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    Introduction to Socionics


    Socionics is a theory of information processing and personality type, distinguished by its information model of the psyche, called Model A, and a model of interpersonal relations. It incorporates Carl Jung's work on Psychological Types with Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism. Socionics is a modification of Jung's personality type theory that uses eight psychic functions. These functions process information at varying levels of competency and interact with the corresponding function in other individuals, giving rise to predictable reactions and impressions—a theory of intertype relations.


    Socionics was developed in the 1970s and '80s, primarily by the Lithuanian researcher Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, an economist, sociologist, and dean of the Vilnius Pedagogical University's department of family science. A. Augustinavičiūtė has later shortened her last name from "Augustinavichiute" to "Augusta" to make it easier to spell for foreigners. The name "socionics" is derived from the word "society", because A. Augusta believed that each personality type has a distinct purpose in society, which can be described and explained by socionics. Augusta created symbols to represent the functions described by Carl Jung and — together with a circle of fellow researchers/hobbyists — eventually created what is known as the "socionic model of the psyche" — a description of the psyche where each of the 8 information elements has its place in each person's psyche.


    The central idea of socionics is that information is intuitively divisible into eight categories, called information aspects or information elements, which a person's psyche processes using eight psychological functions. Each sociotype has a different correspondence between functions and information elements, which results in different ways of perceiving, processing, and producing information. This in turn results in distinct thinking patterns, values, and responses to arguments, all of which are encompassed within socionic type. Socionics' theory of intertype relations is based on the interaction of these functions between types.


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    Speaking Different Languages, Striving for the Same (Socionics vs American typology) 

    by
    glam
    Published on 08-08-2012 03:26 AM  Number of Views: 1558 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. MBTI,
    4. Information Element,
    5. Information Aspect,
    6. Small Groups
    Article Preview

    Speaking Different Languages, Striving for the Same

    © Victor Gulenko, 1996
    From V. Gulenko, V. Tyshchenko, Jung At School.
    Translated by Dmitri Lytov
    Edited by Jeffrey Bolden





    For a long time development of socionics was limited by a single country's borders, but in 1984 its founder, Ausra Augustinaviciute, learned about the MBTI test (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)19, and this was the beginning of communication between socionics and its “transatlantic cousin”.

    Comparison between the American type theory and socionics became possible due to the publication in 1995-1996 of several books by American ...
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    Socionics: Model A: Blocks and Functions of the Socionic Model of the Psyche 

    by
    glam
    Published on 08-05-2012 02:17 AM     Number of Views: 2039 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. Model A
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    Model A:
    Blocks and Functions of the Socionic Model of the Psyche





    Article Contents

    I. Blocks of Model A
    II. Functions of Model A
    III. Function Dichotomies

    For related information, also see: Model A




    I. Blocks of Model A

    Model A divides into four blocks (or rows) containing two functions apiece. Each block contains one Rational and one Irrational element, one Extroverted and one Introverted element. Traditionally it is thought that the functions of each block are somehow connected and codependent with each other. Other socionists maintain that the functions manifest themselves separately.

    Aushra Augusta chose the terms Ego, Super-ego, Super-id, and Id by analogy with Sigmund Freud's model of the psyche. However, the meaning of the terms is somewhat different than in psychoanalysis.


    Figure 1
    Model A: The four blocks.





    1. Base function

    The leading function, also called the base, program, or simply first function, is an individual's most dominant psychic function. It describes in general terms the person's most comfortable thinking patterns, perspective on life, state of mind, and behavioral style as well as their positive motivational forces (what they pursue most vigorously when they have a choice). The leading function is critical to interpersonal dynamics because people constantly and inadvertently make judgments, assessments, and assumptions based on it. These comments and judgments portray a particular set of ...
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    The Centripetal Law of Communication. Estimate Your Chances in Business Competition 

    by
    glam
    Published on 08-04-2012 01:28 AM     Number of Views: 1358 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. Philosophy,
    4. Culture
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    The Centripetal Law of Communication.
    Estimate Your Chances in Business Competition

    Victor Gulenko, April 25, 1998, Kiev.
    Translated by Dmitri Lytov, December 2005.
    Translator’s notes are given in italics.




    Even possessing enormous capacities of memorization, our brain “prefers” to compress information in order to fit it into the narrow space of our operational attention. The volume of unconscious information is huge, but our consciousness can master it only through consolidation into comparatively small number of rationally convoluted concepts.

    Only in course of time and with some galling experience many business people acquire a simple set of criteria that allow evaluating people and situations. Growth of vital experience is inevitably accompanied with more compact convolution of information and mastering of operations of its qualitative processing. In this work I would like to show that typology, as a specific form of classification, helps to significantly accelerate this painful process.


    1. Regimes Change, People Remain.

    Let us consider the concept of ideal type first developed by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864 – 1920). What is a type? According to him, it is not a mere result of generalization or averaging of a certain group of facts. An ideal type, or “pure” type, is the “interest of epoch” represented as a mental picture. This picture is not extracted from the empiric ...
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    Visual Type Identification 

    by
    glam
    Published on 08-03-2012 10:42 PM     Number of Views: 1975 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. Visual Identification
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    Visual Type Identification

    © Victor Talanov, 2001.




    © 2003 Dmitri Lytov, translation from Russian, 2003.
    © Lev Kamensky, edition of the translation, 2004.

    Disclaimer: this article represents the author’s preliminary conclusions, and thus cannot be used as a type detection methodology.

    The author's conclusions are based mostly on Ye.Filatova's series of type portraits.


    Introduction

    Testing without questionnaires means that a psychologist “visually” detects all the four binary dimensions of the client: extroversion/introversion, intuition/sensation, logic/ethic, and rationality/irrationality. This method certain cases ...
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    Advice for each type when facing daily life problems — by Reinin 

    by
    glam
    Published on 05-20-2012 05:23 AM     Number of Views: 2428 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. Information Element,
    4. Culture
    Article Preview



    [This is an excerpt from the book     Socionics: Typology. Small Groups by Grigory Reinin, published in 2005. You can download the full text here.]

    Types of information metabolism and situations.

    An attempt to analyze behavior of people of different types of information metabolism in some typical situations might be presented as some kind of uniquely structured description of types, the latter being examined through the prism of interactions with the environment.

    To begin with, let us examine a spectrum of situations theoretically, taking into account the eight elements of information metabolism (IM):

    Positive subject intuition (+). Integrity of the inner situation: good, pleasant mood, harmony with the external world; fun, happiness; plunging in thought.

    Inverse subject intuition (-). Infringement of the inner peace: irritation, moral discomfort; internal contradictions.

    Positive objective intuition (+). Integrity of the environment: everything is known from beginning to end; the world as if rolls on straight tracks; there is a schedule; the world is predictable, people are predictable, too.

    Inverse objective intuition (-). Infringement of the integrity of environment: unexpectedness, breach of schedule; the result of events is unpredictable, or an unexpected event.

    Positive subjective sensing (+). Various bodily sensations: that of being strong and healthy, taste, color, smells. The practice of cleansing and healing techniques and diets; attention to health. Following fashions in the area of health.

    Inverse subjective sensing (-). Indisposition, pain, hunger, fatigue, unpleasant sensations of other origin.

    Positive objective sensing (+). Form, fashion, appearance. Movement, action, activity. Skills. Will.

    Inverse objective sensing (-). Beautiful/ugly (judgment). Physical violence, danger.

    Positive objective logic (+). External circumstances, events, facts. Personal space. Technology of arrangement. Statistics. The external world is the objective reality. Matter. Documents. Rules, laws. Material values. External social norms.

    Inverse objective logic (-). Loss of values, money. Infringement of the order. Natural disasters. Traffic jams. “Facts are the objective reality.” Numbers, statistics. Loss of territory. Car breakage; TV, home appliance breakage. Dirt in the hall on the carpet.

    Positive subject logic (+). Understanding, hierarchy, structure.

    Inverse subject logic (-). Difficult task; a challenge to the intellect. Necessity to figure out and understand.

    Positive objective ethics (+). External relationships. Relationships with people. People’s attitude to me. Negotiations. Meetings with friends. Fellowship with close ones.

    Inverse objective ethics (-). Conflicts. Intrigues. Slander. Quarrel with near and dear ones. Conflicts at work.

    Positive subject ethics (+). My attitude to people. Necessity to express my attitude, opinion, feelings of love. Pleasant/unpleasant. My evaluation of a thing, an object, a person.

    Inverse subject ethics (-). I abhor, reject, detest.


    Formally, this list can be regarded as an exhaustive one; however, at the same time it is rather abstract, remote from real life.

    Let us pick an example from the abundance of daily situations and examine the `0:00 ...
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    Descriptions of Small Groups — by Reinin 

    by
    glam
    Published on 05-20-2012 03:43 AM     Number of Views: 1573 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. Small Groups,
    4. Quadra
    Article Preview



    [This is an excerpt from the book     Socionics: Typology. Small Groups by Grigory Reinin, published in 2005. You can download the full text here. Notes added to the original text are displayed in blue italic font.]


    Small groups discussed in this article:
    • Quadras
    • Clubs
    • Squares (Relaxation Groups)
    • Blocking Groups (Suppression Groups)
    • Bouquets
    • Health Groups
    • Social Control Rings (Supervision Rings)




    Some Data on Small Groups in a Socion.

    A person’s behavior in a certain situation may depend on several factors: individual traits of character, the type of informational metabolism, certain specific factors of the situation; but to a great extent it depends on the intertype characteristics of the micro group where the person ...
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    Filatova portraits - Delta 

    by
    glam
    Published on 12-16-2011 07:44 AM  Number of Views: 5665 
    1. Categories:
    2. Socionics,
    3. SLI - ISTp,
    4. IEE - ENFp,
    5. LSE - ESTj,
    6. EII - INFj,
    7. Visual Identification
    Article Preview

    These particular portraits are from Filatova's book "Personality in the Mirror of Socionics" (2001).

    While the idea of visual identification or VI in application to Socionics types is often met with staunch skepticism, there has been a considerable amount of research done on the relationship between personality and appearance that demonstrates that there indeed exist some interesting correlations, and that many of us are naturally in a habit of making personality estimates based on other people's appearance.


    On Filatova's portraits - from Wikisocion:
    Originally Posted by :
    It should be noted that Ekaterina Filatova did not herself use visual identification ("V.I.") to diagnose the types of the people in her books. She
    ...
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