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Types #9X ← ✸ → Types #11X
Anonymous said: When do you think people will massively start to awaken to the truth of the real cognitive functions of 16 personalities? Do you want to do something about it and make your knowledge more popular and heard?
:) You make it sound like something really spectacular, haha.
I think a massive thing is very unlikely. There are lots and lots of people using the false functions in lots of different ways. Not only those earning money from that, but all the “communities” and “fandoms” and blogs and accounts (MBTI and Socionics), the ones that really make noise and keep talking and posting about the same things, over and over, everywhere, and would find themselves without their lovely drug, overnight. Because that’s what it is for them: a drug. And that’s what they have: an addiction. Does an addict care if the drug is “incorrect”? No.
That’s probably the biggest problem in all this, and in many other important topics. People don’t care if what they are doing is right or wrong. They say (or think) they do, but they don’t. They think numbers make things right. Or authority. Or some other “justification”. Many are in it as a social thing, because there are others in it, too, so it works just like any other shared idea: the point is not its truthfulness, but its commonality or familiarity. That’s the addictive component. And when there’s already a version that’s known worldwide, however false, there’s no need for another one.
The correct functions are too real, too true, to be fashionable or to work as a drug. In fact, part of the “lure” of the wrong ones is precisely the chaos that comes from the different misinterpretations (those who are actually referring to pairs of letters, those who assign them to the wrong types, those who keep trying to reinvent them, etc). That way people never get to truly understand anything (especially themselves, that would be horrible), and lots of them love that (even if they won’t admit it), including the “freshness” of the endless arguments, of course. If something is definitively explained it becomes “boring” to them.
How many have seen my first post (from almost 3 years ago), and/or others after that, but are still using eiei/ieie? How many really understand that it’s actually eeii/iiee? I don’t know, but I imagine the ratio could be around 0.1% or even less. One person for each thousand people.
Your second question would be a bit like saying if I want to improve that ratio, right? Haha :P Well, I’m probably what could be considered the opposite of an “influencer”. I’m not trying to keep this a secret, of course, I’m doing what I can, but as I mentioned before, I’m always more on the side of observing things carefully than popularizing them. That’s partly because I don’t have the means to do much more, and partly because my approach is always very slow, about checking things, trying to understand and explain difficult ideas calmly and clearly, looking some more, answering questions, going back and editing a thing or two that might be wrong or better explained in some other way, etc.
So I guess you could say I don’t care that much about the ratio. I prefer quality to quantity. It’s better to have one person who really gets it than a thousand faking it.
Anonymous said: Fi is about Individualism, personal values or showing less emotions / spontaneity? I realized that Fi and Ni are the most difficult functions to describe. the meaning of introspection reminds me of Fi “the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes.” the meaning of introspection reminds me of Fi “the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes.”
Think about it: those things you mention can be found in Ti-Fe types, too. Individualism, introspection (Jung was an INTJ), personal values, and being quiet/planful instead of spontaneous, for example. Also, some ETs (=uFi) can be extremely emotional, right? (this last point is more an E>I thing than anything else, see post #14, post #33 and post #91.1).
People tend to look at rather superficial things, while the functions are much deeper (post #17). Ni and Fi are the most difficult to describe, yes, but it’s not that the others are easy. Read post #87, too. That’s one of the best ways to understand them.
I’ll talk a bit about two of the points. You’ll see that the main problem that I have with this kind of thing is the way people misuse the language, in the sense that it’s not acceptable as a way of distinguishing individuals, because everything gets applied to everyone.
- People from all types can consider themselves (or be considered) “individualistic”, it’s just that the basis for that image is located on different things. Which ones are more psychologically individualistic? Well, that’s mostly I>E and T>F, so you can take it as IT>IF>ET>EF (I’ll probably make some kind of compilation of these “rankings”). The thing is: all four ITs have Ti, not Fi. And in fact, the most independent type is INTP (Ni-Ti-Fe-Se).
- I think the common idea that Fi is “personal values” leads to many confusions and mistypes (especially “IFs” who are actually EFs). What is a personal value? Something you want to defend, so that it’s always there? Or something you want to change? Is it something that you want to achieve? Where did you get the idea? Where do you look to see if it has been achieved? Is it about your environment, about the quality and state of physical beings and/or things? Is it about the disposition and evolution of relationships, for example? Is it about society, and/or your place in it?
Too many of those can be centered primarily on other functions, not on Fi. Lots of activists and politicians are EFs, for example (they have conscious Fe, not Fi), but the fact that they share objectives with other people doesn’t mean that, when asked, most of them wouldn’t say those are their “personal values”. Some Fe1s actually try to embody certain “standards of behavior”, so they of course are going to see them as “personal”. The same with some Ne1s and various ideas of progress, which can be interpreted as “values”, too.
Anonymous said: Hi! Jung says about Fi that “In order to communicate with others it has to find an external form which is not only fitted to absorb the subjective feeling in a satisfying expression, but which must also convey it to one’s fellowman in such a way that a parallel process takes place in him.” Isn’t it implying that Fi needs Xe? Or does it premonish Fi-Te? I’m confused.
Hi! :) The context of that quote is communication, not a “continuous need”. He’s talking about Fi especially in comparison with Ti, saying that effective representation is much more difficult for Fi.
I don’t think Jung is referring to a particular extraverted function, I think he just means external form in general, so it includes Se, too. An ISFJ (Fi-Si-Ne-Te) might want to draw something trying to illustrate the inner qualities of a fictional character, for example, but [s]he doesn’t have Se. Does that mean that [s]he can’t draw? Not at all, of course. Se might be just a ghost function in this case (gSe2), but ISFJ can use a pencil and some sheets of paper, and the drawing gets made (through Si2), perhaps with astonishing detail, and then it’s there, outside. Now the question is: ISFJ wanted to transmit something, has [s]he succeeded?
Everybody uses the external world to communicate, right? You speak, write, sing, dance, paint, play, build, etc. If you think about it, that’s actually one of the unfortunate problems that humans have, because other people interpret those expressions through their own particular frames, so you don’t have a single direct line, you have two separate ones, and things get lost (in translation) in both of them. Sometimes the whole message.
So we can rephrase the ISFJ question: for whom did the drawing succeed? To what degree? How does ISFJ know? Etc.
Maybe you can recognize another form of contact, a communication that doesn’t pass through the external world. You could call it communion, for example. That’s the domain of introversion, of course. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s called universal: different people can reach a common ground or point there that doesn’t have/need a physical representation.
Anonymous said: Tell me about ENTPs using Te. I wanna see if I relate to it or if I’m mistyped, Thx.
I talked a bit about ENTPs here. That was a general image of the most energetic. There are other versions, for example those with a more intellectual approach.
I’ll write a few things, but if you suspect a mistype remember that the best thing is always to check the letters. You might be mistyped and reinterpret what follows in a way that matches your real type. It’s more direct with the letters. Some ideas: E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P. Also, as you’ll see, descriptions like this can’t really ignore the other functions, it’s all of them that make the type.
One way in which you can see ENTP’s Te is in how they [want to] put to use what’s available in the present moment, the latest technologies, the recent happenings, etc, in a sort of continuous search, discovery or progression that seems to be an end in itself. That is: they don’t stop or have a fixed set of conditions for recognizing when something is “right” or “done”, they simply go on, and they don’t even notice that they are leaving things (or people) behind.
Te2 doesn’t care about acceptability. That doesn’t mean all ENTPs are obnoxious or scandalous, they can be quite formal (especially in public), but their worries and decisions won’t depend on how others [might] feel, so they can be really cold and/or shocking, with anyone, no matter how close (this matches their disloyal characteristic). Some ENTPs probably have the neutral impression that sometimes they match the current trends (fashion, etc), but sometimes they don’t (that would be gFe3). They don’t care about that.
Looking at post #82 you could imagine that some ENTPs, especially the “intellectual” ones, try to reach a sort of “perfect abstraction of concepts” (gTi2), although they never really get there because the things that they work with depend too much on their interest in new developments and findings (Ne1>Te2). Some ENTPs are aware of this. For others, this is probably the reason why they [want to] see the systems that they invent as “definitive”. I remember here a simple joke about software designers that see too many file standards and say “hey, that’s too complicated, why don’t we make a standard that includes all of those?” So the world ends up with too-many-file-standards… plus one.
You can also think about what I call the “internal engine” of the type, in this case Fi3→Te2 (post #87), which tries to summarize what I wrote in post #51, with phrases like “every allure implies an action”, for example, interpreted inside a global worldview full of possibilities (Ne1) that don’t necessarily bring or connect to usefulness or experience (Si4). But it’s better if you do all that for the other types, too, because the idea is always to get a picture of the whole thing, and then see where you are.
Anonymous said: People from the popular MBTI say that ESFJ (FeSi) are traditionalists, but how could they be traditional if Extroverted Feeling is about following the trends in society? lol
I know, through that description many people are actually thinking about ESFPs (Se-Fe-Ti-Ni), not ESFJs (Fe-Se-Ni-Ti). I made a meme about this, with the idea that ESFPs tend to be those behind the “domestic” stereotype (there’s also an ESF comparison here). Others might be thinking about ENFJs (that’s the EFJ that actually has Si: Fe-Ne-Si-Ti), if they are mistyping with the false eiei/ieie order. Being choleric instead of sanguine (together with other differences), ENFJs might be seen as “more traditional” than ESFJs, somehow.
In any case, you have to be careful because Fe is not exactly about “trends” in the sense of “the latest”. Fe relies on what’s shared, common, agreed or popular (that’s how “fashion” is understood in this context), so it’s not the same thing. In fact, Fe might put a person against certain new developments, although this is probably more common among ENFJs, because ESFJs don’t care that much about Ne (that’s another reason for what I wrote above).
The thing is: Fe can be traditional, too, it depends on what you consider “before” and “after”, “established” or “minority” (given that societies are not necessarily monolithic), and any kind of supposed “historical line” that you assume, because that’s all behind the concept of “traditional”.
Remember that extraversion refers to something localized in space or time, but you don’t know the center[s], size, scope, mixture or evolution of a particular person’s “localization”. It’s not automatically “every/anything”. A Fe1 individual can be perfectly considered “traditional” if the external values that rule his/her mind have been taken [mainly] from a society or a time that the observer considers “old-fashioned”. A good example here would be Don Quixote, an extremely idealistic ENFJ that’s also incredibly traditional because his values come from reading too many romances of chivalry.
This other example will include a bit of generalization, but imagine that several Fe1 children arrive on Earth at the same time, and they enter different societies with the specific mission of being a representative of each one. After a few years they meet again, and you compare them as adults. I think you can easily picture how the person who lived in California and the one living with the Amish (for example) would be quite different, right? And the contrast would be even greater with the one who spent those years among the Amazon tribes. They are all EFJs, but some people would describe the second and third as “[more] traditional”, if they take California as “modern”.
Nowadays you don’t even need to put them in different places: with so much information on the internet you can have Fe1s (and maybe other types as well), right where you are, who are interested in, and perhaps trying to “live” (like Don Quixote), various cultures from all over the world and/or history, some more “traditional” than others.
Anonymous said: Hi! Which types do you think are more daring to solo travel or randomly plan a trip? People associate it with ENFPs and ESTPs.
Hi! :) If they are the energetic kind (and have the means) then yes, those could be the types most likely to suggest or join an improvised trip. But ISTPs and ISFPs can do that, too, especially the solo part (going alone is definitely I>E). ENFPs need company to act like that, more than ESTPs, so with those two the general idea would be ESTP>ENFP.
Both ISPs can be surprisingly gregarious, in fact the classic image of the vagabond is very ISFP (Si-Fi-Te-Ne). Another ISFP example would be Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, the pilot author of “The Little Prince”. Among ISTPs (Si-Ti-Fe-Ne) you have of course people like Charles Lindbergh, the first person to complete a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. You can see how ISTPs are a bit more reliable than ISFPs in this particular context, because T is more about the task at hand than F.
Anonymous said: Can you help us for know INTP and INFP famous people, especially INTP. Why they are so less. Please, please, please, please, please.
:) I think you want to know why is there such a low number of INPs in the typings page, right? :) It’s a combination of things.
- First you have the frequency of the different types, with the INs being among the less common.
- Then it’s the fact that INPs’ main temperament is phlegmatic, just like the ISFs. That makes them stay behind-the-scenes, in contrast with the other 3 groups. The melancholics (INJs and ISTs), even though they are also introverts, can step more confidently to the foreground: they chart-the-course. Then of course the sanguines (ENPs and ESFs) like to get-things-going, and the cholerics (ENJs and ESTs) like to be in-charge. Even if they act/look “shy”, “quiet” or “private” (getting subsequently mistyped by everyone), the reality is that lots and lots and lots (and lots) of famous people are extraverts. That’s not only what I find more and more (even to my surprise), but what makes sense.
- Third it’s the way popularity works: fame wants to reward itself.
What’s repeated and the names that are most widely known need to give weight or “value”, in some way, to something that’s already established (another name, a custom, society itself, an institution, a narrative, etc), to something that’s profitable (a trademark, a company), to something that’s new (like a campaign or a social trend, which can be profitable and/or establish someone), etc. That is: names are repeated basically because they somehow [are shown to] support, elevate or justify the person/thing that mentions them. That’s what happens with those organizations that give public prizes, for example (others use public attacks, it’s the same thing): they do it for themselves, for their own “prestige”, not for the person. They do it to appear in their biographies.
But you don’t tend to get points for naming Ni1 people (often the opposite happens). They are considered either too weird, or too “out there”, or too unknown, or too plain/simple, or too boring, or too serious, or too incomprehensible, or “crazy”, or “useless”, etc. It’s like it requires a rare personal element of recognition to connect with somebody through an INP (this is related to what I wrote here about communion). Not fame. In fact, if an INP person is widely famous it’s extremely likely that his/her work has been distorted in some way, made innocuous, or “adapted” so that it serves something else.
Ni1 recognizes factors that aren’t [meant to be] popular, exciting, entertaining, marketable or fashionable, so it doesn’t sell, at all. It’s not communal, either, or prestigious. It doesn’t offer anything that’s really “new” in the sense of “advance” or “progress”, and in fact it goes against the supposed value of all that.
- Another group of reasons is in my way of doing things, including the people that I’m examining, my particular selection, and the relative easiness of identifying certain types but not others (introverts are harder in general). If the lack of available information wasn’t a problem maybe I could find more INPs if I focused on rare styles or segments of music or art, for example, but that’s not even a certainty (I’d find many other types, too), and their names wouldn’t really be famous. That happens already with some that I have in the list (in fact, I’m pretty sure many people don’t recognize anyone in the Ni1s). Still I try to include examples for all 16 types equally, of course, but the process that’s behind the page begins with a name that’s famous and ends with a typing, not the other way around, so the natural disproportion in the frequency of the types gets amplified.
Anonymous said: Hello! How can I distinguish primary Fi from inferior Fe? It’s really hard for me to see the difference between the two, for example in social settings.
Hi :) Comparisons like Fi1 vs Fe4 are too cumbersome. That combination implies too many movements at once. What you are trying to see is the difference between IFJs (Fi1//Te4) and ITJs (Ti1//Fe4), so what you are actually trying to understand is the F/T dichotomy.
That’s a kind of perspective change that’s needed very often in typology, but people think they have to reduce everything to functions, and don’t realize that they can put things in different terms, using the letters, to get reliable answers from another angle.
If you take a look at these posts you can get an idea of what T/F tries to describe, and the disparities that you’re looking for: post #14, post #20, post #53, post #84 and MBTI List 10. I’ll write a few more general things.
IFJ’s behavior fits feminine archetypes, and ITJ’s is more typical of men. IFJs are more willing to cooperate and/or prioritize relationships, while ITJs are more psychologically solitary or independent, and follow internal rules. IFJs, like the other IFs, tend to be quiet and retiring. ITJs, like the other ITs, are logical and critical. Both can be considered “cold” because they are introverts, but after hearing the same statement an IFJ is more likely to just remain silent or make some kind of tangentially related remark, while an ITJ is more willing to state his/her reasoned opinion, enter/initiate an argument, etc. IFJs can do that if the statement goes overtly against their evaluations (Fi1), in which case you’d sense a more human component in their response (heart>head, people>task), instead of strictly technical or systematic. If the conversation is about politics or something with a broad social scope, some ITJs can get emotional (Fe4).
1. CONCEPTS, THEORIES, SYSTEMS
Seeing how famous thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Russell are STJs, I know many people will ask how can all these philosophers be S if their work is full of abstractions, theories and systems?
Well, the person has a type, not the work. Just like many visual artists are N even if what keeps them busy all day are sensations and practical matters like colors and lines, many “conceptual” people are S because in their work they don’t focus [only] on their proper or conscious functions, or they do but one function alone is more than enough for going on and on about intellectual topics. For example, like 3 of the examples above, what lots of people consider “intangible” (including “philosophy”) is very often just a reference to Ti.
When you are typing someone and get to a piece of work you need to look pass its form, and find or follow its intention or significance within the particular circumstances of the author’s life and ways of thinking, not necessarily in history, or how it appears in his/her biography. I mean: it’s not easy.
The way the MBTI facets for S/N are presented could be a reason behind many Ss mistyped as “Ns”, because in reality lots of people can start releasing thought after thought about countless “abstract” topics, writing books, giving lectures, etc. And they don’t need to be intuitives. Sensation-Intuition is a different thing, you have to take other factors into account if you want to get that letter right. That’s partly why I’m always looking for additional perspectives on the dichotomies.
2. EXTRAVERSION AS “S” AND INTROVERSION AS “N”
Another complication is that the S/N facets can be confused with E/I, respectively. Someone (E[N]) who is all about the present moment, what can be done with the object that’s physically there, or just the “objective facts” (ET), could be seen as “Concrete”, “Realistic” and/or “Experiential”. In those cases what’s simply extraversion is spilling over “sensation” because, as usual, the language gets tricky.
Similarly, someone (I[S]) who is for example quite unorthodox and fanciful, could be regarded as “Imaginative” and “Original”, when the reality is that those things are coming only from introversion and being interpreted as “intuition” (perhaps that’s another reason for the overabundance of “INs” everywhere). Jung himself mentions, somewhere while talking about Ti (which doesn’t imply N): “There will cling to it a certain mythological character that we are prone to interpret as ‘originality’, or in more pronounced cases as mere whimsicality”.
You can also look at the problem from this angle: some people mistake the difference between pairs of E-I types (what I call Ghosts) for a supposed “S-N” difference. So for example, adding other misconceptions that they have, they might end up mistyping ESTJs and ISTJs for “ISFJs” and “INFJs”, respectively.
Anonymous said: Hi. Could you please explain Fi1’s private magnetism? How does it affect people? What are the traits of this magnetism? And how is it different in ISFJs and INFJs?
You probably know what it is already. Think of the silent effect that knowing (or wanting to know) how a rather inexpressive girl or woman really feels has in those around her. There are many possible situations and ideas that could float inside them, but you know the most common: “What is she thinking?”, “Does she like this/that?”, “Have I/we said something wrong?”, “What does she really want?”, etc.
It’s mostly a way of referring to the attraction that certain internal feminine qualities provoke in men, but I don’t call them that directly, because the Fi1 person can also be a man, and it’s not exactly (or exclusively) a sexual thing. Take a look at Jung’s words: “a domineering influence often difficult to define {…} a sort of stifling or oppressive feeling which holds the immediate circle under a spell. It gives a woman of this type a certain mysterious power {…} derived from the deeply felt, unconscious images”.
I use the word “private” in order to differentiate it from more public/social characteristics, which can include what many call “charisma”, for example. (Jung’s “immediate” also refers to this).
The classic version is ISFJ’s, of course: that’s the traditional girl/woman archetype, quiet, dedicated, and also someone to which you could apply the saying “still waters run deep” (especially in comparison with EF types). However, it’s not a helpless person, [s]he can very often defend him/herself quite resolutely, although [s]he might need to overcome a kind of initial resistance to do that (I think this is a common theme in many stories featuring ISFJs).
INFJ shares much of that, but being intuitive you could consider it the most feminine type (which implies the capacity for both the best and the worst of the female traits), and the one to which Jung’s words apply the most. In INFJ there is a kind of detachment from the sound usefulness that ISFJ looks for and, subsequently, a certain lack of practicality, or one that relies not so much on dedication but on some sort of indirect influence over others, on some kind of “trick” (that’s where the “magic” and “witch” associations begin).
Types #9X ← ✸ → Types #11X