Don't look at this as just plain pessimism toward the theory or the model, as I feel it is very important to think critically about anything you study - including socionics. Therefore, I have thought of a number of ways that socionics could break down or not work:

About Socionics in General:

1. Socionics doesn't explain the way people behave at close distance. Don't some people wear masks socially? Aren't there some people who behave one way at work and then differently at home? Don't some people simply want to seem a certain way, when they are very different on the inside? By focusing on things like appearance and social behaviour, socionics misses some of these...

2. Why only 16 types? Couldn't socionics work, but the number of types be very large?

3. Don't people change? Socionics assumes that we have one static personality type that does not change throughout our lives, but is that the way it really works? I remember reading about 'person-stages' in philosophy. The notion is that in life, a person doesn't just have one stage they go through, but several different stages where their traits, interests, values, etc. change. Now apply this to socionics: a person may show traits of ILE at 30 years old, but not at 40. And at four years of age, they might have shown signs of being EII. All of this is unusual from a socionics standpoint, but it really seems quite normal to me...

4. What about cross-types? This is a corollary to 3.: Cross-types are supposed to be unusual, but since people often change, wouldn't it be more natural for people to have a mix of traits, as opposed to fitting Model A?

About Model A:

1. Why does the model hold up empirically? There is no clear answer as to the methodology Aushra Augusta used in developing the theory. Did she interview people and keep records of their answers? Did she read something somewhere else and apply it to socionics? Did she just look at a few cases and match people up intuitively? None of these questions can really be answered.

2. Why does Xe go with Yi? This is a corollary to 1.: why not Ti with Fi or Fi with Fe, for instance? And the same thing with weak functions. I just don't know why these functions are supposed to match up the way they do...

Anyway, I just wanted you to think critically about the theory. The point isn't to turn you into a hard-nosed skeptic, but to be a little more logical in the way you view it, not taking it simply at face value without thinking about it. The solution is not to give up on the theory, but to take it with a grain of salt...