I've just started my blog where I discuss my sorting out through the interoverted vs extraverted attitudes of the judging functions.
http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/blogs/eric-b/872-my-sorting-through-my-own-functions-type.html
It seems the distinctions become very muddy and ambiguous at times (which goes agains the clarity the Ti type needs). Then, I have people like Xander who think I'm an NFP from the way I e-mail, somehow. But as I'm finally coming to a full grasp of the concept, it seems a lot of us have been looking at the wrong things in trying to type people.
Ti is often described as "understanding how things work". So as I struggle to figure out what's wrong with the computer and home network, mess it all up, and then a friend who I believe is ISTJ, yet who has this knack for figuring out computers and other technical things, and who set the network up in the first place has to come and fix it back. I then wonder if I should be embarrassed in light of my Ti profession, as I'm supposedly the one who should be able to understand "how it works" and figure it out.
But Haas and Hunziker's
Building Blocks of Personality Type has made it finally click for me that Ti is really about the internal ordering of thoughts into logical structures, models and frameworks, rather than understanding all external models and frameworks instantly. It's because of the fact that an external system can be mapped to an internal framework that would make the person
likely to gain a good grasp of the system. But it is also said that if the person does not have a particular internal framework that he can map the system to,
he will be very slow to "get" it! This was pointed out by H&H, (the person seemed like they had a learning disability, but he just needed time for his Ti to do its grasp things) and then it finally clicked. His main method of judgment is still internal logic; he just doesn't have a model for that particular system. He doesn't automatically become a Feeling preferrer or extraverted Thinker or somethign like that. Einstein is supposed to have been an NTP, and he even failed Math! So this explains a lot that happened in my educational story.
Likewise, an extraverted Thinker would also be able to understand how things work. Since their logic is focused on those external things, they would really need to understand something about those external objects they are ordering.
So you will see two people who are very logically oriented, and deal in technical things. One will simply crack problems by focusing directly on the obect, and the other will map it to an internal framework like a symmetry, or familiar with those things work, etc.
Hence, Thinking as the neutral "car", and one person is simply driving it one way, and the other is driving it the other way. A much closer analogy would be someone who learns to drive a car by reading a manual, versus someone who learns by simply getting in one first, and applying stuff he remembered wither from watching others drive, or from the remote control toy car or amusement park bumper cars he drove as a kid. Or someone who reads a map to get somewhere versus someone does relies on memory.
Likewise, I had been dealing a while ago with a supposed type expert, who apparently does not really like types displaying her shadow processes a lot, and Fi was portrayed as virtually
less feeling than an INTP, since the INTP's Fe is inferior, yet still in the "ego-compatible" range, while an FP's Fe is even lower than that in the ego-incompatible "shadows", and usually negative. It was like the two attitudes of Feeling were totally different animals! (Hence someone deemed not mindful of a group can't even qualify as an IxTP!) But, (aside from the CP tests, which measured actual strengths of the functions, and in which Fe for INTP's is generally the weakest, at 10% or less); then, I remembered how FP's are generally portrayed as "empathetic" as the FJ's, and began realizing that they weren't as different as the impression I was given.
They both are driving the same F "values" car; only one's values are externally based, and the other's is internally based. Someone using an internal standard will generally try to align with the values of a group he is in, unless a personal value is violated. Then, rather than imposing himself, he will try to withdraw. I imagine if the group is really trying to force itself on the person, he may seem more "selfish" than Fe types. But then this goes to show the relative nature of "values", as different groups will have different values, and who's to say which are really right? The negative side of the supposedly "selfless" Fe is that you could be following the values of a group that has really bad values. (e.g. hate groups, etc). Fi would be more likely to follow universal values (which are considered internal or introverted), and resist the evil.
But the overall net effect of Feeling is the largely the same in both groups. It's only the location of the standard that differs.