You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.
It's difficult to determine blame between the tool and the users. After all reducing something into a general idea is what humans do a lot of the time anyhow, but like astrology using it as anything but the surface approach little bit of entertainment that it is, causes dangerously preemptive idea's about other people.
There really is little more to it than seeking a pattern and hoping it fits. Obviously I'm biased against it as I despise and fear the idea that a person would deal with me or engage with me on the notion of the type they think I am, rather than as another human being.
Now I know that seems a bit unfair but I think its almost impossible to avoid a theory like this influencing how a person looks at others.
Also I have met very few people who claim it has somehow helped them in a real way. In many cases I see a person talking about a relationship it has helped with, but all I see is someone who decided to take a different approach and become perhaps more empathetic towards others and considerate that people see the world differently. But to me it would seem a person could come to that conclusion on their own without the need of an apparently pseudo-psychological theory that merely tricks them into doing so.
The system is limited. Its a theory for christs sake. Then some morons try and act like everything they say about mbti is golden. Its not even a concrete system, good lord.
Wut? MBTI/JCF doesn't apply itself. It's applied by people to themselves or other people. If it's a tool that causes detrimental impact, then don't use it. The same principle applies to anything, including fruit. If you eat too much fruit, you'll get the runs. Does this mean that fruit's bad for you?
It's a fun form of shorthand, for the lazy like myself. Instead of needing to communicate essays, one can communicate it concisely through application of four simple letters. Efficient.
4/5 traits for psychometric instrument Big Five, correlates to MBTI dichotomies. This was quite clearly stated in a study by McCrae and Costa, the creators of Neo-PR-I.
As with all psychological and scientific theory, they continue maturing in complexity which does not mean the initial roughly hewn framework is useless, particularly as a form of lazy short hand.
Idealism tends to fall flat on its face since it seeks perfection to compensate for inner imperfections. In self-acceptance, everything else is set free.
There really is little more to it than seeking a pattern and hoping it fits. Obviously I'm biased against it as I despise and fear the idea that a person would deal with me or engage with me on the notion of the type they think I am, rather than as another human being.
Now I know that seems a bit unfair but I think its almost impossible to avoid a theory like this influencing how a person looks at others.
Also I have met very few people who claim it has somehow helped them in a real way. In many cases I see a person talking about a relationship it has helped with, but all I see is someone who decided to take a different approach and become perhaps more empathetic towards others and considerate that people see the world differently. But to me it would seem a person could come to that conclusion on their own without the need of an apparently pseudo-psychological theory that merely tricks them into doing so.
Well, the question that comes up for me here is whether your biases would require you to actually perceptually erase (meaning: refuse to see) the reality of my own lived experiences because it doesn't fit into your views on this.
In my lived experience over time, MBTI has helped in my relationship with my partner in very real ways. Specifically, it has given us a shared conceptual language with which to discuss things that were present and causing some tension/difficulties, but that we didn't previously have a way to usefully address. For us, having this shared language functions as a way to better understand each other as specific human beings (not as representatives of a type, as so often happens here on this site for example). For us, having this shared language helps us to actually consciously see and discuss dynamics that previously were there but it felt like, I don't know, trying to grasp smoke or swing at ghosts or something.
Now, there are some factors with us that may make it possible for us to use this tool in a truly useful and practical way.
First, we're both ridiculously easy to type within the system as we've encountered it. The concepts, especially the cognitive function stacks, map to real stuff in each of us in ways that we can clearly recognize in ourselves, our respective and mutual life experiences, and each other. (I'm INFJ, she's INFP, BTW)
Second, MBTI isn't a worldview for us, and we don't need it to be valid for all people in order for it to be useful for us. We're very practical about its very specific uses as a shared language to gain better mutual understanding.
Third, and possibly most relevant to this discussion ... as much as we can fight and clash as a couple about various things, neither of us has ever once even hinted at using our respective MBTI typing as a weapon against the other. From what I can see, such weaponizing happens a LOT in TypeC discussions. People deal with their own issues by attacking entire types, people attack individuals using their type against them, people try to "re-type" people as a mode of personal attack, etc etc ... all sorts of nasty stuff. My partner and I don't even come close to doing that. Ever. Our use of the MBTI conceptual tools has been unrelentingly cooperative and positive with each other.
As for how it actually works between us, here are a few examples:
Example 1: There's this thing my partner does that feels unpleasant and deeply confusing to me. We'll be talking about some topic, sometimes something totally trivial, and all of a sudden, she'll start streaming this intense defensive energy for what seems to me to be no reason at all. Any resistance or disagreement on my part just makes it worse. These situations always feel bad to me, at times it's led to fights that I don't understand at all. With the MBTI conceptual language, I can understand (and I have checked with her on this for accuracy) that this thing happens when one of her core Fi values comes into play and is challenged or threatened. A lot of times it's been me doing that challenging/threatening without realizing what I'm doing. For me, knowing about how Fi works in relation to her core values helps in at least a couple of ways. First, I'm far less confused when that defensive energy comes up and I can be more deliberate in how I interact with her. Second, I'm starting to get a sense of some of her core values from tracing these situations back to their source - knowing more about her core values is really great for me as I try to understand her better as a person overall.
Example 2: When I'm in the midst of Ni perceptual processing mode and she asks me how I am or what's going on with me, I will often respond with metaphors that don't have any conscious meaning yet. That state of "no conscious meaning" stresses her out and her response to me when I speak from that space is to try to assign meaning to what I'm saying (as I understand it in MBTI terms from our conversations, her Ne-aux starts generating possible meanings because as a judging dominant she is internally uncomfortable with what she calls "vagueness" and wants to pin things down somehow). When she voices those possible meanings back to me in the mode of trying to be supportive/responsive to what I'm saying, it can throw me off track because Fe-aux in me calls on me to consider those possible meanings as true, which takes my attention from the necessary quiet space I need to allow the Ni meaning to emerge into its consciousness its own way on its own time. Without the MBTI conceptual language, this dynamic still happened. But we didn't know what was going on and we each felt like the other didn't allow us to be ourselves with each other, and maybe this was some awful incompatibility between us and .... spiraling from there.
With the shared language and understanding, we can be much kinder to ourselves and each other related to this dynamic. We can understand that this is really a matter of information processing differences. So for example, from my end, the fact that she can't directly relate to my Ni processing mode in certain phases of its operation isn't because she doesn't love/is hostile to what I am and how I move at my deepest core, it's because the way she processes information makes that particular "vagueness" unpleasant for her. Knowing this makes a huge difference to me. On a practical level (in terms of action), being able to understand this dynamic in terms of differences in information processing means that it's way easier for us both to see the usefulness of her waiting to hear about certain things going on with me until I have a more conscious grasp of my Ni-sourced information and what it means. That waiting on her part, and the related lack of expectation that she should be able to hear it before then, functions as form of support for me, for us and for her.
Example 3: This one that happened partly because of conversations I had on this site about INFJ/INFP and INTJ/INTP dynamics meshing with things that emerged between the two of us. Here's my overarching description:
I'm an INFJ in a 4-year relationship with an INFP and we recently realized something huge (for us). I'm pulling this writing from another thread where this topic was a tangent.
It's ok to go our separate ways in the "middle process"
My INFP partner and I have long noticed that we very often end up in the same place but come from opposite directions. Recently, we had an interesting discussion about a pretty big-deal real life logistical issue requiring our attention and action over time.
She brought up the difference between process and goal in a way I find really useful. She said: look, we share the same goal here, but our processes for understanding how to get there are very different. She suggested that we focus on the fact that we share the goal and not try to share the process. The metaphor she used was walking through the woods with a destination in mind. We start together at the beginning of the trail, and we know we'll meet up at the end (our shared goal). But we each go our own way through the woods (our different processes to get there).
This made/makes a lot of sense to me. We know from experience that we very very often wind up in the same places, share the same goals. We know also that our ways of getting there are very different. We've run into trouble when we've tried to do that middle part - the process of getting there - together. When we try to do that, one or the other or (all too often) both of us feel steamrolled.
I feel like at some level, I've worried that if we can't move well together through the middle process, then something is very wrong in our communication and interaction. The problem has been - we haven't been able to find a way fix that problem. It's felt impossible, and yet necessary, which has led me to have a "banging my head diligently against a wall" feeling in our ongoing efforts to try to make it work.
It's just such a relief to me to consider that what we actually need to do is step away from the wall entirely and just give each other space during that middle process. And trust that our shared goals and different processes will most likely yield the solutions we need for whatever we're trying to accomplish. *deep relieved breath* This makes so much more sense than what we've tried to do before.
And I'll add from my current vantage point: Since we grasped this dynamic, we've been moving toward a level of mutual understanding deeper than I actually ever thought we could get. Letting ourselves off the hook on the "middle ground" has somehow (I don't yet know how) opened us into seeing deep convergences in our perspectives that have been hidden to us before we grasped and consciously began acting on this middle ground thing. This new development is still in process in a huge way, but we're getting real glimpses of deep deep convergences inside of the differences that appear to be opposed. The cognitive function/MBTI discussions have given us a way to get to that place, with the shared language and with the dialogue I had with others here.
The above are just a few examples. There are lots more in our case. I want to be clear that I don't think our case says anything generalizable about MBTI uses. It's quite obvious to me that it can be used in some really nasty and problematic ways, and I see evidence of that here at TypeC quite regularly. That said, in our specific case, it has been useful in real ways, and I would hope that whatever theory or bias people have about it won't go into overkill to erase the reality that we've actually experienced. (though such perspectives aren't going to stop us from continuing to use this tool where it's useful to us).
It's good that you found some positive use for the theory, but your examples only highlight my point that there is no real evidence beyond the heuristic that supports this idea. If anything it is merely a placeholder for the more useful revelation that perhaps we should be more empathetic and considerate of the differences amongst people, which is where I think Jung was onto something even if don't entirely agree with the whole premise.
Conflict often does arise from trying to reach similar objectives through different angles.
I guess like all humanities ideas It's really just a good lie to help us cope with our existence.
[MENTION=20789]we should be more empathetic and considerate of the differences amongst people. Conflict often does arise from trying to reach similar objectives through different angles.
The global horror that continues to unfold in Syria arises from trying to reach similar objectives through different angles. And could be resolved if we were more empathetic and considerate of the differences amongst people.
I am not a goose. I am a Mole in a long line of Moles.
I glory in being a Mole. I wake in the morning, poke my nose out the door, and say, Good morning Sunshine, and the Sun smiles back as She has done for millennia.
I accept your apology, though why you should mistake me for a goose is beyond me.
So why not join Ratty, Toad, Badger, and my good self, and gambol in the Sunshine?
Shocking (not) - when my lived experience flies in the face of people's biases and theoretical filters, one way to reduce the cognitive dissonance is to assume I'm the one who doesn't see clearly.
Shocking (not) - when my lived experience flies in the face of people's biases and theoretical filters, one way to reduce the cognitive dissonance is to assume I'm the one who doesn't see clearly.
We know our senses deceive us; we know propaganda deceives us; we know that ideology deceives us; we know institutions deceive us. That is why we developed the scientific method.
And if we were to apply the scientific method to mbti there would be thousands of random, double blind experiments over last 75 years. But there are none, not one.
Why is this?
This is because if the scientific method were applied to mbti, it would show that mbti deceives us.
But most of all it would show we want to be deceived.
And those who want to be deceived have no self respect.
We know our senses deceive us; we know propaganda deceives us; we know that ideology deceives us; we know institutions deceive us. That is why we developed the scientific method.
And if we were to apply the scientific method to mbti there would be thousands of random, double blind experiments over last 75 years. But there are none, not one.
Why is this?
This is because if the scientific method were applied to mbti, it would show that mbti deceives us.
But most of all it would show we want to be deceived.
And those who want to be deceived have no self respect.
It's good that you found some positive use for the theory, but your examples only highlight my point that there is no real evidence beyond the heuristic that supports this idea.
I suppose it can be seen that way, personally I've seen as much harm as good and an encouragement to pre-judge even more heavily in people who were already bad enough to begin with.
But that's just personally.
I do think it was designed as a way to get people to think more and be more considerate when looking at others and their perspectives. In that way it can be quite useful. I just don't think the rigid application of type can be all that healthy.
