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I'd like to see socionics being spread to more people.
At the very least, that raises a host of questions and issues. It's ripe for discussion!
Expansion will come naturally. I think what needs work is people rushing their ideas and all of a sudden you have a majority in error and nobody can save them because they're all defending each other by "what makes sense," especially that it's what they learned and how they learned it, and they have some sort of personal significance attached to it. Yuck. No, I think defensive stance is the best call.
I think "socionics" is far from perfect and does not cover the 'types' fully, especially since so many people cannot recognize themselves in the type descriptions or from the descriptions of the functions. Another problem I think is poorly understood is how the combination of different functions in use appear as impressions that are mistaken for different information elements altogether - leading to a lot of mistypings...
SLE is one example of a type that is almost universally described from a rather narrowminded point of view (it's all about Se dominance in many type descriptions) making it hard to relate to for many SLE's who naturally are far more developed than this stereotypical view described.
Also online the functions are so easy to mistake from superficial impressions of a person, someone can give an *impression* of using functions X or function Y but that is because they are discussing topics related to them, it doesn't mean they use them as their main ego or valued functions. And people for various reasons develop persona mechanisms and defenses to protect their weak functions or to deflect attention from them or even make them appear as strengths. And that is one of the reasons it 'can' be hard to type people from the forums, eg, based on how they present themselves. This problem also goes for 'celebreties' who use a mask to face the world.
It comes down to really seeing the people interact in the real world to see the functions beyond persona games or image creating games. And moreover even the person himself or herself may be unaware they are using such mechanisms or camouflage in their contact with other people.
Sometimes typing is easy of course, but socionics need to develop the type descriptions a lot and abandon the stereotypical thinking for more nuanced descriptions.
Also I agree with Ragnar, to me there is a lot of 'mysticism' and personal opinions and projections involved in the descriptions of the 'metabolism soup'. Real study is needed to confirm and firm up the ideas, suppositions and claims and to broaden the understanding of individuals and 'types'.
INFp
If your sea chart does not match reality, go with reality (Old mariner saying)
Becoming more academic for sure, that's the path this needs to go. I also think everyone having the same understanding would be a good thing. So, like, when typing someone, there should be a sheer majority in agreement of a person's type.
I find that people who I decide to speak to about socionics typically don't take it so well. I've had an EIE who thought it was some sort of weapon. Two LSE's have listened but haven't seen much value to it. Others have thought i'm nuts!
I think that socionics has great insight but at the same time none. I don't think it can predict relations and people with enough accuracy for people to buy into it. There is also the thing that people often inherently believe in their own potential, most people I think see it as a box which confines, not as a box which can liberate the individual to a better understanding of their wants in life.
I'm kinda like Expat, in the sense that I may use socionics as a tool to describe an analysis of a situation, rather than talk about it as socionics. This actually has more success.
I kind of feel like opening poster, that it's maybe reached it's limit. I suppose the only way I can think of in a small part is to discuss more of our irl interactions with types. From experience, this can get shot down for whatever reason (I tried it in delta quadra before). It can maybe have a tendency to become..implications of, 'you're not X type, and those aren't Y type'.
I think it moves forward by more practical application, not just theoretical application. I'm not sure that socionics in our little domains is ready for that, or perhaps i'm wrong about it's approach and/or my analysis of the situation.
Socionics maybe needs to be a bit more MBTI'ish, in the sense of more empirical research, discussion, collaboration, to see what it does and when it does, or what it doesn't! Or perhaps not, ha.