The Anna Karenina Principle and MBTI type confusion
Tuesday, 5 March 2019 03:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarasa_catIt is hard to explain my mixed feelings about MBTI ... I find it useful until I do not and there are so many ways in which it is not useful plus there is so much MBTI garbage littering the planet.
That said, something struck me earlier today -- The Anna Karenina Principle and how it applied (to some extent) to MBTI, and that became the seed for a 4500 word essay on Tumblr.
https://sarasa-cat.tumblr.com/post/183238307477/the-anna-karenina-principle-and-mbti-type
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That said, something struck me earlier today -- The Anna Karenina Principle and how it applied (to some extent) to MBTI, and that became the seed for a 4500 word essay on Tumblr.
https://sarasa-cat.tumblr.com/post/183238307477/the-anna-karenina-principle-and-mbti-type
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 01:26 am (UTC)I was thinking while we were talking about the mistyping of INTJ-INFJ that my problems with mental illness are probably fouling up both my perception of my cognitive process AND my cognitive process itself. So it's not a huge surprise that I'm confused.
I'm intrigued by the concept of tertiary loops. I went and did some more research about the symptoms of tertiary loops for both INTJ and INFJ, and hoooly shit the INTJ Ni-Fi loop pretty much describes my experience, and why I might not be presenting as a stereotypical INTJ. Whereas the Ni-Ti loop doesn't register for me at all. And the fact that this tertiary loop rings so true to me is really interesting because it also lends itself to strategies that I can use to get out of it, some of which I hadn't thought about in this way before, by focusing on Te.
[Edited to add: And all of this stuff about the cognitive functions actually explains me-as-an-INTJ much more than the stereotypical, horoscope-like descriptions of INTJ, which I always found a complete turn off. The description of Fi as having a strong sense of internal values that you try to align your behaviour and lives to is not often included in generic INTJ descriptions.]
Really really interesting, thank you for typing it all up and sharing!
[Edited AGAIN to add: There's a lot of different things out there about Ni-Ti loops, and not all of them ring true to me (i.e. conspiracy theorist?). But this one had me: https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2017/06/21/intjs-loop-understanding-ni-fi-loop/]
...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 02:06 am (UTC)There is something else I plan on writing and posting soon -- something in response to various things I have been reading plus a series of podcasts -- that attempts to explain why someone saying "Oh, I have really strong T" or "My S is seriously strong" is completely meaningless (something the author of the mbti-notes blog politely/socratically chides people of but never truly hand-holds people through an explanation of *why* they (politely) say "okay, that's nice" in response ... I guess it took me a long time to work through the socratic process on my own to figure out the answer, all while watching mbti-notes interact with people over the years. Haha! ;)
To use the INTJ stack for sake of example (Ni Te Fi Se), if someone who, unbeknownst to themself, says "Dude, my F is really strong", what they really mean is so much F going on in my way of thinking, their hyper-focus on Fi's need for authentic expression of their values and (via the Te-Fi polarity) having those values recognized at some level by society can end up front and center in the brain ***regardless*** of whether or not they are looping. Heck, they could be chugging along doing their thing but feeling bent out of shape because their values and their authenticity isn't being rewarded in their environment ... and if they are unconscious or not entirely aware of how that part of their mind works, Fi will run around screaming like a typical 3rd function: sort of like an immature pre-teen. ;) Obviously, this example also holds true for ISTJ (Si Te Fi Ne).
So, then, this person is given an MBTI style questionnaire to fill out and if this crankypoo feeling regarding their values is talking WAY TOO LOUDLY in that lack of indoor voice that many pre-teens have, lol, this person looks at the MBTI questionnaire and is all F F F F F F F FFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!! Okay, maybe a few Ts over here T T T FFFFFFFFFF. BECAUSE OMFGBBBBBQ THAT F IS SO STRONG. SO OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE AN F TYPE in the mbti four-letter code.
And cue the blogger behind mbti-notes saying "okay, that's nice" when they unload their problem du jour via an anon ask and preface it with "my F is so strong." ;)
Using this Fi example, same thing can happen to an ExTJ who, via this model, will have Fi in the 4th position of the stack. Fi is their least aware, least conscious, least with-the-program function that is still within their 4-function wheelhouse. (the other four so-called "shadow functions" are outside their wheel house and much speculation exists in the community on how that model works. anyhow...). If an ExTJ's 4th function -- Fi -- has the maturity and development level of, say, a toddler, well, just try using reason with a toddler (haha). Sometimes it "works" and sometimes you are just along for the toddler's ride. Talk about some epic strong Fi. (and cue: "okay, that's nice.")
There are many reasons why I have never taken the various MBTI instruments or popular surveys very seriously -- much of it has to do with my training in instrument design. But it wasn't until I started understanding that polarity aspects of the model, or how all of this builds on Jung's theories of the conscious and unconscious (and, obviously, Jung's theories of Si, Se, Ni, Ne, Ti, Te, Fi, and Fe) -- it wasn't until then that I started realizing how absolutely terrible any "Insta-method" is at measuring one's type. Maybe it gives a starting point or maybe it just confuses the heck out of a person.
...
In the end, I suspect but do not yet know how to "confirm" that a number of the type profile sets are actually based on a completely different and, frankly, completely useless/irrelevant notion of MBTI type.
Whenever I read media essays by people who really hate MBTI, who talk about how they have been typed as a handful of different types by these surveys, and how it is evil/wrong for corporations and schools to use MBTI (I agree with them on that point), I know they are criticizing the exact same thing that I am criticizing.
From what I know, the officially MBTI(tm) corp used to use an intense 5-step process to determine type and it was very costly: a survey was a starting point, followed by an interview with a specialist, followed by other magic that is proprietary.
This, obviously, is not cost effective when an organization wants to type 100s or 1000s of people ... thus the newer simplified method and, well, garbage in, garbage out.
I suspect that many of the people who have set up shop giving out extensive free info (mbti-notes.tumblr.com, an INFJ) or making a mission/business out of combining extensive free info with proprietary($) training and development products (personality hacker.com, run by an ENTP and an ENFP) are motivated to fight back against what the MBTI(tm) machine has unfortunately become. But .... that is a big tangent.
tl;dr: most of those type descriptions are useless stereotypes. Also, I feel horrible for employees and students who are subjected to MBTI-based bullshit that attempts to turn them into useful cogs in the big machine. There are some terrible horror stories about this in a hiddenbrain podcast, if I remember correctly. And thus the real controversy at the heart of MBTI.
Re: ...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 02:17 am (UTC)We used MBTI and the HBDI (http://www.hbdi.com/HBDI-book/c/) models when I was in the public service... mostly they were used as a way of learning more about yourself and the people you work with so that you can get along better, but I understand that sometimes they can be used to screen people in or out of certain professions, which is just all kinds of wrong.
Re: ...this is such a can of worms. Can. Of. Worms.
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 02:38 am (UTC)The personality hacker team makes a repeated point of saying "we are into these models *because* they support personal development" and "we like all sorts of models that can be used for personal development, but use them (pragmatically) ONLY to the extent they are useful" ... and I suspect their reasoning is very much in resistance to the Wrong(tm).
Mbti-notes.tumblr.com makes a point of stating exactly where they stand against the Wrong(tm).
The toddler and pre-teen observation is from the personality hacker crew. My one beef with their content is how their verbiage plays fast and loose with Jung's concepts but, as an inroad, it is a good place to start once one unpacks their own biases based on who they are.
MBTI-notes is very dense and difficult to grok because they often assume the reader has knowledge in psychology, Jung, and philosophy. It takes multiple reads to realize that they are often using terms in very technical, very precise ways but once that realization hits (and you understand the language), they are a wealth of information compiled from many sources respected in the mbti world, plus their own spin from via their experiences.
Re: edited AGAIN
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 02:29 am (UTC)There is a damn good reason why: there are many different combinations of how healthy-vs-destructive and aware-vs-unaware thinking will occur within one's cognitive function wheelhouse. Also, environmental factors and a wide variety of other personal factors will play in.
Individuality will always cause variation. The question is how strong the correlation is, assuming there exists a method for measuring correlation (something Dario Nardi looked into and, for whatever it was worth, he did find extremely high correlation in EEG brain patterns between people of the same type when performing a variety of activities in a lab, and close to random noise across all people regardless of type, which says a lot ... but his study was very preliminary, and used a small sample size but lots of EEG data per subject. Waiting for more replication, I guess?)
As for specific examples that different writers (or podcasts) give of phenomenon like Ni-Ti looping or Se grips can suffer from stereotyping either because they are trying to make their content easier to understand (!!!) or because they don't have a deep grasp and are just repeating what they have read. The idea is to understand the MECHANISM and then see if you have **repeating** behavior that fits into the pattern of that mechanism.
For instance, I appear to be close to biochemically immune from having unhealthy relationships with alcohol or recreational drugs. Yet, this is an example of Se grip behavior that many books and bloggers will give: someone in an Se grip getting completely fucked on drugs or alcohol. But the point is that *that* is a specific form of highly destructive Se behavior and Se grip could just as easily manifest as "putting way too much mental energy (almost to the form of exclusivity) into a highly regimented diet and gym routine" such that hours of one's life are taken over by Supreme Health(tm) iron pumping, triathloning, and precision caloric/macro-nutriant/micro-nutriant intake. Hehe. Is that Se grip or actualfax training for an upcoming performance in the olympics? You see what I mean?
The problem with so many of these fast and easy examples is that they skip over the theory and just go straight to ... stereotypes.
Added thing to keep in mind when listening/reading
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 03:14 am (UTC)Keep in mind that people can only write or speak from their personal experience, their observed experience, or their theoretical deductions. If they haven't experienced, for instance, NiTe moving at full steam, there will always be a sense of 2nd handedness in whatever they have to say.
Two instances I keep bumping against :
(1) I have noticed a few different INFJs who are mbti bloggers/writers, and they consistently really just don't get Te beyond applying theory to their observations. This comes across hard in their otherwise excellent, illuminating writing.
(2) The PH.com podcast sometimes has hilarious things to say about INxx types that really aren't wrong at all in the least bit but are just ... only half of the picture? Or don't always capture the "whyness" -- the depth -- behind what is actually happening inside an INxx headspace. The two podcasters are ENxx types.
On Se grip
Date: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 05:38 am (UTC)Although the writer assumes you know the difference between repression and suppression, etc., the second section explains the mechanism by which suppressed Inferior-Se coupled with unhealthy or maladaptive dom-Ni can result in "overly subjective and solipsistic view of the world" <-- something I have seen hardcore with at least one unhealthy INFJ. Anyhow, the point is that for some people, this manifests as conspiracy theories but for others, nope, just very very very idiosyncratic solipsistic worldviews.
...And this is just an example of why the THEORY is far more important than the supposedly reader-friendly random lists that lots of bloggers (cough, and many books) give as illustrations of healthy and unhealthy behaviors for each type.