The Reinin Dichotomies are Dead

This is a continuation of an earlier post where I discussed the problems with using the Reinin Dichotomies in socionics. Here I am announcing that -- for me at least -- the Reinin Dichotomies are dead. I cannot imagine myself ever applying them in any way either practically or theoretically. I probably won't even mention them in the book I am slowly writing on socionics. I have long been dubious of the Reinin Dichotomies, and now my personal research interests have drawn me in completely other directions which have far more explanatory and descriptive potential. As a student of individual differences and human relationships, I can think of dozens of more productive things to study than the Reinin Dichotomies.

The problem with the Reinin Dichotomies is that anything of substance they have to say can already be explained without them through an understanding of Model A, the socionic functions, and information aspects. What other descriptions the dichotomies provide are so vague and unsubstantiated as to be useless.

Paradoxically, it is the vagueness of the Reinin Dichotomies that has ensured their longevity, much like the ambiguity of Nostradamus' prophecies of the future. If Nostradamus had written more specifically ("In 1734 an evil dictator will rise to power in Naples and brutally crush all peasant revolts"), his name would be unknown today. Likewise, if the Reinin Dichotomies had specific content intelligible to a majority of intellectually minded readers, as well as a satisfactory substantiation of the existence of the traits (a "mathematical" substantiation sounds oh-so convincing, but the existence of personality traits cannot be proven mathematically), they would have long ago been either "canonized" or dismissed. But because they are so vague, they cannot be disproven, and "believers" can easily inject their own interpretations into the dichotomies. This is the simple formula to which all mumbo-jumbo owes its existence.

Superficially, the Reinin Dichotomies seem to fit into the overall theoretical framework of socionics. They show that the basic four Jungian dichotomies are just a subset of 15 hypothetical dichotomies that divide the 16 types into orthogonal halves. An attempt was made to provide tentative descriptions of the other 11 dichotomies. It seems so logical... and yet available descriptions are inadequate, if not simply incorrect, when applied to real people. The vagueness of the descriptions makes it very hard to dismiss them as inaccurate, especially as we are used to fuzzy definitions in socionics. People study the Reinin Dichotomies and, not completely "getting it," decide they simply have more learning to do. Maybe it's Reinin who has more learning to do...?

This raises an important issue: how can one distinguish between mumbo-jumbo and things that are simply hard to understand? My answer is to look at the creator and/or chief proponents of the ideas and see whether they are able to apply them confidently and consistently, and whether they have been able to convey their ideas to other people who can also apply them confidently in a way that is consistent with how the creator applied them. If the new ideas have successfully been turned into a language of discourse among a group of peers (i.e. people who are not obliged by a teacher-pupil relationship to mimic their teacher), then the ideas have substance. I don't believe the Reinin Dichotomies pass this test.

Postscript (added March 2010)

Augusta presented Reinin's Dichotomies as a hypothesis and stated that they needed further investigation. In contrast with her descriptions of the Jungian Dichomoties and the socionic functions, her descriptions of the Reinin Dichotomies are vague and generally muddled. Most Russian / Ukrainian socionists say that her descriptions weren't very good.

So, was Augusta (well, Reinin actually) "right?" Yes, in the sense that these dichotomies indeed exist mathematically. Whether they exist as actual physical phenomena is another issue. I personally have been unable to see how any of the proposed descriptions I've read can relate to reality. The second problem is that I cannot see how the descriptions follow logically from the socionic model. The third problem is that I do not know of socionists who seem able to consistently apply Reinin Dichotomies in typing and successfully convey their understanding to other people.

All this suggests that trying to make the Reinin Dichotomies work might not be worth many people's time. My perspective is that there is far more to be gained from, say, understanding gender differences than trying to master Reinin Dichotomies. Gender differences have a large body of empirical research, are readily observable, and are far-reaching in their effects. In contrast, the Reinin Dichotomies have a small body of contradictory, non-empirical research, are difficult to observe, and are limited in their explanatory power.

Why the Reinin Dichotomies Are Trivial

The Reinin Dichotomies (more from Wikisocion.org) are a set of 15 symmetrical dichotomies -- or breakdowns -- of the 16 socionic types. They include the original four dichotomies (sensing/intuition, etc.), which are commonly called the "Jungian Foundation." Now there are 11 more, and more is better, right? More dichotomies = more accuracy?...

When I was first studying socionics, I came across two Reinin dichotomies -- "Positivism/Negativism" and "Questioning/Declaring" -- in the works of Augusta. They were mentioned as basically "additional traits that we have observed" -- a sort of afterthought to the main dichotomies, which she discussed in depth. They seemed to fit me, but they did not offer a whole lot of descriptive power beyond a narrow set of situations such as talking about ideas ("questioning/declaring") or giving evaluations ("positivism/negativism"), so I didn't pay much attention to them. Moreover, they had no theoretical explanation within socionics, so they seemed little different than observations that many extraverted sensing males have a similar balding pattern, etc.

Later I got ahold of Augusta's article The Theory of Reinin's Traits (dichotomies), which offered some prospects, but the descriptions once again were too narrow to be very interesting or useful, and many were simply too obscure to understand. I realized that most of the dichotomies came from applying formal logic to the socionics model to "see what it could do." I read through the descriptions several times, made note for a while of things that seemed to apply to various dichotomies, and gradually paid less and less attention to them.

When I got more involved with the socionics community, I noticed that many, many people were using the Reinin dichotomies in incompetent ways. By incompetent I mean that they took Augusta's or others' hypothetical descriptions at face value and were applying them to online and in-person diagnosis without demonstrating a clear understanding of the Reinin dichotomies or even the original four Jungian dichotomies. There was nothing to suggest that they were achieving greater accuracy; on the contrary, there was even more confusion due to the fact that the Reinin dichotomies -- poorly described as they are -- were being given the same weight as the Jungian dichotomies. Plus, the difficulty of using 15 dichotomies is that only four are needed to determine a type, and using more than that greatly increases the likelihood of contradictory results.

Now I view the Reinin dichotomies as an example of excess ("let's see what other structures result if we apply all possible postulates inherent in the original structure"). A sign of this is that it takes a great deal of preparation and thought to understand and begin to apply the Reinin dichotomies, and the "return on investment" is positively miniscule. By comparison, I guarantee that if you invest the same amount of time into studying comparative psychology (the psychology of animals), neuropsychology, or brain chemistry, you will gain a much greater amount of useful knowledge and insight than from the Reinin dichotomies.

But do the Reinin dichotomies "exist?" In other words, are there common traits among the types that are grouped in such a manner? I would say -- possibly, to some extent, but the commonalities are trivial -- basically not worth paying attention to. For instance, take any of the Jungian dichotomies. These dichotomies affect all areas of a person's life and operate whether a person is speaking or not, in a good or bad mood, etc. In addition, when a person must use the opposite axis of a dichotomy, he conveys a sense of 1) displeasure, 2) strain, 3) incompetence and/or inconfidence, 4) indifference, or 5) submissiveness and willingness to agree -- depending on the specific situation. Can the same be said about the Reinin dichotomies? Also, Model A and the basic four dichotomies describe ways of processing information. Is this true of the Reinin dichotomies -- for example, of questioning/declaring or aristocrat/democrat? I would argue that it isn't.

Suppose the Reinin dichotomies really were just as significant as the Jungian dichotomies. Then we would recognize a questioner even when he's not speaking. When forced to give answers to questions rather than ask questions, we would see signs of strain, etc. Or we would recognize strain when a negativist gives positive evaluations of things. However, this is not the case.

Newcomers to socionics are bombarded with excessive categories, and many or most do not recognize right off that not all the categories have equal value. Some are the product of empirical processes (lengthy observation undertaken by many people) and are the bread and butter of both lifestyle and interpersonal interaction. Others are mainly the product of logical thought, are the source of constant debate, have an imperceptible influence on lifestyle, and may or may not have an influence on interpersonal interaction. I can guarantee that if a newcomer to socionics never heard about the Reinin dichotomies, this would not hurt his ability to apply socionics one bit.