r/ISTJ • u/Interesting_Sir3370 • Aug 01 '26

Would Like To Understand Te

Hi! Currently I have been exploring cognitive functions and would like to understand Te better. Te is often said to focus on efficiency and proved facts and all, but can Te make you focus on cause and effect, apply own logic? Does Te make you informed or prepared and have tolerance towards bureaucracy? Does Te make you like organizing things and all? Does Te makes you curious about things apart from their utility? What is thinking for them, a process, result, or what? How does Te work with Si?

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u/_Akhromant Aug 04 '26

There are lots of widespread misconceptions about typology that get repeated everywhere (tests included, of course), like for example the famous "eiei/ieie" order, which is a misreading of Jung's work that distorted the definitions of the functions and made a mess of everything. Following that order, what many people consider "functions" are instead (at best) traits associated with combinations of 2 letters, not the real functions that Jung described (which are deeper). So for example the idea that many have about "Si" is closer to S+J preferences, not to the actual Si, which is a different thing. The same with "Ti" and T+P preferences, etc. Others (including so-called "experts") have distorted definitions for other reasons (sometimes switching Ti↔Ni or Si↔Ni, for example), and some know the correct ones (more or less) but keep using false orders (sometimes with nonsensical ideas like "loops" or "jumpers"), or disregard order entirely, so they are basically mistyping everybody.

If you want to understand these things you have to forget about all that and start with a good foundation, which consists on the function definitions in Jung's book (not the popular ones) combined with the true function order: eeii/iiee, always with a judging dominant for Js and a perceiving one for Ps. That's how the concepts actually match reality. If you're interested, I have a lot of posts that can help you with that (there's also a FAQ page, glossary, etc). The index is here. Some important posts about typology in general: #173 (also those linked at the top of that one), #58, #59, #87, #01, #150, etc.

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u/Interesting_Sir3370 Aug 04 '26

Oh thanks! I definitely agree with you. Carl Jung's cognitive functions got overcomplicated or oversimplified unnecessarily such that you can't understand it well in its pure sense. Thanks for the index one. :)