Ni and Self-Consciousness/Self-Awareness

[silverchris9]

My new theory is that Ni, especially NiFe, is all about self-consciousness. I mean, that's not the only thing it does, but one of the things it gives rise to is a life that notices the self.

Of course, the classical statement of self-noticing is Walt Whitman's Me Myself in section 4 ("apart from the pulling and hauling..."). But Harold Bloom is noticing the same phenomenon when he attributes Shakespeare's characters with the power of "self-overhearing," the ability to change based on what you hear yourself say (which presupposes the Second Self, the Self that watches and can order a change in the Primary Self, the Persona that acts. Or perhaps the change is in that Third Thing which does not have a name).

Maybe this isn't actually associated with Ni--and properly speaking, I'm not claiming that Ni IS self-consciousness, but rather than high-level, well-developed Ni can often manifest itself in this sort of, abstracted-from-myself self-looking or self-awareness. Similarly, low-level, one-dimensional Ni can manifest itself as a failure to be self-aware, to be aware of what is going on within yourself at a deep level.

Thoughts?

[Creepy-Korpsey]

My new theory is that Ni, especially NiFe, is all about self-consciousness. I mean, that's not the only thing it does, but one of the things it gives rise to is a life that notices the self.

If you were NiTe instead of NiFe you'd have reached the same essential conclusion by a different route. My thinking also has a strongly meta-cognitive overtone like the one you describe.

[silverchris9]

Oh, well good. NiTe too then.

Now that we see that the gate isn't large enough to get everyone in who should be in, let's see if it's large enough to keep everyone out who should be out. 1-D Ni-ers, do you see yourself this way? How do non-Ni-egos see this idea?

[krieger]

i'd say being aware of yourself as an object within reality with certain quantifiable properties invariant to your mental state is more of a Pe thing; one could construe that as a form of "self awareness" with equal justification

[Igxfl]

Could awareness level be more related to the degree of proficiency gained in non-ego functions that with any particular functions themselves?

[Skeptic]

Why do you have this theory

What is it based on, and

Could you elaborate

[Creepy-]

I relate to this proposed aspect of , and that is most likely my base. I'm not sure whether the correlation is high, but I could easily see how the typical attributes could imply the concept of "self-awareness".

[Igxfl]

Well, it seems that the ego functions of any type tend to be used in a very automatic and possibly habitual fashion. On the other hand an individual might pay more attention to less favored functions when forced to use them, and be more likely to use less favored functions in appropriate situations if more self-aware. So I guess I'm not sure which causes which, but they seem as though they would go together.

[EyeSeeCold]

Seems like this will quickly devolve into a discussion on semantics.

OP it'd be great if you could clarify your definitions, perspectives and aspects of self-consciousness and self-awareness.

[Creepy-Korpsey]

Like a monkey fucking a football.

[EyeSeeCold]

Redundant. Socionics discussions are pointless language debates.

The semantics of the functions - yes. I mean the semantics of self-consciousness/self-awareness.

[silverchris9]

Seems like this will quickly devolve into a discussion on semantics.

OP it'd be great if you could clarify your definitions, perspectives and aspects of self-consciousness and self-awareness.

Yeah.

That's what the examples are for, since I don't really have a strict definition, but I will try to describe what it's like for me and see if that helps.

Ever since I was very young (like VERY young, like four or five, maybe younger), I've had a distinct sense of standing outside myself and observing myself, both in what I say to other, and in what I think. I watch myself watching. I've always had a sense of being to some degree separate from myself; there's always a part of me that's acting, but there's always a part of me that's watching too. For instance, just now, I was thinking about whether or not what I am saying is too dramatic... thinking about what cliche or trope I am falling into right now in my attempts to describe myself. When I watch old videos of myself, I can see myself thinking... and then noticing my own thoughts and judging them as good or bad, to be welcomed or to be avoided, etc. I am always aware of my own motives. Sometimes I'll say something accidentally, like a Freudian slip, and I'll notice two seconds later that it's a Freudian slip, and feel bad about it, which makes it seem more like an intentional slight than it is.

Anyway, the theory is partly based on this facet of my personal experience, and partially based on romantic poetry, much of which is about self-consciousness and is written by Ni-egos (Wordsworth in particular is all about "metacognitive" speculation). Most of the Romantics were Ni-egos, with the possible exception of Byron, who does not talk about himself nearly as much, and in fact features an occluded self in a lot of his work. Also, I've noticed a lack of this kind of self-awareness in ESEs I've been close to lately. It's like... ARGH, aren't you aware of what you're saying and doing, and the very obvious motivations for it, and don't you notice yourself doing these things, and doesn't that bother you? Aren't you aware of what is going on inside of you?

So yeah, that's some further explanation of my thought.

[Creepy-Korpsey]

@ silverchris9: On reading your elaboration my initial impression and reply remain unchanged.

[EyeSeeCold]

Alright. I relate.

I would see it as me detaching from my own body's processes into just a mind that notices the body, the thoughts and the surroundings.

I also gain a heightened sense of awareness when I think someone is looking in my general area or when someone is annoying me / intruding on my personal space.

I think it's just dominant . At the most, Cre- accentuation, if that.

[ashlesha]

i relate to it, but i don't have the sense of surety about it that you seem to if i'm understanding you? like even as i'm looking at myself i'm taking stock of the fact that the part of me on the "outside" is also fallible in its observational ability and biased in perspective. so instead of always being aware of my own motives, its more like a constant watching and questioning. whatever type i am...probably 4d unvalued Ni.

[Slacker]

I'm not Ni ego and I've stopped and thought about how my future self would think back on some event as well. Like last summer, my family was hanging out on the beach, and I was enjoying the day and started thinking about how when my kids are grown I'll think about that day at the beach. And I've watched myself speak and worried that I might be saying something in the wrong way. I wonder if people who aren't intuitives at all do this.

[Slacker]

It's possible Ni egos do this more? My LIE and EIE parents used to talk about this a lot when we were kids, and even now. "Someday you'll look back on this and remember . . ." This is a pretty frequent theme to conversations with them (especially my dad.) I do this but I don't think to the extent they do at all.

[Kalinoche buenanoche]

i don't remember me being as a child like what silverchris9 describes but i am now- at an excrutiating degree -and i long for that "merging" to happen again. Actually,at that "merged" state i was more on the unnoticeable observer side and not so physically aware.Now,in a social,environment,i feel very present;as if i am a mass that blocks/bothers easy interchange of ideas/feelings.It is almost like i cause people (except for my immediate family) to go into self-cencoring mode.
As a result I constantly struggle trying to get out of my head and watch what takes place from a distance,making my vibes milder-i but i cant hold it for long.I'm sure that if i lived in the US ,i'd be addicted to MJ or sth.

I understand that i described negative self-consciousness and it is not what the OP is talking about.Maybe it is my Se ego trying having trouble adjusting Ni it in my immediate social reality and everyday give and takes or it could be "accentuated" Fi.

[ashlesha]

i'm feeling a couple of different threads here that might not be intended as separate but i experience them that way. there's the kind of awareness of the self that involves examining ones own motivations and has an introspective kind of quality. and then there's the awareness of self in a kind of way that seems more detached to me, as in the memory thing, or an awareness of yourself as how you look from the outside. the former is much more prominent in my own experience and i wonder if it might be more Fi than Ni (idk)?

do you guys experience both these types of awareness as coming from the same sort of place, or are they connected for you? for me, the more i get mired in introspection the harder it is to look at myself objectively, so they are kind of contradictory...i guess i would see looking at myself objectively as more "seeing from the outside," so it might be more related to what you're talking about.

edit: i think the word "objective" is confusing here bc when i use it i mean how i am from the outside, or to others, which might be less correct than how i really am "objectively." gah, i think this post sucks, objectively. lol.

sorry if this makes no sense.

[krieger]

a lot of what you're describing is in fact Pe, something you're not very good at regardless of what you may think about yourself. Ni generalizes over viewpoints, but it never really disconnects from these. To remove the influence of viewpoint from an analysis is Pe.

[ashlesha]

a lot of what you're describing is in fact Pe, something you're not very good at regardless of what you may think about yourself. Ni generalizes over viewpoints, but it never really disconnects from these. To remove the influence of viewpoint from an analysis is Pe.

ooh, i think "the influence of viewpont" might have been what i was trying to talk about.

[Beautiful sky]

I think a lot of you people confuse Ni and Ne...and both deal with Time in different ways. Just because someone says "Time; sometime; this or that time." that doesn't mean they are Ni types.

[Singu]

I'm not sure if Ni is more or less self-aware than the other types. I think what Ni goes through is, "What does this action mean for myself or others, whether in Fe or Te?".

I'd say... detachment is neither healthy nor is it type-related. When I was really young, I was more "myself"... meaning that I didn't think much about who I was, I just acted on my own instincts. I didn't try to seprate myself from my thoughts and feelings so much. But nowadays, I'm becoming more detached, more unrelated to myself... and that's not good. So I'm trying to return to being like that again.

So anyway, detachment is pretty much just a defense mechanism. If you are unrelated to yourself, then you will not be the one who is experiencing pain for example, it would be some detached, unrelated fellow who was hurt, and not you, the detached, unrelated, impersonal observer. It's as if looking at a distant stranger who is unrelated to you, and you're merely describing him in a detached, observant way. You would not be the one to have these thoughts and feelings, it's always some distant stranger who is unrelated to you. The problem with this approach is that not only you will become unrelated to yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings, but you will also be unrelated to others as well. Severe alienation from self and others is a given.

So I'd say, detachment and self-awareness/being reflective are two different things... One of merely being detached and impersonal, and the other being well... more true to your own thoughts and feelings.

[krieger]

If we suck at Pe (regardless of what we think)… then couldn't the same be said of you and Pi? In which case, should we take seriously that you understand what you think you're saying? More importantly—should you?

i disagreed with the presented characterization of Ni, not with the idea that strengths are unequally distributed across functions in all types. Stop being so defensive.

[silverchris9]

I'm not Ni ego and I've stopped and thought about how my future self would think back on some event as well. Like last summer, my family was hanging out on the beach, and I was enjoying the day and started thinking about how when my kids are grown I'll think about that day at the beach. And I've watched myself speak and worried that I might be saying something in the wrong way. I wonder if people who aren't intuitives at all do this.

...I think about that differently than I think about what Ashton said. I mean, yes, thinking about yourself speaking, being afraid of saying the wrong thing, everybody does that. The thing with Ni is, when its balanced I don't think it has to be negative. Like, a lot of the times I notice my own self-presentation, but I'm not worried about it. I'm conscious of seeming natural, maybe? And it isn't so much the "you're gonna miss this, you're going to want to remember" phenomenon as looking at things in terms of a future subjectivity, maybe. Standing outside yourself and looking at yourself in terms of a different thing, not an outsider, but another subjectivity, in terms of yourself in fifteen years or whatever. I dunno. Maybe there's no difference.

I've been the same way since I was 4 years old; I can actually recall what seems to have been the distinct moment at that age when I 1st became intently self-aware. I remember me and my family were visiting one of their friends, and I'd wandered off by myself and was walking down a hallway because I heard a Nintendo going off somewhere in the vicinity. And for whatever reason, at that moment the realization crossed my mind that there would be a future version of me that would be able to look back and recall things later. So I deliberately stopped in the middle of the hallway and took a few moments to visually scan and record the surroundings in my mind—the purple color and texture of the wallpaper, the ambience of the lighting, the fact that Bubble Trouble was playing on the Nintendo in an adjacent room. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I just did it for no other reason than because future-me would look back and recall it later.

Exactly. I can't tell you how many times I've done that. And you're aware of yourself doing it. It get very recursive, self-consciousness. I'm aware of myself being aware of myself being aware of myself, ad infinitum (ad nauseum).

I dunno, maybe that experience is common though? I haven't mentioned it to many people, so I don't really know. I don't like telling people these things because I don't want them thinking that I think I'm different and special or some lame arrogant bullshit like that. I don't.

Yeah.

Another possibly related thing is that I experienced constant mental imagery back then too. Like I'd hear people say things and flashes of random images would spontaneously flicker in my mind in response to the words. Except somehow the images were entirely disparate and bore zero rational sense in their relationship to the actual words used lol. But yeah, I'd go around all day just having imagery constantly going off in synaesthetic reaction to what was happening externally. It lessened in frequency as I got older; sometimes I still get it, but its not automatic like it was before. I have to deliberately tune in to it now.

Interesting. I've never had that. Or at least, I can't remember it if I did. I had and have word reactions to things. That's how I do the interpretive work of reading, actually. I'll experience a situation and it will remind me of a line of poetry for a reason I can't figure out, and then I figure out the connection, which helps me understand both my life and the line of poetry. But I wish I had constant flashes of images related to what people are saying. I've never been very visual (horrifically bad visual memory, pretty good verbal memory).

i'm feeling a couple of different threads here that might not be intended as separate but i experience them that way. there's the kind of awareness of the self that involves examining ones own motivations and has an introspective kind of quality. and then there's the awareness of self in a kind of way that seems more detached to me, as in the memory thing, or an awareness of yourself as how you look from the outside. the former is much more prominent in my own experience and i wonder if it might be more Fi than Ni (idk)?

do you guys experience both these types of awareness as coming from the same sort of place, or are they connected for you? for me, the more i get mired in introspection the harder it is to look at myself objectively, so they are kind of contradictory...i guess i would see looking at myself objectively as more "seeing from the outside," so it might be more related to what you're talking about.

edit: i think the word "objective" is confusing here bc when i use it i mean how i am from the outside, or to others, which might be less correct than how i really am "objectively." gah, i think this post sucks, objectively. lol.

sorry if this makes no sense.

The post is fine! Here's what I like about it: it explores the concept in a way that recognizes a distinction that I didn't see before. So yes, I would say that for me they are not contradictory. I am aware of my own motivation as I would be aware of any other thing (that's why its a perceiving function, rather than a judging function). I interpret myself (get interpretively on the inside of myself) in the same way that I would interpret any other set of signs. So it's like... introspection by means of othering the self. Introspection as outro-spection. So that's how I think Ni (internal abstract) blends the introspective and the awareness of how the self looks from the outside, which is different than Fi (internal involved).

I'm not sure if Ni is more or less self-aware than the other types. I think what Ni goes through is, "What does this action mean for myself or others, whether in Fe or Te?".

In a certain way, I agree. Ni is interpretive--it evaluates signs and does meta work, as in exploring the relationship between signified and signifier, is it arbitrary, what makes it arbitrary, etc. I don't think that it necessarily answers a question as specific as "what does this action mean..." But this does clarify some things for me. I think the argument can be re-stated as: Ni-egos are (often) in a constant state of interpreting their own subjectivity. I am reading myself, not my external actions so much as the implicit parts and the invisible parts: what I'm thinking, how I'm reacting, the energies changing and shifting, etc. This reading of the self produces this shadow of a self, this Second Self: because the reading is constantly occurring (and you're constantly doing it, to yourself), you get the sense that thing that is doing the reading is an entity in itself, an entity more constant (because it has only one, permanent activity) than the self that does all the activity. You can identify this with yourself, or you can identify it with an other, i.e., the daemon, the Second Self, the dusky brother, the Me Myself, etc.

The question is: is all this related to Ni, or simply to intelligence? Or to how many books you've read? Or something else entirely?

I'd say... detachment is neither healthy nor is it type-related. When I was really young, I was more "myself"... meaning that I didn't think much about who I was, I just acted on my own instincts. I didn't try to seprate myself from my thoughts and feelings so much. But nowadays, I'm becoming more detached, more unrelated to myself... and that's not good. So I'm trying to return to being like that again.

I agree and disagree. I would argue that in its extreme, it is unhealthy. However, I would argue that, according to the Ni/self-consciousness theory, one of the strengths of Ni is the capacity to be self-conscious neutrally. To have productive self-consciousness that allows you, ultimately, to change at a rather deep level based on your awareness of yourself (that's what H-Bloom says, anyway). It can lead to (a kind of) freedom ("free artists of themselves").

Also, I would argue that this is part of why Se needs Ni. No function is more attached to the object than Se. So it takes the extreme object-focus of Se (and that object focus works at multiple levels---more on that later) to bring Ni out of self-consciousness. It's only when Se is moving you too fast to keep up mentally with all the new stimulus that you don't have any energy left to sit and obsess over yourself (and also, seeing all that stuff changes you, which then gives you something new to brood over when you return to your self-watching; the self that you watch changes, so the watching becomes more interesting, thereby defeating the evils of Ni-enuui).

It's like Matilda. When she was being challenged in school, she didn't have any mental energy left over for telekinesis. The theory is, when Ni has enough new things to grapple with interpretively, it doesn't have any mental energy left over for self-consciousness.

(unrelated side note: Just want to add that poetry doesn't work as the new stuff, it has to be real life, real experience; because when you read poetry, you're interpreting by the Hume method: observe my own sentiments, in order to deduce properties in the work. Watch how the work changes me to understand what about the work causes the change.)

So anyway, detachment is pretty much just a defense mechanism. If you are unrelated to yourself, then you will not be the one who is experiencing pain for example, it would be some detached, unrelated fellow who was hurt, and not you, the detached, unrelated, impersonal observer. It's as if looking at a distant stranger who is unrelated to you, and you're merely describing him in a detached, observant way. You would not be the one to have these thoughts and feelings, it's always some distant stranger who is unrelated to you. The problem with this approach is that not only you will become unrelated to yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings, but you will also be unrelated to others as well. Severe alienation from self and others is a given.

So I'd say, detachment and self-awareness/being reflective are two different things... One of merely being detached and impersonal, and the other being well... more true to your own thoughts and feelings.

Okay, this is what I disagree with the most. Maybe detachment is bad, but one can actually be two selves, simultaneously active and efficient in the world, as ramshackle and ramshod as Walt Whitman, AND constantly watch. So one can be self-conscious while being attached. In and out of the game.

Detachment as a means to avoid pain is one thing. But good self-consciousness entails being both attached and detached. Both life and the living of it. Living and the awareness thereof. The act and the audience. Of course, there is a danger of being all audience. It's a tricky and difficult (and impossible?) balance to sustain.

As a side note, this thread is why I love socionics. It helps me to have a label and a set of associations for a given concept, which in turn helps me understand the concept (self-consciousness) in question.

I once used to attribute being introspective and self-aware to Ni...now I don't. I notice plenty of Ni leading people who seem really out of touch with themselves, at least to how it strikes me when I observe them...some seem like they have a hazy understanding of who they really are (versus a fictionalized version they hold of themselves which has little connection to how they actually come off and are actually perceived in actual day to day affairs).

And yes, it depends on what we mean by self-conscious and self-aware and I take that as a trait of someone who is awakened to who they are in and out and has no hold on one's type. Delusion is not something we can stamp to a given type as it's an attitude of mind that some people have and some don't and some become self-aware and lose it all throughout their lives, which obviously makes a point that it's not type related.

hmmmm... well, this raises a question: is it Ni or is it just intelligence, right? Because obviously not all Ni-egos understand themselves really well.

And I have a proposed answer, see how it strikes you: there's a difference between self-awareness and self-knowledge.

That is, you can have a semi-conscious motivation that causes you to misinterpret the knowledge you gather from observing yourself, or block some information and accept other information, so that you get a skewed picture. But nevertheless, you did observe the self, you still have that "permanent (self) observer" side of yourself. You just allowed yourself to willfully misinterpret that data that you did gather.

On the other hand, Ni-polrs seem, to me, to just not gather the data in the first place. They just do whatever it is they do without noticing themselves doing it, without finding the meaning in it. What meaning? they ask. I saw it, so I did it? Why are you trying to find a hidden meaning/implication/idea inside of this action? Je tells me that I should take action x, so I do it. There's nothing going on underneath that (but of course... there is... they just don't notice it. mwa ha ha ha ha).

Anyway, this only (potentially) answers one side of the problem, the "stupid Ni-egos" part. What about the second side: the "smart non-Ni-egos" part. That is, how do non Ni-egos, especially people with 1-D Ni (Ni DS and Ni polr), achieve self-knowledge, and is watching yourself act (in the way we've been describing) necessarily a part of that? (hint: I imagine Ti can help, at least for dualized SLEs... (Ti reifies Ni conceptions into rules for how to interpret the self: if action x, then internal state y))

[krieger]

i don't see merit in expressing the notion in further detail. the disconnect from viewpoints (i.e. fields) is simply what i see as being the essential property that distinguishes Pe from Pi. An object is something viewpoint-independent, so the attention placed on an object disconnects from a point of view. This principle does not change when applied to "the self".

[silverchris9]

i don't see merit in expressing the notion in further detail.

Then don't. Seriously, I think our ideas are so different that we are effectively discussing different "systems" of socionics. Now, which system is the right interpretation of the given texts, or which system corresponds most closely with (unknowable? unarticulable?) reality, is something we can hash out in a different thread, if you like. I think I'd enjoy that. (I tend to assume that it ultimately reduces to the disagreement about static and dynamic we had a while ago.) But I don't necessarily see that question as an important one to answer in this thread.

[krieger]

if you reject the most basic claims about Pi and Pe in socionics, such as the fact that the first orients to a perceptual field whereas the latter orients to an object, then any impossibility of communication between our views is entirely the result your stubborn and irrational agency.

[ashlesha]

The post is fine! Here's what I like about it: it explores the concept in a way that recognizes a distinction that I didn't see before. So yes, I would say that for me they are not contradictory. I am aware of my own motivation as I would be aware of any other thing (that's why its a perceiving function, rather than a judging function). I interpret myself (get interpretively on the inside of myself) in the same way that I would interpret any other set of signs. So it's like... introspection by means of othering the self. Introspection as outro-spection. So that's how I think Ni (internal abstract) blends the introspective and the awareness of how the self looks from the outside, which is different than Fi (internal involved).

yay, not only did you understand what i meant, but you made sense of it and i'm not so confused about it anymore. awesome, thanks.

It's like Matilda.

lol, just wanted to say i <3 this movie.

Anyway, this only (potentially) answers one side of the problem, the "stupid Ni-egos" part. What about the second side: the "smart non-Ni-egos" part. That is, how do non Ni-egos, especially people with 1-D Ni (Ni DS and Ni polr), achieve self-knowledge, and is watching yourself act (in the way we've been describing) necessarily a part of that? (hint: I imagine Ti can help, at least for dualized SLEs... (Ti reifies Ni conceptions into rules for how to interpret the self: if action x, then internal state y))

i'd be interested in seeing it explored for Ni polr types. if anyone wants to touch that, lol.

[The Ineffable]

Why do you have this theory

What is it based on, and

Could you elaborate

You ask way too much .

[Beautiful sky]

Here's an example of my subconscious regrets with regard to time and how that function manifests into me demonstrating Ni.

Sometime ago, I had an opportunity to buy a house and I regret not taking the necessary measures to complete the purchase and the house now costs way more than I would have purchased it for.

The above is the subconscious influence of time and that event and how that even stresses me out until today. I missed the opportunity; but can't let go of the even that impacted my decisions/course of action. What I hope and want is Te, to explain to me how things are moving dynamically so that I can brush away this thought from my subconscious. Because I talk about this even the way I do, I demonstrate Ni, but I'm really Fi. Most people here can't see type as a picture, rather they see it as pieces of a puzzle.

[Pookie]

if you reject the most basic claims about Pi and Pe in socionics, such as the fact that the first orients to a perceptual field whereas the latter orients to an object, then any impossibility of communication between our views is entirely the result your stubborn and irrational agency.

Dude, can you not see yourself right now?

You're calling him stubborn and irrational. You're understanding of socionics is never going to be the only or right way. There is no right way. Have some humility.

[Sumer1an]

if you reject the most basic claims about Pi and Pe in socionics, such as the fact that the first orients to a perceptual field whereas the latter orients to an object, then any impossibility of communication between our views is entirely the result your stubborn and irrational agency.

I reject your basic claims of Pe and Pi. Honestly, Im not sure you completely understand what is being talked about here. If what your saying is true, Im an ENTp and I am definitely not an ENTp. My creative function is definitely Te, and my Polr is Fe and my HA is Fi. You shouldnt be so focused on the preservation of your theories (or anyone else's theories). Socionics should be based off of people, not people based off of socionics.