• 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.

[INTJ] The compassionate INTJ ...

Kalach

Filthy Apes!
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
4,310
MBTI Type
INTJ
Having all this can-could-may-might be called Te is getting annoying. As is the suggestion that Te is any good as an inconsistency checker or even, Lawdy, a moral judge. As is too the wonderful accretion of properties these two-letter signifiers are somehow acquiring.

Jung said that introverted feeling, like all introverted functions, seeks--and I'm going to use my own verbs here--to partake of the primordial images. It would seem he meant to suggest that all people have some similar basic psychological structure at bottom. And actually, his descriptions of both Fi and Ti are really very ugly. Those functions retain the ability to be judges by repelling and being repelled by "the object". So... seeking the primordial expressions and eschewing the object that gave rise to the seeking...

There's a great deal to unpack in that and I'm hardly sure if I have it right so far. But there is one point to make, again, about the difference between a cognitive function and, now, a value system. One is the (partial) product of the other. (And we should describe the producer in terms of the product?)


To sum up, if we don't know what Fi is, we'll be able to describe an INTJ's compassion only in the shallowest surface terms. But it'll be adorable and all.
 

uumlau

Happy Dancer
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
Messages
5,517
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
953
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I find the effort to coherently, logically, systematically describe Fi, here, to be quite amusing. The final picture of Fi appears to Escheresque, built by unguided Te, and is declared to be a self-consistent system of rules. "Oh, wait, it has to be consistent with this ... and this ... and this ... oh, and this."

escher%20lego.jpg


The reason for the error is that neither Ti nor Fi is self-consistent. Rather, there is a drive for a kind self-consistency. Even the terms of the self-consistency are unchosen: even a purely logical Ti is necessarily reliant upon choosing proper initial axioms. And no one's Ti qualifies as "purely logical."

And that's for Ti, where in the end there is a desire to be consistent with reality.

For Fi, it's worse. There is nothing objective to which to compare it. We're stuck saying what it's "like", not what it "is." H&B's description is in all likelihood apt for her experience of Fi. The words and descriptions she is applying, however, result from her own subjective understanding and an attempt to turn it into an objective, explainable construct. With every extra detail, it becomes more and more difficult to separate the essential Fi from Fi working with Ne and Te and all the rest.

I am sensing a bit of bias in various descriptions, an emphasis to indicate that Fi isn't "just mushy feelings", it isn't about "being nice," (I agree with this, btw) but that it is about <deep voice>Values!</deep voice> ... *waits for echo of the deep voice to fade away*

I believe that values are an intrinsic part of Fi (and Fe), but there is a strong tendency to turn them into objective rulesets, and to detach them from their underlying subjectivity, as if that subjectivity were something to be abhorred. I believe that the "values" that one states are a mere shadow of what is going on in Fi - kind of the best approximation that we can make with words, and if you take them too seriously, you start processing with Te (or Fe, or even Ti), and start arriving at conclusions that may even contradict the real, core Fi.

Personally, I take what I get from Fi on its own, it has its own voice. Ni has a voice. Te has a voice. Se, when I pay attention, has a voice. When I say what I say, when I do what I do, it is a synthesis of all of these. It is very rare for only a single voice to be expressed, though a single voice might be predominant.

That's why I use the imagery to "explain Fi." If I add in too much more, the idea is inadvertently communicated that: "explanation of Fi" == "Fi". And then that "explanation of Fi", which is just a projection of Fi into words, proceeds to imply conclusions that eventually contradict Fi. With imagery, however, I can successfully communicate Fi, and then when the analogy is stretched too far, we realize that it is the words, the projection, the image that fails, while the mutual understanding of Fi is maintained.

[:nerd: My next topic is to describe the synthesis, in particular of Te and Fi. Expect a General Relativity analogy. :nerd:]
 

highlander

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
26,562
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
To sum up, if we don't know what Fi is, we'll be able to describe an INTJ's compassion only in the shallowest surface terms. But it'll be adorable and all.

Perhaps this is a reasonable description: Fi is your conscience. We judge based on values, a sense of personal integrity, and what is important to us. We work to understand our emotional reactions and why we are responding in a certain way. It relates to:
- Our individual values and the perceived values of others
- Integrity, ethical behavior, discerning what is right from what is wrong
- Sensing others emotional states by understanding our reactions to them

Some potential examples of INTJ behavior in relation to this:
- Using high ethical or moral standards in decision making
- Mentoring and developing people
- Sticking up for people we feel have been unfairly treated
- Sensing the emotions of another person (some combination of Ni/Ti thing going on there) and taking concrete actions to support them
- Putting the interests of a cause or others ahead of personal interests
 

sculpting

New member
Joined
Jan 28, 2009
Messages
4,148
Oh U, we totally sidetracked your thread. I'm sorry, I am having an Ne day....

Let me tell you about my most favorite intj in the universe. Oddly the list of people whose respect I desire is quite small, but this intj? Totally. He is my father-in-law who I will just call dad from here on out.

The first time my ex istp left our first son was a week old. I was 17 and in my first semester at a junior college. My 200 bucks a week waitressing wasn't paying the bills at all. The bills kept slipping and I was starting to panic-and he came over to my house, sat down calmly and explained I would be moving in with him and his family.
I freaked out-i hate help. Hate it as it comes with emo obligations. I was sort of left without many options and he hardly knew me-yet he was offering to let me live in his house. My plan was to stay two months and get my own place. I lived there for four years while I completed undergrad. I still worked nights and him and his wife would watch my baby. They were his surrogate family while I finished my education so I could support him.

At first I would try and pay him. He would just give me the stare and say "put your money away". He made me go to church every sunday. He told me when I was doing stupid things. He told me to "never bring a boy like that home again" meaning his son.

I eventually moved out but while in grad school he would still help now and then-no obligations-he would pissed if I treid to pay him back.

He isn't just like this with family though. He is very devoted and has taken over preaching at his church. He spends his evenings visiting members of his congregation. I am not at all religious but I really enjoy his sermons-haha, could be the NiTe at work, but they are always full of compassion-strict, full of expectations, demanding, asking much of you-but compassion.

He now works as a consultant-training-but he takes that same sense of obligation with him to work everyday. He is idealstic-but ina stern noncomprimising way. People will follow him as they sense the ability to lead but also sense that sticking to ideals-that integrity to the best interest for thw whole?? I dunno what this is-these qualities...

But I see it in most of the older INTJs I have been around. I would follow them off the end of the earth myself.
 

Kalach

Filthy Apes!
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
4,310
MBTI Type
INTJ
The reason for the error is that neither Ti nor Fi is self-consistent. Rather, there is a drive for a kind self-consistency. Even the terms of the self-consistency are unchosen: even a purely logical Ti is necessarily reliant upon choosing proper initial axioms. And no one's Ti qualifies as "purely logical."

When Jung describes the introverted judging functions they sound really ugly, a mean-spirited dive into the subjective, actively eschewing the object, pushing aside the thing that gives rise to the inner imago. In the pure subjectivist's absence of an attachment to the "object", the subject becomes deeply moribund. There is, it would seem, supposed to be a balancing act performed by any well-adjusted introverted function between retreat from and connection to the object. Hello, extroverted functions.

The purest self consistency of an introverted function is the total absence of any object. This actually corresponds to a complete absence of objective content within an introverted function. And, necessarily (I guess), just because the objective exists too, this corresponds to an actual emptiness within that function's domain. And that's what introverted functions drive toward! The purest of pure subjects: zero.


Ergo, though perhaps this is a shallow "ergo", yes, Fi is the INTJ conscience, the subjective balance for objective logic.


For, what is the content of introverted feeling other than affect. The object, whatever it is, gives rise to affect, cognitively dealt with as subject. Fi, the function, seeks to intensify affect while dismissing object, seeking out the "true" affect. And (if we go along with there actually being a universal unconscious) "true" has something to do with primordial images of "reality".

What the actual process of the universal unconscious is, is another question. I'm going to say it is some kind of personally created thing. Possibly Jung would not disagree since he said several things about the creators--individuals--being sufficiently similar that they create similar things right down deep in the subconscious.
 

goodgrief

New member
Joined
Apr 3, 2010
Messages
480
MBTI Type
INTJ
Compassionate INTJs certainly do exist, and at times, I can be very compassionate. I swear sometimes I must turn into an F. I mean, I tend to be logical, but I will try really hard to make those I care about happy and I get really upset when people don't see me as a caring person. My friend once told me I could never be a psychologist because I don't care about others views (an idea she got because I always argue with her (she's almost always wrong)) and I was really sad for a while. Also, people tend to think my arguments are just attacks, which is not true. I just want people to listen or prove me wrong. But alas, this sort of thing is what makes many think INTJs have no souls. But I am truly devoted to my friendships and would be distraught if I were to lose them.
 

kiddykat

movin melodies
Joined
Jul 27, 2008
Messages
1,111
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
4, 7
My INTJ friend, confirmed is pretty compassionate.. She hides it very well underneath her thick skin.. I never once cried in front of her, but have had her break into tears on me a few times. I was :shock: to see how emotional she can get, but yah..

One thing I truly admire her for are her values. Her actions speak louder than words. Maybe she can look tough on the outside, but underneath that exterior is a person who's truly cares.

Oh- and I understand her when she gets into the challenge me mode. It's more for shits and giggles and for deeper understanding- not meant to be personal at all. She's very no-nonsense bullshit, kind of person. One of the reasons why I love her.
 

Crysalis

New member
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Messages
1
MBTI Type
INTJ
I'm a bit mushy on the inside, I just don't like people to see it. I don't know why it's so uncomfortable for me. I really don't think it's pride or anything, just a genuine discomfort with public displays of emotion and the emotion sometimes causes actual physical pain for me, like a deep aching tension, probably because I fight it. I am also unable to take comfort from people when I do get upset, I just want them to back off. The old scenario of asking someone who's barely holding it together if they're okay and next minute the flood gates open. Please don't open my floodgates! I want them shut! My husband and kids don't think I'm cold and hard, they think I'm soft, well they see the tears well up with the odd soppy movie. Being a T makes it harder for people to manipulate us and that seems like a good thing to me.
 

Laurie

Was E.laur
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
6,072
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
Is this another ENFP trap? I'm not falling for it!

INTJs are some of the most compassionate people I know.
 

WoodsWoman

New member
Joined
Dec 24, 2007
Messages
778
MBTI Type
INFP
The people an INTJ includes in their circle of trust are in a very honored place. Just after my husband died his - now my - INTJ friend was incredible in many ways, compassion at it's best. He is one who's respect and good opinion I value highly. It was his influence and presence that spurred me to join INTJforum (I'm more active there).
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
Joined
Jan 2, 2009
Messages
6,387
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
7w8
What is this thread about?

I think INTJs are definitely compassionate and from the people that I know, do indeed seem softer than the INTP.

And it’s similarly meaningless for a Fi-user to boast authenticity or honesty since it is simply the rational fleshing out of the principles of coherent subjective systems. Just as it would be meaningless to Fi to legitimise contradicting actions or to claim emotional entitlement as a means to direct other people's choices or to support oneself through group-approval as in "After all I've done for you...", "Everybody, hear what he did to me..." etc.
(FYI: It's not to say that competent Fe-users do this. Because they generally don't. According to Lenore, such unpleasant emotional hickups are on the other hand precisely what immature Fe would do, more specifically tertiary Fe wrecking havock in a tertiary temptation spree.)

I'm not entirely sure how accurate the above statement is. I don't believe that tert Fe or immature Fe does what you said.

Lenore said that tert Te looks for support from the "crowd" and begs people to look at the facts. It brings everything to the surface and says "look what happened here - who agrees with me?" It looks for support.

Tert Fe tries to guilt trip the person. There is an element of making the person look bad, but it's usually done in a quiet, underhanded way. There is usually an element of "friendly" behavior.
 

Heart&Brain

New member
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
217
MBTI Type
ENFP
I find the effort to coherently, logically, systematically describe Fi, here, to be quite amusing. The final picture of Fi appears to Escheresque, built by unguided Te, and is declared to be a self-consistent system of rules. "Oh, wait, it has to be consistent with this ... and this ... and this ... oh, and this."

escher%20lego.jpg


The reason for the error is that neither Ti nor Fi is self-consistent. Rather, there is a drive for a kind self-consistency. Even the terms of the self-consistency are unchosen: even a purely logical Ti is necessarily reliant upon choosing proper initial axioms. And no one's Ti qualifies as "purely logical."

And that's for Ti, where in the end there is a desire to be consistent with reality.

For Fi, it's worse. There is nothing objective to which to compare it.
We're stuck saying what it's "like", not what it "is." H&B's description is in all likelihood apt for her experience of Fi. The words and descriptions she is applying, however, result from her own subjective understanding and an attempt to turn it into an objective, explainable construct. With every extra detail, it becomes more and more difficult to separate the essential Fi from Fi working with Ne and Te and all the rest.

I am sensing a bit of bias in various descriptions, an emphasis to indicate that Fi isn't "just mushy feelings", it isn't about "being nice," (I agree with this, btw) but that it is about <deep voice>Values!</deep voice> ... *waits for echo of the deep voice to fade away*

I believe that values are an intrinsic part of Fi (and Fe), but there is a strong tendency to turn them into objective rulesets, and to detach them from their underlying subjectivity, as if that subjectivity were something to be abhorred. I believe that the "values" that one states are a mere shadow of what is going on in Fi - kind of the best approximation that we can make with words, and if you take them too seriously, you start processing with Te (or Fe, or even Ti), and start arriving at conclusions that may even contradict the real, core Fi.

Personally, I take what I get from Fi on its own, it has its own voice. Ni has a voice. Te has a voice. Se, when I pay attention, has a voice. When I say what I say, when I do what I do, it is a synthesis of all of these. It is very rare for only a single voice to be expressed, though a single voice might be predominant.

That's why I use the imagery to "explain Fi." If I add in too much more, the idea is inadvertently communicated that: "explanation of Fi" == "Fi". And then that "explanation of Fi", which is just a projection of Fi into words, proceeds to imply conclusions that eventually contradict Fi. With imagery, however, I can successfully communicate Fi, and then when the analogy is stretched too far, we realize that it is the words, the projection, the image that fails, while the mutual understanding of Fi is maintained.

[:nerd: My next topic is to describe the synthesis, in particular of Te and Fi. Expect a General Relativity analogy. :nerd:]

I find your dismissal of my idea that Fi (amongst doing other things as well) works as a 'visceral' (pre-rule, pre-moral, pre-verbal, pre-analytic etc.) bullshit detector as 'just H&Bs personal feeling' a tad condescending. I've been conscious about having what I now know as 'Fi' since I was five, thus about 35 years. Which does NOT mean 'mastering' it (oh boy, no...:cry:).

If you're an xxFP, no matter how fucked up your childhood has been Fi is per definition your preferred judgment function when judging and maneuvering your way through growing up. Unless you been comatose, it's simply impossible to NOT know if it's how you roll because it's so powerfully visceral and will mess about with you in an unmistakable fashion until you get it a bit under control.
So, I know a bit what I'm talking about. Unlike some others here about who like to pose as authorities of Fi while hardly ever having used it.

Sorry that I sound harsh, but I feel mocked to the point of just turning my back and not caring anymore having to witness too many inconsistent and phony selfindulging declamations of Fi-ness across the NF-threads.

So, I focused on the aspect of Fi that will manifest as a nagging - but at first unanalysed - certainty that *something* in what people do and say rings fake. Doing so was firstly because I think it is an important and valuable aspect of Fi, but it was certainly also my intention to make a plea to posters pretending to have Fi, to please turn ON that bullshit detector if they mean business.

But I'll try one more time (is this the one-more-chance-ENFP-stupidity?):

Regardless of cognitive preferences, every human will experience shifting subjective emotions as well as shifting objective calculations. And this fact precisely doesn't equate that every human is using Fi and Ti.

Introverted judging preference is, both necessarily as well as in lived life about judging and processing the perceptions of our world on a much more systematic, universal and 'timeless' level than the idea of some arbitrary, artsy or sentimental personal whims suggest. I don't like the reductionism to subjectivist "whatever you like it to be, honey" that I hear in your dismissal. I may have misheard, though. But if not, I'll have to say that I find describing Fi like something excusing personal irresponsibility, to be a fox hole for legitimising unethical behaviour ("It wasn't me, it was my feewings that did it!" :alleged Fi-user hits and runs: ).

And: if celebrating unethical and irresponsible eulogised action, or irresponsibly vomit one's first arbitrary, sentimentalist and incoherent judgments are supposed to be the core qualities of the functional theoretical "Fi", I've either misunderstood everything or I'm so done with MBTI.


But I agree with you, Uumlau: Fi is in itself certainly not Te-shaped and will easily appear simplifyied and mechanistic when Te'ed.

What's more, Fi is not word-shaped at all. But neither are electrons. In fact, I suspect that the only wordshaped things in the world are... words.
Which kind of leaves us with the question: so, do we shut up about the subjective and objective reality or do we keep talking?

The same problem goes for Ti obviously, since it's what judges reality in the first place thus is what establishes anything objective to 'compare itself to'. Self-delusional circularity could ensue.

The good news are of course that realising how correspondence theory (on the T-side) and idealistic transcendentalism (on the F-side) are both trying to prove themselves by such circular bogus doesn't need to imply that now "anything goes". Critical awareness of trivial unprovability does by no means take away our responsibility to talk about all these non-words in as precise and interesting and consistent and enlightening and constructive fashion as possible, be it feeling judgments or electron spins.

So, let's keep talking and conceptualising, this idealist would say. For now at least... ;)



Okay, aside from this epistemological rant, I still think I'm on to something important about Fi in general, not just how little H&B experienced it. Since it is quite close to these thoughts by Seymore, quoting Jung in the "Weary Fi-users" thread today (sorry, I don't know how to link to a post yet), I'll take the words out of my mouth in the hope it will create a better understanding of this universal aspect of how things can and cannot fit in a subjective system, than I was able to:


How Fi is like Ti

To paraphrase Jung "everything that is true of Ti is true of Fi, substituting Thinking for Feeling." It may be hard for Ti-users to fully appreciate, but I think there is a lot of truth there.

Both Ti and Fi tend to work from universal principles, tending to ignore surrounding prevailing standards. For Ti, those principles are founded in logical objectivity (although in terms of one's own theoretical system). For Fi, those principles are based on ethics, humanity and aesthetics (not that Ti lacks aesthetics). Neither Ti nor Fi place much emphasis on status or authority. In fact, both try to find the universal in the essence of the specific.

Both Ti and Fi value staying true to the essence of things. In Ti's case, it emphasizes staying true to things with logical consistency and precision. Fi demands staying true to things on the level of feelings, ethics and/or aesthetics.

Fi values staying true to one's self, one's nature, and the universal qualities of humanity. Ti values staying true to logical principles, precision and conceptual elegance.

Fi and Ti both tend to stand up for the importance of the specific reality. Fe and Te care more about general organizing principles applied consistently (and often externally), while Fi and Ti both are about adjusting understanding precisely in order to capture the underlying essence of the individual case.

Ti does have some advantages over Fi, since it is, in part, objective. Thinking, whether introverted or extraverted, more easily allows for external evaluation and validation. Logical theories and concepts can be detached from the people involved, and be both perceived and weighed for truth. Feeling doesn't have same objective measures.

The Nature of Fi

Jung states (Psychological Types, p387), "It is extremely difficult to give an intellectual account of the introverted feeling process, or even an approximate description of it, although the peculiar nature of this kind of feeling is very noticeable once one has become aware of it." Fi tends to elude verbal and logical descriptions, much to the frustration of both the Fi-user and his or her audience. This also hampers Fi-users in debate, since they are not always able to clearly explain and defend their deep understanding of the issue at hand.

Jung continues, "Conversely, with the introverted feeling type, feeling attains an abstract and universal character and can establish universal and permanent values." Introverted feeling forms principles based on those things that bind all of us together as human beings. It tends to respect the personhood, values and moral agency of the individual.

Introverted Feeling is also about harmonizing one thing to another. Actions should be harmonized with principles, deeper purposes and aesthetics. One's daily life should harmonize with one's underlying values. One person can harmonize with the feelings of another to better understand them. Fi can be rather exacting in this respect, leading to an kind of uncompromising and demanding perfectionism.

Fi is the judging function closest to the unconscious, so tends to communicate by means of feelings and primordial images.

Fi imparts value judgements before logical understanding. Therefore Fi-doms may understand something as essential, important and right long before they can defend why that is the case."
 

Heart&Brain

New member
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
217
MBTI Type
ENFP
I'm not entirely sure how accurate the above statement is. I don't believe that tert Fe or immature Fe does what you said.

Lenore said that tert Te looks for support from the "crowd" and begs people to look at the facts. It brings everything to the surface and says "look what happened here - who agrees with me?" It looks for support.

Tert Fe tries to guilt trip the person. There is an element of making the person look bad, but it's usually done in a quiet, underhanded way. There is usually an element of "friendly" behavior.

Lenore on tertiary Fe-temptation in ENTPs:
Tertiary Fe: (1) "I'll lay a guilt trip on this guy, tell him all I've done for him and suggest that the next time he's in a tough spot, he might need my help. (2) Well, hmm, ok, I'll be all friendly. I'll smile, tell him I like him, what a great guy he is. (3) Well, hmm, that's not working, either. Ok, I'll make him look bad in the eyes of his friends."

The Secondary Function would say: "What is the truth? Not what people would agree is true, not an angle on the truth for making it palatable to someone, but the whole, honest truth?"



The emotional tone of such tert-Fe spectacle can obviously speed cycle between (1) the bravely sobbing martyr, (2) the shallow pretend-friend or (3) the raging pimp slapping his disobedient bitch publicly. The frequent changes in emotional tone is part of the 'symptom', since they would solely depend on what the upset person in the grip of tert Fe judges will provide the most Ego-pay off from moment to moment. Inner drive for detached consistency and realistic consequence-calculation not being the prevalent judgment parameters as long as Ti is muted by tert-Fe on a rampage.

But of course, one's tertiary doesn't need to take the shape of a destructive tertiary temptation. Done 'right' the contributions of the tertiary should follow and serve, not negate, the Aux in one's type.
So I agree, that in healthy mixes I too can clearly recognise ENTP social awareness and fluid gentleness as well as INTJ compassion and fierce ethical demands to self.
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
Joined
Jan 2, 2009
Messages
6,387
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
7w8
Lenore on tertiary Fe-temptation in ENTPs:
Tertiary Fe: (1) "I'll lay a guilt trip on this guy, tell him all I've done for him and suggest that the next time he's in a tough spot, he might need my help. (2) Well, hmm, ok, I'll be all friendly. I'll smile, tell him I like him, what a great guy he is. (3) Well, hmm, that's not working, either. Ok, I'll make him look bad in the eyes of his friends."

The Secondary Function would say: "What is the truth? Not what people would agree is true, not an angle on the truth for making it palatable to someone, but the whole, honest truth?"



The emotional tone of such tert-Fe spectacle can obviously speed cycle between (1) the bravely sobbing martyr, (2) the shallow pretend-friend or (3) the raging pimp slapping his disobedient bitch publicly. The frequent changes in emotional tone is part of the 'symptom', since they would solely depend on what the upset person in the grip of tert Fe judges will provide the most Ego-pay off from moment to moment. Inner drive for detached consistency and realistic consequence-calculation not being the prevalent judgment parameters as long as Ti is muted by tert-Fe on a rampage.

But of course, one's tertiary doesn't need to take the shape of a destructive tertiary temptation. Done 'right' the contributions of the tertiary should follow and serve, not negate, the Aux in one's type.
So I agree, that in healthy mixes I too can clearly recognise ENTP social awareness and fluid gentleness as well as INTJ compassion and fierce ethical demands to self.

Since you are an authority of Fi, having used it for 35 years, and everyone else can't seem to verbalize or even understand it, do you find it acceptable to also assert a knowledge of Fe - especially since you don't use it?

I am stating that the 3 phases that you so described can equally pertain to the end result of Fi - the martyr complex, the sobbing, the pimp-slapping - all of these emotional reactions can be done by anyone, of any type. Behavior is not the same as cognitive function.

Saying the users of Fe don't have genuine and authentic feelings is a gross misunderstanding. Fe can be calculating, sure, but so can any function or person. Just because Fi is "authentic" doesn't mean it's not also self-serving.

And if you do want to attribute it to function, you have to acknowledge that just seeing the end result does not give you insight into which process was happening internally. I've seen plenty of Fi users with a martyr complex or in a public rage.

And if Ti can be muted by Fe, can the same thing be said of Fi being muted by Te?

I think that you certainly do have a solid grasp on what is or isn't Fi, but that doesn't translate to all of the functions, nor the reasons for the behavior of random people you only know through segmented writings on the internet.
 

uumlau

Happy Dancer
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
Messages
5,517
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
953
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I find your dismissal of my idea that Fi (amongst doing other things as well) works as a 'visceral' (pre-rule, pre-moral, pre-verbal, pre-analytic etc.) bullshit detector as 'just H&Bs personal feeling' a tad condescending. I've been conscious about having what I now know as 'Fi' since I was five, thus about 35 years. Which does NOT mean 'mastering' it (oh boy, no...:cry:).
I did not dismiss that particular idea so much as refrain from discussing it. The problem is that all the other Fi users have their own subjective understanding of how Fi works for them, we get our subjective feeling of your description, and it doesn't quite jibe, and we're not quite sure why it feels wrong.

I agree that Fi is "visceral." That is a very very good word for describing it. I'm not so sure that it is a "bullshit detector," so much that it can be a bullshit detector. See the difference? Fe and Ni, in particular, can also be bullshit detectors, just as visceral. Any reasonably sharp person who pays attention to people will develop such skills. The cognitive functions are more about how one would go about developing the skills. For skilled Fi, it is likely as you suggest: a visceral feeling. For skilled Ni, it is an instinctive observation that a pattern suggests bullshit. For skilled Fe, it is simply obvious that someone is dissembling.

What characterizes Fi isn't what it does, but how it does it. Because it is so visceral, it becomes close to impossible to distinguish from other functions, such as (in my case) Ni. So when I try to communicate what Fi is, I don't talk about what it does, but how to get into the state of mind that most explicitly uses Fi.

Sorry that I sound harsh, but I feel mocked to the point of just turning my back and not caring anymore having to witness too many inconsistent and phony selfindulging declamations of Fi-ness across the NF-threads.

So, I focused on the aspect of Fi that will manifest as a nagging - but at first unanalysed - certainty that *something* in what people do and say rings fake. Doing so was firstly because I think it is an important and valuable aspect of Fi, but it was certainly also my intention to make a plea to posters pretending to have Fi, to please turn ON that bullshit detector if they mean business.
Here is where the trouble comes in. Just because you developed a bullshit detector with your Fi doesn't mean others have. This is as fundamental an error as asserting that if one is an INTJ, one's "best match" is ENFP. MBTI doesn't work like that. Just as MBTI doesn't guarantee that a particular INTJ will get along with a particular ENFP, it doesn't imply that all dom/aux Fi users will have bullshit detectors as you describe.

Introverted judging preference is, both necessarily as well as in lived life about judging and processing the perceptions of our world on a much more systematic, universal and 'timeless' level than the idea of some arbitrary, artsy or sentimental personal whims suggest. I don't like the reductionism to subjectivist "whatever you like it to be, honey" that I hear in your dismissal. I may have misheard, though. But if not, I'll have to say that I find describing Fi like something excusing personal irresponsibility, to be a fox hole for legitimising unethical behaviour ("It wasn't me, it was my feewings that did it!" :alleged Fi-user hits and runs: ).
I'm surprised that you would even suggest that I espouse such a view.


And: if celebrating unethical and irresponsible eulogised action, or irresponsibly vomit one's first arbitrary, sentimentalist and incoherent judgments are supposed to be the core qualities of the functional theoretical "Fi", I've either misunderstood everything or I'm so done with MBTI.
I believe that at its most immature, Fi often does vomit arbitrary judgments. Undeveloped Fi is just white noise.

At its most mature, it is an understanding of human, ethical, spiritual truths so deep that it defies explanation. Most statements of such truths tend to be incomplete if stated with precision and clarity, or paradoxical and unclear if stated completely.


But I agree with you, Uumlau: Fi is in itself certainly not Te-shaped and will easily appear simplifyied and mechanistic when Te'ed.

What's more, Fi is not word-shaped at all. But neither are electrons. In fact, I suspect that the only wordshaped things in the world are... words.
Which kind of leaves us with the question: so, do we shut up about the subjective and objective reality or do we keep talking?
We keep talking, but our descriptions still remain very limited for the reasons I've stated. Electrons are far more objective and empirical than Fi.



How Fi is like Ti

I've made similar observations, before, though not in such detail as you have, here. If fully-developed Ti is the abstract theorist/scientist who tries to understand the objective universe, then fully-developed Fi is the "saint" or "monk" or "spiritual teacher" who tries to understand the subjective universe.

The Nature of Fi

Fi tends to elude verbal and logical descriptions, much to the frustration of both the Fi-user and his or her audience. This also hampers Fi-users in debate, since they are not always able to clearly explain and defend their deep understanding of the issue at hand.
Yep.

Introverted feeling forms principles based on those things that bind all of us together as human beings. It tends to respect the personhood, values and moral agency of the individual.
Yes and no. This is beginning to mistake the choices one makes for the cognitive function itself. "Ti" is not the same as "logical." "Fi" is not the same as "moral."

Introverted Feeling is also about harmonizing one thing to another. Actions should be harmonized with principles, deeper purposes and aesthetics. One's daily life should harmonize with one's underlying values. One person can harmonize with the feelings of another to better understand them. Fi can be rather exacting in this respect, leading to an kind of uncompromising and demanding perfectionism.
Again, yes and no. I think "harmonizing" is a great word to use with Fi. It would be analogous to the Ti drive for "consistency." However, there remains the confusion of the choices one makes with Fi. An individual's Fi "harmonies" could be sublime, or they could be quite dark, indeed.
 
Top