The Key Factor in Screening Ni Dominance

[Andy Quellenlicht]

justeccentricnotinsane,

ok, if you use "signifier" and "signified" in the way ferdinand de saussure did, then our definitions are quite the opposite. lacan turned de saussure around and stated the primacy of the signifier (the unit of the unconscious language) over the signified. so ok, I read you now having de saussure in mind. still it would help me to understand you if you define how you exactly understand these 2 terms.

you say: "Ni-doms do not see things as puzzles - they experience everything as clear and obvious. Or rather, I do." i think that unconscious perception is by definition not clear and obvious. thomson puts it like this: "After all Introverted Intuitions are not really ideas. They're like trains at the edge of articulated knowledge. You can't claim them or advocate them. You put on a hat, grab hold of a boxcar door, and see where they go. Until these types acquie enough information to map out the path they're taking, all they can do is insist on their need to take it." p. 229. so what do you mean by clear and obvious - i have infp-friends who talk like that (as you say, Fi), but i first would like to listen how you understand it.

the generalizations: I see them as a necessary way of dealing with a flood of information, but nothing specific mbti-wise, well a little bit of Si (and sure they do not take into account the individual). Your "stock of answer" is not mbti-specific too, imo, its the world of the imaginary in the lacanian sense. it's necessary to build an identity. the enneagram says more about this than the mbti. that's why it would be interesting to know your enneagram-type. so i could see, what interferes with the mbti.

when your friend lost her faith in humanity, in my view she did some good mourning over her assumption that her inner world was the world. for fi-dominant people this is particularly hard, for Ni-dominant it's presupposed in everything they think (even though, as children, they thought like everybody else, that their way of looking at things is how everybody does). and yes, not making assumptions with individuals until you hear and see them speak and act is quite a Ni-approach. but it's more a perceiver's approach in general, even though Nis are experts in this "not judging", because everything's a matter of perspective.

in my opinion, Ni is not directly about meaning but what is "under" the meaning. by perceiving this "under" they can better "extrapolate" (not consciouscly) than others what will be probable to happen. it's like intuiting the underlying algorithm and apply it to meaning. but the meaning in itself is "bla bla bla" (arbitrary word-sequences that have an orienting and calming effect in a given and specific system). what is "under" the meaning? all the unconscious drives and inclinations. now, by definition nobody - Ni included - can tell, put into language what these drives are in a given situation, but Nis have a sensorium for this and based on this, not knowing what it is, they "extrapolate" and are quite often right. what do you think about this last paragraph of mine? to what extent or quality - if at all - can you see this as your own way of functioning? and what overall "weight" does it have in your psyche?

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

you say: "Ni-doms do not see things as puzzles - they experience everything as clear and obvious. Or rather, I do." i think that unconscious perception is by definition not clear and obvious. thomson puts it like this: "After all Introverted Intuitions are not really ideas. They're like trains at the edge of articulated knowledge. You can't claim them or advocate them. You put on a hat, grab hold of a boxcar door, and see where they go. Until these types acquie enough information to map out the path they're taking, all they can do is insist on their need to take it." p. 229. so what do you mean by clear and obvious - i have infp-friends who talk like that (as you say, Fi), but i first would like to listen how you understand it.

Hm. I don't know. I definitely could use Fi and have understood it wrong. Maybe I just mean in comparison to the inside world. Or I guess it sort of comes out when we talk about people. I hadn't realised that Fi made judgements about people immediately - which is what I do, I think. I mean, not without seeing them Of course they have to be in front of me, but I'm just not sure it really takes that long. I tend to have little interest in people if I meet them and think they're going to be a hassle, basically. That's why it kind of works. It's difficult to describe. It's not like love or hate, it's just about thinking "Oh God, it's one of the them" - for instance, people who are manipulating people for personal gain (people who are using people to get status but who will then dump the individuals they used). I can get irritated at this, though I get more irritated that everyone else can't see it so they get away with it. Not that I'd say anything, I haven't got evidence until it happens. What I mean by "clear and obvious" is that. I meet a person, and know it doesn't really take long so maybe I'm an INFP, I don't need to meet them for more than a minute and sometimes I spot them across the room (I guess because of they way they interact with others). But other people don't seem to see it for a while and I have to wait. I don't know, people seem obvious to me. A lot of my friends seem to get upset when people do wrong and say things like "why would they do that?!", whereas I tend to be relatively unsurprised by others' wrongdoings and I don't particularly feel much about it, though I get angry if someone close to me has been hurt. i never question why, I suppose, I don't see it as some kind of a puzzle. Don't get me wrong, I'm only ever interested in the why of things and usually not the what, it's just that I already know the why. I don't see it some "crazy world". I see it as perfectly simple. I don't know. That basically. I don't tend to be shocked by others behaviour very often because I usually saw it coming and I think it's pretty obvious it was going to happen and I guess I get slightly frustrated that other people can't just see that. Saying that, though, I tend to be able to analyse the actions of people I haven't met. Like if my friend tells me about the person they are going out with and says "he always does this" then I tend to say "oh he thinks like this and he's doing it because of this". That isn't to say I wouldn't change my mind if I met them, sometimes I never do, so I don't know.

"not judging", because everything's a matter of perspective.

I don't know about not judging. I like a bit of poetic justice, that requires judging and I do judge people as being people I want to be around or people I don't want to be around. Like there's some people I just can't be bothered with and I don't like being around people who are being arseholes - so I judge. I do have a friend that never, ever judges and thinks it's wrong to judge. Who will stay friends with people no matter what they have done to her and prides herself on this belief that you can't just not be friends with someone over what they've done because we all make mistakes, which I think takes it a bit far. Of course I can see why they've done it and how we could all make the same mistakes, but I don't see any reason why I should just let them do it again, so I get them out of my life. Only if they're going to do it again, though. People make mistakes that they won't repeat. It depends whether it's part of them or a one-off.

in my opinion, Ni is not directly about meaning but what is "under" the meaning. by perceiving this "under" they can better "extrapolate" (not consciouscly) than others what will be probable to happen. it's like intuiting the underlying algorithm and apply it to meaning. but the meaning in itself is "bla bla bla" (arbitrary word-sequences that have an orienting and calming effect in a given and specific system). what is "under" the meaning? all the unconscious drives and inclinations. now, by definition nobody - Ni included - can tell, put into language what these drives are in a given situation, but Nis have a sensorium for this and based on this, not knowing what it is, they "extrapolate" and are quite often right. what do you think about this last paragraph of mine? to what extent or quality - if at all - can you see this as your own way of functioning? and what overall "weight" does it have in your psyche?

I may be wrong but this appears to be what I was describing above. My foresight tends to be through extrapolation, I think.

My Enneagram is 1.

And it may be easier for you to test your theories with someone else. I'm interested in your Lacanian reading - though it looks like I'll have to read Lacan again because I haven't in years and it seems I have not remembered it correctly and am merging it with Saussure. But I may or may not be an INFJ and that is something I'm unlikely to decide as I find it very difficult to say what I'm like. With most of this stuff in the MBTI I have initially said "no I'm not like that" and then caught myself doing it and been a little surprised. So I'm not sure I have enough self-awareness to be able to answer questions well.

Cheers

EDIT: I've found a better way of explaining the way I judge. I tend to judge actions, I think, but not people by their actions. So I will say that cheating is wrong, but I wouldn't necessarily say the person who cheated is immoral, it depends on the person. If one of my friends cheated on their partner I would consider it to be a selfish act and may be a little annoyed about it, but that doesn't mean I won't understand why they did it and help them get through it (in my case all of my friends would feel very guilty). I would be wary of going out with someone who has cheated on someone before, though, because it takes a certain mindset to be able to do it. It doesn't mean that they are "bad" people, it's just that I may not want to go out with them myself, because they have previously been able to not worry about another person's feelings for as long as it takes to have sex - which is long enough for most of us to consider our actions! Yeah...I don't know. Maybe that helps, maybe it doesn't.

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

I'm sorry if i come accross a someone who wants to "test... theories". my main point of interest is to understand who and how individuals are, as unique persons and in relation to a typology which joins them to a group of people.
now, i'm glad you said you are a e1. cause this rapid judging is an e1-standard. and i have wondered for a while, if a e1 could possibly be a dominant perceiving type. it seems highly improbable - though not impossible. there would be a lot of tension within such a person, then.

to see rapidly who a person is and/or how she is going to behave, in my understanding, has little to do with the mbti. i think it's your capacity to read body language and to extrapolate from it.

have you read lenore thomson's book (personality type)? imo, after reading the infj- and infp-chapter, it is quite clear, that these two types are fundamentally different. i was not sure, whether i was infj or infp. after these two chapters, it was quite obvious (especially the cartoons summarize it marvellously). yes, i'm quite curious what your mbti type is, since your way of writing has much of Ni. if you indeed were an e1 and infj, this would imo explain much of "I find it very difficult to say what I'm like."

it's rare somebody knows more than the name of j. lacan. and you obviously do. what you couldn't know is the fact that i'm in the process of writing my MA-thesis in psychoanalysis, specializing on lacan (the thesis is about the void and the lack in the lacanian subject and the voidness in buddhism, especially in the school of madhyamaka).

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

I'm sorry if i come accross a someone who wants to "test... theories". my main point of interest is to understand who and how individuals are, as unique persons and in relation to a typology which joins them to a group of people.

Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I just mean that there is no telling whether or not I'm an INFJ so I don't know whether I should necessarily bring myself into a discussion on Ni etc because it might muddy the waters.

now, i'm glad you said you are a e1. cause this rapid judging is an e1-standard. and i have wondered for a while, if a e1 could possibly be a dominant perceiving type. it seems highly improbable - though not impossible. there would be a lot of tension within such a person, then.

I don't know. The enneagram certainly isn't perfect. I tend to agree with the parts that talk about how I feel about myself more than how I feel about other people. I don't tend to have high standards for others but I have high standards for myself. I suppose I do feel frustrated with others when they do wrong but there isn't really any point in me making my frustrations known, it is more effective and helpful to find the common ground between us and speak about the situation from that perspective. I don't tend to demonise people because it isn't that simple (and it takes an awful lot of energy!)

Your way of writing has much of Ni.

Please could you explain what it is you see in a way of writing?

The thing about not knowing what I'm like - there's two reasons I get it wrong.
1) A lot of things we do unconsciously or automatically. For instance, when asked whether I am the same in all situations and with all people or whether I adapt myself to the environment, I assumed I was the first as I did not feel I changed myself or was selective about how I acted around others, I felt that I was always myself. A few months later, a friend of mine came to a party at my house and saw me interacting with my brother and my boyfriend. She had this utterly bewildered look on her face and my first reaction was to think "you've known me for eight years how can you possible be shocked by me?!" A moment later it suddenly occurred to me that I have never acted the way I do with my brother around her and I have never acted around my brother the way I do her. But both of the ways I act I consider to be "me", they don't seem inconsistent. And that was when I realised that I do act a shade differently according to who I'm talking to. I mean, most people do to a certain extent. And from then on I've been noticing me do it. So I didn't know I did that, because it was so completely automatic that it never occurred to me.
2) I overanalyse. I attempt to analyse myself and say "I am like this", but I try to make it too simplistic, or concrete, or easy to understand and by doing that I necessarily miss out nuances and often find out I am wrong! That's just me overcomplicating matters.

This doesn't mean I feel confused about my identity by the way. I don't feel any kind of confusion about who I am. I feel quite consistent, It's just more that I have a "sense" or who I am but I would have to start being mindful of my own behaviour to answer specific questions about me. I would have to observe myself in action, because I don't tend to be as aware of myself as I am of others. I think some people are just like that.

it's rare somebody knows more than the name of j. lacan. and you obviously do. what you couldn't know is the fact that i'm in the process of writing my MA-thesis in psychoanalysis, specializing on lacan (the thesis is about the void and the lack in the lacanian subject and the voidness in buddhism, especially in the school of madhyamaka).

Good luck! I also studied Lacan and he was one of my major assignments in uni, but it quite a few years ago now and I didn't tend to use his theories to a tee - I merged them with Saussure, Derrida etc. so I find it difficult to separate them now. All seems like part of the same thing to me! I was writing film theory, which tends to grab ideas from various theorists to create a new theory that shows how cultural artefacts can reveal societal undercurrents, shifts in ideology, collective response to world events etc. Kind of "the temperature" of society and culture at the time. Very interesting stuff, wish I could have done it for the rest of my life! I'd love to read your paper when it's finished. I really enjoyed reading Lacan.

EDIT: It occurs to me that it is not possible to pin down "what Ni is" or "what Fi is" or whatever. Jung may have had a different perspective than Lenore and they both have a different perspective from me and possibly from you as well. And everybody else here has a perspective of their own. The theory of eight cognitive functions can be used in many ways. You could demarcate various functions observed in human nature and personality in a variety of ways and the theory would still work. It depends where you draw the line in the sand. It occurs to me, therefore, that there is nothing wrong with people having their own perspective of what each cognitive function means regardless of what Jung originally said. To trust in Jung would be to assume firstly that authorial intent has been adequately translated (I don't just mean in the translation to English but the way we all translate as we read), which is impossible using mere words, and that Jung was right. Jung was essentially right, but so am I and so is everybody who has a different way of looking at this. Essentially, if personality is a spectrum - as it must be for this theory to work, or for any theory to work - then it does not matter where you draw the lines.

This phenomenon, to me, is far more fascinating than what Jung actually said (not that I have ever read what Jung actually said!) I had my own conception of what the cognitive functions meant. It does appear to be different from what everybody else here has said. But despite this, my reaction was "Wow! this theory really works!", but unbeknownst to me, it was a different theory to Jung's and to others here, because I had drawn different lines. However, it seems to me that other people's theories work just as well. We could draw 16 lines, 32, 106,098 and it would still work. The way in which the human mind separates anything is fascinating, and the way that arbitrary categories allow us to view the world more easily - I could see Si, Fe, Fi, Ni etc in everybody I knew well according to my theory of the functions, and it appeared to explain me very well - but of course it would, because I had drawn the lines

 

[invisible]

i have to spend a lot of time figuring out the maze of ideas behind why my intuitions are true, which they pretty regularly turn out to be. i think i am INFJ more so after attempting to read through this thread as some things really rang true but then again i could be wrong, the technical theory seems slightly difficult to understand. i wish i were educated enough to participate, the discussion is really interesting. kudos

 

[InvisibleJim]

I'm happy my post has generated significant and involved debate.

 

[bickelz]

This is true of all Ni dominants. We are incredibly fickle and particular beasts and you can see that it is 'borderline' present in the Ni 2nds, the ENxJs.

What you tend to find is that Ni dominants are both 'early adopters' and 'early leavers' and can also be frictional in doing so. The mindset of Ni is such that it is actively resentful that others have encroached on it's intellectual and psychological head space.

What I tend to find on Typology forums is 'weak Ni counter-rationalisation' from many members of typology boards to label themselves with a more 'favourable' in their view type because they feel organised and thus J and mystical and thus Ni... really, come on.

It's funny that you mentioned this because my fickleness has led me to question my type lately making me feel more like a perciever. The early adopters and early leavers thing is interesting because I seem to do it with relationships of any kind, particularly friends. I've only had a couple good friends throughout my life but I changed groups a lot on high school and middle school. I adapted to a group and then felt I didn't fit in correctly/was done with them and found other people. Although I didn't do many social things, usually keeping to myself.

Do you think Ni doms are a bit flaky by nature or seen to be flaky?

 

[InvisibleJim]

Do you think Ni doms are a bit flaky by nature or seen to be flaky?

What does it matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it meows?

 

[bickelz]

What does it matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it meows?

Good point, main picture over the details. I guess what I was getting at is that you mentioned "I'm organized and thus J yet mystical thus Ni dom" and was thinking about how "J" the infj really is. It just seems to me that a fickle person can be a flaky person when coming to relationships (of any kind). One day, they're your best friend and the next you don't know who they are kind of thing.

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

justeccentricnotinsane,

was strikes me as typically Ni is your approach by definitions. you seem to go in the direction of: problems (in thinking) arise when the definitions are not clear, let's clarify the definitions and the problems will be solved. this could be an aquired part of yourself, thru academical training. it could also correspond to your Ni-inclination. it's up to you to evaluate if it's kinda your "natural" way of approaching things; it sure is mine. definitions are perspectives; and to look thru a different definitions is a shift in perspective. a holistic type, like infp, would ideal-typically not approach a problem by definitions, but would see the thing as a hole and give good reasons why his or her "view" is more consistent. for a infp, it's not a view, it's how it is, the core of the subject beeing what's universally human - as an infj i can only sigh loudly, when i read or hear such things, even if c. g. jung would agree.

then all the reasons you give why you cannot be this or that is also typically Ni. your intuition does not build context, like for Nes, but it takes away context, that is, here, not fitting interpretations. so you deconstruct and you do this following your "trains" (lenore) which you can't put into language. this approach is totally different from infp. after a while they get mad at me, when i'm proceeding according to my Ni-inclinations. Ni tends to show the limits of a concept or an idea - not to destroy it, but to invite oneself and others to make a intuitive leap and to go beyond a concept or an idea, even if it becomes paradoxical or whatever.

your way of analyzing seems to be left-brain (look in lenore's book about this). it's one after another (well, this could also be a result of your training; it's up to you to evaluate).

the overall tendency in what you are writing is, imo: even though there is something to it, it's not this and it's not that. so nothing is really sufficient - how could it, in a Nis perspective? now, this could be, among many things, an e1-trait: the quest for perfection to avoid critique. it could be Ni in the above described sense.

if you like lacan's ideas, it might be probable to think that deconstruction is not just a fad you are following but that this process would be part of you. Ni fundamentally supports desconstruction... to liberate new unconscious perception, to see things in a new light, to transcend the usual way of looking at things.

"EDIT: It occurs to me that it is not possible to pin down "what Ni is" or "what Fi is" or whatever. Jung may have had a different perspective than Lenore and they both have a different perspective from me and possibly from you as well. And everybody else here has a perspective of their own. The theory of eight cognitive functions can be used in many ways. You could demarcate various functions observed in human nature and personality in a variety of ways and the theory would still work. It depends where you draw the line in the sand. It occurs to me, therefore, that there is nothing wrong with people having their own perspective of what each cognitive function means regardless of what Jung originally said. To trust in Jung would be to assume firstly that authorial intent has been adequately translated (I don't just mean in the translation to English but the way we all translate as we read), which is impossible using mere words, and that Jung was right. Jung was essentially right, but so am I and so is everybody who has a different way of looking at this. Essentially, if personality is a spectrum - as it must be for this theory to work, or for any theory to work - then it does not matter where you draw the lines.

This phenomenon, to me, is far more fascinating than what Jung actually said (not that I have ever read what Jung actually said!) I had my own conception of what the cognitive functions meant. It does appear to be different from what everybody else here has said. But despite this, my reaction was "Wow! this theory really works!", but unbeknownst to me, it was a different theory to Jung's and to others here, because I had drawn different lines. However, it seems to me that other people's theories work just as well. We could draw 16 lines, 32, 106,098 and it would still work. The way in which the human mind separates anything is fascinating, and the way that arbitrary categories allow us to view the world more easily - I could see Si, Fe, Fi, Ni etc in everybody I knew well according to my theory of the functions, and it appeared to explain me very well - but of course it would, because I had drawn the lines"


what you say here would be typically Ni (hard core) - if there was not this "this fascinates me" (or so) and you seem like to have discovered in your life that everything is a matter of perspective. so, is it a counter-tendency to your inclination, is what you write how you function, when not counter-acting? this would be my main question. you appear to be basically Ni - but this would be the way of a e1 to improve herself!!! because it's so contrary to the inclination of a one! an e1 tends so see things as being like the e1 sees them. it has a very objective touch. to relativize everything is a total counter e1-move. but it could be - according to a specific subculture - a way of evolving! so again it's up to you to evaluate, what it could be... i know from experience that ones can counter-act their inclinations around many corners, to become better (what ever "better" means, according to a subculture). but this counter-acting makes ones and others tense! and in midlife, the counter-acting will become weaker... 'cause the energy is going down.

another point for Ni would be your attentiveness for subtext. now, it could also be for many other reasons than for Ni to have this interest.

does this say something to you? if yes, what do you think about it?
and how do you perceive me (in this forum)? with regard to typology or whatever...


(lacan is usefull in many fields of science, - his homefield was psychoanalysis and I think one needs a good freudian and philosophical background to interprete him somehow adequatelly; i dunno if you will be able to read my paper, it's written in french)

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

invisible, what rang true for you?

 

[Kmal]

Good point, main picture over the details. I guess what I was getting at is that you mentioned "I'm organized and thus J yet mystical thus Ni dom" and was thinking about how "J" the infj really is. It just seems to me that a fickle person can be a flaky person when coming to relationships (of any kind). One day, they're your best friend and the next you don't know who they are kind of thing.

infjs are infps in socionics. it's worth looking in to. http://www.wikisocion.org/en/index.php?title=INFP

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

justeccentricnotinsane,

was strikes me as typically Ni is your approach by definitions. you seem to go in the direction of: problems (in thinking) arise when the definitions are not clear, let's clarify the definitions and the problems will be solved. this could be an aquired part of yourself, thru academical training. it could also correspond to your Ni-inclination. it's up to you to evaluate if it's kinda your "natural" way of approaching things; it sure is mine. definitions are perspectives; and to look thru a different definitions is a shift in perspective. a holistic type, like infp, would ideal-typically not approach a problem by definitions, but would see the think as a hole and give good reasons why his or her "view" is more consistent. for a infp, it's not a view, it's how it is, the core of the subject beeing what's universally human - as an infj i can only sigh loudly, when i read or hear such things, even if c. g. jung would agree.

I'm going to have to ask you to clarify, sorry. When you say "definition" - do you mean literally that I want to pin-down the meaning of terms used or that I want to classify things? I don't tend to care what words people use so long as the meaning comes across adequately enough for a conversation to run smoothly. I'm not finicky about it, basically. And when it comes to classification..ah...sorry, I'm confused. I'm going to have to ask you to rephrase your above paragraph. Perhaps you could give an example to make it clearer?

then all the reasons you give why you cannot be this or that is also typically Ni. your intuition does not build context, like for Nes, but it takes away context, that is, here, not fitting interpretations. so you deconstruct and you do this following your "trains" (lenore) which you can't put into language. this approach is totally different from infp. after a while they get mad at me, when i'm proceeding according to my Ni-inclinations. Ni tends to show the limits of a concept or an idea - not to destroy it, but to invite oneself and others to make a intuitive leap and to go beyond a concept or an idea, even if it becomes paradoxical or whatever.

Ah, now here is a problem we on forums seem to come up against. This word "context" - it has a few different meanings I think to different people. I tend to consider myself to be "contextualising" by seeing things at the root and realising that they will be different according to context and therefore do not have meaning in and of themselves, only when they are associated with other things. But, as you say, this could also be called stripping away the context. Does this sound like what you meant? What I mean is that I do not really believe in truth or the idea that any answer can be correct, or the idea that things can truly encapsulate a problem. I tend to see things more as "the best fit" - my decisions/words/actions/ideas are, I believe at the time, the most effective for the present situation but are unable to adequately cover everything. Erm....let's put it another way. I don't like listening to activists say "WE MUST DO THIS!" (whether it is about women, climate change, whatever) because I normally think they are naive, even if I agree with their point of view and find these things to be important too. I mostly just think that their passion may handicap them, that sticking so vehemently to one idea may be their downfall. It's important to be aware of the limitations of what you are doing and what you believe to make it workable (and to get others on your side, of course - it's give and take). Although idealism is admirable, I am normally the person pissing on their bonfire. Is this what you mean?

your way of analyzing seems to be left-brain (look in lenore's book about this). it's one after another (well, this could also be a result of your training; it's up to you to evaluate).

On all but one test I have been told I use both relatively equally. The one test that was different said I used right-brain strongly. I'm not sure. I consider the left brain to be extremely logical and the right brain to be extremely creative and that most are probably somewhere in the middle. But I do not have lenore's book and would not be able to say what her definition of this is. What would you consider to be left-brain thinking?

the overall tendency in what you are writing is, imo: even though there is something to it, it's not this and it's not that. so nothing is really sufficient - how could, in a Nis perspective? now, this could be, among many things, an e1-trait: the quest for perfection to avoid critique. it could be Ni in the above described sense.

Well, I feel like I can quite easily point out my e1 tendencies if that is helpful. The enneagram is a little bit crap, in that I have just chosen the best fit but do not fit an archetype. I don't think anybody does. Even with all the wings on and all that. I can tell you that I am driven by anger but never allow this anger to show/never shout at others/never throw tantrums or express anger in any other way. This is a big e1 thing and is at the core. I believe I will be disproportionately punished for my mistakes. For instance, if I slip up at work I become so convinced that I will be sacked and I will start making plans for how I will be able to make enough money to pay the rent. I strongly fear being proven to be a bad person or going against my very strong moral code - this is where it gets confusing I do have a very strong black and white moral code for me. But I don't judge others with the same yardstick. I believe it is my e1-ness that make me feel disappointed or frustrated with others when they do wrong, but it is my MBTI type that does not blame them for it (depending on the individual, sometimes it is actually their fault!) I don't make sweeping statements about morals when it's about others, it's just too complex for that, but I do hold on to my own morals. It's one rule for me, another for others, and I am far more strict on myself. While it is ok for a friend of mine to appear arrogant (I enjoy seeing her confidence) it is not ok for me to do the same, because it is not within the rules of what I must achieve - which is utter perfection. The difference, I think, between me and the way the e1 profile looks, is that I do not attempt to moralise others. For a start, I don't see the point, they won't change their minds just because I tell them to. And secondly, it would be ridiculous to assume that I am right. It is simply useful for me to have moral goals and they need to be black and white if I am to reach them. So that's where my e1 is. It's in the black and whiteness of things and it's in the need for total perfection. The thing is, I don't need anyone else to meet those standards, I will judge them according to their entire personality. Some people, I'm just not going to get on with. That's life. Some people I will. But it rarely has anything to do with my values. It usually just has to do with what kind of personalities I find bearable! Some, I'm afraid, I just find to be an irritation. Just because I would never steal from a shop or deal drugs, it does not mean that I will not be friends with people who steal and deal drugs. That's not the whole of them. I mean, there will be a line. I will not say "yes it's ok that you steal", I will stick to my belief that you shouldn't steal, that it effects other people negatively, but if it's something that's a bit petty (I had friends who just found it exciting to lift something of low value) then I really don't care. So...does that make sense? I guess it depends on magnitude. Hm. What you say about the contradictory nature of e1 absolutism and my "we can't go drawing lines" philosophy would be as above. There are rules for me and rules for others but, although I'm aware that it's contradictory, the contradictoriness does not really bother me.

if you like lacan's ideas, it might be probable to think that deconstruction is not just a fad you are following but that this process would be part of you. Ni fundamentally supports desconstruction... to liberate new unconscious perception, to see things in a new light, to transcend the usual way of looking at things.

Yes. It had occurred to me that I have taken the choices I have education wise because I followed what seemed correct to me. I learned many theories and threw out Freud, Marx and the Frankfurt School because I saw them as "missing the point", while I was attracted to Lacan and Derrida because their thinking suited my own. So there's probably a bit of both - education and original perception.

How do you perceive me (in this forum)? with regard to typology or whatever...

Sorry, I don't know. I'm not very good at telling through one conversation. I usually need to see people react to things to have the first clue of this!

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

justeccentricnotinsane,

interesting you didn't give an echo to what i declared to be my main point:

"the overall tendency in what you are writing is, imo: even though there is something to it, it's still not exactly this and it's not exactly that. so nothing is really sufficient..." variant: it's about half/half. so i'll underline it a bit:

maybe this truism is important (especially if e1 would be your type): typology is never 100 %, it's about tendencies, it covers maybe 30 % of the important traits of a person, not more. you say to yourself: "are unable to adequately cover everything", so the (preconscious) subtext could be: should be covering everything, but don't (on a unconscious level, negations do not exist). in my perception, your fingertip is pointing at the limitations of every concept or tendency (your smiley, thus your emotion, is after the word "confusion"). this would be Ni, or e1, e6 or e4 or whatever.

so, applied to the topic of definitions: look how you answered my first post in this thread and how you used the idea of definitions (the concept and it's synonyms and larger synonyms) in your argumentation. sure a definition does not have to be explicit. it's the way of approaching a problem by (very often implicit) detecting presuppositions and relativizing the topic by it ("assumption", "presupposition" are synonyms for "definition" in this context of mine). the way how you use the idea shows how you define it.

subtext (i take the risk of a hypothesis, which is strictly heuristical): versus your eroding of my concepts (which is ok with me, since i do it all the time) i invite you to define your concepts, stick with them (without relativizing them by showing the limits of someone's elses use of it) and show me how you use them and how they apply to your person. if you're interested in deepening this, i recommend reading the according chapter in thomson's book. it would take too much space to summarize all this. what i just said in this paragraph is applying what thomson says about Ni to your text, without knowing if you are Ni-first (if you're Ni-first, these remarks could trigger something in you, if you're not, they will probably have no effect on you). so i might be way off...

then there is the part of your aversion against: "we must do this!" thomson describes this on the bases of Ni. Ni is a perception, action is based on judgment. If Ni is more important than your judgment and overrules the e1 in yourself (smile!) then, no action is required and you maintain your autonomy (a feature very important to Nis).

i got your point that you keep your black and white within you. has it always been this way? did you learn it, because the others reacted by turning your interventions down? (is it half/half ;-) if not, maybe it's the (Ni?) part in you that keeps assigning the freedom-space to others you'd like to have yourself - against your very strict inner tutor. what ever the motivation or the function, i'd like to support your Ni vs. e1 ;-) 'cause in my life, i had not only minor conflicts with e1s who's ethical claims i quite systematically deconstructed. preferably letting them know - in the subtext - that i consider it as their will for power (and to avoid the shame of critique).

what is "your point" (vs. freud, marx, frankfurter schule)?
what "suits" your own "thinking" with lacan and derrida?
what is "eccentric" in you, but not "insane"?

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

to me lacan suits my feeling and thinking in many ways, one of the important ones being:

whatever i do, say or live, i'll never be fully satisfied. i will always be looking for this full satisfaction, causing me thereby a lot of pain, and still the satisfaction i look for is moving with the horizon i'd like to reach.
lacan believes this is not only the case for e4s (or e1s, or e3s), but for every human being, yet in different ways and "colours". i'm not sure if this is universal, but it's true for me.

the "solution": to accept this chronic frustration as being part of life, to accept my limitations, which is a reconciling mourning process.

my nick means: sourcelight, i.e. light originating from the source. this is what i believe is my core but i have lost the contact to it in so many areas of myself. so it's this horizon, or this root, i'm longing for.

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

Firstly. I'll come back to what you asked earlier in your answer. I'm sorry, I don't think I'm quite as far along as you with this stuff and I think I need to give it a couple of reads to understand it properly. But the bits below I understood, I understand.

i got your point that you keep your black and white within you. has it always been this way? did you learn it, because the others reacted by turning your interventions down? if not, maybe it's the (Ni?) part in you that keeps assigning the freedom-space to others you'd like to have yourself - against your very strict inner tutor. what ever the motivation or the function, i'd like to support your Ni vs. e1 ;-) 'cause in my life, i had not only minor conflicts with e1s who's ethical claims i quite systematically deconstructed. preferably letting them know - in the subtext - that i consider it as their will for power (and to avoid the shame of critique).

Well, I have been told as a toddler I was quite authoritative with others, making sure other toddlers shared for example (which apparently was very funny and cute) and I can remember scolding people at primary school and before my teen years over things I found to be immoralistic. The main thing I scolded people on was triviliaising important matters. I had friends that "played" with the idea of anorexia and bipolar disorder. That said they suffered these disorders because they thought it made them look cool, but really they did not have these disorders. I can remember being upset at that and complaining to other friends or (when I was very young) to the person's face that they should not disrespect the pain of others by playing with these things. I was a very serious kid in that way! But I grew out of this quickly and it was gone by the time I was 13. I don't think it was through my intervention not working, or people reacting badly. I think I just grew up! I didn't particularly expect anyone to do what I said, it was more just expressing my anger (badly). I think I just learned more mature ways to deal with that anger the older I got. I'm not even sure it was to do with the morals, more that I was very angry all the time and that was how I allowed it to come out. I now don't feel anger at others' immoral behaviour. I have a friend that gets very angry if others are immoral or irresponsible. I tend to believe that she is right - that people should behave differently - but I don't share her strong emotion about it. It just doesn't touch me the same way. I'm sorry that I can't be more clear for you. I don't really know why I grew out of it and I'm not sure if the way I was acting was a typical e1 way. I think as a youngster my anger derived from jealousy, though I am assuming that in hindsight and can't actually remember, and the way I treated others - assuming authority over them in a moralistic way - was because of that, rather than the morals themselves. I do believe in the morals, I just don't think it was the morals that drove me. I was angry and it came out in various ways - this was one of them but I could also be very violent (which may not seem particularly e1!)

what is "your point" (vs. freud, marx, frankfurter schule)?

Marx - theory relies on power actually coming from the top.

There's two problems with this.

1) The assumption of a downward movement of authority, power and ideology
Marx assumes we are under the control of the very rich - a handful of society (of all powerful despots in Marx's view) controlling the rest.

This seems to assume that people are easily controlled. They can be controlled.but not to the extent that Marxists seem to believe. It just seems implausible. It suggests that we are literally manipulated by higher powers - large companies, rich people - and they deliberately keep us down, keep us in line. There is an element of this, of course capitalism can lead the rich to be rich and the working classes to work hard for very little. And yes it alienates them from the product they are creating (I forget what Marx called this). These things are true. But it is the way in which Marx conceives of this kind of function happening that bothers me. Ideology does not come from the top.

Ideology is created in a sideways fashion, not from the top downwards. It is not literally the case that people tell us what to believe. Propaganda, of course, can be very effective, but not on its own. Even propaganda needs to key in to the prevailing ideology of them time. One way in which people who believe power comes from the top (that we are controlled) evidence this power is in consumerism. This is where Adorno (from Frankfurt school) comes in too. People assume the way it works is that companies advertise and the masses are fooled into buying new things, thing they don't need. Yes. To a certain extent. But it's not quite so simple. It's a process of trial and error. Of course we could look back and say, for example, that Twiggy became popular and then everybody wanted to be thin and now there are a lot of sales of diet products etc. Well, it is easy to look back and see that correlation - of Twiggy being popular and people beginning to diet - but to do that we have to ignore the hundreds of other young models. It is not that the advertising agencies fed us Twiggy. It is that they fed us Twiggy alongside hundreds of others that weren't Twiggy and that nobody remembers, and waited to see what would stick. Why don't we remember them? They may well have had just the same amount of money poured in to advertise them but the public didn't like them. We go for products and images that we are already looking for. Ideology can be influenced, but not controlled, because it is also influenced by world events, by a shift in society, by anything. Why was Marilyn Monroe popular? Because they chucked her in films and told us to love her? What about all the other actresses? No, it was because her image embodied a certain type of woman at a time when women were moving into the workplace. She was a glamourous but essentially submissive woman that pretended to be stupid and sexy - it is what men most wanted to look at at a time when women were beginning to be more powerful.

The same with politics, the same with everything. We cannot be controlled from the top alone. We can be influenced, but our influencers need to key in to the public mood - they need to deliver their message to us in the way we need at that moment - they need to key in to what we most desire. They cannot just force feed us any old shit because people are not that easily brainwashed. Brainwashing works when we want to be brainwashed. The power is on both sides, even if it leans towards the more powerful people in society.

2) The working class will do something different to the upper classes - moving things externally
The Marxist way: "If the working classes rise up and take power they will create a more equal society because they know what it's like to be hardworking and will want things to be equal".

No. Simply not true. If the working classes rise up and take power they will be exactly the same as our current leaders, even if there are some slight differences in policy. They are still people. It is not that people are inherently different if they are at the bottom or top of society. I think it is naive to think that people want things to be equal, regardless of class. People want what they think they deserve - and they often think they deserve a lot! Besides this, there is a great deal of people in society who, if tempted, would gladly take more money to screw someone over. Unless you're going to kill anybody with a slightly different moral view then you're not going to keep people in line by appealing to their conscience. It's idealistic. It's nice, but it's idealistic.

With Freud (sorry I'm trying to stop rambling so I'll keep this brief!) - The question "why?" comes to mind. He never, to me, tried to make his argument plausible. As far as I can tell, he could have said we were driven by the need to climb trees (one of our early instincts) and it would have made as much sense. The idea that everything is libidinal simply does not work, because even animals aren't simply libidinal! There are many other instincts that are just as important. And the idea the unconscious is a mystical, magical box of repressed memories?! Give me a break. He was treating people at a time when women were bought to be suffering from hysteria - that was part of his work. The reason it was all about sex was because, as has oft been said since this era, the repression from sex - the need for women to feel shameful for wanting it and the need for them to want for nothing and rely on men - was quite damaging (alongside many other things). Freud was a product of his time. (So was Marx to a certain extent). Their work makes more sense in its historical context than out.

what "suits" your own "thinking" with lacan and derrida?

In a sentence - nothing is real.

Nothing is absolute, nothing can be pinned down exactly, we are a product of our language, we are subjects to an ideology which permeates through the collective unconscious (rather than from the top). We are driven by our need to feel authentic, to feel we have an identity, to believe we are autonomous beings. But this is an illusion.

what is "eccentric" in you, but not "insane"?

I tried to explain but it's really difficult. I can't pin it down. I've just always felt a bit different and, to be honest, most people treat me as if I'm a bit different too. I can be very aware that my priorities and the way I think are a little different. I'll come back to it once I've had a think and see if I can come up with definite examples.

By the way - let's not make this conversation all about me! what about yourself? How would you say you fit in with the typology?

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

about after the second post of yours i asked myself if you had ever considered e6 (and if, why you've rejected is as a primary type...) just an idea.
for me, it's time to go to bed. bonne nuit, gute nacht.

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

about after the second post of yours i asked myself if you had ever considered e6 (and if, why you've rejected is as a primary type...) just an idea.
for me, it's time to go to bed. bonne nuit, gute nacht.

Oh God, not more possibilities! hehe. Read through a description. I see myself in some of it like asking everybody's else's point of view before confirming a decision. But in my case, I've already made the decision and if people say no I'll do it anyway. I'm not asking because I feel fearful of making the decision. I am asking people if I am being irresponsible for making the decision I have already made. I need assurance that I am not being irresponsible before I can allow myself to do something without guilt. So although I see part of it, I see the e1 more.

Cheers and goodnight!

 

[Andy Quellenlicht]

j.e.n.i.,
with infj, according to l. thomson, i fit quite smoothly. it showed me a lot about my functioning.
with the enneagram, it's much more complicated; but e3w4, self-preservating subtype, expresses many important things in me.

what i recall most of my interpretation of yesterday is your smiley after the word "confusion"... ;-)

 

[invisible]

invisible, what rang true for you?

a range of things confusedly. novelistic tendency to follow strong hunches until i might elucidate principles behind them over time although i might already have made the decision that it is right and may never get at the complete entirety of why i have decided it is right. exclusion of conflicts with my hunches and impulses, in order to follow them, to the point of isolation. also your material on relating to and making use of patterns, need to reach and demonstrate transcendence of concepts.

will probably return to this thread and digest it over time, too much information to take in at once.