combinations that are purportedly associated with the functions."

I totally agree that Myers thought that the preferences combined with each other in interesting ways, and I think so, too. But as I said, she didn't really give any special priority to the combinations that supposedly correspond to the functions — and on the contrary, and as I've already noted, she actually treated the SF/ST/NF/NT combinations as the most significant.

In any case, there's no reason why someone can't be of the view that, all other things being equal, an IFJ will be more liable/driven to express some of their F-related stuff outwardly because that's a part of the impact that their J qualities have on their F, without having to believe that there's such a thing as an "extraverted feeling" function that is one of four "perceiving" functions that have been shaped by evolution. That's my view, that's Reynierse's view, and I think (as partly explained in that long spoiler) that a fair reading of Myers' writings overall — including the 1985 Manual — suggests, as I said, that Myers' take on the types was much more reflective of a four-functions (where you favor two of them) perspective than the eight-functions perspective (where you favor four of them) that typical forum discussions tend to revolve around.

I don’t see how the contradiction here is not glaring to you….
Why are ENFJs feeling first and ENFPs intuition first if the foundation of their type descriptions is not rooted in Jung’s type descriptions?
If we toss out functions, then what justification can be used?

I acknowledged that that last teensy-weensy bit of the report was indeed a nod in the direction of the functions — but first, it's such a laughably cursory afterthought (after the many pages of dichotomy-based descriptions) that it just reinforces my point that the official MBTI folks in charge of those reports were not inclined to treat the functions as what your type was mostly, or even very significantly, about.

And second, and just as important, and consistent with what I already noted about Myers, those function references, in the context of that report, are essentially references to the four functions, rather than the eight functions. The ENFJ uses F "in the outer world" and N "in the inner world"? What does that even mean, really? Remember this is a report written to be suitable for someone with little to no MBTI background, and keep in mind that the many paragraphs of F description that precede this final toss-off are the exact same paragraphs of F description that appear in an ENFP's report — even though an ENFJ is (supposedly) an Fe type and an ENFP is (supposedly) an Fi type.

Describing F in multiple paragraphs and then referring to F "in the outer world" or F "in the inner world" captures next to nothing of the many and essential differences normally found in Fe and Fi descriptions. You know this. So again, that official Step II ENFJ report clearly reflects an official MBTI attitude that says that, in explaining an ENFJ's type, "Fe" is barely worth talking about.

And again, that's consistent with Myers! Myers never came up with revised eight-function descriptions that reflected the years of psychometric analysis that led her to make so many adjustments to Jung's original concepts. The only eight-functions descriptions in Gifts Differing were the brief bullet-point tables that she noted were simply the summaries of Jung that Briggs had put together back before any work had been done on the MBTI — and the 1985 Manual (which Myers co-authored) had no function descriptions at all. Just like the authors of that Step II report, what Myers described at length was F, not Fe or Fi, and then (as part of her very brief Jungian lip service) she noted that the (supposed) Fi types preferred to use that described-at-length F function "in their inner world" and the (supposed) Fe types preferred to use it "in their outer world." And 'nuff said about Fi and Fe.

I agree it is under appreciated (but I think the comments about Myers not having a degree are tasteless and pointless; how you don’t see a Te attitude in that is hilarious. Someone is only smart and educated if we’ve used the conventional means of measuring them as such and handed them a piece of paper stating it?). But these online communities started getting interested in the functions because of holes in the MBTI that its very foundation patches.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but if you think my reference to Myers' lack of a psychology degree was intended as a dig at Myers, nothing could be further from the truth. What I said was that her lack of a degree may be part of the explanation for why she was pretty strongly motivated to cloak as much of her typology as possible in the Jungian mantle — and hence give Jung a degree of lip service that partly masked the extent of the changes that Myers had made to Jung's type categories.

Although I deny SearchingForPeace's charge that I "worship" any particular typologist or typology, I do consider myself one of Myers' most outspoken fans at the MBTI forums, in the sense that I'm perpetually coming up against people who've swallowed the Great Internet MBTI Myth that says that Jung was this genius who came up with pretty much the exact functions (and stack!) that get talked about on the internet today, and Myers was just a housewife who managed to figure out a way to dumb down Jung for the masses, or make Jung's typology more testable, or whatever, and that's about the extent of her "contribution," and you have to mostly leave her dichotomies behind if you want to understand what your type is really about — and I'm perpetually explaining to those people that, on the contrary, Jung provided a semi-inspired (but also significantly erroneous) starting point, but Myers spent much of her life putting his concepts to the test, made lots of adjustments and additions, and deserves a lot of the credit for the modern MBTI.

But the problem with Big 5, IMO, is that it tells you nothing beyond what you give it. You tell it you like poetry, and it says “you are open, and open people like such things as poetry.” Ummmmm…..yeah, that’s what I told it! It doesn’t take every dimension it tests and combine them and create a WHOLE recognizable personality type.

I'd say that's much more false than true. Whether you're talking about the MBTI or the Big Five, the test items are nothing like a comprehensive roundup of everything the relevant typologists know about the types. In each case, you take the test, get typed on the basis of that limited bunch of items, but then you can read up on the typology and find out about all kinds of things that have been found to be typical of people with your preferences and that go beyond the test items.

I would certainly agree that typical MBTI sources tend to have much more in the way of descriptions relating to combinations of preferences (whether you couch them in NP terms or "Ne" terms) than Big Five sources. And that's good.

But on the other hand, it's my view (as you know) that some of the "extras" people get when they look into fairly typical MBTI sources — especially on the internet — consist of rubbish rather than enlightenment.

Here, function theory patches the hole. T and F are dichotomous….but Te and Fe have some things in common (extroverted rationals), as do Ti and Fi (introverted rationals). The different commonalities you can find between the 8 types involve I/E and J/P aspects and cut across S/N and F/T preferences, meaning the dichotomies sometimes assign a particular quality to one preference when it exists to a degree in others (or other combinations). This can be explained when we note that functions have attitudes, and that the whole is more the sum of the parts, and how the letters combine to form a larger whole rather than being separate dimensions within a personality.

I just don't see anything there that falls outside what the Real MBTI Model can encompass. It can be true that what "Te" and "Fe" have in common is (1) the things they have in common because they're two poles of the same dimension (T/F) and therefore both deal with some of the same areas of personality (albeit in oppositish or otherwise different ways), and (2) the J influences on those aspects of personality that they both share; and also be true that J isn't just one simple thing (or set of things) but is rather something that combines with T and/or F in some subtle/interesting ways. So in other words, it seems to me that both of those things can be true without any need to bring a special set of "function" constructs into the picture.

And also, coming up with a set of "function" constructs to "explain" the interactive effects of the T/F and J/P preferences seems inconsistent with not coming up with "functions" to "explain" similar kinds of interactive effects between the S/N and T/F preferences (for example).

Personal anecdote - I test close on T/F, and what helped me decide the best fit type for myself was learning that Fi often doesn’t appear outwardly in the personality as Feeling and that Feeling is rational. To deny this comes from Jung’s theory is disingenuous. It is also hard to explain why IFP often looks that way but IFJ doesn’t. That Feeling is directed inward for a FPs explains it, and it really explains it when we see a similarity with how feeling operates in EFPs and IFPs, because we cannot just chalk it up to introversion anymore.

Well, I suppose I could note that there's arguably a bit o' circularity in the fact that you ultimately chose the IFP type because of some "rational" flavor you identified in yourself, and now you seem to be using yourself as an example of IFPs being rational...

But what I really want to do is ask: What aspect of your personality are you both (1) identifying as "rational" and also (2) suggesting is characteristic of IFPs and not characteristic of IFJs?