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By contrast, there is no respectable body of data pools supporting the validity of the Grant stack expectation that, if what you're correlating with type is something that's influenced by Te/Ti, and where "Te types" are "a lot different" (as you put it) from "Ti types," the TJs and the FPs come out on one side of the correlational divide (albeit with the TJs presumably farther out toward the end, natch, onnaccounta dom vs. tert) and the TPs and FJs on the other.
As I am forever and ever pointing out, the notion that an INFJ has "tertiary Ti," and will therefore tend (probabilistically speaking) to have "Ti" aspects of personality in common with a typical ISTP that ISTJs tend not to exhibit, is a typological assertion that — like all assertions that crosscut the dichotomies in that counterintuitive way — has no more validity than the notion that two people born at around the same time will tend to have aspects of personality in common because they're both Capricorns.
When it comes to practical use of the stuff, I tend to find that certain types think a particular way. You can call it whatever you want - cognitive functions or types that have dichotomies in common (i.e., extraverted TJs). They have a particular way of viewing things which is somewhat predictable. As to the the stack order and the functions and how they interact with each other and all that, I don't tend to use it really at all. What I do use is the cognitive functions as a lens in understanding how particular people would think about something. It's pretty valuable actually.
I don't think the cognitive function descriptions are all that great but there does appear to be something there in terms of being useful. This stuff is all just a bunch of gobbledygook if you can't use it and we can't go around administering tests to everyone we interact with.
What is an "unconscious" function? Can anybody answer that without circularly referencing more Jungian jargon? As in, "unconscious" means "undifferentiated."
When it comes to practical use of the stuff, I tend to find that certain types think a particular way. You can call it whatever you want - cognitive functions or types that have dichotomies in common (i.e., extraverted TJs). They have a particular way of viewing things which is somewhat predictable. As to the the stack order and the functions and how they interact with each other and all that, I don't tend to use it really at all. What I do use is the cognitive functions as a lens in understanding how particular people would think about something. It's pretty valuable actually.
I don't think the cognitive function descriptions are all that great but there does appear to be something there in terms of being useful. This stuff is all just a bunch of gobbledygook if you can't use it and we can't go around administering tests to everyone we interact with.
On the one hand, you say "you can call it whatever you want" (e.g., "Te stuff" or "TJ stuff") — but on the other hand, you suggest that there's "something there" that's "useful" in the function framing that would somehow be lost if you moved to a dichotomy-centric framing. But the notion that the dichotomies are somehow limited to more shallow/superficial stuff, and/or behavioral stuff, and the functions are about deeper stuff, man, and how we think, is just straw-manny internet-forum functionista groupthink.
Once again, with feeling (and thinking)... as Reynierse has noted, virtually all the respectable data/studies point to the conclusion that the actual, at-least-semi-genetic, underlying components of MBTI personality are the four dichotomies, and that personality characteristics that result from (or are influenced by) a combination of two or more of the dichotomies are affected in a simple, additive way. So what I call the "Real MBTI Model" — partly because, if you ignore the Jungian lip service, it was essentially Isabel Myers's model — looks like this:
INTP = I + N + T + P + IN + IT + IP + NT + NP + TP + INT + INP + ITP + NTP + INTP.
INTJ = I + N + T + J + IN + IT + IJ + NT + NJ + TJ + INT + INJ + ITJ + NTJ + INTJ.
ESFJ = E + S + F + J + ES + EF + EJ + SF + SJ + FJ + ESF + ESJ + EFJ + SFJ + ESFJ.
And there is nothing about that framing that puts any limitation on what aspects of personality may be found to be associated with any of those dichotomies or dichotomy combinations — attitudes, values, superficial stuff, deep stuff, behavioral stuff, how-you-think stuff, or anything else. Any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-dom, for example, can just as well be said about an I_TP. And any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-user can just as well be said about the four TP types.
And here comes one of the all-important points: as Reynierse emphasizes (and he's done some studies of his own that reinforce the point), there is absolutely nothing that the standard cognitive-function-based "type dynamics" framing predicts about any type — at either a shallow or deep level — that both (1) adds to what you'd expect if the functions were just a "category mistake" that piggybacked on the additive/combinatory effects of the dichotomies they correspond to (i.e., that goes beyond what the Real MBTI Model alone would lead you to expect), and (2) has been validated by some respectable body of studies.
Nothing.
One example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is the notion that N plays a stronger role than T for an INTJ and T plays a stronger role than N for an INTP — because dom/aux! Going all the way back to 1985, the second edition of the MBTI Manual noted that the preference scores in the official MBTI database didn't reflect any consistent tendency for types to get higher scores for their supposedly dominant preference than for their supposedly auxiliary preference. And nobody's managed to supply any respectable body of support for the dom/aux aspect of the Grant stack (or any competing stack, for that matter) in the 30 years since — and on the other side, there have been a number of data pools (including several from studies that Reynierse conducted) that indicate that the (supposedly) dominant function is no more likely to be the stronger of the middle two preferences than the (supposedly) auxiliary function.
And another example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is that Grant-stack-specific one I've already talked about in my earlier replies to you. If somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and they also limit who they mean by those type references to TP types and TJ types, then there's nothing about that that goes beyond the Real MBTI Model — and if somebody creates a reliable questionnaire or otherwise comes up with a respectable study that reflects those two ways of thinking, and the TJs come out on one side and the TPs come out on the other, then congratulations, and that's additional knowledge about the MBTI types that would in no way be lost if you left the "type dynamics" model behind.
And on the other hand, if somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and by "Te types" they mean TJs and FPs, and by "Ti types" they mean TPs and FJs... well, then you've got yourself a function-based insight that truly does go beyond the Real MBTI Model (and so beyond the dichotomies). Buuut the trouble is that, as previously noted, nobody's ever been able to validate a type grouping like that. If T/F and J/P make a joint contribution to some aspect of how somebody thinks — or any other personality-related thing — and if T and J pull in the same direction, so that TJs exhibit the most of that "Te" thing, then it virtually always turns out that the FPs exhibit the least of that thing (and/or the most of the opposite thing).
So... the idea that there's "something there" in cognitive function descriptions that is "useful" but would be lost if you moved to the Real MBTI Model is, not to put too fine a point on it, Highlander, just wrong — assuming that you're working with a usefulness definition that requires that the elements of a typology have been validated to some degree that puts them respectably above the Zodiac. It's a notion that's often heard on the internet, most often from someone who's either got a blinkered perspective on the potential scope/depth of the "dichotomies" (and dichotomy combinations), or thinks there are respectable/valid aspects of "type dynamics" that otherwise go beyond the dichotomies, or both.
But if you open yourself up to the idea — and it's certainly consistent with Myers' perspective — that the aspects of personality affected by the dichotomies and the various dichotomy combinations go all the way from the shallow end of the psyche to the deep end, then you may find it easier to accept the idea that nobody's really found anything about the MBTI types (1) that's consistent with any respectable body of evidence, and (2) that also reflects some typological double-flip or scrumbydidulum that in any way goes beyond the Real MBTI Model.
This part from Psychological Types is what led Myers and others to make the auxiliary extroverted. If the aux is in every respect different, it suggests an opposite attitude (ie if dom is I, then aux is E).
I specifically talk about that sentence you bolded in my two-part post about the attitude of the auxiliary. It's not hard to understand why Myers would have cherry-picked that sentence to justify her renegade interpretation of Jung, but her cherry-picking really doesn't work. And the biggest reason it doesn't work is that her interpretation of that sentence is inconsistent with way too much else in Psychological Types — including a multi-paragraph E/I passage that I quote near the end of my two-part post. But more specifically, her interpretation of that sentence — which, as she conceded, is contrary to the understanding of the great majority (all but one, she said) of Jung scholars — doesn't even work well within the context of Jung's discussion of the auxiliary function.
In saying the auxiliary function needed to be "in every respect different from the nature of the main function," what Jung was saying was that the auxiliary's "nature" needed to be such that it didn't oppose the main function in a way that required the dominant to repress it. As Jung explained (also in your quote), "only those functions can appear as auxiliary whose nature is not opposed to the leading function. For instance, feeling can never act as the second function by the side of thinking, because its nature stands in too strong a contrast to thinking. Thinking, if it is to be real thinking and true to its own principle, must scrupulously exclude feeling."
As I'm always pointing out: as Jung saw it, the dynamics of the human psyche revolved first and foremost around a single great divide, and that divide involved two all-important components — namely, introversion/extraversion and conscious/unconscious — and Jung spent far more of Psychological Types discussing the opposed characteristics that he thought all introverts and all extraverts have in common than he did talking about all eight of the functions put together. As Jung saw it, of all the components that go into Jungian type, there was no "opposition" more strong and profound than the one between introversion and extraversion. And in fact, as further discussed in that two-part post, Jung viewed the conflicting aspects of extraversion and introversion as so fundamentally opposed that it was ultimately impossible to truly reconcile them in terms of anything in the nature of conscious reasoning. Instead, Jung said extraversion and introversion could only be reconciled in a kind of inchoate and fragile way, by a process he referred to as the "transcendent function," through which a "symbol" would arise from the unconscious that would allow the repressed unconscious libido to surface in a constructive way and unite with the conscious attitude — but only temporarily.
Whenever Jung wrote about how an introvert's introversion gets balanced (or "compensated," as he more often put it) by extraversion (and vice versa) — and he actually devoted a great deal of Psychological Types to that issue — he consistently envisioned the I/E balance happening by way of the unconscious, and never by way of a differentiated conscious function oriented in the opposite direction. In other words, Jung envisioned that an introvert's extraverted "compensation" would come by way of the unconscious functions in the same way that he envisioned that a T-dom's feeling "compensation" would come by way of the inferior function. And in both cases, that compensating force (extraversion or feeling) was located in the unconscious because it was repressed, and it was repressed precisely because it opposed the dominant function in a way that made it unsuitable to partner consciously with the dominant as an auxiliary function.
The letter dichotomies are also based on Myer's idea that the auxiliary for an introvert determines their J/P preference also. Her book also groups people according to their dominant preference, which the J/P dichotomy is meant to indicate also. For example, she discusses both IxTPs as being Introverted Thinking types. So the difference between an ISTJ and ISTP is not simply J/P preferences, but what that indicates, which is that ISTJs are sensing types first and ISTPs are thinking types first, but that being introverts, each displays the other for their "face".
Remove the connection with functions and MBTI profiles don't make sense anymore.
I strongly disagree that Myers significantly based her "MBTI profiles" on her notion — which is best viewed as simply a part of her theoretical justification for the auxiliary attitude flip — that each type used one of their preferred functions in connection with their "inner world" and one in connection with the "outer world." And there's more from me on the schizophrenic introvert idea — outwardly J but dominantly P, or vice versa — in this PerC post.
But more importantly, and for the most part, Myers really didn't base her profiles on the "functions" at all. She based them on the dichotomies. And it's reasonably clear that that's because Myers, despite quite a bit of lip service to Jung and the functions, 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. In fact, Myers thought of NF/NT/SF/ST as the most significant dichotomy combinations — and it's worth noting that each of those groups is a type foursome with (assuming you believe in type dynamics at all) four different dominant functions.
The disreputable districts of the MBTI community are well populated with people who would have you believe that Jungian/MBTI type is largely about the functions, and/or that the dichotomies mostly deal with more superficial stuff, and/or that you should think of the dichotomies as "letter codes" that need to be decoded to lead you to the deeper stuff. And at some level, everybody's entitled to their opinion. But anybody who mistakenly believes that that reflects Isabel Myers' perspective — or the perspective of the official MBTI folks who wear grown-up pants — is strongly implored to read the recycled reckful in the next spoiler, which ought to serve to put that factual mistake to rest.
For anyone who thinks that the rejection of the functions that Reynierse advocates would represent a revolutionary shift as far as the "official" MBTI is concerned, I'd argue, to the contrary, that the MBTI has essentially been centered around the dichotomies from the beginning. Aside from the test instruments themselves, the analysis in Myers' Gifts Differing focuses substantially more on the dichotomies than the functions. Myers was a nobody who didn't even have a psychology degree — not to mention a woman in mid-20th-century America — and I assume that background had at least something to do with the fact that her writings tend to somewhat disingenuously downplay the extent to which her typology differs from Jung. So it's no surprise, in that context, that the introductory chapters of Gifts Differing, besides introducing the four dichotomies, also include quite a bit of lip service to Jung's conceptions — or, at least, what Myers claimed were Jung's conceptions — of the dominant and auxiliary functions. But with that behind her, Chapters 4-7 describe the effects of the "EI Preference," the "SN Preference," the "TF Preference" and the "JP Preference," and those four chapters total 22 pages. Chapter 8 then describes the eight functions — and that chapter consists solely of a half-page table for each function, for a total of four pages. What's more, those four pages were simply Briggs' summaries of Jung's function descriptions, and Myers ignored (and/or adjusted) substantial portions of those in creating her own type portraits. (As one example, and as discussed at length in this post, Myers' IS_Js bear little resemblance to Jung's Si-doms. And for a detailed discussion of the surgery Myers performed on Jung's conception of Te, see this PerC post.)
But most tellingly, following Myers' introductory and portrait chapters, the second half of Gifts Differing — covering a variety of topics, including "Use of the Opposites," "Type and Marriage," "Learning Styles" and "Type and Occupation" — focuses almost exclusively on the dichotomies, both singly and in combinations that don't correspond to the functions. She talks about introverts and extraverts, thinking types and feeling types, intuitives and sensing types, judging types and perceptive types, "INs," "ESs," "NF types," "STs," "introverts with thinking" (i.e., ITs), "EF types," "ESF types," "ISTs" and on and on. At one point in the Type and Marriage chapter, "FJ types with extraverted feeling" are mentioned, but that's very much the exception that proves the rule. References to the functions (and the dichotomy combinations that correspond to them) are almost entirely absent from the book's second half, and on the rare occasions when she refers to one of the two-letter combinations that corresponds to a function — e.g., SJ (Si) — she most often makes no reference to the function. At one point, for example, she notes that "Judging types, especially those who prefer sensing (the –S–J types), like their work to be organized, systematic, and foreseeable." I'm not suggesting that this means Myers didn't really believe in the functions (necessarily, anyway), but she was certainly not a theorist who thought the functions were anything like the main event.
Five years later, the 1985 edition of the MBTI Manual, co-authored by Myers, was even more lopsided in favor of the dichotomies. In a 1990 article ("Review of Research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator." Perceptual & Motor Skills, 70, 1187) in which John B. Murray concluded that the MBTI's "indices of reliability and validity have been extensively investigated and have been judged acceptable," Murray noted that over 1500 studies were included in the 1985 Manual — many of them either discussed in the text or included in one or more tables of statistics. And good luck finding any results in that manual that are framed in terms of the cognitive functions. The 1985 Manual is full of statistics correlating type with interests, occupations, scholastic achievement, other personality measures, etc. — and the reported correlations almost exclusively involve the four dichotomies, the sixteen types and/or dichotomy combinations with no meaningful function correspondence — with the combinations most often included (by a wide margin) being ST, SF, NT and NF. So on top of the fact that Myers and the rest of the official MBTI establishment were predominantly dichotomy-focused, it's also clear that the independent psychologists conducting many of those studies weren't laboring under any misconception that the MBTI dichotomies were relatively superficial indicators (convenient for testing and/or labeling purposes) while the cognitive functions were what the typology was really about.
The third edition of the MBTI Manual was published in 1998, and according to the Reynierse article I linked to above, it cites a grand total of eight studies involving "type dynamics" (i.e., the functions model) — and Reynierse summarizes them as "six studies that failed, one with a questionable interpretation, and one where contradictory evidence was offered as support." He then notes, "Type theory's claim that type dynamics is superior to the static model and the straightforward contribution of the individual preferences rests on this ephemeral empirical foundation."
And finally, I think it's also worth noting that the 17-page report that an ENFJ (for example) receives after taking the relatively recent MBTI Step II test includes page after page of dichotomy-based analysis (including five separate subscales for each of the four dichotomies) and not a single mention of "extraverted feeling" or "introverted intuition" — other than a diagram near the end that shows that "ENFJs like Feeling best, Intuition next, Sensing third and Thinking least," and one brief note about tending to use Feeling in the "outer world" and Intuition in the "inner world." All the rest of the ENFJ descriptions in the report — after the brief initial profile, which isn't broken down by components — are descriptions of N (not Ni or Ne), F (not Fi or Fe) and so on, and they're the same descriptions of N and F (and the five subscales of each) that ENFPs receive in their reports (notwithstanding the fact that ENFJs are Fe-Ni and ENFPs are Ne-Fi). And Nancy Harkey has pointed out that "there is no discussion in the Step II manual of applying type dynamics (dominant, auxiliary etc.) to the overall preferences. I really don't know what that means at the moment, but it is curious."
The more I reread Psychological Types, the more I appreciate the extent to which getting from Jung to the Myers-Briggs typology involved substantial adjustments and additions. I think the formidable job Briggs and Myers did in separating the Jungian wheat from the chaff, and modifying and supplementing Jung's theory, is grotesquely underappreciated by many internet forumites. Myers may not have been as smart as Jung, and she may not have had a psychology degree, but she and her mother had the benefit of standing on Jung's shoulders, and Myers then spent many years, as a labor of love, educating herself on modern psychometric methods, designing and refining her test instrument, and gathering data from thousands of subjects — leading her to conclude that the four dichotomies (as she conceived them), and not the functions, were the main event. I think Myers' conceptions of the dichotomies and the types still leave plenty of room for further improvement, but 50 years later, the results of many more studies — and in particular, the correlation of the MBTI dichotomies with the Big Five — suggest that, in terms of the basics, Myers pretty much got it right. If Jung were still around, I think he'd mostly approve.
I do have a few questions [MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION] - and maybe they're addressed in your other posts - but what of people who testing nearly 50/50 on certain dichotomies and may relate equally as much to both descriptions of the letter dichotomy?
Jung (as already noted) spent more of Psychological Types talking about extraversion and introversion than he spent talking about all eight of the functions put together — but he also said that he thought more people were essentially in the middle on E/I than were extraverted or introverted. And Myers allowed for the possibility of middleness on all four MBTI dimensions.
In at least one of the early versions of the MBTI, it was possible to get an "x" on any of the dimensions. The current version assigns people a (tentative) type on each dimension, but that's a very different thing from saying that it isn't possible for someone not to have a preference — and the MBTI Manual specifically notes that someone with a score near the middle is someone who has essentially "split the vote" rather than offered much evidence of a preference. What's more, as you probably know, the recent "Step II" version of the MBTI has five subscales for each dimension, and it's possible to come out on the E side (for example) of some of them and the I side of the rest.
And as I understand it, and maybe most importantly: regardless of what Jung or Myers may have thought, there's now quite a lot of accumulated data that suggests that most or all of the MBTI dimensions (and the Big Five factors they correlate with) may well exhibit something along the lines of a normal distribution, with the majority of people in or not very far from the middle.
So when you ask "what of people who test nearly 50/50 on certain dichotomies," one possible answer is that the reason quite a few people test near the middle may well be that lots of people really are in or near the middle on one or more of the dichotomies.
But if what you're really asking is why middlish test results are more of an issue with the dichotomies than with the functions... where have you gotten that idea?
I mean, first of all, no function test currently exists with any respectable body of psychometric support behind it. But assuming for the sake of argument that such a test could be produced, why do you think you're in a position to state — if this is what you're implying, and maybe it isn't — that such a test would have fewer people coming out with middlish scores than the official MBTI?
As explained at more length in this post — which also addresses a number of other issues often raised by people claiming to "debunk" the MBTI — the reliability stats for the MBTI put it essentially "on a par" with the leading Big Five tests. In my experience, claims that the Big Five is substantially superior to the MBTI in the test/retest reliability department are most often accompanied by statistics that confuse retest rates on single dimensions with retest rates for a complete four-letter type.
I once corrected a forum poster who'd noted that the MBTI "has a test-retest rate of some 60%, meaning two out of every five people get different results when retaking the test," while the NEO-PI-R's "levels of consistency are incredibly high (N= .92, E= .89, O= .87, A= .86, C= .90)." Buuut if you apply the same test-retest standard that results in that MBTI 60% score to those Big Five statistics — i.e., one that says it's a retype "failure" if any of the dimensions flips — then you get a Big Five test-retest rate of .92 * .89 * .87 * .86 * .90 = 55% (or 60% if you leave out Neuroticism).
On the one hand, you say "you can call it whatever you want" (e.g., "Te stuff" or "TJ stuff") — but on the other hand, you suggest that there's "something there" that's "useful" in the function framing that would somehow be lost if you moved to a dichotomy-centric framing. But the notion that the dichotomies are somehow limited to more shallow/superficial stuff, and/or behavioral stuff, and the functions are about deeper stuff, man, and how we think, is just straw-manny internet-forum functionista groupthink.
Once again, with feeling (and thinking)... as Reynierse has noted, virtually all the respectable data/studies point to the conclusion that the actual, at-least-semi-genetic, underlying components of MBTI personality are the four dichotomies, and that personality characteristics that result from (or are influenced by) a combination of two or more of the dichotomies are affected in a simple, additive way. So what I call the "Real MBTI Model" — partly because, if you ignore the Jungian lip service, it was essentially Isabel Myers's model — looks like this:
INTP = I + N + T + P + IN + IT + IP + NT + NP + TP + INT + INP + ITP + NTP + INTP.
INTJ = I + N + T + J + IN + IT + IJ + NT + NJ + TJ + INT + INJ + ITJ + NTJ + INTJ.
ESFJ = E + S + F + J + ES + EF + EJ + SF + SJ + FJ + ESF + ESJ + EFJ + SFJ + ESFJ.
And there is nothing about that framing that puts any limitation on what aspects of personality may be found to be associated with any of those dichotomies or dichotomy combinations — attitudes, values, superficial stuff, deep stuff, behavioral stuff, how-you-think stuff, or anything else. Any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-dom, for example, can just as well be said about an I_TP. And any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-user can just as well be said about the four TP types.
And here comes one of the all-important points: as Reynierse emphasizes (and he's done some studies of his own that reinforce the point), there is absolutely nothing that the standard cognitive-function-based "type dynamics" framing predicts about any type — at either a shallow or deep level — that both (1) adds to what you'd expect if the functions were just a "category mistake" that piggybacked on the additive/combinatory effects of the dichotomies they correspond to (i.e., that goes beyond what the Real MBTI Model alone would lead you to expect), and (2) has been validated by some respectable body of studies.
Nothing.
One example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is the notion that N plays a stronger role than T for an INTJ and T plays a stronger role than N for an INTP — because dom/aux! Going all the way back to 1985, the second edition of the MBTI Manual noted that the preference scores in the official MBTI database didn't reflect any consistent tendency for types to get higher scores for their supposedly dominant preference than for their supposedly auxiliary preference. And nobody's managed to supply any respectable body of support for the dom/aux aspect of the Grant stack (or any competing stack, for that matter) in the 30 years since — and on the other side, there have been a number of data pools (including several from studies that Reynierse conducted) that indicate that the (supposedly) dominant function is no more likely to be the stronger of the middle two preferences than the (supposedly) auxiliary function.
And another example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is that Grant-stack-specific one I've already talked about in my earlier replies to you. If somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and they also limit who they mean by those type references to TP types and TJ types, then there's nothing about that that goes beyond the Real MBTI Model — and if somebody creates a reliable questionnaire or otherwise comes up with a respectable study that reflects those two ways of thinking, and the TJs come out on one side and the TPs come out on the other, then congratulations, and that's additional knowledge about the MBTI types that would in no way be lost if you left the "type dynamics" model behind.
And on the other hand, if somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and by "Te types" they mean TJs and FPs, and by "Ti types" they mean TPs and FJs... well, then you've got yourself a function-based insight that truly does go beyond the Real MBTI Model (and so beyond the dichotomies). Buuut the trouble is that, as previously noted, nobody's ever been able to validate a type grouping like that. If T/F and J/P make a joint contribution to some aspect of how somebody thinks — or any other personality-related thing — and if T and J pull in the same direction, so that TJs exhibit the most of that "Te" thing, then it virtually always turns out that the FPs exhibit the least of that thing (and/or the most of the opposite thing).
So... the idea that there's "something there" in cognitive function descriptions that is "useful" but would be lost if you moved to the Real MBTI Model is, not to put too fine a point on it, Highlander, just wrong — assuming that you're working with a usefulness definition that requires that the elements of a typology have been validated to some degree that puts them respectably above the Zodiac. It's a notion that's often heard on the internet, most often from someone who's either got a blinkered perspective on the potential scope/depth of the "dichotomies" (and dichotomy combinations), or thinks there are respectable/valid aspects of "type dynamics" that otherwise go beyond the dichotomies, or both.
But if you open yourself up to the idea — and it's certainly consistent with Myers' perspective — that the aspects of personality affected by the dichotomies and the various dichotomy combinations go all the way from the shallow end of the psyche to the deep end, then you may find it easier to accept the idea that nobody's really found anything about the MBTI types (1) that's consistent with any respectable body of evidence, and (2) that also reflects some typological double-flip or scrumbydidulum that in any way goes beyond the Real MBTI Model.
I agree with a lot of things you are saying but not all. I don't agree with your bolded statement above, the reasons for which I will explain below. I am also dubious about the shadow functions - meaning the bottom 4 and any kind of ordering or role they might have. It just seems unlikely. As to the top 4, I think it probably is mostly accurate though not for all people. I do think the looping thing happens and I do think people have undeveloped functions and so forth and this does impact their test results. I tend to believe in the inferior because there is too much stuff written about it and how this manifests that seems eerily accurate for people I know .
Concerning shadow functions, I believe I had a different understanding of them, upon first creating this thread. However, I learned more, (which is what my goal was in creating this post...so, mission accomplished..) ..and figure now, I viewed them incorrectly.
I think I was confusing shadow functions with purposefully ommited functions. So, from my understanding , shadows are the last 4 out of the 8. (..no matter the order).. Skipped functions, to me, are the ones people skip, simply to come up with a type. This is what I'm so heavily opposed to. It's cognitive omission, to support an inconsistent theory/system for the sake of making it work. (..the Functional Stack System, everyone hammered over my head when I first got into this stuff)..
Something I will say is, I noticed I'm Ti dominant and my inferior function is Fe. That agrees with the stacking for INTP. However, the other portions don't add up. For instance, I believe Ne is my 2nd function but Si isn't my 2nd most inferior function. Fi would be my 2nd function, if this logic was applied to every function after Ti. My stack looks like "Ti>Ne>Se>Ni>Si>Fi>Te>Fe"..
However, according to a system that claims opposite functions will appear, parallel, on the "other side" clearly isn't accurate. It just happens to be true in my case with my dominant/inferior functions. So, in my personal case, what you said is consistent.
Going by tests can help as a guide but I think we have to study functions for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. Most tests tell me I'm an ISTP but I highly disagree with this..
I'm still lost on looping and undeveloped functions. If someone has undeveloped Fe/Fi, why shouldn't that make them Ti/Te? Why should Ni>Ti>Fe>Te be considered an INFJ stuck in a T loop? Why not just call a spade a spade and say they are xNTx, with higher Fe? (In this case it's not that it's undeveloped but that one is preferred and naturally used over the other.) This is what I have trouble understanding from people who told me that. Perhaps you can better explain...
..And I'm still not hip to the notion that having an extroverted function as dom makes one an extrovert as many understand it, at this moment. It makes more sense to determine I/E based on energy you get or lose from people..not things.. People unaware of MBTI and functions, (which is even less known about), determine I/E by how much you enjoy socializing and the energy you get or lose from it. This is why you get sports stars who could be Se dom but are antisocial and to themselves.. Se doesn't have to be social.. So, then, this throws society off by calling the sports star in question, an extrovert.
So far, I don't think I agree with any system created to find personality type but then again, it would be highly unrealistic to think any dichotomy based on theory would be spotless..even my own. There will always be exceptions to the rule because mankind is so complex... I do tend to like a one size fits all theory, which is why I feel mine is preferred. It gives us more wiggling room to be paradoxical and bizarre, while at the same time giving us the fun of typing and categorizing ourselves..
On the one hand, you say "you can call it whatever you want" (e.g., "Te stuff" or "TJ stuff") — but on the other hand, you suggest that there's "something there" that's "useful" in the function framing that would somehow be lost if you moved to a dichotomy-centric framing. But the notion that the dichotomies are somehow limited to more shallow/superficial stuff, and/or behavioral stuff, and the functions are about deeper stuff, man, and how we think, is just straw-manny internet-forum functionista groupthink.
Once again, with feeling (and thinking)... as Reynierse has noted, virtually all the respectable data/studies point to the conclusion that the actual, at-least-semi-genetic, underlying components of MBTI personality are the four dichotomies, and that personality characteristics that result from (or are influenced by) a combination of two or more of the dichotomies are affected in a simple, additive way. So what I call the "Real MBTI Model" — partly because, if you ignore the Jungian lip service, it was essentially Isabel Myers's model — looks like this:
INTP = I + N + T + P + IN + IT + IP + NT + NP + TP + INT + INP + ITP + NTP + INTP.
INTJ = I + N + T + J + IN + IT + IJ + NT + NJ + TJ + INT + INJ + ITJ + NTJ + INTJ.
ESFJ = E + S + F + J + ES + EF + EJ + SF + SJ + FJ + ESF + ESJ + EFJ + SFJ + ESFJ.
And there is nothing about that framing that puts any limitation on what aspects of personality may be found to be associated with any of those dichotomies or dichotomy combinations — attitudes, values, superficial stuff, deep stuff, behavioral stuff, how-you-think stuff, or anything else. Any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-dom, for example, can just as well be said about an I_TP. And any deep, true thing that can be said about a (supposed) Ti-user can just as well be said about the four TP types.
And here comes one of the all-important points: as Reynierse emphasizes (and he's done some studies of his own that reinforce the point), there is absolutely nothing that the standard cognitive-function-based "type dynamics" framing predicts about any type — at either a shallow or deep level — that both (1) adds to what you'd expect if the functions were just a "category mistake" that piggybacked on the additive/combinatory effects of the dichotomies they correspond to (i.e., that goes beyond what the Real MBTI Model alone would lead you to expect), and (2) has been validated by some respectable body of studies.
Nothing.
One example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is the notion that N plays a stronger role than T for an INTJ and T plays a stronger role than N for an INTP — because dom/aux! Going all the way back to 1985, the second edition of the MBTI Manual noted that the preference scores in the official MBTI database didn't reflect any consistent tendency for types to get higher scores for their supposedly dominant preference than for their supposedly auxiliary preference. And nobody's managed to supply any respectable body of support for the dom/aux aspect of the Grant stack (or any competing stack, for that matter) in the 30 years since — and on the other side, there have been a number of data pools (including several from studies that Reynierse conducted) that indicate that the (supposedly) dominant function is no more likely to be the stronger of the middle two preferences than the (supposedly) auxiliary function.
And another example of "type dynamics" going beyond the Real MBTI Model is that Grant-stack-specific one I've already talked about in my earlier replies to you. If somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and they also limit who they mean by those type references to TP types and TJ types, then there's nothing about that that goes beyond the Real MBTI Model — and if somebody creates a reliable questionnaire or otherwise comes up with a respectable study that reflects those two ways of thinking, and the TJs come out on one side and the TPs come out on the other, then congratulations, and that's additional knowledge about the MBTI types that would in no way be lost if you left the "type dynamics" model behind.
And on the other hand, if somebody says that "Ti types" and "Te types" think in distinctive ways, and by "Te types" they mean TJs and FPs, and by "Ti types" they mean TPs and FJs... well, then you've got yourself a function-based insight that truly does go beyond the Real MBTI Model (and so beyond the dichotomies). Buuut the trouble is that, as previously noted, nobody's ever been able to validate a type grouping like that. If T/F and J/P make a joint contribution to some aspect of how somebody thinks — or any other personality-related thing — and if T and J pull in the same direction, so that TJs exhibit the most of that "Te" thing, then it virtually always turns out that the FPs exhibit the least of that thing (and/or the most of the opposite thing).
So... the idea that there's "something there" in cognitive function descriptions that is "useful" but would be lost if you moved to the Real MBTI Model is, not to put too fine a point on it, Highlander, just wrong — assuming that you're working with a usefulness definition that requires that the elements of a typology have been validated to some degree that puts them respectably above the Zodiac. It's a notion that's often heard on the internet, most often from someone who's either got a blinkered perspective on the potential scope/depth of the "dichotomies" (and dichotomy combinations), or thinks there are respectable/valid aspects of "type dynamics" that otherwise go beyond the dichotomies, or both.
But if you open yourself up to the idea — and it's certainly consistent with Myers' perspective — that the aspects of personality affected by the dichotomies and the various dichotomy combinations go all the way from the shallow end of the psyche to the deep end, then you may find it easier to accept the idea that nobody's really found anything about the MBTI types (1) that's consistent with any respectable body of evidence, and (2) that also reflects some typological double-flip or scrumbydidulum that in any way goes beyond the Real MBTI Model.
What I call the Real MBTI Model is based on the idea — consistent with the psychometric clusters that have shown up in decades of MBTI and Big Five studies — that the real, underlying, substantially genetic building blocks of your MBTI type, as (presumably) selected for by a gazillion years of evolution, consist of the four dichotomies.
For someone with that perspective (like Reynierse, and like me), the so-called "cognitive functions" are a "category mistake" (Reynierse's term) because they involve a model that says, no, the stuff that gets assigned to the dichotomy categories is a more superficial level of effects that are somehow more, uh, testable than the functions, but the more fundamental, underlying building blocks of your type are a different set of "categories" that involve four ways of perceiving things (Ni, Ne, Si and Se) and four ways of judging things (Fi, Fe, Ti and Te).
That's what I'd say is the most general answer. But if you read Reynierse's critique ("The Case Against Type Dynamics"), you'll see that he discusses a number of more specific mistakes that involve the relevant categories — e.g., the notion that whether an NT is a J or a P affects whether their N is introverted or extraverted, when I/E and J/P are in fact independent categories, with your J/P status having nothing to do with how "introverted" or "extraverted" any aspect of your psyche is.
What I call the Real MBTI Model is based on the idea — consistent with the psychometric clusters that have shown up in decades of MBTI and Big Five studies — that the real, underlying, substantially genetic building blocks of your type, as (presumably) selected for by a gazillion years of evolution, consist of the four dichotomies.
For someone with that perspective (like Reynierse, and like me), the so-called "cognitive functions" are a "category mistake" (Reynierse's term) because they involve a model that says, no, the stuff that gets assigned to the dichotomy categories is a more superficial level of effects that are somehow more, uh, testable than the functions, but the more fundamental, underlying building blocks of your type are a different set of "categories" that involve four ways of perceiving things (Ni, Ne, Si and Se) and four ways of judging things (Fi, Fe, Ti and Te).
That's what I'd say is the most general answer. But if you read Reynierse's critique ("The Case Against Type Dynamics"), you'll see that he discusses a number of more specific mistakes that involve the relevant categories — e.g., the notion that whether an NT is a J or a P affects whether their N is introverted or extraverted, when I/E and J/P are in fact independent categories, with your J/P status having nothing to do with how "introverted" or "extraverted" any aspect of your psyche is.
What I call the Real MBTI Model is based on the idea — consistent with the psychometric clusters that have shown up in decades of MBTI and Big Five studies — that the real, underlying, substantially genetic building blocks of your type, as (presumably) selected for by a gazillion years of evolution, consist of the four dichotomies.
For someone with that perspective (like Reynierse, and like me), the so-called "cognitive functions" are a "category mistake" (Reynierse's term) because they involve a model that says, no, the stuff that gets assigned to the dichotomy categories is a more superficial level of effects that are somehow more, uh, testable than the functions, but the more fundamental, underlying building blocks of your type are a different set of "categories" that involve four ways of perceiving things (Ni, Ne, Si and Se) and four ways of judging things (Fi, Fe, Ti and Te).
That's what I'd say is the most general answer. But if you read Reynierse's critique ("The Case Against Type Dynamics"), you'll see that he discusses a number of more specific mistakes that involve the relevant categories — e.g., the notion that whether an NT is a J or a P affects whether their N is introverted or extraverted, when I/E and J/P are in fact independent categories, with your J/P status having nothing to do with how "introverted" or "extraverted" any aspect of your psyche is.
Is type dynamics incoherent according to Reynierse? What does that even mean? Type dynamics don't correspond with the facts? Which facts, behavioral or cognitive? Why even go down this rabbit hole when people have more important things to think about?
Is type dynamics incoherent according to Reynierse? What does that even mean? Type dynamics don't correspond with the facts? Which facts, behavioral or cognitive? Why even go down this rabbit hole when people have more important things to think about?
Never mind, I'm finding out what things like 'category mistake' mean by reading Reynierse's article. As for the rabbit hole, I guess once you're in it you have to follow it to the end, even if (definitely in this case) it merely leads to a fantasy realm.
Ok, so I'm learning about some new jargon, but so far it's all been stated before Reynierse. We all know there is no empirical evidence, and that Jung himself was only spouting theories based off of his personal experiences with his patients. But it should also be mentioned, in Jung's defense, that Chapter 10 of Psychological Types is at the back of the book because Jung considered it to be the least important part of the book.
I've learned that a conscious function is one that is under conscious control. I disagree with that if we're talking about a dominant function. I believe we are more conscious of its presence in our thinking, but that (based on experience and much studying all of my life) it also appears to be compulsive in nature. So the dominant functions are expressed by people who are compulsive feelers, compulsive doers, and compulsive thinkers. This idea is supported by G.I. Gurdjieff who asserted that humans are mechanical beings (but that there is a way out of this mechanical nature). If our dominant function was under our conscious control we would not only be able to switch it off at will, we could even question it. But most people can't do either one. When it becomes conscious in terms of a theory, however, I am free to ask myself "is it appropriate to be logical when I should be feeling right now?" Or, "why am I standing here thinking about it when I should be acting on it?"
Type dynamics do not help one engage in self-questioning. Type dynamics place you in an absolute category for which there is no way out, no solution to the problem of mechanicalness. Type dynamics are a useful guide to seeing one's mechanical nature, whether empirically true or not, but they aren't presented that way. Considered even as empirically false to human nature, at least I can put my foot down and say "I don't have to be a mechanical being ruled by type dynamics anymore," or at the very least question my method of dealing with reality. But whatever level you want to take that to, type dynamics never questions, it simply orders you to obey it while basing itself on hot air.
When first discovering typology, the first thing we should learn, conceptually speaking, is that people have different ways of thinking, and that generally speaking there is no right or wrong way. The thinking is only wrong when it is misapplied. If you value your marriage, then you do not want to tell your wife that the dress makes her look fat (unless hearing that statement wouldn't bother her). But Thinkers tend to be unskilled at social norms, particularly the introverted thinkers.
The second thing we should notice is that (for most of us) we have been expecting that others think (or should think) the same way we do. This is poppycock. It's important to value the differences because without them the human world would simply fall apart. But besides that, on a more practical level, don't expect by projection that your customer will simply approach you and calmly explain why he doesn't like the job you did. Don't assume things. It is just as likely the customer will simply yell at you and tell you never to come back. You may not understand that, but that's just the way it is. While your calm approach may seem reasonable to you, the yelling approach may seem reasonable to the customer.
Personally, I'm rather annoyed by the fact that this forum got me involved in cognitive type dynamics. When I first came here it was considered to be the god of typology. I didn't follow it (because I'd never heard of it), so I was considered to be like a heretic. That's the problem with all theories that aren't based in reality, they take the form of a religion. Type dynamics is a huge distraction, an intellectual game that engages us in gazing at our own navels and in intellectualizing the personalities of others.
"Meier, interpreting Jung, then makes clear that where there is an auxiliary type it is in the same attitude [as the dominant type], whereas the inferior is always in the opposite attitude... [Because] 'cooperation with the main [dominant] function is made easier'" when the attitude is the same.
Given Meier's example of this, what does Te and Se (Te/Se) look like when they are "cooperating," either behaviorally or cognitively?
"Meier, interpreting Jung, then makes clear that where there is an auxiliary type it is in the same attitude [as the dominant type], whereas the inferior is always in the opposite attitude... [Because] 'cooperation with the main [dominant] function is made easier'" when the attitude is the same.
Given Meier's example of this, what does Te and Se (Te/Se) look like when they are "cooperating," either behaviorally or cognitively?
As a reminder, I don't believe in the cognitive functions or type dynamics, so in talking about "Te" or "Se," I don't think we're talking about things that deserve to be viewed as real components of the psyche, one of which is a "judging function" and one of which is a "perceiving function."
But if it's Jung's perspective you're talking about, then come on, fella. Read Jung's description of a Te-dom, and then read Jung's descriptions of Se and Si. If a Te-dom with an S preference is going to have one of those two S functions as their auxiliary, which one (Se or Si) sounds like it would be more compatible with Te?
To Jung, the extraverted attitude and introverted attitude were 83.47% of the show. (I'm approximating.) Much of what made Te Te were the aspects of Te that came from its extraverted, outwardly-directed focus on the real world. By contrast, Jung characterized Si as so dominated by an introverted focus on primordial archetypes, etc. that Si-doms had "an illusory conception of reality," and the relation between the actual physical world and an Si-dom's perception of it was "unpredictable and arbitrary."
So... as Jung portrayed the functions, the realistic and outwardly-directed aspects (i.e., the extraverted aspects) of Se made it significantly more consistent/compatible with Te, which is why it should be no surprise that Meier — Jung's longtime assistant and the first president of the Jung Institute in Zürich — explained ("interpreting Jung") that "cooperation" between Te and Se would tend to be "easier" than cooperation between Te and Si.
As an incomplete response, and as Jung saw it, two very important aspects of conscious (and differentiated, because the two went hand in hand for Jung) functions that distinguished them from unconscious functions were (1) that a conscious function, because it had been disentangled from the messy/primitive/archaic/doleful influence of the other functions (and the unconscious murkosity), was in a much better position to be "true to its own principle" and function effectively from the standpoint of various positive talents, skills, etc. related to that function (Jung believed that modern industrial civilization encouraged people to more fully differentiate their favored functions so that they'd serve the economy more effectively), and (2) that only conscious functions were really subject to the will and capable of being directed — whereas unconscious functions tended to manifest as things that simply happened to you, mostly outside your control.
As an incomplete response, and as Jung saw it, two very important aspects of conscious (and differentiated, because the two went hand in hand for Jung) functions that distinguished them from unconscious functions were (1) that a conscious function, because it had been disentangled from the messy/primitive/archaic/doleful influence of the other functions (and the unconscious murkosity), was in a much better position to be "true to its own principle" and function effectively from the standpoint of various positive talents, skills, etc. related to that function (Jung believed that modern industrial civilization encouraged people to more fully differentiate their favored functions so that they'd serve the economy more effectively), and (2) that only conscious functions were really subject to the will and capable of being directed — whereas unconscious functions tended to manifest as things that simply happened to you, mostly outside your control.
It sounds like you're failing to distinguish between whether the Te part of the Te-dom's psyche is disentangled from the Fi and exercising its Te skilz in a way that puts the other types on the block to shame (in the Te department) from whether the Te-dom (the whole person) is still dealing with the doleful effects of inferior Fi.
And in fact, as Jung saw it, the more one-sided the Te-dom's conscious favoring of Te became — with (at least potentially) the result that the Te-dom was an impressive Te ninja — the more strongly the inferior Fi was likely to be repressed, and the more strongly the Fi was repressed, the more likely it would be to act up (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually) in some dramatically awful way.
It sounds like you're failing to distinguish between whether the Te part of the Te-dom's psyche is disentangled from the Fi and exercising its Te skilz in a way that puts the other types on the block to shame (in the Te department) from whether the Te-dom (the whole person) is still dealing with the doleful effects of inferior Fi.
And in fact, as Jung saw it, the more one-sided the Te-dom's conscious favoring of Te became — with (at least potentially) the result that the Te-dom was an impressive Te ninja — the more strongly the inferior Fi was likely to be repressed, and the more strongly the Fi was repressed, the more likely it would be to act up (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually) in some dramatically awful way.