Dang, where did you get that Beren's quote? I'll have to get the book that has that quote. That is spot on!
Understanding Yourself and Others, An Introduction to the Personality Type Code. ENFP (and ESFP) profiles, side bar for shadow functions.
Right after the discusssion of me being ENFP, I wanted to learn more about the congnitive fynamics, and began ordering the Berens books (and also the one on Temperament, Interaction Style, and Cognitive Processes, and also Hartzler's and finally Nardi's book. All of that helped me understand the functions better, and more recently led me to question whether I really prefer Te over Ti.
As for temperments, you should probably forget about what you thought the ancient temperment stuff meant. When people talk about temperments in terms of type theory, they are thinking of something very different. By now they are different ideas (so there's no house of cards for your (trickster?) Ti to knock down. I'm not trying to agressively type you, but can you relate to that? That's how I sometimes use Ti in a tricky way- if I don't like an idea I often try to find the right string to pull to make it collapse, in a very agressive and intentional way.) I know that's what choleric is supposed to mean, that's how Rudolph Stiener followers use it.. so what.
So how do you think NFs would act, in terms of the 'ancient' temperment stuff? (yes, this is a trap).
I also followed the history of temperament theory. The four temperaments, originally believed to stem from the influence of body fluids ("humors"), and later realized were not, were originally measured in terms of a person's "response-time delay" and "response-time sustain". Long delay became introversion, and short delay became extraversion. Sustain comes down to us as Agreeableness, (and Informing-Directing) and can also be Eysenck's Neuroticism. This tells us how much a person holds on to negative emotions, and thus, how serious or "responsive" they are to others.
Kant is the one who first introduced
perception as a temperament factor. He called this recognition of Beauty or the Sublime. Where the older model paired Sanguine and Choleric as extroverts, Melancholic and Phlegmatic as introverts; Sanguine and Phlegmatic as short sustain, and Choleric and Melancholic as long sustain. So here, we had our original temperament matrix. Perception paired Sanguine and Melancholic as high "Beauty" (e.g. Sensory or concrete) and Choleric and Phlegmatic as low Beauty. Those "pairs" had formerly been diametrically opposite.
This is where the rift between what you're calling "ancient" and "modern" (i.e. Keirseyan) temperament theory began. Kretschmer apparently picked this up, and came up with all new names and scales. Keirsey then used this model, and named them first after Greek gods, and then Plato's "four types of men" (the current names. And then Berens renamed them yet again). He mapped them to the MBTI groups that seemed to fit the descriptions. Yet now, we have Berens, who introduces another "four type" model also resembling the ancient temperaments. And this one uses the original extraversion and responsiveness (informing/directing) as its factors. The result, is that each of the 16 types shares one "Interaction Style", with one of Keirsey's "temperaments".
So what it seems is that there are in fact two versions of the "four temperaments", and
both come to play in defining the types.
Now to pick up on other versions of temperament theory, you had many other systems using extraversion and responsiveness, such as Adler, Fromm, Marston (DiSC), Social Styles, etc. Berens compares several of these to her Interaction Styles model. Tim LaHaye repopularizes the original four temperaments and introduces 12 "blends" of them (SanMel, etc). These also result in 16 total combinations, though he does not seem to connect them to MBTI. (People now associate the original temperaments with Steiner, but he's 100 years ago, yet LaHaye is the one who seems to have brought them back for this generation. In the middle of that century, you had Eysenck, who used them with his new Neuroticism scale replacing responsiveness/(agreeableness). Both scales later become part of the Five Factor Model).
FIRO-B used Expressed and Wanted scales in three areas (Inclusion, Control and Affection), to measure learned behavior, and not type. Yet another Christian theorist, Richard Arno, maps the ancient temperments to the system, and in the process discovers that the Phlegmatic is actually
moderate in both scales, and the low E/high R range consititutes a fifth temperament. He calls it "Supine", because it is servant-like; liking people, but being shy. In the area of social skills, it may partly explain the apparent "introverted extraversion" of some people in E-NP types. Othwerwise, it probably fits in with the Phlegmatic in INP and ISF types. Other E/R-like matrices using moderate scores and a fifth type are Blake-Mouton, Jay Hall and TKI.
So it is not "ancient" theory so much I am discussing. There seems to be one primary temperament theory, thought it has been updated in many ways, both in the names used, and its factors, and has split into two models, both cross-mapped to the 16 types of the MBTI. One uses expressiveness and responsiveness, and the other uses perception. This ends up measuring two different
areas of our whole personality profile.
What it looks like to me, is that the Interaction Styles correspond to the temperaments in the area of social interaction, and the Keirsey "conative" temperaments are leadership and responsibilities. (Two of the three areas covered by the FIRO system, basically, and also loosely matching LaHaye's blends). So they seem like two totally different "temperament" theories, one ancient and one modern, but the "ancient" one has been reborn in MBTI circles as the Interaction Styles.
When you think of temperament, you basically think of social skills anyway. Yet the conative model is dealing with another area; one of "action", or leadership. That's why they seem so different. They're covering different aspects of the temperaments, and people are a blend of a social style and a leadership style, corresponding to the 16 types.
So where NF would fit in that. It seems to be either a Phlegmatic or Supine in Control. The Supine would have more energy than the Phlegmatic, and does react if his [unspoken] needs for affirmation aren't met. So this could be the so-called "hyperesthetic" behavior of Kretschmer's character style. Keirsey linked the NF with "hyperesthetic" and NT with "anasthetic". The hyperesthetic is described as having "
tender" sensibility, while the anasthetic has "active coldness, passive insensitivity, tenacity, stubborn willfulness", etc. Kant, however, had made both the Choleric and Phlegmatic "
cold-blooded", but they were both "cold" in different ways. The Phlegmatic was "cold" in being sluggish (including emotionally), while the Choleric was "cold" in having specifically a lack of feeling. Keirsey linked the NT's lack of feeling with Phlegmatic, and the NF's starting out more peaceful, but then becoming exciteable as "Choleric".
That's one thing that points to the temperament + interaction styles model as being two separate "areas" of the same four temperaments. What we are calling "temperament" (the "conative" model) is not about surface social skills (that's basically what the Interaction Styles are), but about "action" or leadership skills, so you don't look for necessarily the same
surface behaviors (such as "coolness" or "exciteability") in naming the temperaments.
There is also a moderate hybrid called Supine Phlegmatic, who has elements of both temperaments. The Phegmatic is diplomatic like the NF's skills set, (The NT was "logistical") and the Supine has a need for appreciation of his worth, like the NF's core needs of meaning and significance. The NT's need of mastery and competence is clearly the Choleric in Control.
The most "choleric" are the NTJ's. In the NTP's, it is tempered by the "informing" interaction styles. The ENFJ is part Choleric because it is "In Charge". If NF were also Choleric, it would be a pure Choleric, but it is not, and rather the ENTJ "Fieldmarshall" is. The INFP certainly is not Choleric either. They may have angry reactions after awhile, but then every type does in one way or another. The INFP is slow with it, while the Choleric is famous for having a quick temper.
With you, the Ti you mentioned is a shadowy thing, but with me, it is more prominent, even though you may not see it here that much.
Yes, the smaller the parts, the more INNaccuracy you will get. For instance, there's those supply and demand curves, but that's an artificial situation. In real markets, there's a zero profit tendency.
Those 'facets' are untrue anyway. And it's not like they naturally extrapolate from the theory in any way. (really, they don't)(by the theory I MEAN the cognitive processes)
Yeah, well, just like them looking for smaller "fundamental" particles, more questions and apparent problems will come up in the theory. But still, the five subscales do seem to help by identifying where we do not fit a pattern.