I have been sensing recently that the English-language socionics community is entering a new phase of development -- one of increasing fragmentation. This article discusses the causes and implications of this evolution.
Socionics forums
Originally, people were drawn together to the16types.info to discuss socionics, because there was nowhere else to do so. Socionics.com was where the bulk of socionics information could be found, but the site (as far as I know) did not have a forum at the time.
The16types.info grew, and eventually people settled into the community, and differences of opinion began to form. A group splintered off and created Socionix.com. At first this was not too successful, but after the passing of a few (?) years, it appears that the new forum is reasonably active and here to stay. At some point, a forum was established at Socionics.com.
A number of single-member forums were attempted, but none of these were successful. Next, the Socionics Workshop project was created. At first not too active, through persistent efforts it has become stable and reasonably active.
Most recently, the former admin of the16types.info created his own socionics forum and seems to have been successful in attracting a certain number of people to it. His persistence in socionics related projects will probably guarantee some measure of success.
That makes 5 viable forums now, instead of 1 just a few years ago. Recently, I have noticed people taking on new usernames at the new forums. This reflects a desire to break with the past and participate only in one or maybe two forums instead of jumping from forum to forum as they used to. The sense that there is a single socionics community seems to be gradually disappearing.
Socionics wikis
Something similar has happened with socionics wikis. Wikisocion was created to be something independent of any socionics 'schools' that might develop. I did not foresee that fragmentation would lead to the creation of new socionics wikis as well as new forums. With an emphasis strictly on amassing information, I did not think that Wikisocion would develop the same social problems as socionics forums typically do. Now there are wikis in place at socionics.ws and metasocion.com (coming soon). Naturally, building an active wiki community takes much more than simply setting up the software, and both of these competing wikis could well end up the sole domain of a single contributor, but given an active forum community that is already in place, both these sites stand some chance of creating a viable socionics wiki over time.
In short, fragmentation is the new trend, and every breakaway group has the bright idea of generating its own texts, own forum, and own wiki, which are not easily distinguishable in substance from the others. It seems that the main motive for this is not dissatisfaction with existing information, but interpersonal animosity: people want to keep doing the same activities as before, but without the aggravating presence of "certain individuals." More on animosity later.
Parallels with the Russian-language socionics community
Basically, the same processes are taking place, but with some key differences. Most importantly, the practical development of socionics in the West is not occurring as thoroughly as in Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania due to the fact that almost all discussion and communication is online. Seeing that socionics is a kind of applied psychology, trying to use it in person, in groups generates more skills and understanding than discussing it over the Internet. Hence, for now at least, the factions that have formed in the English-speaking Internet are not able to really develop any collective know-how beyond some common general approaches used in online discussion. Due to their years of hands-on experience, socionics groups in the former Soviet Union have been able to amass much more know-how and are still far ahead of their western "colleagues." Blessed with free time and an intellectually conducive environment in the USSR during their early years, they were able to work together synergetically in ways that seem unlikely in the more materially preoccupied West.
Implications of fragmentation
Whereas up until a few years ago the spirit of the online socionics community was generally one of cooperation, now more competition is evident. Multiple forums and wikis must now compete for active members. Each community tries to create its own body of knowledge in order to be autonomous, even though it that body differs little from that of other communities. Each forum or wiki or other project is ultimately about the same topic, with almost no specialization possible in practice. This means that each forum is in direct competition with the others and defines itself through overt or implied references to "the other forums." This direct competition seems to perpetuate existing ill-will between communities. Indeed, competition seems to be the defining aspect of the current phase of socionics. Judging by how the Russian-language socionics community has developed, it may well be permanent.
The type of competition that is evolving in socionics is more akin to the competition of business or politics than to that of academia. It is a competition for website hits, popularity, and influence among the mass consumer rather than for recognition within one's professional community (although undoubtedly there are elements of politics and business in academia). To their credit, Russian and Ukrainian socionists are making efforts to develop a professional community, mostly to collectively defend themselves and the field from the ill effects of outsiders who misrepresent socionics for personal gain and engender negative public perception of socionics through their careless practices. Not to say, of course, that mainstream socionists don't make mistakes or always conscientious. Socionics as an pre-academic field is particularly vulnerable to abuse by entrepreneurial or neurotic individuals. Rather than the thorough, rational academic, nowadays it is the savvy independent website developer who wields the most influence in forming popular perception of socionics. Socionists basically find themselves in the same position as practitioners of natural healing -- vulnerable to quacks and at the mercy of those who form popular perception of the field and whose websites are at the top of search engine results. Recognizing their vulnerability, socionists begin to focus more on promotion, advertising, and Google page rank and somewhat less on developing the field of socionics itself.
As more and more people develop their own personal formulations or interpretations of socionics and write about them as "socionics," the neophyte experiences greater and greater conceptual confusion when trying to learn about the subject in English. A review of the two books published on socionics in English reveals significant differences in theory and method. A review of information sites on socionics confirms this suspicion. Indeed, as a beginner to socionics in Ukraine in 2000, I found the amount of information on the subject (in Russian) simply staggering, yet ultimately found only a very small amount of it to be actually necessary and useful. The rest was redundant, superfluous, speculative, or misleading or plain false. Almost everything of value had been derived from Augusta, so studying her writings proved more important than reading anything else, though some people find her style hard to digest.
Animosity in socionics
Anyone who has participated for any length of time in socionics forums has encountered animosity -- often shocking in its vehemence. At one forum you read about how another forum sucks. As a website owner, you get messages telling you you're an idiot and a failure (as well as thank you messages, to be sure). Forum comments about the stupidity of other forum members or information sources are everywhere. People are quoted incorrectly; their motives are misportrayed. This animosity seems to have grown over the past few years and become institutionalized through the formation of competing forum communities.
Long-standing socionics practitioners literally have to pass through a prolongued bath of negative emotions to remain in the field, and few are capable of making it through without becoming embittered, even traumatized on some level. Those who seem impervious to the negative emotions tend to lack intellectual depth.
As I have mentioned, animosity goes hand in hand with competition for limited resources (active forum members, personal popularity, popular perception, advertising or book revenue, etc.). Competition, in turn, is the result of having no niches to develop (i.e. it's all just "socionics"), and also because of the lack of science in the field (i.e. there are no objective criteria for choosing between competing views).
But perhaps most of all, animosity arises because socionics is about people. Community members inevitably use it on each other (by typing, labeling, and categorizing), often causing offense and bad feelings. Participants of socionics forums reveal a lot of themselves and end up becoming vulnerable. While the personal disclosure is necessary to build relationships with friends within the community, it will inevitably be misinterpreted or judged less positively by others, who are then likely to refer to you unflatteringly behind your back. We are all guilty of this at socionics forums, and it seems unavoidable due to the nature of the subject. Too much personal information and sentiments shared publicly by too many people builds a foundation for interpersonal animosity. Within a community of regular members, such as an active online forum, there is no way to reduce exposure to potential enemies; they are all there in one spot. This allows bad relationships to flourish along with potentially good ones, and the spirit of personal disclosure and analysis, and getting and giving feedback on things that are personal, that is inherent to socionics, provides the spark to set the process in motion.
Let me rephrase that thought. I think the basic source of animosity comes from having too much personal contact with people with whom there is no natural basis for friendship (for whatever reason). When boundaries are crossed with the wrong people, animosity arises. Socionics encourages people to get more personal and open up more than they normally would, since the topic of discussion is personality, right? As a result, more boundaries are crossed with more of the wrong people, especially on online forums where there is no way to handpick one's audience. This is a recipe for a morass of bickering and in-fighting.
As a result, we get a rather perverse situation where a field that has a lot to say about personal growth and interpersonal relationships spawns a community that actually breeds animosity as one of its side effects. I'm not the first person to say this; a while back I found an article online in Russian, called "Socionics: the Science that Teaches Animosity" (copy of article posted
here).
Conclusion
From my point of view, the processes taking place are natural and inevitable. I tend to think that if it could be any different, it would be.
While socionics can be applied individually with positive results (in my experience, at least) and discussed fruitfully among friends and similarly minded acquaintances, making socionics a topic of discussion among larger groups seems to invite contention. When a stable community develops, animosity and eventual fragmentation appear inevitable, and discussion is plagued by a lack of scientific method. Commercial and territorial interests eventually arise, and a mixed bag of people are attracted to the profession, where there is no accountability or quality control other than one's own internal guidelines. The conscientious and responsible then form associations to protect themselves from outsiders. Hopefully, at some point the field of socionics is overtaken by rational, empirical science before anything really bad happens.
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Follow-up Dec. 2009
This post deserves a follow-up at some point. The reasons for this are the failure of McNew's individual socionics projects, my 8-month hiatus from all things socionic, and a recognition that some of my assessment above was colored by my own sensitivity to animosity, ill-will, and bullying behaviors.
