[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Introverted Perception: Fixated

[Virtual ghost]

Well, yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to get at initially, so I think we're in agreement more than we're disagreeing.


That's why I look for the absurdity in history. Trying to make sense of it all can be like trying to understand a story with a lot of conflicting narratives and plot holes.

I never though we are in some "disagreement" we parhaps evaluate some details differently but that is it.


I think I will leave this thread for now, it went too far to the side and we started to mix other functions with the Ni/Si.

 

[OrangeAppled]

For me, Ni fixation = runaway extrapolations... I will end assuming a lot of things based on shaky foundations. My ISTJ friend is much less prone to do do because he tries to leave info as is and keep it simple.

Observing my ISTJ friend, his Si fixation tends to be basing almost his whole understanding through his experiences, books he's read, what trusted sources have told him and then analyze it on his own. He struggles with off-the-cuff brainstorming. He gets amused by anything random and unusual.

It is weird, because as an INxP, I am somewhere inbetween that.
As [MENTION=12103]Poki[/MENTION] noted, building perception is less of a focus for an IxxP than understanding it (aka "ordering" it). Perception feels very fluid then, nothing is really definitive, but perhaps suggestive when in a particular context.

Brainstorming is no challenge for me, but I definitely seek understanding through things like books, in particular theories or spiritual stuff (not into, say, history or trivia much). I am more of an observer and researcher than an active participant.

The result tends to be that I recall my ideas that emerged when I read/experienced stuff, but I can be fuzzy on what I actually read/experienced vs what it made me imagine or the insight that occurred to me from it. The latter is always more interesting to me and what feels most "real" to me.

Pi is very hard for me to fully grasp. It seems swampy and highly emotional and erratic to me, as lower order functions tend to.

 

[Poki]

For me, Ni fixation = runaway extrapolations... I will end assuming a lot of things based on shaky foundations. My ISTJ friend is much less prone to do do because he tries to leave info as is and keep it simple.

Observing my ISTJ friend, his Si fixation tends to be basing almost his whole understanding through his experiences, books he's read, what trusted sources have told him and then analyze it on his own. He struggles with off-the-cuff brainstorming. He gets amused by anything random and unusual.

that shapes who he is and builds his internal perception. healthy. unhealthy is when they become so fixated they are basically heading down a single path and single vision. this is when they control instead of experience. everything caters to perception, become head case.

knowledge is paramount not stagnant for IJs.

 

[Poki]

I think Ji combined with tertiary Ni results in a kind of impenetrability to the outside world. It's a self-contained, self-regenerating cocoon ... not the most pleasant cocoon but a cocoon nonetheless.

i would have to shut the world out, something i personally wont do. i can see that happening with IP though. so, we controp mind and soul as a cult leader. i can buy that.

 

[Poki]

It is weird, because as an INxP, I am somewhere inbetween that. As @Poki noted, building perception is less of a focus for an IxxP than understanding it (aka "ordering" it). Perception feels very fluid then, nothing is really definitive, but perhaps suggestive when in a particular context. Brainstorming is no challenge for me, but I definitely seek understanding through things like books, in particular theories or spiritual stuff (not into, say, history or trivia much). I am more of an observer and researcher than an active participant. The result tends to be that I recall my ideas that emerged when I read/experienced stuff, but I can be fuzzy on what I actually read/experienced vs what it made me imagine or the insight that occurred to me from it. The latter is always more interesting to me and what feels most "real" to me. Pi is very hard for me to fully grasp. It seems swampy and highly emotional and erratic to me, as lower order functions tend to.

that fuzzy causes dom Ji to dig and learn instead of take it at face value. perception is highly maleable. it trips me up...as in its kinda funny...when people try to control me via perception. i am like...ok, your point is.

imagine the eye opener when people realize your perception of people is nothing more then your perception...welcome to MBTI...lol

 

[iwakar]

I really like this metaphor. I think I often feel hamstrung as an Ni-user trying to understand myself and my own past because a lot of my memories are in actuality summaries I had assembled at some point. For instance, if I wanted to make sense of something that might have been painful to me as a child with my adult mind, I feel like I'm accessing that information through the lens of that summary, rather than revisiting the events themselves. What ends up happening is like...a meta-analysis of a meta-analysis, and I find that my memories end up falling in line with whatever the updated assessment is.

Ugh, so fucking much this. Gottdammit all.

 

[Tilt]

that shapes who he is and builds his internal perception. healthy. unhealthy is when they become so fixated they are basically heading down a single path and single vision. this is when they control instead of experience. everything caters to perception, become head case.

knowledge is paramount not stagnant for IJs.

I have seen that happen with a few other people...
To put it in a more positive way, his Si-Te usage acts an Occam's razor to my sometimes runaway Ni and my Ni helps to redirect his Si when it gets stuck. But it's interesting how dom Je affects the dynamic... I usually have a set objective how I want to redirect his Si. My Fe distorts my Ni... it freaks me out... haha

 

[Poki]

I have seen that happen with a few other people... To put it in a more positive way, his Si-Te usage acts an Occam's razor to my sometimes runaway Ni and my Ni helps to redirect his Si when it gets stuck. But it's interesting how dom Je affects the dynamic... I usually have a set objective how I want to redirect his Si. My Fe distorts my Ni... it freaks me out... haha

i personally may get stuck in my judgement and i refuse to change. its my refusal i get stuck in. i dont need a reason, i dont need any of that. i just wont no matter what. its my stubborn. i can use it for good for others, but its not healthy used in support of self in that negative fashion.

 

[Tilt]

that fuzzy causes dom Ji to dig and learn instead of take it at face value. perception is highly maleable. it trips me up...as in its kinda funny...when people try to control me via perception. i am like...ok, your point is.

imagine the eye opener when people realize your perception of people is nothing more then your perception...welcome to MBTI...lol

I swear this is the crux of most of my fights with my ENFJ friend. We are regularly trying to change each other's perception on things. We were fascinated by the concept of perception and how to change it. How NJ does that sound?

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Ni creates a filter through which all possible events are viewed. It is easy to forsee how things will turn out, so often it is difficult to want to pursue high risk possibilities. And creates a tunnel vision, if not grounded.

Changing an established filter is difficult My brain has run through so many scenarios to pick the most correct, even with incomplete data, that it takes conscious effort to change.

I don't know how different that is for others, anyway. As Johnathon Haidt says, all internal reasoning is fundementally emotional. We produce logical and reason to try to convince others or to resist the efforts of others to convince us. The elephant is running along and we believe the rider is in control.

And current thinking of thinking (as discussed in Thinking Fast and Slow and Blink) is that are rapid unreasoned judgments are usually pretty good. But unless we are experts in something, attempts to reason something can be be difficult.

One example from Blink was jelly rating. Experts could easily set forth standards for rating jelly. Lay persons could pretty much get similar results when they didn't try to provide reasons. But when lay persons tried to use standards and provide reasons, they screwed everything up.

Anyway, for me I operate on 80% accuracy. Ni gives me clarity enough to be near absolutely correct about 80% of the time. For most things, that is pretty good. It could be 70% or 90%, but somewhere in that neighborhood, arrived at very quickly through incomplete data. But I don't know in advance if it is one of times where I am wrong.

So, occassionally, I can be really wrong, due to Ni. And I don't see it until awhile later.

A few years ago, before the housing crash, I lived in an area that was undergoing massive speculation. A lot of people bought 10 or 15 homes under construction and sold them when they were completed for huge profits, as the prices rose so fast. I could have done the same, but since I knew it would crash, I knew it was artificial. But I didn't buy the houses and just make an easy $100k or more profit per house, like so many acquaintances did.

Ni helped me see, but prevented me from taking advantage of the short term possibilities.

Overall, it is often difficult, because of the Ni blinders. I see so much and Fe provides such meaning and understanding, that I struggle to know what I don't know....

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

[MENTION=7254]Wind Up Rex[/MENTION]

I really like this metaphor. I think I often feel hamstrung as an Ni-user trying to understand myself and my own past because a lot of my memories are in actuality summaries I had assembled at some point. For instance, if I wanted to make sense of something that might have been painful to me as a child with my adult mind, I feel like I'm accessing that information through the lens of that summary, rather than revisiting the events themselves. What ends up happening is like...a meta-analysis of a meta-analysis, and I find that my memories end up falling in line with whatever the updated assessment is.

I relate to this. Although, do your memories fall in line with whatever the updated assessment is? or do your feelings about the memory change? Or both?

For me, the memories remain the same. How I feel about them changes. But I think Ni can build off of reasons behind memories/viewpoints and go off on connecting the dots and "play" with lines of thinking. I do that and sometimes it puts you in that profound "aha" moment. I think this is what you mean by Ni cocoon. It's super easy to start believing your own hype

Also, Ni/Ti/Fe is strongly linked to empathy for me. It's the only way I know how to "put myself in someone else's shoes" by thinking about how they must *think*. This is strictly internal and it takes a lot of time to do this. It's really hard to explain!

TBH, the Ni thing is like a new toy for me. It's a plaything and I like it. It's like playing dress up for reality. You can put different clothes on any view and wear them for a while. I think Ti/Ni can really go wild with this. But, what brings me back, and sometimes it is easy to get lost in those internal lines of thinking, is to back out and be objective toward my own feelings/thoughts.

It's difficult for me to "own" any real thought or view for very long because I don't think it's workable or smart to put myself in a corner and tell myself to stay there. Ti/Se. (Interacting with the world will tell you it won't/can't be predicted).

It's extremely difficult to set parameters before I "get there". When I need to be decisive when a situation presents itself, I can know immediately what I want to do. Or what I think about it. I can tell you why, when how what where. Where do I want to stand right now? I know that answer.

I'm essentially a hypocrite to my own opinion, many many times. I contradict myself quite often but I'm okay with it because I never held it to a viable standard to begin with.
"Just gotta do you."

That's where I end up.

 

[violet_crown]

Ni creates a filter through which all possible events are viewed. It is easy to forsee how things will turn out, so often it is difficult to want to pursue high risk possibilities. And creates a tunnel vision, if not grounded.

Changing an established filter is difficult My brain has run through so many scenarios to pick the most correct, even with incomplete data, that it takes conscious effort to change.

I don't know how different that is for others, anyway. As Johnathon Haidt says, all internal reasoning is fundementally emotional. We produce logical and reason to try to convince others or to resist the efforts of others to convince us. The elephant is running along and we believe the rider is in control.

During times when you've had to "consciously change" the assumptions of your filter, what did that process look like? What would you say perciptated the re-evaluation?

I feel like since Ni is something that highly systems oriented in its outlook, one of the most terrifying things about the possibility of a "corruption" in one's Ni is that it's not going to touch one thing--it's going to hit on a system's level. I feel the times that my Ni assumptions were genuinely rattled and had to be updated, it felt like...the emotional equivalent of 9/11.

A lot of NFPs emotional processing and insight seems to revolve around a pretty ongoing assessment of their Si-grids. Or, from my conversations with them, it seems like they know when some rut they're dealing with is a grid issue vs a more situational problem, and are very capable of articulating where that breakdown is happening inside of them.

Those conversations were definitely another influence on this topic for me. Ni (regardless of whether we're working in raw data at the time an assessment or not) does still draw on a certain set of assumption of how the world works, and those assumptions can be set by all kinds of things--some more subjective than others--and in the event those assumptions are no longer serving us, it seems like we have less of a recourse for how to either identify the breakdown or means to address it in a way that's not so devestating.

Now, it's 100% possible that NFPs have a more objective view of Si beacuse it's a tertiary or inferior fuction for them, and not conscious enough to be weighted down with the same ego identification issues that NJs might deal with as we explore our own Pi. I'd love to hear from an SJ on some of this. [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] or [MENTION=23583]Yamato Nadeshiko[/MENTION]--y'all have thoughts on how you re-evalute your Si-assumptions?

 

[á´…eparted]

I really like peoples reasoning for Ni that it's a lot of summarization of events. It's like, I don't really need to think through past events or information that I recall. It comes to me in a packet that I understand. However, explaining it or giving details is a challenge. It's like a messy closet. It's there, I just don't always easily find the individual parts I need. I think a good illustration is when I am asked in my field to recall a reaction, or if I see a reaction written on the board. I have a a good understanding of how to do it. However, I won't easily recall the name, or remember the details of it. I'll simply know how to do it. Sometimes (but much less often) it's the other way around. It's sort of like I need some sort of external prompt to remember it all. Though that's not terribly interesting as that's how memory works for people.

Ni for me really just doesn't want to be arsed with parsing out details. The summary or packet is just good enough, and it wants to pass that on as is. At times it's really helpful, useful, and works great. At other times, it's bad because those details will matter a ton and without them mistakes are made, and I won't see how or why they are mistakes, or even see mistakes at all.

 

[Yama]

I'd love to hear from an SJ on some of this. [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] or [MENTION=23583]Yamato Nadeshiko[/MENTION]--y'all have thoughts on how you re-evalute your Si-assumptions?

Re-evaluate? Almost never. The fixation is strong in me. My archetypes are fairly solid and unless something drastic happens that makes me re-evaluate my entire worldview, I generally believe in them.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

During times when you've had to "consciously change" the assumptions of your filter, what did that process look like? What would you say perciptated the re-evaluation?

It can be as simple as one new tiny bit of info. Once it is accepted as valid, the entire strucutre gets reworked. A little change can completely change the paradigm. Ni isn't the sum total of past experiences, but a framework with gaps that Ni bridges, pulling together into one great whole.

Some things take years to settle into place.

Big events can quickly cause settling to take place or just disrupt everything for a long time.

About 8 years ago, I read a throwaway line in a novel that struck me and helped to settle Ni down in an area. It was instant.

I feel like since Ni is something that highly systems oriented in its outlook, one of the most terrifying things about the possibility of a "corruption" in one's Ni is that it's not going to touch one thing--it's going to hit on a system's level. I feel the times that my Ni assumptions were genuinely rattled and had to be updated, it felt like...the emotional equivalent of 9/11.

My wife's tert Ni can get odd. It really locks her in, especially when combined with Fi. She can be brilliantly insightful out of the blue, but gets very locked into a mindset.

My own Ni is mostly unsettled in many areas and I feel pretty lost. I can't get clarity and it sucks. I hate unsettled Ni. I feel adrift on the sea in a lifeboat with huge storms on the horizon.

I hate not being able to articulate my vision and as long as Ni is unsettled, I just can't get it out. In college, I couldn't write term papers until the last moment. I remember searching for distractions to no end. But once it clicked into place, I could type up a long paper in one setting, and it would be beautiful.

Ni just needs time and grounding to make it work......

A lot of NFPs emotional processing and insight seems to revolve around a pretty ongoing assessment of their Si-grids. Or, from my conversations with them, it seems like they know when some rut they're dealing with is a grid issue vs a more situational problem, and are very capable of articulating where that breakdown is happening inside of them.

Those conversations were definitely another influence on this topic for me. Ni (regardless of whether we're working in raw data at the time an assessment or not) does still draw on a certain set of assumption of how the world works, and those assumptions can be set by all kinds of things--some more subjective than others--and in the event those assumptions are no longer serving us, it seems like we have less of a recourse for how to either identify the breakdown or means to address it in a way that's not so devestating.

Now, it's 100% possible that NFPs have a more objective view of Si beacuse it's a tertiary or inferior fuction for them, and not conscious enough to be weighted down with the same ego identification issues that NJs might deal with as we explore our own Pi. I'd love to hear from an SJ on some of this. [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] or [MENTION=23583]Yamato Nadeshiko[/MENTION]--y'all have thoughts on how you re-evalute your Si-assumptions?

Sounds interesting.....

 

[violet_crown]

Re-evaluate? Almost never. The fixation is strong in me. My archetypes are fairly solid and unless something drastic happens that makes me re-evaluate my entire worldview, I generally believe in them.

You've never felt like you were in a rut or obsessing over something, and you might need to make significant changes to get over it?

 

[Yama]

You've never felt like you were in a rut or obsessing over something, and you might need to make significant changes to get over it?

Well, I'm currently in that sort of situation now... where I realize I'm at an unhealthy level of obsession and have to do something about it. I'm just really, really bad at the actual changing of behavior. It's very difficult for me to break my habits. Usually, I'll try to break out of it and do good for a couple days, and then fall right back into it like nothing happened.

Usually, it takes other people pointing it out to me for me to notice if I'm unhealthily obsessing over something. Otherwise, I actually kind of like "ruts" because routine is safe and comfortable to me, and I don't mind hobby obsessions as long as they don't hurt anyone. Currently, I've been aware that I need to "do something" about the thing I'm stuck over for a few months now, and have made (what I consider to be) almost no progress.

 

[Coriolis]

Ni Fixation

I feel a lot of times I’ve heard discussion of how those with strong Si-use can distort the future because of their past-orientation. I don’t hear as often how Ni’s future orientation impacts how it understands the past. I feel Ni can just as easily become “stuck” by it’s own selective memory. Like, you have these experiences, and you have a certain way of remembering them. Because there’s less unpacking of those memories and less conscious effort to re-contextualize prior experience in the same systematic way Si might, it can bake in certain flaws into how the Ni-user projects the future that are neither obvious nor easily rectifiable because of the preference for Se data. The Ni corruptions creates a rut of self-fulfilling prophesy that just becomes deeper and deeper over time.

A first, quick take on this: Ni's future orientation distorts the past by filtering or distorting it in such a way as to support the Ni future vision.

I've been observing to see if I'm more inclined towards Ne or Ni. The discussion of Ni memory is an interesting one. I think it is a logical presentation of the theory. In MBTI theory it is not possible to have a preference for both Si and Ni, and so the assumption is that these two perspectives are mutually exclusive. It is something I'll spend some time thinking about.

As I understand MBTI theory, it is in fact the preferences for Ni and Si that are mutually exclusive, not our experience of the functions themselves. I do engage Si, and when I become aware of it it can make me very uncomfortable. So it is there, just not at all preferred and not integrated well at all into my overall functional makeup.

No offence but you are from the country that has short and relatively clear history. Therefore you have easier time seeing it as a academic topic. While in some countries history can openly border on propaganda. For example my country has changed 6 political systems over the 100 years and each system was basically build on the corpse of previous one, so each one has it's own view on the previous ones. Therefore objective truth got lost in the transitions/genocides ... and because of that it is completely pointless to be the slave to the past. I mean past shouldn't have the direct impact on the future since it is uneraliable, especially at the current rate of changes and especially since most of the documents got lost in wars, destruction and repression. Therefore it is basically impossble to be certain about the facts, even the witnesses can be questionable since they may lie and distort the truth for some reason. (probably because they were part of "the system") However most of the world is more like my country than your country, therefore history in general should be taken with the grain of salt.

The past always informs the future, if only in repeated demonstrations of human nature. What both historic and future events have in common is that they will be enacted by people. In any case, it is incorrect to discount history as a subject simply because it has been infused with propaganda in your experience (and probably many others' as well). That would be like discounting science as a subject because of the influence of someone like Lysenko.

 

[violet_crown]

A first, quick take on this: Ni's future orientation distorts the past by filtering or distorting it in such a way as to support the Ni future vision.

My point was that it works both ways. The vision impacts how we understand/remember the past, and the assumptions we generate about our future are impacted by our prior experiences. People with strong Ni preferences tend not to recognize the latter half of that because it's in their blindspot.

 

[Coriolis]

My point was that it works both ways. The vision impacts how we understand/remember the past, and the assumptions we generate about our future are impacted by our prior experiences. People with strong Ni preferences tend not to recognize the latter half of that because it's in their blindspot.

I find the first much harder to manage than the second. Specifically, I often wonder in what way my vision is impacting my view of the past, and how I can correct for it.