Thank you for creating this Forum.
Thank you for creating this Forum. I have found Socionics an intensely interesting and delighful subject and would like to learn more about it. I have been translating many Russian Socionics pages but the quality of AltaVista translations is often unfortunately poor.
Let us hope that we can attract more people to this site. I intent on posting various thoughts and opinions about socionics and it would be a pity if there is no one to share their thoughts and opinions with me.
I am not very familiar with the Oldham's personality theory. It seems quite interesting although it does not seem to be fully compatible with socionics modelling of the human psyche, but ofcourse
My bone with the type descriptions
I think the major problem with most personality type theories is that it is very difficult to write type profiles which would accurately pinpoint the differences between the types. The range of behaviour exhibited by people of the very same type often appear so overwhelmingly vast that it is difficult to find any similarities at all between the representatives of the same type. I like the DarkAngelFireWolf69's Socionics profiles which Socionics.com translated, because with their minute details of the appearence and behaviour of each type, they are one of the few descriptions which are actually useful in helping to recognize other people's types. In a sense it may stilll make much more sense to descripe people's outward behaviour which can be observed with at least a certain degree of objectivity, whereas the internal experience of each type is much more difficult to sum up. People easily think that they are very unique when in fact most people tend to go through pretty similar emotions and suffer from similar problems:
"Psychologist B.R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone. Consider the following as if it were given to you as an evaluation of your personality.
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
Forer gave a personality test to his students, ignored their answers, and gave each student the above evaluation. He asked them to evaluate the evaluation from 0 to 5, with "5" meaning the recipient felt the evaluation was an "excellent" assessment and "4" meaning the assessment was "good." The class average evaluation was 4.26. That was in 1948. The test has been repeated hundreds of time with psychology students and the average is still around 4.2."
http://skepdic.com/forer.html
For example the Keirsey Temperament Sorter's description of Healer Style (INFP) is a prime example of this kind of non-sense description. The first time I took the test and received the description I thought it was eerily accurate. The problem though is that pretty much anybody could agree with the description. It is almost impossible to use the Keirsey descriptions in order to identify other people's types:
Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and informative and introverted in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.
Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King's Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.
Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the Healers. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, Healers can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Healers are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when Healers believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the Healer, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.
http://keirsey.com/personality/nfip.html
"There really is a very particular mental illness associated with presuming that human dealings can be perfected through reduction to discrete variables."
...and the name of that mental illness would be "economics", the 'dismal science'.
:wink:
http://www.corante.com/many/archives..._i_thought.php