True power of socionics

[drake]

I think that on these forums there's a lot of bad debate going on.
I looked at few posts where people discuss personality types of famous people. There are many errors and the main reason could be that people know specific famous people only by few pictures, few quotations and a short biography of them. And, lots of readers of socionics are just enthusiasts who don't analyze descriptions of types to the last part, who don't think enough before they speak and who aren't psychologists with practice.

I have to admit that I'm also a reader and a toilet bug considering the knowledge I have about psychology and socionics. )

However, I wish to know what is your impression about where does the true power of socionics lie? 'Where' refers to the personal use of socionics as a tool.

An answer from a psychologist and a socionist would be appreciated very much.

Thank you.

[metaiwan]

Oooh oooh am I considered a socionist? Who is? Who decides?

From a personal point of view, the power of socionics is understanding relationships. And in the future, modeling human behavior and love / drama scripts archetypes programs, whatever you want to call them. So basically, the power of socionics is so they can came out with a really really badass 'Sims' game.

[Labyrinth]

I complete and totally agree! That's why i've stopped posting here. Not enough use of the scientific method, and people trying to pass off radical speculations as fact.

The first chapter in Psychology 101 will teach you not to overgeneralize from a small sample, that correlation does not denote causation, and to look for multiple explanations.

What I always try to do is back up anything I read with real world observations, and make mental comparisons/corrections, most of the time reinterpreting what I have read in a more accurate way. The last thing I want to do is just believe, instead I like all "beliefs" to be backed up by a mountain of evidence, and there's certainly a lot of evidence to be had; every social situation i'm involved in is an opportunity to try and make sense of the typologies, to try and make sense of what is really happening.

However, I wish to know what is your impression about where does the true power of socionics lie?

Socionics is a fascinating field that offers great insight into your own personal development and into your relations with others. The theories aren't as solid as quantum mechanics (whose predictions have never contradicted an observation), but there's enough evidence to suggest there is unquestionably _something_ to it. I find it extremely gratifying at times to examine social interactions or even my own behavior from a socionics perspective, and it can be very rewarding to entertain the various theories to explain what is happening.

And sorry drake i'm not quite a psychologist yet, maybe someday

-Labyrinth

[pax]

I think that on these forums there's a lot of bad debate going on.
...
However, I wish to know what is your impression about where does the true power of socionics lie? 'Where' refers to the personal use of socionics as a tool.

It's simple. If you have opinion, there is someone another who has opposite opinion. You may agree, you may debate, you may ignore, you may quit, but you should be tolerant. Because you know why. Because another opinion isn't worse than your opinion -- it's different. Tolerancy - this is the true power of socionics.

[discourse]

At least for me, the power of Socionics lies in it's typology and intertype relations. Type is still, borned into INTp, you will be INTp for the rest of your life, however being INTp, you will be INTP in many different ways, there are many changes in types life time. That's why I don't take descriptions so trustfully- they are abstract. A lot of people find them being someone like described, but in real life, your TIM is far more complex.

And There are descriptions of how types will tolerate each other, again we can't take these word by word, but you can predict that probably ESFJ and INTP will fight a lot.

Personally I don't take type as something like astrological sign, but people whom I have talked to, tend to think so. Socionics power doesn't lie on that you say :'' She is ISFP and probably will be bad at working with machines,'' (ISFP naturally knows it is bad at machines and usually doesn't end up as truck driever or someone like that), but the power likes in things like:'' She is ESFJ, probably she will be good friend to me; she has a life phase where she has to deal with things a lot, how can I being ENTP make her life easier?''

In these ways to predict,understand someones life phase, to help somone lies the power of socionics for me.

P.S My type is still at investigation.

[indigoroom]

yesterday i told one INFP girl that she can write pretty well. now i'm reading her story and i'm pretty satisfied that i've managed to motivate her to try. thanks to socionics.

personally it helped me to break my.. how should i say it.. personal matrix. now i know who i am (infp's lifetime problem i think) and i'm aware of my capabilities and weaknesess.

[WVBRY]

Yeah I agree that theres alot of bad debate on this site that usually consists of trying to extrapolate general laws about how a type acts from personal anecdotes and unimportant details. Reading through all the"Am I INTp or INTj" debates, I realize that if based my understanding of the types on what the forum regulars say, I really could could be either INTp or INTj, since one thing about INTjs seems to apply to me, and one thing about INTp seems to apply to me, so I could be either( I am either INTp INFp INFj or INTJ, I know that much, and im inclined to say more thinkng than feeling, but as far as J or P is concerned, Im lost). No wonder these debates never end, there isnt enough good around info to help you conclude if you are J or P.

[WVBRY]

Tha was me above, the damn thing keeps logging me out. That or Im going nuts :wink: ... I could swear I logged in.

[CuriousSoul]

You usually get logged out if you do not do anything for some time. So you could preview your post once and awhile. Also it seems if you have many windows open it can cause you to log out, I do not know why. And sometimes you have to log in twice before you are properly logged in, strange.

[Cone]

So basically, the power of socionics is so they can came out with a really really badass 'Sims' game.

An answer from a psychologist and a socionist would be appreciated very much.

Wait a few years; I'm getting there.

It's simple. If you have opinion, there is someone another who has opposite opinion. You may agree, you may debate, you may ignore, you may quit, but you should be tolerant. Because you know why. Because another opinion isn't worse than your opinion -- it's different. Tolerancy - this is the true power of socionics.

Genius, pax, genius. Probably the greatest thing said on this forum yet.

So here's my belief:

Nothing is ever truly, truly wrong, and nothing is ever truly, truly right. That is the seed of debate. That's what makes people differ. That's why human evolution will never hit perfection. That's why everyone has their own opinions. That's why there are wars and conflicts every day. That's why people die for what they believe in. That's what makes people so great, and others so bad. That's what brings us together and pushes us apart. That's what brings us closer to truth; that's what directs us farther away from it. That's what makes people feel so good about themselves, and others so bad about themselves. That's what pushes us toward are dreams. And that's what makes life worth living.

No one's going to figure out life completely, so why give up? Why sit atop your ivory towers, looking down at everyone and telling them that they're wrong? Why give up before you even begin? Why completely disregard something that has little empirical evidence?

Speak up, people. Say whatever's on your mind. So what if it's wrong? So what if it's not provable? That's what we're here for: to be wrong. People will help you fix your mistakes; that's a given. But would they have ever said anything if you hadn't?

The people who are wrong are the ones who move mountains, because without them, no one else would have spoken up. They are the sparks that set the fires, and it's those fires that really move humanity. It's those that constantly try to improve what others say and who create wrong ideas of their own that really do something useful. A critic who simply criticizes is the most useless man in the world.

So here's what I say: keep being wrong, keep overgeneralizing, keep creating bunk theories. Because no one's ever right the first time.

I for one am going to keep posting here on this forum until I die or admin stops hosting it. I'm going to tell the world what I believe in, no matter how wrong it is. And it won't just stop at this forum.

Do you know how much of Socionics I disagree with? Over half, at least. But why stop believing in it? Fix it, improve upon it, make new theories. Change the world.

Boy, I hope I didn't sound like a complete idiot.

But at least I said something.

[Jimbean]

Knowledge is objective while communication is subjective. By communicating, a person will inevitably make an arbitrary statement out of something objective.

Based on my understanding, minus Quantum physics, I agree with Pedro-The-Lion, but I think it has a lot to do with honesty, effort, and reality.

I apologize for those who are getting sick and tired of my philosophical B.S.

[MysticSonic]

Hey Cone, just mentioning this, but I also live in Pennsylvania. I live in Philadelphia.

[Cone]

I highly disagree.

Me too. I let my ESFp anima get too out of control with that one. I'll never try pep talks again (although it sounded so good in my head!) I was just getting angry at some of the laziness on this forum.

But what I really wanted to say is that I highly agree with what pax said about tolerance being the true power of Socionics, then that intrigued my humanist side, then, well...

Anyway, I find Socionics to be a way to a higher understanding of people's intentions, opinions, held truths, unconscious desires, emotional problems, interests, behaviors, etc. Plus, it mixes the impersonal with the personal, which works for me. It's a science that probes into something we can never fully understand, thus it fills one's life with enough stuff to do to fill eternity. So I'll have fun.

Your Quasi-Identical INTp friend,

Cone

[Cone]

Hey Cone, just mentioning this, but I also live in Pennsylvania. I live in Philadelphia.

Cool. I know what you look like, so if I'm ever in Philadelphia, I'll be sure to look for you.

[LevKamensky]

"I highly disagree. If nothing is intrinsically right/wrong or true/false statements could not be made. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying I have the truth"

that's the very difference between the worldview of the intj and the intp. intp being irrational prefers to play with data, while for the intj data is only necessary to form judgements on the basis of it.

hence the world view the intp finds more convenient is that everything is relative: this allows him to "play" with more facts -- like the game of glass beads. once the intj "feels his oats", he does not need the sift through the data anymore. it served it's purpose...

objectively i think it's something in the middle. there are absolutes, but the way they play out in practice is highly relative...

or maybe there are spheres of life where everything is relative, and there are other spheres that are governed by absolutes...

whatever.

[metaiwan]

I knew an INFJ who dated an INTP which ended horribly. I stood by and said nothing, that's why I'd never become a good practicing psychologist.
Ex.
Say a man walked in and said ever since he got married he's always gotten in heated arguements with his wife. He really liked her, but he'd hate that he's always get in arguments and wanted to know what he was doing wrong. I'd say sometimes people can like or love each other and but have innate personality differences, and cannot do anything to change them. I'd tell him to get divorced and find someone who he didn't argue with. No tact us INTJs, no tact at all.

BTW, nice to see you posting Lev Kamensky

[LevKamensky]

I think how they came to subtypes is through V. I.

they noticed that there are several typical "looks" for every type

and attributed it to subtypes.

but really guys, even Jung discussed subtypes

i certainly can see subtypes in real life

[LevKamensky]

what do you think causes subtypes?

[metaiwan]

I think how they came to subtypes is through V. I.

they noticed that there are several typical "looks" for every type

and attributed it to subtypes.

but really guys, even Jung discussed subtypes

i certainly can see subtypes in real life

Jung started out with types being Introverted Thinking, or Extraverted Feeling, etc. He started out with 8 types, then expanded to 16. Can you quote whatever you are talking about?

[LevKamensky]

There is very little in common between someone who uses a hammer to hammer in nails, and someone who uses to crash the sculls of saracins. One is a knight, another -- a carpenter: two very different life scenarios, yet they could be both classified as "hammer" type. The same with psychological functions. Two people that use Introverted Intuition for instance can have nothing in common. Introverted Intuition can be sentimentality, or imagination, or prediction, or faith. The introverted intuition of a composer would be as different from the introverted intuition of a painter as feeling from thinking. Indeed we may want to look at subtypes as separate types. Functional types is an easy way to classify people when you are dealing with a very large quantity of impirical data. In this case even eight types would be enough. However, when you are analyzing an individual, everything is not so cut and dry. The type relationships will not work maybe 50% of the time. It works in theory. But in practice, the same function may mean totally different things for different representatives of a type. There are innumerable(!) subtypes. But as students of life and society, we should distinguish a few common ones. It may be three for one type, five for another, two for another. It does not have to be even, because the landscape of life isn't even.

[LevKamensky]

"Can you quote whatever you are talking about?"

sure check Psychological Types, one of the last chapters that contains the actual type descriptions, subsection about Intuitive Introverted type.

[LevKamensky]

so it depends on what u want to use type for. if u want to classify large quantities of people in order to make some generalized statements about them... maybe u don't need subtypes. maybe u only need 8 types.

but if u want to understand an individual human being, subtypes may come in handy.

but socionics' theory of subtypes here will not work very well. subtypes have to be studied impirically from life. the way jung did it.

that's where theory has to end and observation -- begin.

[LevKamensky]

OK, I’ll try to make it crystal clear (Sorry if I sound redundant):

If my goal is to find out:

- what makes you tick
- what you like
- what is your philosophy of life
- what turns you off

knowing your type will not be enough.

 First i may make a type diagnosis using dichotomies

 Second I will choose between four or five subtypes that (from empirical observations) are common for this type. (you might be an exception, and belong to none of them, but most people I meet will likely belong to one of them). THAN I’d know what kind of person you are.

Socionics theory of subtypes is definitely flawed. BUT it is better to think that earth is a flat circle, than to think of it as a flat square. It’s closer to the truth, you know what I mean? Perhaps Socionics subtypes are better than no subtypes at all. However things may be, these subtypes have absorbed some common stereotypes for a particular type. So until we have better subtype descriptions (empirical ones), let’s use those.

[Cone]

I don't believe in subtypes as being intrinsic or even specifically right, because remember, only 50% of all your traits are attributable to Socionics. The rest, to the environment.

Don't forget about the environment, folks.

[MysticSonic]

Easy, you abitrarily set the personality quirks, thereby establishing the subtype and recognizing such traits as independant of these so called "personality quirks."

[metaiwan]

I tend to agree with Cone and Pedro here...if you really want do define all the subtypes you can find in types, you might find that no matter the type the personality is individual as a snowflake. Even with identical twins who grew up together. The same with relationships...you'll find they are pretty unique too depending on the nature(work, friendship, intimate, family), etc. But feel free to waste your time

[Cone]

And this is why I'm writing those real life type descriptions; to show that no matter how much you know Socionics, Socionics only "predicts psychological relations not RELATIONSHIPS." The environment is what fills in those factors needed for specific relationships.

Your Quasi-Identical INTp friend,

Cone

[LevKamensky]

Cone not all INTj here.

So environment and Socionics? What about Individual free will and and child rearing?

OK... well with subtypes. I am of a different opinion on the matter. A type is like latitude and longitude in psychological space. You can't really assume that person A and person B have anything in common just because they have the same functional type. They may have a totally different reasons for being "there". Subtypes group people together with the same reason for being in the type. So it makes it easier to make generalizations about them. Go on. But remember that most of your generalizations will only prove true about 50% of the time with only 16 types.

[LevKamensky]

no... maybe 30%

[metaiwan]

actually it's 35.45%

[Cone]

Where did you get that fact?

[metaiwan]

Cone, I wish the internet had a sarcasmeter....

[LevKamensky]

an estimate based on experience

[LevKamensky]

I think how they came to subtypes is through V. I.

they noticed that there are several typical "looks" for every type

and attributed it to subtypes.

but really guys, even Jung discussed subtypes

i certainly can see subtypes in real life

Jung started out with types being Introverted Thinking, or Extraverted Feeling, etc. He started out with 8 types, then expanded to 16. Can you quote whatever you are talking about?

Jung, Psychological Types:
“9. The Introverted Intuitive Type
The peculiar nature of introverted intuition, when given the priority, also produces a peculiar type of man, viz. the mystical dreamer and seer on the one hand, or the fantastical crank and artist on the other.

“The pure intuitive who represses judgment or possesses it only under the spell of perception never meets this question fundamentally, since his only problem is the How of perception. He, therefore, finds the moral problem unintelligible, even absurd, and as far as possible forbids his thoughts to dwell upon the disconcerting vision. It is different with the morally orientated intuitive. He concerns himself with the meaning of his vision; he troubles less about its further æsthetic possibilities than about the possible moral effects which emerge from its intrinsic significance. His judgment allows him to discern, though often only darkly, that he, as a man and as a totality, is in some way inter-related with his vision, that [p. 510] it is something which cannot just be perceived but which also would fain become the life of the subject. Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life.”

[LevKamensky]

We think that white is just one color. But to an Eskimo who lives in a snowy desert there are dozens of different type of white, for which in the Eskimo language there are seperate words. Likewise a person who is very well familiar with a particular psychological type thinks that it is absurd to group people of different subtypes together. Recognizing subtleties is the mark of a pro.

[Creepy-Waddles W.]

This sub-type stuff is jumping above and beyond our limitiations. Devising all of this complicated sub-type mumbo jumbo is just complicating something that we are already just beginning to understand.

imagine the amount of people you would have to meet and type and talk to and test just to develop this "mark of a pro" understanding of subtleties. One person can't do this alone, thats a superhuman task, it takes decades of research.

It seems like alot of people are making these little sub-type theories just to justify their own uncertainty about what type they are.

lets stick with the freakin' basics for now. Intuitively speaking, those are enough take in as it is.

[metaiwan]

Noting subleties in how type manifests would preserve types as currently understood and allow for the variation observed.

AMEN!!!!

My philosophy(feel free to disagree) is that socionics describes information metabolism of a type. From that, you can make general descriptions of an "information metabolism type"(I will not use the words personality type here). Now you can go and then subdivide(without theory) the people of the same type, and possibly even put them in groups, making "subtypes". However with my philosophy, this is in the personality range, not the information metabolism range, as I have understood every subtype theory out there. Subtypes all seem to be based on the idea of another metric beyond the socionics model for determining what function to use. I feel this metric is learned, not inborn, or a byproduct of environment, while the nomenclature "subtype" doesn't seem to reflect this difference from information metabolism type, so I veer away from subtypes completely. I would certainly agree to discuss "personality subgroups" between "information metabolism types", but the current nomenclature of personality type and personality subtype seems misleading if you understand the theory of information metabolism.

One thing I've noticed is that in the beginning of learning socionics, I started to see how common certain personality traits were in certain types, but now I see how individualized each person is.

I hope you understand my post, and why I try to critik(sp) every subtype post. Not that I don't think they exist, but the naming convention we are using for them confuses the issue of inborn types and personality.

Maybe you all agree with me, and I'm just unneccessarily dismissing subtypes because of my problem with their nomenclature that everyone has understood and accepts. Or maybe you don't, and you believe the subtypes are defined within the socionics model, etc, possibly because you just feel differently about it or maybe the nomenclature led you to believe other than I do.
I just felt that needed clarification.

Guestaka LK) Please make an account an login, just so we know whos saying what. or keep using LK as the guest name, it just confuses me and probably other people when a bunch of people post as guest...just as a favor to me.
About what you are saying, I guess you do know what you are talking about, as you could take what Jung said two different ways. One, it was before he discovered the secondary function and thus he saw two subtypes in each of his 8 types, or he began to describe personality developed metrics of a specific type of his full 16(when he died).

Just trying to clear this stuff up....

[metaiwan]

“The pure intuitive who represses judgment or possesses it only under the spell of perception never meets this question fundamentally, since his only problem is the How of perception. He, therefore, finds the moral problem unintelligible, even absurd, and as far as possible forbids his thoughts to dwell upon the disconcerting vision. It is different with the morally orientated intuitive. He concerns himself with the meaning of his vision; he troubles less about its further æsthetic possibilities than about the possible moral effects which emerge from its intrinsic significance. His judgment allows him to discern, though often only darkly, that he, as a man and as a totality, is in some way inter-related with his vision, that [p. 510] it is something which cannot just be perceived but which also would fain become the life of the subject. Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life.”

Through looking at this again, it seems he was describing a moral subtype and logical subtype of the "intuitive type", which he later would describe as the types introverted intuition, extraverted logic and introverted intuition, extraverted feeling. Seems like he would see the 16 IM(information metabolism) types before he saw the personality differences between IM types. Does that make sense to anyone else?

[LevKamensky]

No, I think it is clear from the text that he is comparing the pure intuitive, to an intuitive with a developed secondary feeling function. In Socionic nomenclature that would be an "Intuitive" subtype and an "Ethical" subtype of INFp.

[metaiwan]

Valid perspective, but so was my perspective. I kinda agree with yours, I kinda agree with mine. We'll leave it up to the reader.