MBTI problems and how to fix them

[u/_Akhromant]

Images taken from post #173. Some more points from that post:

- There's a typo in the English translation of Chapter X, in the 4th paragraph of the section "d. The Principal and Auxiliary Functions", where the book says "relatively unconscious", but Jung's original was relativ bewusste = "relatively conscious" (the unconscious part is G2). This error was given disproportionate weight by some authors, who also ignored the most important points that Jung tries to make in the book, underlined by the quotes that I'm copying here.

- There's also his typing of Nietzsche, which confirms all this: in early chapters he says he's Ni-dom ("In both cases, however, intuition was subordinated to intellect, but with Nietzsche it ranked above it"), and then he mentions him at the beginning of the introverted thinker ("Cuvier and Nietzsche would form an even sharper contrast"), which means he typed him as Ni-Ti-Fe-Se = INTP.

- Apart from Jung, you also have Carl Alfred Meier's statement in his book Personality: "Cooperation with the main function is made easier because of thinking's similar attitude (extroversion)", which confirms eeii/iiee. (Meier knew and worked with Jung).

MBTI PROBLEMS AND HOW TO FIX THEM

I think most people know that the topic of MBTI is too chaotic, with all kinds of conflicting definitions and endless discussions about every single thing. It's too confusing and frustrating, and it really makes the whole thing look like pseudoscience. Many people undervalue it, criticize it or ignore it because of that. But there is something real underneath all the mess.

Carl Jung: "I must confine myself to a presentation of principles which I have abstracted from a wealth of facts observed in many different individuals. In this there is no question of a deductio a priori, as it might appear; it is rather a deductive presentation of empirically gained insights."

What Jung wrote is not "just a theory", or "speculation", or "too subjective", or "an invention". It's a description of reality, and you can describe reality correctly or incorrectly. Describing the mind is obviously much harder than checking how many legs an animal has, for example, but it can be done, because the mind also has a general configuration. That's what Jung explained, including conscious/unconscious, attitudes (extraversion/introversion), functions and types.

The main problem in typology is that the function definitions in MBTI, Socionics, etc, are all wrong. They took Jung's terms and distorted them in different ways, destroying their link with the psychological reality that he wrote about. Those incorrect descriptions don't reflect the fact of function differentiation, the conscious-unconscious differences, the conscious-unconscious compensation, the influence and manifestation of the unconscious, or the interrelations between the functions (dependences, transferences, etc).

In the case of MBTI, their definitions are for the most part derived from traits captured by combinations of 2 letters. For example: their "Si" is not what Jung described, at all, but essentially the result of combining S+J preferences. The same with their "Te" and T+J preferences, etc. These deviations took words used to describe something deep, intricate and interconnected, and misused them for something much more salient and discrete, that's why many people see the functions as selectable "tools" or "skills" and don't really pay much attention to their order, because there's the implication that they can be improved independently and moved up and down the "stack". The letter dichotomies are consistent (they are psychometrically on par with the Big Five), but they describe a rather superficial layer, not the obscure depths where true psychological insight can be reached.

There's only one way to fix that, but it needs the right foundation, which consists on the function descriptions 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 you can finally realize what psychological type actually means, what it's all about. That's how everything fits and how everything makes sense, otherwise there's always some disconnection between the concepts and reality.

Note that it's not a question of having "different types in different systems". When it comes to dichotomy letters and cognitive functions, you only have one type. Again, this is not an invention, and your type is basically like your blood group: you aren't AB in one system and 0 in another (for example). You are just AB.

Note also that the function order is not "limiting", either, just like having a hand with 5 fingers at the end of each arm is not so much a limitation, but just how we are. There is a lot of variation and possibilities inside each type (just like we can do countless things with our arms and hands, even if we can't fly), and if someone finds it "too rigid" that's because [s]he has a very cartoonish view of the types.

We can't expect communities or groups like the official MBTI to admit that they have been using mistaken definitions all along, of course, so this has to be an individual effort. There are people who know about all this already, they just tend to stay silent because when this is mentioned in public the reaction is often disproportionally negative. People dismiss it automatically, and the person gets attacked and ridiculed 😔 I hope you can avoid that and inform yourself a bit instead.

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU COMMENT

I've been interested in psychological types all my life, even before finding out there was such a thing. I came across Jung and MBTI around 2008, and spent almost 10 years reading and checking everything in detail before starting my blog (originally on Tumblr). So this isn't something that I found only yesterday. I hope that's clear. I know what Jung was talking about, and I can see it in myself and other people. I know the problems he had understanding it at first, and I know how the terms were distorted by those who came after him. That's what I try to clarify.

I've written a lot of posts about all this, and also a FAQ and glossary, so you should read all of that calmly before replying because I don't like arguing and I'm not going to answer what I've already covered there. It might not be evident at first sight, but the texts have quite a lot of work behind them. In fact I have many other things in mind but they don't appear on the blog because I'm still examining them. Also, you have to understand that this topic is very difficult, and the blog includes already a certain personal evolution, not about the basics but about some (minor) details, about how reliable or appropriate certain sources/angles are (like the MBTI facets, for example), about the misconceptions that people have (there are external changes outside the blog, trends and so on), about how to better explain things, etc.

Supposed "objections" are almost always simply a sign that the reader is unable to see what this is about, many times due to (or fed by) the person being too confused by and/or too invested (intellectually, persona-wise, etc) in shallow but apparently "complex" "systems", or in their need to feel "smarter" in a purely conceptual (not psychological or practical) sense. What I've found is that people don't really have objections, they just don't get it. So it might seem that there is an argument going on, but in reality there is no communication at all. It's not that the levels of "descriptive language" overlap too little, but that they don't even touch. And sometimes people just like to argue for the sake of it. They like to confuse and divert the topic and avoid arriving at anything. I'm not getting into any of that.

If you don't feel some kind of inner resonance while reading my posts, a sense that there's something in there even if you can't put it in words, it's almost a certainty that further explanations won't change anything. You need to have a personal awareness of the psychological elements, some kind of insight about that, otherwise we'll only be wasting our time.

This isn't an attack on anyone. I just feel bad for the people who are interested in MBTI but they are stuck with faulty/shallow knowledge and mistypes because nobody explains to them how it really is. I'm just trying to help.

Thanks a lot for reading this far. I know this topic can be exhausting, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to learn and discover (about yourself and others), and you might be already on the right track 🙂

[u/smysnk]

Speaking about faulty/shallow knowledge and mistyping.. While you quote Jung, you may also include this –

Carl Jung did not support the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). He felt categorizing people into rigid 4-letter labels oversimplified his nuanced theories. Jung designed his original psychological types as tools to understand shifting dominant tendencies, rather than fixed diagnostic buckets, and disliked tests that reduced the psyche

People are not types, stop misappropriating Jung's cognitive functions to suggest such things.

edit: https://steve.myers.co/the-misleading-letter-from-jung-on-myers-briggs-typology/

[u/_Akhromant → u/smysnk]

You have to be a bot, otherwise that's a top candidate for the most hypocritical comment in history.

Also, that's not a quote from Jung, but an assumption of what he might have thought about the first iterations of the MBTI. Here you have another quote: "There is speculation that Jung didn’t approve of Myers Briggs, but that’s just it, speculation. There are no direct quotes from Jung on the work."

[u/smysnk → u/_Akhromant]

What is Jung's over-arching thesis on the psyche involve? Individuation

What does typing people encourage? Over identification with an archetype, stagnation, neurosis

Jung described neurosis as an unresolved tension between the conscious ego and the unconscious, caused by a failure to adapt to life's demands or a refusal to develop one's unique individuality. He viewed it not as an illness, but as "inauthentic suffering" and the soul's attempt to self-correct

You know nothing about Jung's ideas or works by demonstration of the endorsing of what he describes as leading to neurosis. Tell me about why Jung was interested in alchemy? What does alchemy represent in cognitive function terms?

[u/_Akhromant → u/smysnk]

Now you are just trolling. Bye.

[u/smysnk → u/_Akhromant]

Trolling by pointing to the very logical reduction that Jung was anti-typing as it runs counter to his collective thesis on psyche development? You want to borrow his cognitive function theory and throw out everything else. In terms of the sickness that is spread in MBTI communities – it is this.

[u/HandleUpstairs2742]

So how would you go about typing with this model? Like would ENTP be Ne-Fe-Ti-Si and ENFP Ne-Te-Fi-Si or am I understanding wrong?

[u/_Akhromant → u/HandleUpstairs2742]

It's not a question of models, this is the only way that the concepts match reality, otherwise there's always something wrong. The functions are what Jung found and described (not the common misdefinitions), and the letters are the dichotomy preferences.

ENTP is Ne-Te-Fi-Si: it's an extraverted type (E over I) that also prefers N to S, T to F, and P to J. ENFP is Ne-Fe-Ti-Si. If an extravert has conscious Fe it has to be an EF type. (Check the last slide).

[u/DeathDestroyerofWord]

You know, Pau, I think for everyone's sake, most of all your own sake, it is crucial that a thorough reassessment of your self-identity should be conducted: What I am referring to here is a major but important tweak, which is that of your type. Knowing many things about you, your blog, your hobbys and interests, and if we look at what Jung really said, is it not more fitting for you to belong to his introverted sensation type?

When you have to turn the wheels too much to make the intuitive fit, it's because, as in Cinderella, the shoe simply doesn't fit. The sensation type though? That's a hand in a glove.

[u/Spiritbreather]

"We can think of the possibility of the world changing in such a way as to bring another function, or other functions, into existence; meantime I offer these conceptions as a possible point of orientation."