I know people love their Reinin dichotomies, but I think it's important for everybody (both new and those who were here at the time that should remember) to know what AWOL Russian socionics buddy Dmitri Lytov had to say on the matter back in the day. Now obviously his words are just the words of one guy on the internet but the truth of the matter here is that his understanding of socionics was much closer to the source, both personally and linguisiticaly (a native speaker of Russian and as a translator by profession quite proficient in English as well).
My own personal opinion (gathered from my 35 years life experience and watching the endless round and round discussions and debates on this stuff) is that while perhaps the the dichotomies occasionally describe the roughest of generalizations about the types, they are very very weak constructs. People IRL act contrary and inconsistant with respect to them more than enough to render them practically meaningless for typing, incites into thinking and IM, and whatever other purposes people come up with for them here. The Reinin dichotomies are one of the greatest engines of confirmation bias that I've ever observed in this community and I believe that their ability to sidetrack, confuse, and outright distort a socionics understanding infinitely outweighs any vague "incites" they may provide.
I'm posting this not as a appeal to authority or to spark any sort of discussion that I'll be taking part in (of course you're free to ramble on between each other about it). I'm just summoning from the depths of the forum the opinion of a genuinely solid socionics practitioner, which has been lost in time to the point of being practically non-existant for anybody who's joined within the last two to three years. It just so happens that his opinion very much agrees and backs up my own understanding and experience. Theoretically, hell maybe even mathematicly and logically, the Reinin dichotomies may seem like the greatest thing since sliced bread... but in reality they suck huge sweaty balls![]()
In the words of Aushra Augusta herself, "Reinin's criteria are crap, it was a wrong hypothesis".
dichotomies of Reinin (06-25-2005)
Statics and Dynamics in Quadras (04-28-2005)



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