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

Added thing to keep in mind when listening/reading

[sarasa_cat]

About descriptions not always ringing true or, more likely (in my case now that I have internalized a lot of theory/jungian language), *feeling shallow* --

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.