Socionics as the psychoanalysis of our time
I thought I'd write this in lieu of all the philosophical talk on the forum. I think this is important for everyone out there to know.
How far are we really in the development of Socionics? We know about how relationships work, we know that types exist, and we know that we use specific functions to get things done. We all use it in our everyday lives for things like self-awareness, how to get along with a certain person, how to get that person to like you, etc. Socionics has really opened up our eyes to the mystery of human nature. Its importance is immense, and we are just about to the perfection of our system. We've almost got humans figured out, right?
Let's go back 100 years in history, to the time of Freud and his psychoanalysis. Here we have a system of human nature that seemed pretty correct, at least to the psychologists working in the field. Great strides were to be made. The world would live by the creeds of psychoanalysis, and human nature would be a mystery no longer.
A few decades later, everything fell apart.
Now we come to, in my opinion, the greatest discovery made in psychology by any one man: B. F. Skinner's stimulus-response mechanism. This was not merely a new system in which to explain human behavior; it was the ultimate abstraction. Everything that a human did could, roughly, be explained in terms of a stimulus and a response. You drank your morning coffee (R), because you were thirsty (S). Simple enough, eh?
Well, for more complex behaviors, the stimulus-response concept couldn't cut it. It would have taken too much to explain behavior by this system, and most of the time, certain stimuli were indeterminable. You would have had to know your entire past in great detail to find out why you were having dreams about killing your mother. This indeterminacy launched a new program called the social-cognitive learning theory. This was a theory that used stimulus-response concepts with other concepts found in the history of psychology. It was a compromise between extreme reductionism and generalizing.
But the most important idea that stemmed from Skinner was that everything was now measurable. There was no such thing as the "mystical" or "unconscious" side of human nature. Nowadays, because of this discovery, psychologists know more about the human mind than we ever could have figured out from Freud's theory. Without Skinner, we would all still be in the dark, floating around on vague generalities.
So what does this mean for Socionics? It means that Socionics is now roughly equivalent to Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. We've been observing people and theorizing our asses off, but for what? For piling up as many adjectives and adverbs onto type descriptions as we can, that's what. Socionics doesn't need more people sitting around theorizing anymore. What Socionics needs is a completely new perspective.
What can we measure in Socionics? Nothing so far. And why not? Because we haven't reduced it to tangible objects yet. What we need is a philosophy of Socionics, something that describes the basic building blocks of human nature. We need a single dichotomy that explains our four dichotomies and the rest of them that people randomly come up with. Until we reduce Socionics to one basic concept, we'll never figure out the mystery of human nature.
But don't despair. The seeds of this revolution have already been sown on this forum. There is one topic on here that was the real first push towards this philosophy. You just have to find it.
Your INTp friend,
Cone
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Originally Posted by Pedro
I'm going to go compose some music and wait until you hardcore types get a Cliffsnotes out.
