Tests do not work (here is what you can do)

[Fruiteloop]

I once found an online test that said I was INFJ

I realized that we cannot get any clarity of who a person is simply by asking general questions that have nothing to do with how we relate to ourselves and the world around us. Forced choice methodology is not telling us the actual boundaries. It is only by personal experience of what happens that we can even begin.

INFP is my type because I have deep reactions and attachments that I happen to me emotionally. So Introverted feeling is adverse to bad things and really drawn to appealing things. The difference between it and Extraverted feeling is in the nature of Extraversion. Extraversion takes in whatever it can no matter what it is. Introversion on the other hand accepts or rejects, its discriminatory. Not in a moral way but in preferences.

Going with this model it happens that we can get at core understandings rather than misconceptions about MBTI in the Jungian sense.

You can ask yourself questions then about yourself and others you wish to explore rather than narrow pre-set pairs.

For me I came up with these:

Is a person emotionally reactive and under what circumstances?

Fe will be calm most times but reactive more so by conflict in Ti (introverted thinking)

Does a person look at things more than they contemplate?

Se has greater vision than both Intuitive processes.
(Si is going to have more focused interoception discrimination where Se can adjust to anything practically)

Will a person examine the world around them logically or build their own logical model extensively without outside feedback most of the time?

(Te studies the world more as Ti is going to build a inner structure to which they must make perfect, flaws to it is unrelated to outside contexts but requires logical consistency)

Is the person coming up with leaps in ideas or not?

Intuitive extraverts get all kinds of ideas from everything. A big web of ideas.
Intuitive introverts have them from within, an idea they never had before can be unrelated to anything previously known.

*

As far as me being INFP and not INFJ it is in the Te that I can be differentiated in.

I study everything, this does not mean I learn good or am higher in intelligence than others IQ wise. It simply means when I make something the structure can be inconsistent with errors and not thought out that well. I cannot think of everything. Ti would be able to get it right because it sees all angles all approaches focuses on what criteria's are absent. INTP and ISTP do just that. The first has Ne to guild them where the second has Se - both exhaust all options.

Therefore Fi is what I have as a way of feeling good or bad about something. Ideas people places moods. Sometimes its ok sometimes its not.

Third Ne comes in and Fi has its field day: all the pretty colors all the non pretty ones but in ideas. ISFP actually are the ones who have real colors do this.

I feel ideas and ISFP feels colors. I study them with Te - with Si I have the hardest time, I disconnect from my body often yet am aware of it. I can like what happens or not and this sense of emotion I have seeps into me. Unlike ISFJ I cannot pay attention to the inside a long time. I am distracted by ideas studying things and feeling good or bad about them. Si is not memory exactly but memory is tied to emotion and thus the body has attachments to it.

Last to mention is INTJ - Ni can almost see the future because unlike Ne as a web the Te in INTJ plans and organizes in future directions. I happen to have things in my life as organized chaos so its all nonlinear and spread out in different areas as can be seen in how this thread was just from the top of my head being INFP and everything came out this way at once.

 

[aeon]

The Feeling functions have nothing to do with emotion or mood.

As such, this all seems highly suspect.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Fruiteloop]

I think what you are getting at is that the Feeling function is about making decisions.

I'd say and this has been shown by neuroscience experiments that without the amygdala we cannot make decisions.

It may be oversimplified how I described it as emotions but I think their needs to be a distinction as to thinking and feeling.

I believe that the extraversion or introversion of feeling is an emotional process tied to thinking also but in different configurations.

So its not exactly that decisions are not the feeling functions but I imply that emotions play a role more in feeling than thinking.

And if they do then we need to discriminate how feeling decisions are happening in introversion and extraversion.

Fi decisions or Fe decisions would use emotions/amygdala in not the same way and so make Fi paired with Te and Fe paired with Ti

Thinking can be emotion or attached to the process of feeling but indirectly.

My hypothesis is that Fe can control how they "feel" in ways Fi cannot and vice versa.

 

[John K]

@Fruiteloop while understanding where you are coming from, I think it is unwise to tie the feeling function too closely to emotion. Emotion is bound up with thinking as it is with feeling, but in a less in-your-face way. To be more explicit, thinking is based primarily on a chain of reasoning, but that has to start somewhere on a set of givens that are taken as intuitively true - in maths these are called axioms but they are there in all reasoning chains. There is as much emotion bound up with these a priori truths as there is with any chain of feeling rationale, and logical folks can be also very much self-identified with their prowess in their chains of reasoning. Try arguing against global warming to see this in action for example.

I think it is not quite right, as well, to say that Feeling and Thinking are decision making functions - they are really judging functions that are about how we make decisions. A simple example - should my wife and I travel to see our grandkids over Easter? Logic says that the current fuel crisis means I will use a tank-full of diesel in doing this which I may not be able to refill in the current world crisis, so we should maybe abandon the trip. Feeling says that this trip is important to my wife and to our family, and that is more important than the risk. I'm secondary Fe, so my natural choice is to go with the latter and live with the risk. So Fe is not the decider, which is my will, but where the motivation comes from that leads to that decision. There is certainly emotion involved, but the actual decision is always an act of will. If I were an INTJ then I would probably make the opposite decision, given our driving commitments that are coming up beyond the immediate future.

I think the difference between Fe and Fi is that the former is based on what is perceived to be best for the well-being of your immediate social context whereas Fi is based on how to be personally authentic within your values. These two are not as distinct from each other in their expression as the literature seems to indicate, but Fe is more likely to sacrifice authenticity in order to achieve social harmony while Fi is likely to do the opposite. The emotions that run around these can be very complex and may be significantly decoupled from the choices actually made. Fe may sacrifice personal integrity and suffer emotional distress as a chosen consequence, while Fi might sacrifice social harmony for the sake of personal authenticity while accepting that this could lead to the pain of disapproval.

 

[Fruiteloop]

@Fruiteloop while understanding where you are coming from, I think it is unwise to tie the feeling function too closely to emotion. Emotion is bound up with thinking as it is with feeling, but in a less in-your-face way. To be more explicit, thinking is based primarily on a chain of reasoning, but that has to start somewhere on a set of givens that are taken as intuitively true - in maths these are called axioms but they are there in all reasoning chains. There is as much emotion bound up with these a priori truths as there is with any chain of feeling rationale, and logical folks can be also very much self-identified with their prowess in their chains of reasoning. Try arguing against global warming to see this in action for example.

In the Enneagram model we have heart head and gut which kind of looks like they are separate but in fact we have all three but in a configuration working together. They work together in different strengths and connections.

So I am not really tied to emotions being the feeling function.
Emotions play a small part of what I think is happening in most peoples functions, yet in an integrated way.

It is how then introversion and extraversion are operating when emotional motivation can be used.

The concern I have is more to do with that tests do not make it apparent how a person is that often confused me in the past.

So yes we would say that thinking must have the intuitive part and the feeling part involved that people can be very passionate about math's and such yet also my bigger idea is that feeling or thinking or any Jungian function F T N S is bound to follow extraversion or introversion first. That leaves clues as how to find out ones type and then others types. Its an open question I am following not prescribed rules people must follow to understand types.

I think it is not quite right, as well, to say that Feeling and Thinking are decision making functions - they are really judging functions that are about how we make decisions. A simple example - should my wife and I travel to see our grandkids over Easter? Logic says that the current fuel crisis means I will use a tank-full of diesel in doing this which I may not be able to refill in the current world crisis, so we should maybe abandon the trip. Feeling says that this trip is important to my wife and to our family, and that is more important than the risk. I'm secondary Fe, so my natural choice is to go with the latter and live with the risk. So Fe is not the decider, which is my will, but where the motivation comes from that leads to that decision. There is certainly emotion involved, but the actual decision is always an act of will. If I were an INTJ then I would probably make the opposite decision, given our driving commitments that are coming up beyond the immediate future.

This shows that we have multiple functions in us the T F S and N working together. But in my model the begins with E and I - i have it that yes in your example Fe would want more to please others but its not a contradiction to say that is because Fe takes in more. Fi takes in what it wants to take in otherwise I would be advocating for the distinction as something else. Fe feels for everything and everyone. Fi though has in many ways I seen people call it selfish when tat is not the case. Before I looked at what E and I was I had trouble understanding what Fe was doing differently than Fi. The INTJ as you say would not wish to go on the trip because Te overruled Fi - For me I'd have to think really hard about it because I'd need to sell my stuff or personal belonging to make the trip practical and that be whether to keep my favorite toy or item or to please the people I care about which makes it more painful a decision because if I have no money tough choices must be made. And is this happening just because I need to see my extended family is important enough to sacrifice my treasured things or is it because my aunt is old and may dies soon and this is the last time I may have the opportunity to see her.

If I had to I'd sell my important things to see my aunt but I would not sell them to just make someone happy that was not critical to their survival. If that were the case I'd be homeless with no food because I just wanted to make everything better for everyone else without thinking of the actual values involved. INTJ would know what is and is not important what the priorities are and what can and cannot be sacrificed. They do that all the time. Me being INFP my values have been challenged so many times in tough emotional decisions that I practically have no way of copping most times making impossible choices I'd rather not happen because Then I have to say one thing is more important than another.

This is why I think ISFJ as with my mother are some of the best people to have help you because they are almost completely selfless but that doesn't mean INFP or any Fi type cannot do the right things. It just means that we have to set boundaries more often because we feel things in such ways that if we do not we close off and then everything we love is ruined or taken away for arbitrary reasons.

I think the difference between Fe and Fi is that the former is based on what is perceived to be best for the well-being of your immediate social context whereas Fi is based on how to be personally authentic within your values. These two are not as distinct from each other in their expression as the literature seems to indicate, but Fe is more likely to sacrifice authenticity in order to achieve social harmony while Fi is likely to do the opposite. The emotions that run around these can be very complex and may be significantly decoupled from the choices actually made. Fe may sacrifice personal integrity and suffer emotional distress as a chosen consequence, while Fi might sacrifice social harmony for the sake of personal authenticity while accepting that this could lead to the pain of disapproval.

I see that it can happen that way but it is the "why" it happens that concerns me. For example if we say F is reasoning about its values then yes that's not emotions per say. It is just a way of looking at the world or the self that the extraversion or introversion is making us have.

I for example hate things that make people get hurt in any way shape or form. I do not watch horror movies because it makes me scared and sad. I love my toys and drawings and ideas because it makes me happy. I Love my friends because they love me.

The only problem I see is that if reasoning has nothing to do with emotions then the reason is that we are using words to describe what is happening in Feeling and words are abstract that we must translate Feeling into abstractions and therefore take away some of the reality of what feeling actually is. The Greeks had terms such as pathos, logos and ethos. But in the east they said the name that can be named is not the true name. MBTI is not a set of rules that tell us top down what people are decreed from above. It shows us people have different ways of being and experiencing the world.

There is a field called mass psychology where large groups of people have dynamics individuals do not. At some point (dun bars number) people cannot interact with such large groups. Everyone has a set point. So I guess what I am saying is that Fe types have greater crowd control skills that Fi types must shut down in bigger groups but that is not negligence or oppositional defiance. It comes from somewhere that the person is overwhelmed and copes in ways depending on type whether they happen to or can make a difference in the larger world. Because MBTI is not about morality but people have tendencies to cope based on type that leads to good or bad outcomes or character. We are getting into how people make choices (the reasoning) because most people think in words. To me and others like me we have to use something less abstract that depends quite allot of the inside not the outside because the multifaceted natures of people we meet not being all the same INFP like myself have to make choices that worlds cannot describe most times. Because that becomes a simulacrum of what is actually happening in our feeling function which I wish to show must be thought about more deeply in order to understand what it actually is.