Man as a System of Types

V. Gulenko; Man as a System of Types. The Problem of Diagnosis of the Ego and Persona
This article was published in the sixth issue of “Socionics, Mentology and the Psychology of Personality” in the year 2000.

This article has led me to engage in fierce debates in recent years, which has led to an ideological schism among the socionics schools. The crisis of diagnostics, which we are currently experiencing, will either completely undermine faith in socionics among professionals and our potential clients, or will give birth to a new comprehension of the phenomenon of human personality as a polysystematic object, exchanging energy and information with the surrounding environment.
1. The Overall Structure of the Personality of Man

In response to criticism on the part of psychologists we cannot repeat too often that socionics type does not exhaust the entire personality of man. That is, it is incorrect to equate sociotype with personality type. But what part of the personality does it claim to represent?

I think that in the most common schematic of the personality of man, if we disregard sociological factors (the position of man within society's stratification into classes), no less than four relatively autonomous parts arise:
— the logical part of the personality: the sociotype proper, as a diagram of the interaction of basic psychological functions;
— the sensory part of the personality: age, physical constitution, state of health, the daily needs of a material nature;
— the intuitive part of the personality: the capacity of man, his capability, his intrinsic natural gifts;
— the ethical part of the personality: training, developmental level, life experience.

If we recognize that all four aspects of man are equally important, then traditional socionics covers no more than 25% of the psychological world of personality. Not very much to arrive at any predictions of the behavior of man in a group, to say nothing of inter-group interaction.

In this regard the question arises: is socionics type innate or is it formed by the surrounding environment? Analogously, the natural gifts and sociotype are most likely innate, but the developmental level, as well as the daily state of man is determined for the most part by the influence of the surrounding environment, which trains man for survival and stimulates his adaptive qualities.

2. Hypothesis: two types in one person

Nothing in principle prevents us from considering personality as a system of several types, at least two. The input type and the output type of a system are far from being one and the same. It makes sense to separate the type of information reception from the type of reaction to a greater degree than is accepted now. In a developed personality “to think” and “to do” exist in a complex, ambiguous relationship of competition, where success goes first to one side, then to the other side.

The first type, the type of input - this is the sociotype proper, understood in the sense of Aushra, i.e., information. It can be considered the mental type, which describes more exactly the course of the thought of man, than his real way of life. The structure of the mind it is convenient to call the Ego type.

The second type, the type of output - this is the behavioral, living, vital type. It performs the role of adaptation to the concrete conditions of reality. Using the archetypal language of Jung, let us call this the Persona type. It is opposite to the Ego type in the same way that the input of a system is opposite to its output. In the Persona, in comparison with the Ego, material-energetic processes have a greater importance than information.

This idea will be disputed by those schools of socionics which consider sociotype the structure of informational exchange only. At the same time they assert that sociotype covers the vital side of personality. But why then do they call it the type of information exchange? Possibly, they do not attribute vital processes to energy?

My position regarding the rings of the sociomodel: the upper ring (mental, it is active per Aushra) models the process of type stabilization - the maintenance of homeostasis, and the lower ring (vital, it is passive per Aushra) it accounts for the processes of development, connected with the disturbance of homeostasis - heterostatsis. Mentality and vitality, if we understand these terms in the general scientific sense, are not related to active and passive rings.

— EGO - mental stabilization
— PERSONA - vital stabilization
— ANIMA - vital development
— SHADOW - mental development

The two types, mental and vital, co-function in man as a self-organizing communicative system. They act equally. It would be a mistake to assert that the Ego type is primary, and the Persona secondary. If a position in the Persona requires more power than in the Ego, it does not quite follow from this that the Persona is secondary. This only attests to the fact that in the Persona, as I already noted, energy-processes predominate over pure informatics.

3. Relation to itself

With the introduction of two equal types, the dialectics of development emerge. The theory acquires some features of dynamics. The relation between two types in the man is none other than the internal source of his development. Into a rigid structure is introduced an internal state of conflict, contradiction, which is so lacking in traditional socionics, which describes those communicative states which should exist, and not those which exist in reality.



To some extent this softens the sharpness of contradictory sociodiagnostics. What a man writes about himself, as a rule, turns out to be the type of his Persona, but what is not perceived until the end, what lies behind this description - there is the Ego type. Therefore if two schools of socionics assign someone to different sociotypes, it is necessary to stop and to investigate the man more thoroughly. It is very likely that one of the schools has diagnosed his Ego, and the other his Persona.

In exceptional cases both these of the type coincide, and then it makes sense to talk about a “pure” type. But even then the intra-type relation does not cease to exist. The types of Ego and Persona do not merge.

What internal relation gives maximum development? Naturally, extraversion and primarily linear-assertive (extra-dynamic). The quickest rates of development will therefore be the different personalities, which are to themselves beneficiaries, activators, or quasi-identicals. Though the activating effect of the first two relations is clear, many socionists do not even guess that quasi-identical relations also contribute to accelerated development.

A flexible-maneuvering (extra-static) relation produces average development. This situation, if projected outward, resembles the position of a man among people with his own kind of temperament (calm among the calm, energetic among the energetic). To this class of relations belong identity, super-ego, kindred, and business. There are no stimuli of any kind to speed up his development, nor factors to slow it.

Relations with receptive-adaptive temperament (intro-dynamic) lead to internal homeostasis, the greatest harmony with oneself. Intra-personal dynamic balance is provided by self-dualization, self-semi-dualization, mirage, and to a lesser degree extinguishment.

Balanced-stable relations rather slow down development in comparison with the average rate, although they do it more qualitatively due to the self-correction (internal supervision, mirror, conflict). A person with internal socionics conflict (RF-relation) cannot in this sense be considered neuroticized. If a man is conflictor to himself, this means that he is maximally prepared for opposing unfavorable external pressures.

4. Eysenck test for diagnosis of the Persona

Attempts to adapt the known psychological tests (Cattell, MMPI, Leary and others) for the needs of sociodiagnosis have not lead to the success. Why not? It is unlikely that the problem can be reduced to purely technical difficulties or the absence of financial means. There was no understanding that in addition to objective difficulties of diagnostics per se(psychometric paradox, the instability of results over time, the subject's desire to give socially important answers) all the tests so far created diagnose not so much Ego type, as the type of Persona.

The most frequently used of the biographical questionnaire techniques is Hans Eysenck's EPI (1963) [1]. Under certain circumstances it is worth trying for the purpose of determining the socionics temperament of the Persona. The fact is that from the standpoint of the socioanalysis [3] of the Persona, just as with the Ego, it is possible to derive type from temperament and club.

The scale of neuroticism in this test corresponds in many respects to the socionics pair of dynamics/statics. The scale of extraversion only partially suits us, because Eysenck treats it almost exclusively as function of E -- ethical extraversion, i.e., talkativeness and sociability. Here are examples of E-questions from EPI:
— Do you love to be frequently in company?
— Do you prefer reading books to getting together with people?
— Do people think of you as a lively and cheerful person?
— Is it difficult to get real pleasure from activities in which there are many participants?

But indeed there is also I-extraversion (generation of nonstandard ideas, increased attraction to what is new), F-extraversion (dominance, the ability to be a strong leader) and P-extraversion (activity in business, enterprise). In order to correct the imbalance, additional questions are necessary.

For example:

I: Are you inclined to statements and behavior which surprise conservative-minded people? Can you be included among those people who actively spread information about all unusual things?

F: Do you readily engage in competition in order to prove your own superiority? Is it true that fighting and the clash of interests is your usual way of life?

P: Can you get by for long without hard work and movement? Is it correct that you find it difficult to speak up, even in prolonged dispute?

Consequently, the use of an Eysenck test will give satisfactory results in the determination of the temperament of the Persona, only if both his scales (besides the scale of deception) can be balanced so that the questions are oriented to the different aspects determined with the help of typological features.

5. Diagnostics in ethical socionics

Let us turn to the intellectual heritage of the German philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 - 1911) - the founder of understanding-psychology. It seems to me that it is necessary to continue his humanitarian tradition and to raise the question of the need for the creation of understanding, or ethical socionics.

Understanding one's own internal world, according to Dilthey, is achieved with the help of introspection; understanding someone else's world is achieved by means of familiarizing, empathy, compassion. Indeed, this idea of Dilthey served as one of the sources of the beginnings of the 20th century flow of authority, in particular, the philosophy of life and hermeneutics, opposing panlogism in the human sciences.

The identification of the personality type (Ego + Persona) in ethical socionics is built not so much on the explanation of the operation of the model, as on understanding. Comprehension of type not through analysis, but through synthesis.

Objective methods of determining type do not exist, or do not exist thus far. Subjectivism must be perceived not as a necessary evil, but as a good. Familiarize, feel the diagnosed as if he is your own self. Remember that we perceive the Ego through the Persona - the unique mask.

Man himself acts as the measuring tool. However, it is necessary at first to “calibrate”, to attune. To learn to practical socionics from books is impossible. In sociodiagnosis it is more by skill, than by strict science. Knowledge is transferred in a living way -- from teacher to student.

It would seem that sociodiagnosis is considerably complicated: if it cannot be figured out with 16 types, then with 256 (16x16) it should be even more difficult. But this is not so. This complication, oddly enough, in many ways makes it easier, since it presents completely different requirements to the procedure of diagnostics, which makes with its more comprehensible.

Double extraverts and double introverts are very noticeable. The majority of people are ambiverts, which are divided into introverted extraverts and extraverted introverts. With them it is more complicated.

Here are some patterns.

If, for example, bright extraverts, like the same introverts, behave in basically identical ways at different communicative distances (extraverts actively, and introverts passively), then the behavior of ambiverts is stepped. A rather sharp boundary lies between their long-range interaction and close-range interaction.

Conversing with an introverted extravert, you feel like the man gradually opens up internally, the initial barrier is destroyed. With an extraverted introvert everything is vice versa. As the degree of rapprochement with him becomes increasingly closer and perceptible you bump into an internal “wall”, beyond which access is closed to you forever.

And this fourfold gradation is along all indicative scales. Type in the new system is written with a double name: Critic-Analyst, Entrepeneur-Mentor, etc. This is not simply a quantitative increase in the typological assessments. Here occurs a qualitative leap. Man is converted from a rigidly deterministic mechanism, any deviations from which are perceived as distortions, into a being gifted with free will and a yearning for the creative quest.

Literature
1. Psychology of Personality: tests, questionnaires, procedure. / Authors compilers: N.V. Kirsheva, N.V. Ryabchikova. -M.: Helicon, 1995, pp. 35.
2. Dilthey, W. Descriptive Psychology. Second edition. Aletheia, Sptb., 1996.
3. Gulenko V. V. The Handwriting of Personality in Society. Sociodiagnostics Through Observation. // Socionics, Mentality and the Psychology of Personality, #5, 1996.
4. Gulenko V. V. Structural-functional model. K., 03. 12. 1997.
5. Gulenko V. V., Tyshchenko V. P. Jung in the School. Socionics - [mezhvozrastnoy] Pedagogy. From NSU, Novosibirsk, 1997.