The Anna Karenina Principle and MBTI type confusion

[sarasa_cat]

It 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)_/¯

Comments

[thehungrycity]

Wow, long informative post is long and informative!

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/]