Trauma and Type

[Aramas]

Hi everyone,

Some thoughts I had today occasioned this post. I was walking around and thinking about Reinin dichotomies, and was wondering about the trait of positivism found in EIIs. According to the Wikisocion definition of positivism vs. negativism, there's a difference in how each of these tends to react toward people. Positivists supposedly tend to react by default by trusting other people from the beginning, while negativists do the opposite. But then this made me wonder. What if a positivist experiences abuse or trauma at the hands of another person at some point in life? If this trauma results in a change in how the positivist sees other people in general, would that greater distrust seem to imply that the individual is a negativist to others, and assuming Reinin dichotomies are used, result in a mistyped individual? Maybe this is a problem with Reinin dichotomies, or perhaps an oversight.

On the other hand, I knew an SEI once who had dated an ILE with a very physically abusive childhood. She somehow maintained an attitude of trust toward others and an optimistic attitude in spite of what she had faced early on as a child. So maybe the influence of trauma doesn't cover up this attribute of positivism or negativism?

More generally, I extrapolated and wondered whether psychological trauma can influence how people behave and thus lead to mistyping. Do certain types behave in certain ways when they encounter trauma? Is this predictable? Or will it simply cause a behavior style that isn't predictable and thus lead to a mistype?

What are your thoughts?

[Chae]

There are different types of traumas, idk... And all types deal with it differently on top of that, it'd be hard to predict.

[Exodus]

In my view the Positivist/Negativist dichotomy does seem meaningful in many cases but it's still only approximately true -- even DarkAngelFireWolf69 has noted that the conventional description (mostly based on cynicism vs being upbeat, noticing bad things vs. good things etc.) doesn't apply that great to SEIs, who very often seem quite happy and "positive" in the everyday sense. He proposes that Negativism has more to do with solving problems/needs, which is maybe better but still not perfect IMO.

Personally, I think -Ni is the True "negative" element, followed by -Fi and maybe -Si. If people are open and trusting it's usually due to Ne and/or Fe.