I have read the description you sent me and I can agree upon it in that it is one that is looking upon the relationship in a very stable and positive light, yet I still believe the relationship to be conducive to unhealthy behaviors and avoided for the sake of mental health purposes. May I point out that the very nature of the relationship is one that causes much uneasiness in people and the mere aspect that a person's PoLR is exposed in the process is what causes that spooky "I am being watched" feeling that manifests as a chief characteristic of the relationship. If Carl Jung was alive today and aware of socionics, I am sure he would agree that people would do much better to surround themselves with others who easily bring their own unconscious to light as opposed to a person’s weakest and most vulnerable function, as is was happens in a supervision relationship. I really do not think the relationship is any better than a conflicting relationship in this regards. May I ask, if a relationship of supervision is one worthy of perusing, then why did the very founder of socionics place so much emphasis on "dualization?" I have always been under the impression that socionics was founded to bring a person into a more positive well-being and self-awareness of their own actions by pairing people two people together that can bring to light a fair exchange of each others "dark sides" as Jung would put it. Where is that in supervision? I sure do not see it ...Hi Reuben,
one more remark to your site. I strongly disagree that "supervision relationship should be avoided at all cost", even though this relationship gradually becomes very unpleasant in married couples. The fact is, a relationship in a married couple differs from relationships in other situations in some important ways. (by the way, my father-in-law is my supervisee, and my mother-in-law is my supervisor, but I do not feel this relationships uncomfortable). Moreover, you forgot that these two types always have one common strong function, which is 1st for the supervisee and 2nd for the supervisor.
The important prerequisite of stability of the relationship of supervision is DISTANCE, maybe not even in physical but rather in temporal meaning: a supervisee may get offended by the supervisor's immature speculations, but he gladly accepts his supervisor's mature solutions. The supervisor's role function coincides with the supervisee's 2nd function, and this makes the supervisee frustrated: he expects objective evaluation of his 2nd function results, but instead, hears from the supervisor something chaotic: one day supervisor can approve some his actions, the next day disapprove the same actions, just because thye supervisor processes this information slowly and needs some time to develop stable criteria.
Therefore, communication between the supervisor and the supervisee needs two conditions: - in standard situations their communication is conflictless. Even more, in crisis situations they can offer each other unusual ways of solving the problem (although this solution will be used only once, for this specific case, because the advised one does not understand the advisor's motives correctly, whether an advise was given by the supervisor or a supervisee). - when discussing something really important for them both, they need time delays between their discussions - just until one of the parties will be able to find an alternative. Without these time delays,discussions may become boring and even offending (you are stupid, youcannot understand such simple things!).
And finally: the most unpleasant situation is when a supervisor is a subordinate of his supervisee. Then the supervisee, which is superior to his supervisor, becomes strongly irritated: how dares he, in his position, make such unpleasant remarks about me before other people!He feels to have no other choice as to "show the bastard his right place".
Regards,
Dmitri Lytov,
St. Petersburg
www.socioniko.net
Although, I am glad you took the time to comment on the supervision description I authored on the socion.info website. Even if I personally disagree with an individual opinion, it is always good to at least have something to consider in the event that real changes do need to be made. And truthfully, there might be the possibility that a few change need to be made and it is not an unfair thing to cue a person into that. Though, I should state that the socion.info website is not naturally a place intended to necessarily contain generalized descriptions and information such as you would find at socionics.com or other various socionics websites. So, if you wonder why some bits and pieces may not necessarily seem to fall in line such as would in a description found elsewhere, I would credit that either to the specific experience in a certain life context of the author in question or that it may be vague or not necessarily type related information. While this may be a good way to create a website with new and interesting information that you probably could not find
elsewhere or may even be of some scientific value with the chance of new discoveries or originality, this may also sometimes lead others who do not know the purpose of the website to protest and consider the website lacking in quality information and therefore non-consequential. And to be honest, I am not bothered in that I am more concerned about various experimentation with possibilities and originalities than I am for making an actual name for myself or earning a reputation. I took alot of time encouraging others to author descriptions and to discuss aspects of themselves that could be used to make considerations or as a vehicle for new information to be reviewed for scientific or whatever purposes. Since so far I am the only one to have authored intertype relationship descriptions for the socion.info website, nearly all of them were literally based on patterns I found personally from having the relationships and later compared to the patterns I found relayed in the experiences of others who have had experiences with the same type of relationships, including the supervision relationship description by which I had consulted an ESTp/ISFj pair for inspection of contextual fluency. I did that with nearly all of them actually.
I do agree that the description may not be general enough to apply to all instances of interaction between supervision partners and of partners of types other than ENTp or ISTj. I am sure the we are both well aware that there exist supervision relationships that are not as bad as it was made to seem in the description, and maybe it was not very fair of myself to fail to make those sort of considerations when authoring that description. Essentially, assuming that I am unquestionably an ENTp and my father is unquestionably an ISTj, I cannot say that the supervision relationship on the socion.info website is an incorrect description in that specific context nor can I say that I was wrong in the presentation of the relationship in that context. In my opinion, to say that "supervision relationships should be avoided at all cost" is apparently a fair assumption to make in that specific instance, as that is how I personally experienced the relationship with a supervisee who found himself to not only be in a superior position than I, but he was my father. To put it bluntly, I honestly think you hit the nail on the head in your own description when you marked the summarizing paragraph with a conclusion such as that the supervisee "feels to have no other choice as to 'show the bastard his right place.'" Frankly, I could not say that could be said any better.
May I suggest, that you may take the time to reread the description and consider what I have said within the context I have provided and also consider the possibility of there being another firsthand account description from someone who has been under the influence of this particular relationship in this context. Then, come and explain to me what is perceived to be wrong with the description. Do you think that maybe the real problem is that I did not generalize it enough? Or maybe the problem is that I failed to clarify that the description was meant to be look at in a specific context? Or maybe I just did not take the time to familiarize myself enough with the dynamics of the relationship to make the description palatable? In any case, I could really have done better writing any of the descriptions. I admit it may not have been one of my best ones.