Tests aren’t doing it for me, the questions usually suck. Descriptions are neither, they are vague. I would prefer to just understand the terms (such as “introverted sensing”), but all the descriptions thereof are vague, too.
Also, the tests I’ve seriously tried tend to be inconclusive. All I know for sure is that I’m an introvert.
In fact, the ‘Big Five’ thing makes much more sense to me, as there you can just be ‘moderate’ in a certain domain (e.g., moderately agreeable). But in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, there is always an absolute preference for either of the two options. There is, for instance, no such thing as an IN(T/F)P, i.e., someone who is equally Thinking and Feeling.
I’m tempted to dismiss the MBTI altogether, as pseudoscientific bullshit. Can anyone convince me otherwise?
I really wouldn’t worry too much about it. Maybe you’re expecting too much from the tests. From everything I’ve been told by people with more long-standing and professional association with tests, they are not meant to be absolute indicators but rather suggestions or guides for thought.
I’m an introvert too. That’s really a very important guide to figuring out where you derive and lose energy. For me, being around people too long makes me noticeably physically and mentally tired. For an extrovert, it’s just the opposite.
What else is important is whether you are under stress or not, and figuring out what puts you under stress can help you figure out how to deal with your shadow side which can also be occluded or something you are unaware of. It looks to me as if there is a shadow operating in your frustration around the Meyers-Briggs test. In reality, you can do just fine without it.
Is there a Jung Center in your area? If so, I’m sure they offer classes and workshops on these kinds of subjects. Also, you will meet people who know all about this stuff and can help you learn about all the aspects of types and even things like alchemy and myth with regard to psychic transformation.
Thank you for your reply. The thing is, while the Big Five is much clearer to me, it’s also much less interesting: I basically already knew what it told me.
The MBTI is an absolute indicator in that it indicates whether you tend to be, for instance, a Thinker or a Feeler when it comes down to it. There is no middle ground.
I’m wondering if maybe the Sensing/Intuiting and the Thinking/Feeling dichotomies are basically the Perceiving and Judging forms, respectively, of the same basic dichotomy.
That’s interesting. Do you have any particular definitions for each one that I can refer to so that we are on the same page? I need to be reminded anyway.
I hate to say this, but I’ve been thinking of myself lately as a kind of psychology faddist, just flitting from one psychologist or system to another. When I’m studying one, I feel as though I’m really into it and finding out something deep and important about myself and others; but then as life goes on I just sort of forget about it and then at some point something new catches my interest. My latest fave was the Enneagram, which we are discussing over at the Nietzsche forum. But actually as much as I like that system, I find myself interested more in spirituality and mysticism these days. This is probably anathema to a physicalist like yourself, but my life experiences are more in line with the kinds of things that happened to PK Dick and I love it when answers seem to come my way. My main interest of course is art, like NIetzsche’s, though I don’t apotheose it like he did. But I’m a happy soul and nothing really sits all that intensely on my mind or worries me all that much.
I do enjoy discussing depth psychology, though. So I look forward to a link or two on the MBTI types so I can analyze myself even more, huge guffaw here, as if my psychological map isn’t crowded enough.
I consider such evaluations to be based on gross misunderstandings and mis-concepts that are seriously primitive in their nature. One CANNOT measure intelligence on a linear scale and one equally cannot measure personality traits or decision making skills in a dichotomy, black or white, arena of labels. But then, I consider Carl Jung to be one of the very many cleverly presumptuous idiots (psuedo-intellectuals) of this age who is being promoted not for his accuracy but for his insinuations (as is always the case).
So even if you find someone who can convince You of such tests, they will have a much greater mountain to climb in order to convince me. Tests produce a few words at best. A personality is a picture of pictures.
I found this site that explains the M-B types. On a test I came out INFJ, which also apparently means that I make a great counselor. That is true in a way, but I have to be thinking about doing that consciously, which I hardly ever do any more. But there have been many times when I was a good counselor to someone.
Well, it seems I was mistaken. I think now that the Thinking/Feeling dichotomy only refers to one’s values: whether feelings and opinions, or laws and principles. Then again, maybe the same applies to the Sensing/Intuiting dichotomy (though there the values would be actual sensory data on the one hand, and things like hunches on the other, respectively).
As I said before, I took a form of the MBTI and came out INFJ, and I provided a bit of an explanation above. However, that test really annoyed me because in actuality I couldn’t answer some of the questions but felt forced to just to get a result. Some of the dichotomies just don’t seem to correllate with real life actions or interactions for me. The best I can say is that I’m definitely an introvert and I enjoy being that way.
I think you are right about the sensing/intuiting dichotomy; it’s like the difference between knowing and gnosis in a way. As for the thinking/feeling type, that is about how you make decisions, either based on thought or feeling. I don’t necessarily associate either one the way you do. Surely a thinker can make a decision based on an opinion, just as a feeler could; and the same goes for laws and principles, you can have both thought and feeling operating there too. What do you think?
Both Thinking and Feeling are so-called “rational” functions. By itself, however, reason cannot make decisions. The decision one makes follows from one’s ‘weighting’, i.e., on what things one puts most weight, as values.
If you can read Jung without the phrase “pseudoscientific bullshit” crowding out all other thoughts, you’re probably missing something.
But! I’ve found Myers-Briggs to be generally accurate, despite the theories behind it. As a pragmatic tool, my anecdotal evidence is positive. More so than Belbin tests. I don’t know Big Five details about enough people to say - I understand it’s related to Hofstede’s Cultural Assessments, which I find very useful.
It’s limited by its binary nature though, you’re right. You can be strongly introvert or extrovert, or you can be very close to the middle. I have taken a few tests over several years and always come out as fairly clearly ISTP, and the description fits me pretty well. A friend of mine comes out differently with each test, her scores are always very marginal. It might just be that you’re very balanced on the scale.
Thinking/Feeling is roughly analogous to deontology/utilitarianism - do you decide on rules or human benefits?
I definitely think Jung was on to something with his ‘archetypes’.
As for the MBTI, what I’m occupied with at the moment is establishing definitions of the difference between, say, Sensing and Intuition. I think there must be one basic difference from which all the others follow. In the case of Sensing and Intuition, this seems to be the difference between focusing on ‘content’ and ‘context’ (details and big picture), respectively. In the case of Thinking and Feeling, it seems to be whether one values ‘clarity’ or ‘harmony’ (consistency or concord).
I suspect there’s something there; on the basis of brain development and evolution, it would surprise me somewhat if we didn’t have something hardwired or otherwise inherent. But as presented, it’s pseudoscientific - no evidence, unfalsifiable handwaving.
Introvert/extrovert is the clearest, and the easiest to see in others.
Sensing and Intuition as I understand it is more or less empirical/rationalist, whether you go for the concrete evidence of your senses or the big picture as you say - I wonder if there’s a tie-in with Berlin’s fox/hedgehog? I’m certainly an S/fox.
Thinking and Feeling is indeed consistency/concord.
Judgement/perception is then which of S/I and T/F you favour, so SP and IP are dominant combinations, as are TJ and FJ. But then it gets a bit complicated in combination with I/E, I’ll have to look my notes out.
I suspect the narrative explaining the relations of all of the diads is fairly unimportant, compared to the outcomes of the sixteen types - a story can be made to fit them, I’m sure, as the sixteen types can be fitted to a 2^4 classification scheme, but the meat is in what the sixteen types are individually, rather than why the diads combine to make them so. But then I would say that, I’m an SP.
I’m thinking now perhaps the S/N dichotomy corresponds to the Heideggerian-Nietzschean discordance between truth and art. My reason for thinking this is that iNtuition is sometimes described as being about seeing possibilities of change, whereas Sensing is then described as being concerned with what is. And if Sensing corresponds with ‘truth’, Thinking rightly corresponds with Logic, as Logic needs ‘truths’ (premises, i.e., statements that supposedly have truth value) to work with. Sensing and Thinking then belong together, and then so do iNtuition and Feeling. Feeling is about emotions: Fe about the emotions of others, Fi about those of oneself. And so is it with Thinking: Te is about the logic of others, Ti about that of oneself. Note that I distinguish between Logic and logic. Maybe we should say “sense” instead of “logic”: Te is concerned with the common sense, Ti with one’s own sense (e.g., of what is right).
Ne is concerned with the possibilities of change in the external world; Ni with those in the internal world: interpretations, connotations, etc.
In a Jungian vein, I think of Sensation in terms of knowing and interpreting the world mostly through the five senses directed outward to physical reality. I think of Intuition as knowing and interpreting the world mostly by way of immediate apprehension and a kind of gnosis, directed inward to psychic reality. Thus, you Sauwelios, being primarily and foremost a physicalist, I would think it likely that you would tend towards Sensation, though you came out an N on the MBTI. I tested out as an N, which corresponds to what I know to be true about myself. I can agree that Sensation people would be more concerned with what is out there, and Intuition people more concerned with what is inside. However, I don’t see any reason why both types would not be able to see possibilities of change; it’s just that those possibilities might be distinguished by the way the world is perceived, thus providing in concert a greater depth or arena of possibilities.
I’m not sure whether one type is more inclined towards art or not. I am certain, however, that both types have their own way of apprehending Truth, and that art itself is also an expression of, and a way in to truth. Picasso said, “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.” Furthermore, art can also be considered to be “a transmission of feeling the artist has experienced,” as Tolstoy put it. I think that Nietzsche’s attitude towards art is most compatible to both these views.
Well, you’re wrong. Both Sensing and iNtuition can be extroverted or introverted.
‘The’ MBTI? I haven’t taken the official MBTI instrument (which costs money).
I tend towards Sensation, though I do not dismiss intuition as such: I only dismiss the notion that intuition come from on high (‘inspiration’), not that it come from down below (the subconscious). ‘Intuitive knowledge’ may still be sensible; its sensibleness may just lie hidden from the consciousness. Thus I may even trust intuition more than sensation in certain cases, as subconscious thought processes may have evolved due to their efficiency.
The question is how you define the difference between S and N, and if your definition is not essentially different from the Jungian one.
I am going to borrow Jung’s book, Psychologische Typen, from a friend of my mother’s in order to learn more.
Then again, I was not talking about art in general, but in the specific sense as opposed to “truth” in Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Volume 1, chapter ‘The Raging Discordance Between Art and Truth’).
Heidegger argues that ‘art’ and ‘truth’, for Nietzsche, are the most basic two forms of the Truth (the will to power). Compare:
[size=95]Every living being, and especially man, is surrounded, oppressed, and penetrated by chaos, the unmastered, overpowering element that tears everything away in its stream. Thus it might seem that precisely the vitality of life as this pure streaming of drives and pulsions, proclivities and inclinations, needs and demands, impressions and views, wishes and commands pulls and sucks the living itself into its own stream, there to exhaust its surge and flow. Life would then be sheer dissolution and annihilation.
However, “life” is the name for Being, and Being means presencing, subsistence, permanence, withstanding disappearance and atrophy. If life therefore is this chaotic bodying and oppressive urging, if it is supposed to be what properly is, it must at the same time and just as originally be the concern of the living to withstand the urge and the excessive urge, lest this urge propel toward mere annihilation. This cannot happen because the urge would thus remove itself and hence could never be an urge. In the essence of this excessive urge lies a kind of urge that is suited to its nature, that urges life not to submit to the urgent onslaught but to stand fast in it, if only in order to be able to be urged and to urge beyond itself. Only what stands can fall. But withstanding the urgent onslaught urges toward permanence and stability. Permanence and the urge toward it are thus nothing alien or contradictory to the life-urge, but correspond to the essence of bodying life. In order to live, the living must for its own sake be propelled toward the permanent.
[Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. III, chap. 13, trans. Krell.][/size]
However, it’s the way that the world is apprehended that determines that Sensing moves outward from the psyche towards physical reality, while Intuiting moves inward. This has nothing to do with whether you are an introvert or an extravert. Check out what Jung has to say about Sensing and Intuiting.
Take this one for free and see how it comes out. It told me I was an INFJ.
That’s an interesting take on Intuition. I think that both Sensation and Intuition have value; they complement each other, so to speak.
Let me know what you find out and if there’s anything else to know about these types.
I don’t see how this analysis relates to the types or their relative expression of art, though. I would say that creation is a way of making order out of chaos or formlessness; and that art can make this form beautiful, a beautiful lie that as a lie can tell a truth and be a Truth.
Introverted Sensing seems to be about sensing what is in the mind (e.g., in one’s memory).
That is not the official instrument.
So do I. But I don’t think intuition has to do with supernatural or paranormal stuff or something like that.
Well, I never spoke of the types’ relative expression of art. I said ‘art’, in the sense defined earlier, might correspond to iNtuition. Even if art is making order out of chaos or formlessness, that is changing that which is.
Sensing is not introverted. In Sensing, the mind moves outward to the physical world to apprehend what is there. In Intuition, the mind moves inward to the psyche for an immediate apprehension of the world, like a quantum leap or something, you just know something even though you don’t know why. It’s like ESP or having a hunch sometimes.
I’ve taken the real one, and this one is just fine to get an idea of your types. I took it just to see how it came out, and I do remember the actual MBTI coming out pretty much like that. Keep in mind that I don’t like this test that much, but it can be interesting. The only types ultimately useful to me are Introvert and Extravert. I much prefer the Enneagram anyway.
So go ahead and take it and look at the results with a critical eye. You’ll know instinctively, more or less, whether it’s correct. It also might help you in your continued thinking and refinement of the types, which are very illuminating and interesting.
I like to keep an open mind there, but I would think that certainly not all intuition has to be supernatural or paranormal; but certainly some of it can be. The problem is that people might not be able to distinguish the two.
Yes, art does change that which is, and that is why art is a lie, which as Picasso said, “makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.” And sometimes the Truth in art is more true than that which is.
However, I hope you’re not saying that only Intuitives can be artists. Surely the Sensationists can create art too. Besides, I don’t think that anyone is purely one or the other.
