"Fooled" by Socionics

This long and rambling post was inspired by this comment from Consentingadult.

I have a suggestion: instead of criticizing Augusta (which in itself is perfectly valid), why don't you actually criticize one or more of your own writings? E.g. the ILE description in the article, where you said, amongst other things: 

"I have known ILEs who were heads of research institutes, NGOs, language teaching schools, and consulting companies. Many more held various positions in all kinds of organizations where they had a great deal of independence. The common feature of all engaged ILEs seems to be that they are working on some far-reaching personal project that has yet to come to full fruition."

I would like to know: what was wrong about this, how did you fool yourself to arrive at such insights that you now claim cannot be true or valid?

I'll get to criticism of types eventually. I was hoping to start with information aspects, then move to functions and Model A, then to types and intertype relations.

If your question was not simply rhetorical (since I detect a bit of sarcasm), here is my response.

What's "wrong" about the ILE description

I described a subset of ILEs — those who are above-average, proactive, and highly engaged in the modern, growing economy. If I'd written something that described the under-average, reactive, and underengaged ILEs, or the subsistence farmer and hunter-gatherer ILEs equally as well as the more fortunate, modern ILEs, the resulting description would have been too abstract to "do any good."

One might argue that I've described the "greatest potential" that people of this type can attain to. I agree that that might be inspiring, and people want and need to be inspired. But it's not necessarily true that you can group people into 16 types and then expect that any of those people has the potential to achieve the level of success, fulfillment, or happiness of the most fortunate individuals of their type.

I described the ideal type, not the borderline, overly contradictory, or untypeable ILEs. This is a universal problem in socionics, and it comes from being unable to type all individuals in a population. If socionists can only type what they themselves can recognize, then they only describe the most recognizable types. Then other people will perpetuate the bias towards recognizable types and intertype relations.

I don't expect that socionics will ever overcome this problem because it is not sufficiently accurate to ever develop foolproof empirical tests. An "ILE" will always be "what I've defined as an ILE," and thus any description is as good as any other.

Why do I use the word "accurate?" Because I am convinced that no matter how you define and split the 16 types, the resulting intertype relations will not be close enough to those postulated by socionics to call the system "accurate." The reason socionics has a "lack of empiricism" problem is simply because it has an "accuracy" problem. If socionics were more accurate, the empirical data would be flowing in all around. For instance, the phenomenon of duality would be scrutinized and elucidated, and researchers would be studying it from multiple angles to learn more about how and why it happens.

The fact is, socionics duality as described by Augusta is a rare subset of dual relations, and when it happens between a man and a woman, there is a lot more going on that has nothing to do with socionics. And it doesn't necessarily happen just to duals. In my mind this is a fatal blow to the socionics model of the psyche, since duality was socionics' most powerful hypothesis.

How I managed to "fool myself" 

A bigger question to ask is, "how did Augusta manage to fool herself?" I'll speculate about this further down.

In my case, my initial insights were simple and promising enough that I continued my study of socionics. I had only really deeply processed a small number of my personal relationships, but my insights were promising enough that I was hopeful that socionics could be applied generally, and not just in these specific cases. Of course, I based my understanding on my experiences of the most easily recognizable types and relationships in my environment.

At the moment I wrote the ILE description, my arsenal of experience had grown from a handful to maybe a couple hundred people of different types. However, my deeply processed personal experiences relating to each of them lagged behind. Based on my experiences so far, I was willing to take the system on faith to a degree. When eventually forced to face major contradictions, I began to systematically consider the less easily definable types and relations that I had been discounting and give them an equal place in my mind alongside the recognizable ones. After a while, I concluded that socionics was not accurate enough as it should be, considering the large amount of mental storage space required to house it. Furthermore, the things it could tell a person (less than I used to think) were of little use to me at this stage of life. This process provided some new insights that I now feel obligated to share with my socionics audience.

Biases

When one begins to get into socionics, one recognizes only a tiny sliver of types and intertype relations — those that most obviously fit descriptions and can thus be interpreted thoroughly from a socionics perspective. These "obvious fits" then form the foundation of one's understanding of socionics, giving the person a bias from day one that they will be unable to correct until much later, if ever. If a socionics aficionado recognizes the limitations and inaccuracies of socionics from the outset due to a more methodical and less exciteable personality, you can be sure that they will never become socionics writers!

Socionics is, in a way, worse off than astrology. With astrology you at least know when a person was born, making disagreement on their astrological type impossible. Then you can read a description and say, "well, that doesn't fit!" In socionics, if a person doesn't match their type description, then you've probably mistyped them. Keep switching types until you find the "best fit!"

Changing times

Yes, this has been an absolutely normal way of thinking about psychological matters for eons, but the times are changing and this approach is losing popularity as science has more and more to say about things that people used to only be able to speculate about. More and more people are sensing this and jumping on the train of empirical psychology and neuroscience. This is one of the reasons socionics is, in my opinion, slowly dying out.

Speculation about Augusta

I am quite certain that if Augusta were born today, she would not create socionics. She would read everything currently available on individual differences and go into psychology research or neuroscience. But she grew up before most of the really interesting research started being done, and was stuck in the Soviet Union where there was a official slant on psychology that downplayed personality differences. Thanks in part to typology, personality differences are now taken for granted.

Augusta created a system that allowed for much more healthy psychological variability than was commonly accepted at the time, but she was quite absolutist in her views on the types. For instance, she published a paper explaining why ILE is the best type to run a scientific research institute, ignoring other significant factors other than type. It seemed that she was proposing a new way of staffing posts and organizing society that could be implemented within the Soviet system.

Obviously, the zeitgeist has changed dramatically since then, even in the former Soviet Union. As I understand from my interaction with the socionics community in Kiev, in the late 1980s Augusta's interests drifted to other areas, and she became a less and less active participant of the socionics community, while continuing to occasionally voice her views on the subject. I was also told that she was in a rather unhappy marriage with an LSE (she was ILE), which could have contributed to her idealization of duality.

Was Augusta "fooled" by her own ideas? I suppose you could say so. She would have had the same problems with confirmation bias that any later student of socionics would have, alleviated by the process of discussing ideas and hypotheses with a group of associates. They noticed some fascinating new patterns, broke new ground, and made some mistakes that are easier to recognize decades later.

Watering down socionics

If socionists were forced to type everyone and, particularly, to examine every single relationship among these people, and then to describe types and intertype relations using a strictly statistical method, I am certain that we would see a drastic watering-down of both type and relation descriptions.  Socionics would lose its "teeth."

However, the more watered-down one's views on a subject are, the less motivated one is to propogate one's views. This is why the people who have built up the experience to help water down socionics usually can't be bothered to do so. I personally view this as my duty to society, but my motivation is much weaker than it was to promulgate classical socionics, which engaged my need for recognition, connection with others, and mental discovery. Now, the inspiration is just not there. There's no "vision" to be found by picking apart someone else's somewhat erroneous theory to a dwindling and disinterested audience. In fact, the main reason I am writing this post is probably to avoid doing my taxes.

From a kind of esoteric psychology perspective, it may be good to keep socionics classical, albeit full of illusions. People come through the system, receive rigorous training that excites them and fills them with energy, and they move on to do other things. But it's already too late; socionics is dying a long, slow death. Successive generations of socionists are less and less inspired and inspiring, career momentum and entropy are taking over, and there is just too much new and exciting information on personality and human interaction coming from research that takes a fundamentally different (empirical) approach than socionics.

Reexamining Socionics: Introduction

I'd now like to begin an ambitious and open-ended intellectual exercise — to critically reexamine the foundations of socionics and look for errors. I have a few ideas, but I honestly don't know where this is going to lead. It could be great, or it could be pathetic.

As explained in previous posts, this idea only came to me recently after a critical mass of disqualifying counter-examples to socionics theory had accumulated. Until then, I had kept the original theory intact in my mind, but had tacked on increasing numbers of "additional factors" that influenced interaction and relationships. The sum of these efforts is presented in my post on "My Personal Typology."

Just so you know, this whole way of writing about people and their interaction feels increasingly ridiculous to me. Feel free to laugh with me at the level of intellectualization coming through in the previous paragraph. So, I will try to break free of this mold (pun intended) over the next few posts. After all, that's part of why I've decided to put socionics behind me. 

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So, what are the foundations of socionics? Turns out I listed them in 2007. We have information elements or "aspects of information," which are a kind of logical necessity once you state that different functions (I previously called them "IM elements," following Augusta's nomenclature) perceive different types of information about reality. Then you have Model A with its 8 different positions, or "functions" (yeah, the double meaning of "functions" can be confusing), and the 8 functions/IM elements that can occupy the different positions, each of which describes a way of perceiving information, and a kind of state of mind. That's three sets of highly interrelated concepts, the core of socionics theory. These concepts come with some assumptions that I hope to look at as well. And they combine together to form a system of 16 types that can be broken down into dichotomies, 16 intertype relations, quadras, etc.

Yes, I understand that not everyone sees socionics as being about this stuff. But that's their choice to disregard classical socionics and reframe the field in their own peculiar way. I "grew up" on Aushra Augustinavichiute's texts, so that's what socionics is to me. I encourage you to revisit my presentations/discussions of some of her foundational works. Unfortunately, I only got partway through my write-ups, but enough work was done that you can get a good taste of things.

Augusta also gives the best presentation of socionics, in my opinion. She explains why she introduces concepts and starts with broad premises. Subsequent authors either write in a blatantly non-explanatory style (e.g. "Socionics divides information processing into 8 different varieties...") or pass over the broader ideas superficially (e.g. "Information can be divided into 8 types..."). Some make new broad idea inventions of their own, but they seem too detached from reality. Skimming over some of Augusta's writing now, I am still impressed with the boldness and freshness of her intellect. Take this for example (source):

'Direct' interaction of bodies — or collisions — are a rare phenonemon. 'Catastrophes' in space are rare only because heavenly bodies interact "from afar," by means of fields. Living organisms also interact through fields. From an observer's viewpoint, an organism's field is the sum of all interrelations between one object and other objects. The individual psyche perceives this interaction as all manner of internal feelings.

Even if I no longer "do" socionics, this stuff is still pretty cool to think about. Or how about this for something to mull over (source):

The human brain, in reflecting external and internal reality, serves not only the individual himself, but society as well. To satisfy his own needs, a person needs to have an idea of the entire reality around him. People cooperate in serving the needs of society; individuals communicate to the community their impressions of only certain aspects of reality. The mechanism for this phenomenon, in our present understanding, is quite simple: various aspects of reality are reflected in the human brain with differing degrees of differentiation and awareness. Aspects that the individual only uses for himself are reflected in general, composite form and are remembered as images, experience, and skills. Other aspects, which the individual communicates information about to society, are perceived in well-differentiated form with an accuracy that allows the individual to relate information verbally.

I personally love these kinds of broad-stroke descriptions. "Well, that's because it's typically ," you might answer. But I can assure you that different IEEs or ILEs will have different reactions to these texts. Some will say, "duh," some will find them annoyingly vague, others will question their validity (which I may do later). Others will read through them several times and be unable to understand what the author's saying. It's this kind of variation in response that has led me to stop looking for the "needle in the haystack" that is the "essence of " and start interpreting things based on simpler proximate causes, or at least on personality traits with some kind of identifiable physiological basis. Or, actually, just not interpreting them at all if I'm not interested.

So, enough with the introduction.

Reflections on Complementary Functions

I'm posting here my response to the following question:

I don't know if you're still into socionics, but I have actually become better in applying it, and I think it's pretty accurate. The problem is explaining the theory to other people. Socionics seems like more of a system that is based on observation than anything else. (For example, I can't see any reason why Ti types would necessarily seek out Fe types - you could come up with a reason, but it doesn't necessarily prove it, unfortunately.) That's why I'm wondering about its history, because it will make it easier for me to explain to people why it might work. So, here's the question: do you know how Ausra Augusta and her associates developed the system? Was it based on observing a handful of people she knew, or were, for example, hundreds of people talked to in order to develop Model A? (Or something else?) I don't really want to burden you with finding an answer, but you seem like one of the few people in the English speaking world who might know.

I still think of socionics regularly when meeting people and reflecting on their personalities. The subject, I think, will continue to interest me forever. I think the complementarity of functions that you mention is a great mystery that remains to be uncovered by science. Simply by giving the mystery a name (i.e. Ti and Fe), socionics does a lot towards finding an answer, but "Ti and Fe" itself is not the answer.

The answer is doubtless to be found in neurophysiology. Something about the neurophysiological activity known as "Ti" leads to neurochemical exhaustion if not supplemented by "Fe."

More broadly, any specific type or closely related types of mental activity will lead to exhaustion if engaged in long enough or with enough intensity (mirroring the effects of physical activity). As a result, one feels drained, irritable, or devoid of will.

"Ti" and "Fe" may be seen simply as convenient, though imperfect, ways of categorizing mental activity.

Since the source of "Ti" and "Fe" -- evolution -- acts via our physical survival and successful physical transfer of genes and is only interested in our mental activity inasmuch as it produces external results, the mental activity represented by "Ti" or "Fe" must also represent broad types of approaches towards dealing with one's external environment.

A "Ti person" tends to tackle problems and opportunities in his environment in a certain way that differentiates him from most others. This typically leads to success in some areas and deficiencies in others. Yet, because we are not bees or ants, the differentiation cannot be absolute. A "Ti person" who performs more types of tasks adequately probably stands a higher chance of reproducing than one who cannot.

The "purpose" of this differentiation appears to be to make social cooperation desirable and inevitable. It is distinct from sexual drives which make reproduction desirable or from survival drives which make animals territorial and prone to aggression.

The fact that what we call Ti and Fe tend to attract one another is a conclusion born of observation more than logical deduction. Augusta recognized that such patterns existed, but she had no name or framework for them until she came across Jung's Typology, which she adapted to fit her needs more closely. Model A was developed as a result of studying Jung, observing her acquaintances in everyday life, and discussing her ideas with a group of like-minded friends who took interest in the topic. They would field ideas among each other and see how well they played out among each other and in their personal experience, much like any informal but stable group of friends. In this way they were able to develop the overlapping experience that is so critical to socionics (as well as being its Achilles' heel). Without it, socionics discussions tend to be difficult and relatively unproductive.

The Psyche and Reality: Augusta's Understanding

In an earlier post I mentioned the confusion surrounding the terms "function" and "information aspect." In actuality there are three different things that each have their own proper name, and people often mix them up or use them interchangeably for convenience. To clear up the confusion, I have created the following visual (the underlined words are not links):

*Note that in Jungian typology both IM elements and functions of the psyche are called "functions" ("thinking," "feeling," etc. are called functions, but so are the "leading function," "vulnerable function," etc.), while there is no concept that corresponds to information aspects in socionics.

Augusta saw objective reality as consisting of "bodies and fields" - objects and their interrelations. Individuals' perception is able to register all aspects of reality (or at least those accessible to our species) to some degree, but focuses on certain aspects more than others. Hence, the categories used to "divide up" reality can also be used to describe the corresponding "modules" of perception that register them. These modules Augusta called IM elements, or elements of information metabolism. The aspects of reality Augusta called information aspects. She viewed reality as sending living beings a constant stream of information about itself. This stream breaks down into different information aspects much as light breaks down into the colors of the rainbow.

To describe the differences in perception of information between individuals, Augusta used Jung's concept of functions of the psyche. By assigning a number to each IM element in her model of a specific type, she was able to describe the priority of perception, or - in her preferred wording - "the degree of clarity and differentiation of perception" of the given information aspect. The first two IM elements determine the ordering of the other six according to the rules outlined by Jung. At first Augusta referred to only 4 functions, following Jung's example. She called this "Model J." However, there was a logical inconsistency. Reality consisted of 8 information aspects, but only four of these were represented in the model of the psyche, suggesting that the psyche was unable to register the other four. Eventually Augusta and her associates introduced the 8-function model, called "Model A," and found the proper places for perception of all 8 aspects of reality in the socionic model of the psyche.

Simplifying Reality Through the Weak Functions

This topic came to me while working on a translation of Augusta's The Dual Nature of Man. Augusta's type was ILE. She had a definite tendency to simplify factors affecting relationships and interaction between people. Today her theoretical understanding of socionics and intertype interaction still lies at the foundation of socionics, but they have been fleshed out and are widely recognized to be not as clear-cut as she originally described them. In comparison, my blog and website show a more diverse approach to the topic of human interaction that includes other sources of insight (psychology, evolution, personal observations) in addition to socionics.

The difference? Augusta was an ILE with weak (simplistic) , whereas for me is an area of creativity and multi-dimensional perception. Augusta in effect describes a sphere with the aid of . Since her explanations of relationships are secondary to her discovery of new patterns and structure in personality and information interchange, her oversimplifications are permissable, but in the long run they lose out in memetic competition to more fleshed-out and sensitive approaches to understanding relationships. Her understanding of relationships is rough and simplistic and doesn't pick up on the nuances of people's subjective feelings and the diversity of factors that influence these feelings from day to day.

Each of us simplifies certain aspects of reality as well. Have you ever met people who say and believe that all you have to do to maintain good health is eat less than 2000 calories a day, or visit the doctor every six months, or jog three times a week for 40 minutes? Have you ever met people who say and believe that all you have to do to develop your intellectual powers is read one book a week? Or that the key to maintaining a good relationship with your spouse is to frame statements about the relationships in the first person rather than the third (e.g. "I feel distressed when... " instead of "You never... !")? Or that the key to professional success is to perform one's duties and assignments diligently? Or that the way to ensure their physical safety is to take a self-defense course?

Each of these beliefs bears the mark of a weak function (usually the Super-ego). People take a one-dimensional approach toward a multi-dimensional issue. The purpose of this approach is to avoid thinking about this particular aspect of life in order to direct a larger proportion of attention and energy to our "favorite" tasks and activities. People with a multi-dimensional intuitive understanding of the area in question display a willingness to examine the nuances of each problem as it comes up instead of applying a blanket solution (one might say, a "final solution," to use Hitler's revealing choice of words). In certain areas of life each of us is prone to concoct "final solutions" that - naturally - must ultimately fail, since we assume that the problems that arise in this area will always be of the same narrow type that we have been able to foresee. But not all health problems arise from obesity, reading does not involve the entire intellect, relationships cannot be saved through careful wording, diligent employees are often laid off, and robbers do not always attack from the front and warn that they are assaulting you.

In the absence of close relationships with duals (and, to a degree, activators and partial duals), this one-dimensional approach often turns into a rigid false conviction; the individual believes he has found the single correct way of doing things and does not recognize his own incompetency. Dual relations in particular tend to keep the psyche flexible and constantly remind the individual of his own subjectivity in many areas of reality.

Bodies and Fields

One of the tantalizing concepts introduced by Aushra Augusta is the metaphor of "bodies" and "fields" in perception. She wrote that reality consists of aspects that can be broadly compared to bodies in physics and aspects that can be called "fields." Fields are the space between bodies (or objects) where interaction takes place.

Extraverted functions perceive aspects of bodies that can be discerned in and of themselves: shape, color, strength, processes within the object, the object's external activity, direction of movement, potential for change and development, etc.

Introverted functions perceive fields between bodies, or - as Augusta might say - "the reflection of one body within another." When these functions are at work, the individual has a certain attitude towards an object or objects. This attitude is what Augusta is comparing to a "field" in physics. These "attitudes" include: feelings of attraction/repulsion, like/dislike, logicalness/illogicalness, comfort/discomfort, serenity/worry, etc.

Extraverted perception focuses the individual's attention on external objects. Introverted perception focuses attention on the individual's perception of objects.

As I write at Socionics.us,

Objects (bodies): things that can be observed, studied, and discussed apart from the subject (observer)

Fields: things that are perceived through the subject by means of attitudes and cannot be studied apart from the subject