Ni does not exclude narcissism.
Nor does Ni indicate intelligence. (A
general statement, not a veiled insult directed at anyone!) Ni is just a means of perceiving. It has some great strengths and some remarkable weaknesses.
I think Se is less popular. Almost everyone who I have met who has it in abundance tries to pretend they are a different type. Usually ENFP or ENTP.
Yeah, and even then Ni has some degree of popularity, given the number of people who will self identify as INTJs instead of INTP or ENTP or ISTP.
With respect to Se, I understand its lack of popularity, because it sounds like a "stupid" attitude. However, living "in the moment" is a very enlightened way of life, so long as it isn't accompanied by crass immaturity. People with strong Se tend to think that what they do
must be intuitive, because so much of sensing is "concrete" and often described in such a way that it describes Si more than Se.
Se has its own "intuition," and I don't mean the Ni variety that appears in developed ISxPs. Se "just knows" the right thing to do in a given moment. If accompanied by a well-developed introverted function (Ti or Fi), it can quickly analyze a situation "in the moment" and come up with a reaction or judgment that is eminently apropos.
In fact, Se works quite well with Ni, when both are developed. Se provides the "real time" information, and Ni can further perceive and evaluate it with refinement. This serves to counteract Se's primary weakness which is shortsightedness: Se tends not to gather information that isn't immediately within reach, and that results in a tendency to make great short term decisions, but fairly mediocre long-term decisions. Ti, Fi and Ni modulate Se to embody a more long-term perspective.
Now introverted intuition in particular is a landscape of "the real meanings of". Name a thing (or experience it) and introverted intuition will have or generate the "real" meaning of what happened. How? By already being a landscape. A network of connected content. The connections are the products of speculation that doesn't happen in the moment, but does happen fairly constantly at all other times, building and breaking connections in a moderately constant search for better, bigger connections.
So, toss up some situation, something determinate in the real world, and how does introverted perception NOT suddenly tell you what will happen next? The objective situation is there, the connections are there, what's not to see?
A very good post, overall, Kalach!
I've selected particular pieces to highlight them, and bolded parts of these to further draw attention to what Ni is really doing.
The bolded is how Ni and Se relate. Ni maintains an internal landscape, as K calls it. I would call it an internal dynamic model: for me Ni really is a "function"! Se (or Te or Fe) provides input, and out pops the answer.
I would describe Ni as providing a "result" based on "Ni(Se,Te,Fe)", where Ni is the "function" and you just plug in the extroverted function "variables." Thus Ni "tells you" what is going on, and that information is consequentially predictive, because Ni is a dynamic model. By virtue of knowing "what is really happening," we also predict "what will happen," with a remarkable degree of accuracy.
I should use this observation to point out a weakness of Ni: it depends on the input values, and it isn't obvious where the input values come from. E.g., it's possible to have just Ni(null, Te, null), or Ni(null, null, Fe) or Ni(Se, null, null). Or worse: Ni(null, null, null). Or nearly as bizarre: Ni(Ti) or Ni(Fi).
Ni needs to build its landscape/model, and that model is necessarily built
in terms of the Ni user's other functions. If those other functions are weak, or nearly non-existent, Ni can come up with some really crack-brained ideas. The more developed the other functions are, the more apt Ni is at spotting "what is really going on." The more Ni "sees" (or would that be "Se's"?), the more accurate its predictions. In the case of the extroverted judging functions, each tends to blind Ni to its opposite, so that Ni only sees the Te connections or the Fe connections, but not both, thus limiting its reliability.