Internal-Involved-Field-Static

These are the Socionics terms that make up Fi. Unfortunately, you can't look up all these terms in a dictionary and piece the definitions together to get a useful understanding of Fi. I know for me I couldn't get any sense of the Fi despite being an Fi-leading type. Even after all the talks I've heard of it. Some of the more useless talks I've heard related Fi to ethics and relationships. Well, I dunno. If that's what Fi is really about, then I don't see how it can be a useful term to help with understanding people and their interpersonal dynamics.

I've heard from Fe valuers how Fi can seem... not consistent. Which is really curious considering how Fi is a static function. For Fe people, I remember it being described that some things are just NOT okay to do. But, for Fi people, that thing can be okay or not okay. It depends.

There are a bunch of other threads and posts and chats on Fi too. Some of them interesting. But, none could really give me any sense of awareness of Fi.

That didn't really change until I got to know some Fi ego people more. Now I think I do have some understanding of it, and I think I can best explain it by going over how I think the people I've observed exhibit Fi. I'll start with woofwoofl.



People familiar with woofwoofl in the chatbox will know how very readily he accepts just about anyone as cool. Seems about the same way with accepting things as awesome as well. Now how does this relate to Fi?

It's starting to seem to me that Fi acts as a kind of... filter. There's gotta be a better word for it than that but I can't come up with one. It can sometimes seem like a lens meant to put things in a certain kind of light. I start with woofwoofl because his is easiest to explain. It is very straightforward. At least from what I can observe from his chatbox activities. It's as though woofwoofl is wearing cool shades that only cool light can shine through so woofwoofl sees most everyone as cool and acts accordingly. To be clear, I wouldn't say those cool shades are strapped to his face. It feels to me that with the right kind of trigger, woofwoofl will take off those shades and whip out another pair. What kind of light woofwoofl will see people in those shades I do not know.

Okay, so that sounds pretty basic, I know. Surely that isn't the only way Fi can manifest, though. There's, I think, a more intricate seeming way someone can put these sort of Fi filters, lenses, or whatever such word you could use to relate to how Fi seems to act on things. From my impressions, I think dolphin uses Fi in a way that I can say is more intricate.



I get the sense that a significant number of people hold the view of Fi as a rigid thing. A judgy thing that locks Fi users into a certain mentality. Yet, I'm starting to see how Fi can be a searching, open function.

I've chatted with dolphin at length quite a few times. It's interesting. She can be very direct. But, um, if you want to really get what she's saying, you need to get a feel of her thought processes. That's why, I think, Ashton got into that kind of scuffle with dolphin in that one thread. Took what she said too literally to be able to really get what she was saying. My impression of that, anways.

So these thought processes I mentioned are where Fi comes in. Rather than just a lens and seeing things in just that light and going from there, she puts things through all these sorts of filters. Feeling them out. Like that picture of a tree up there, viewed in the different seasons. It's still the same tree. But, the feel about it is different. How you approach that tree, look at it, think of it, will be different depending on the state you are viewing it from.

That's what I feel part of dolphin's thought processes are and how Fi can work. She's sort of getting a feel for the proper sort of distance and such she has from a thing. A sort of searching through of an object by putting it through different kinds of lights, I guess.

I hope I've communicated effectively what my current understanding of Fi is. It's a sort of viewing of something in a... kind of light (there's gotta be a better analogy than that) which determines how it should be approached and interacted with. The object itself can be completely the same, but how to interact with it can be different just from a different sort of view of it.