Career Recommendations for Socionic Types: 2010

Socionics can be a powerful tool for making wise career choices and achieving professional self-realization. Here I've listed the best professions for young adults of different types given their particular functional strengths and weaknesses:

ILE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SEI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ESE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LII: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
EIE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LSI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SLE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
IEI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SEE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ILI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LIE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
ESI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
LSE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
EII: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
IEE: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor
SLI: farming, crafts and traditional skills, physical labor

Career preparation

1. Stay out of debt at all cost.
2. Consider college only if it costs you nothing and can provide opportunities to learn more about the areas of specialization listed for your type above.
3. If you're paying for college and are in debt, you've almost certainly been tricked. Do a clear-headed cost/benefit analysis given the realities of 2010 (see below) and consider whether to continue studying law, business, or whatever it was the economy needed 10 years ago.
   
4. Cultivate meaningful relationships in the real world. Put the Internet in its place, if necessary. Get to know your neighbors. Experiment cooperating with people in little, material things like cooking, gardening, sharing tools, etc.
   
5. Decrease your energy consumption and lower your baseline expenses as necessary to ensure your continuing security and freedom.
6. Find mentors and develop the professional skills needed for the careers listed for your type above.
   

Outlook for 2010 and beyond

Economic stimulus packages have helped the economy make a modest comeback, and 2010 should see a tentative economic recovery, despite lingering unemployment and a depressed housing market...

Blah blah blah. You've heard it all before. How about a different perspective that doesn't come from the mass media?

Creating a Positive Type Environment

In a previous post I mentioned that I had used socionics to help create a better type environment for myself:

Thanks to socionics, I became aware of the kinds of interpersonal factors that might have been causing my multi-month blues. I came to believe that the types of the people around me were having a great effect on my general emotional state, and that results could be obtained by changing the types in my environment by choosing more carefully whom I lived with, worked with, and was emotionally close with. This strategy worked! It took a couple years to make my "type environment" the way I wanted and to learn to stop nagging people with the "wrong" types to try to get them to start understanding and validating me. But since then, I have never had anything that I would call full-fledged depression.

This generated some questions, so I will go into some more detail here about my personal experience.

Before my turning point at age 23 when I learned of socionics, my type environment had depended almost entirely on forces outside of my control. I was born into a particular family with a particular lifestyle and set of life circumstances. Location, infrastructure, and family values influenced my personal contacts while I lived at home. As an exchange student, I was placed in a host family; at the university, I was placed in a dormitory with people I didn't know. As a missionary during a two-year mission, I was moved around and put with different missionary companions at others' will, as if a guinea pig in a gigantic socionics experiment where two months of peace might be followed by two months of hell.

This is often the situation for many adolescents. Part of becoming an adult is to begin making your own choices of "who, what, where, when, why, and how." Only a lucky minority get ideal conditions for their own personal growth and harmony handed to them on a silver platter right from their infancy. In my case, some things were given to me while others weren't. For instance, I had ideal conditions for intellectual development and imperfect conditions for emotional development. I had always managed to find friends at school and elsewhere who would listen with interest to my insights and laugh at my humor, but only by my mid-20s was I consistently living and interacting closely with people who could balance out my own tendencies and bring out the best in me.

At the time I learned of socionics, my personal and interpersonal lives were a complete mess. I did not have reliable confidantes that I felt secure sharing my problems with. I was trying to manage my inner life by applying learned religious formulas which did not work because I had such unfulfilled emotional needs and because my personality did not fit the formulas. I had not learned to recognize and trust my instincts regarding relationships, and had been dating a girl that I had had constant doubts about. I tried to ignore my doubts because on the surface it seemed like a really good match. I had years of personal and relationship issues that were eating at me, and I was unconsciously looking for a way out.

When I met my first teacher of socionics, I began to see the way out of my particular mess -- to stop looking for the sources of problems within myself and to start seeing the external causes, in this case the types of people surrounding me and affecting my emotional life. I quickly realized just how random my type environment had been until then, with just a few periods of good fortune where I was with compatible people (but not of my own choosing). I resolved to master socionics and work my way out of my problems into a happier situation. For a few years this was the guiding purpose of my life around which all my inner forces were "crystallized."

Immediately, I started making different decisions. For instance, I was living at the time with an EIE-LSI couple that I felt very uncomfortable with, and yet baffingly had never considered leaving. I moved out of their home and rented a separate apartment with a friend's help. I started relating to people at my work a little differently, allowing myself to be a bit more personal with some and remain comfortably distant with others. I found this took some stress off me, as I had previously worried about what kind of distance to keep with people. I found that I tended to relax around certain people and grow tense around others. I began to let these internal responses influence my actions with people, pushing myself to be more spontaneous and self-revealing whenever I felt comfortable with someone. My teacher helped by identifying the types of many people at my office, mostly correctly.

Fortunately, my teacher planted some very handy, if somewhat esoteric, ideas in me. One was to treat my own psychological type as a powerful piece of machinery that I had in my possession and could learn to use to my advantage by paying close attention to my machinery's "output" in response to the environment's "input" and by cleaning the machinery of stereotypes and other people's values that I had unconsciously picked up over the years. I found this to be a valuable metaphor for all the psychological and physical traits we are born with. It was exactly the kind of thing I needed to learn after having mistrusted my natural impulses for so long.

Another idea he planted in me was that to allow dualization to happen I had to do certain things to trigger a response in the other person. I needed to learn to "act my type," in a very general way. Then, the other person would respond in a typical way that would in turn set off a related mechanism in myself, and the process would start rolling and gaining a momentum of its own. This type of guidance from my teacher concreticized the things I needed to work on and helped me see a clear path of development in front of me.

I returned to the States from Ukraine and had a very peaceful senior year with vastly less personal and interpersonal anguish than before. Instead of opening up indiscriminately to whomever came along and seemed willing to listen (and often feeling burnt by their lack of response), I now tried to open up only to people who could realistically respond in the way I needed. I kept my eyes pealed for possible duals and tried to find ways to spend time with them and get to know them better. Luckily, a college setting is ideal for meeting different people. I wasn't wildly successful, but the results were at least quite promising. From my perspective, I had a lot of things inside me that needed "fixing," and only duals could provide the deep level of comfort and trust necessary to be able to fix them.

Luckily, I had met a dual in Ukraine who had started this process, so I was not thinking in abstract terms, but was simply looking for someone like my female friend in Ukraine, because I knew that's what I wanted and needed. Compared with just a year earlier, I was consciously paying attention to entirely different traits in other people.

From then on, I chose carefully who I lived and worked with. I moved in with some people in Kiev whom I'd never met before, simply based on their types. We turned out to have fairly little in common, but I did feel a basic level of comfort with them that allowed me to more or less be myself. I felt that each significant life change (move, change in employment, etc.) needed to put me in a more favorable situation than before.

At one point I was working for an American businessman of my own type. As a way of resolving some of the difficulties I was having as his assistant, I hired a local assistant of my own, using my teacher to help screen people based on type. In essence, I "bought myself a friend." Later we ended up sharing an apartment together, and he was an important source of moral support for a couple years and is still a friend today.

And still I had not been able to have a romantic dual relationship, which had basically been my goal all along. It seemed like there were some powerful barriers in place that I had to find a way to circumvent somehow. I found I kept ending up having purely conversational relationships with girls without a deeper emotional or physical connection. Since the sharing of broad insights and life experiences is perhaps my strongest trait, it makes sense that other people would respond to this aspect of me first. As I later discovered, for anything to work between me and a dual, I would need to experience a strong interest in them that compelled me to direct my mental energy at them. Then, they would respond physically and emotionally. In my "undualized" state, it actually seemed easier for me to develop relationships with other types, but these relationships wouldn't provide me with what I needed.

I tried meeting people through a socionics dating site but was ultimately not as lucky as other people (I know several married couples who met on the site). Something about the awkward format of meeting someone in person for the first time with all the attendant hopes and expectations did not work for me. Also, I was just too different for people to digest, and all the girls I met had ordinary histories and life experiences. At one point I had a relationship with a dual I met on the site, but it was not fueled by enough sincere interest and attraction, and I look back on it with regret. It turns out, duality only works if you fall in love! In fact, dualization is basically a synonym of falling in love and having your expectations fulfilled. Who knows -- maybe any two people who fall in love experience the same thing, regardless of their types?

Well, eventually I did meet someone through a more organic process, my hopes and expectations were fulfilled, and this chapter in my life gradually came to a successful end.

In my case, I was fortunate to come across a socionics mentor who helped me out on a personal level and gave me important keys for my further development in addition to mere socionics lessons. Also, my intent to improve my life situation was very strong and involuntarily drew certain opportunities and people to me. With this intent, I chose to make personal and professional sacrifices in order to pursue my single most important goal. It was more important to me to learn to be myself, attract compatible people, and become balanced than, say, to earn money or make my family proud.

I thought of myself as climbing up the steep side of a plateau. Until I had made it to the top through great personal effort and focus, there was always the danger of sliding backwards, but once I had reached the top, I would be on a whole new footing and my new relationships with others and with myself would begin to sustain me with a new momentum of their own. This analogy holds for any conscious improvements people try to make in their lives, be it emotional, interpersonal, physical, mental, or spiritual.

3 Relationship Tools

In my opinion, there are three classes of things worth learning about in order to enjoy positive interpersonal relationships. Maybe I will add more over time as I discover them.

1. Individual psychological differences.
Example: Socionics
Innate individual differences are vast and can potentially take a lifetime of study to grasp, but it makes sense to at least familiarize oneself with a system of psychological types such as socionics. No concept of interpersonal relationships can be complete without an appreciation of personality and how it affects, even determines, our interactions.

2. Gender differences.
Example: John Gray's books (Men, Women, and Relationships; Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus)
Personality typologies tend not to describe gender differences at all, yet these psychological differences affect the dynamics of any inter-gender relationship regardless of the personality types involved. Gender differences are the easiest of the three categories to understand and apply because there are only two basic types to learn, and type identification is no problem!

3. Personal development.
Example: Stephen Covey's books (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and others)
Once we understand some or most of the deterministic factors affecting our relationships, it would be a mistake to stop there and decide that nothing can be done to influence interactions one way or another, since all is determined. There is still the art of life to learn. This is the realm of personal religion, mythology, or spirituality, which can never be replaced by science.

The examples I give are just samples of some of the routes available to learn about each particular category. As the most subjective of the three, "personal development" has the greatest number of possible routes. I find Stephen Covey's approach to be particularly comprehensive and understandable to the western mind, but one could just as easily find guidance for personal development in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, neopaganism, the writings of Joseph Campbell, Osho, Krishnamurti, etc. etc.

As I've studied each of these three areas, I've been astonished at how they ignore the others or mention them only in passing. For instance, socionics has nothing to say about how the psychology of a female SLI differs from a male SLI, though the differences are hardly trivial in the context of "dualization." John Gray's otherwise excellent writings say next to nothing about the importance of choosing the right partner to begin with; he focuses only on living with the partner after the choice has been made. Likewise Stephen Covey, who talks about all the synergy and intimacy that he and his wife share, while ignoring the fact that he obviously made a very wise choice to begin with. If there were serious compatibility issues between him and his wife, all the "personal development" in the world would still not be able to produce the same results as with a more compatible partner.

In other words, existing knowledge in each of these three areas tends to have significant shortcomings. Taking only one class of knowledge as your ultimate guide on the subject of relationships can lead to naivete and disappointment when the tools don't always work -- for reasons you are unable to discern because you lack knowledge of other important aspects.

On Melancholy

I just read (skimmed, actually) an interesting article called "Depression's Upside" at nytimes.com. Chances are, if you end up reading the entire thing, too, then you must be melancholic yourself.

Depression is one of those age-old phenomena that has been taken over by commercial interests who would like as many people as possible to think they have a problem that requires treatment. I prefer to divide what we today call "depression" into two categories -- pathological "depression" and normal "melancholy." Melancholy is the historical and more accurate term for what so many of us experience on a regular basis.

The article talks at length about research that shows that melancholy is associated with greater focus, creative output, and analytical thinking. It states,

In a survey led by the neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, 30 writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were interviewed about their mental history. Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression. A similar theme emerged from biographical studies of British writers and artists by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, who found that successful individuals were eight times as likely as people in the general population to suffer from major depressive illness.

Wonderful. Surely this should be included as one of the "7 habits of highly effective people." Actually, it may already be implied. Who else would be predisposed to ruminate over their long-term goals, form "personal mission statements," and to spend time analyzing their behavior, attitudes, and assumptions? I'm sure Stephen Covey is himself depressed -- just look at his writing output. Something is clearly bugging him! In fact, all the people I know who've really gotten into Stephen Covey have been melancholic. Hmmm....

I laugh at this topic because I am myself a writer, am prone to introspection and extreme focus over long periods of time, and am highly analytical and generally perceived as a creative person. Melancholy is a normal part of my life, a valuable resource to be utilized but not overexploited. I owe many great ideas and wonderful decisions to my propensity to think long and carefully about things, introspect, and distance myself from social stimuli. I wouldn't trade my melancholy for a million dollars (indeed, to earn a million dollars in the first place one would have to be melancholic).

While I scoff at the thought of ever thinking of myself now as "depressed," there have been a few times in the past when I would have certainly qualified for the term. In each case there were objective causes -- always interpersonal -- to my protracted malaise.

Thanks to socionics, I became aware of the kinds of interpersonal factors that might have been causing my multi-month blues. I came to believe that the types of the people around me were having a great effect on my general emotional state, and that results could be obtained by changing the types in my environment by choosing more carefully whom I lived with, worked with, and was emotionally close with. This strategy worked! It took a couple years to make my "type environment" the way I wanted and to learn to stop nagging people with the "wrong" types to try to get them to start understanding and validating me. But since then, I have never had anything that I would call full-fledged depression.

And yet, the melancholy continued to come and go even as my life circumstances improved. I believe it has a physiological component that is built into my temperament, whereas my "depression" was the result of external factors that could be influenced or removed.

I observe that melancholics can be of any socionic type, and that many IEEs are not melancholic like I am. Melancholy seems to be something that is mostly or fully independent of type.

My experience is that melancholic IEEs tend to be introspective, slower-paced, and share more original thoughts. Those who lack the boon of melancholy seem to easily lose their train of thought, jump from topic to topic, and engage in more superficial conversation and gathering of random but "potentially interesting" data. They are more sociable and spend less time alone, thinking or working.

In general, melancholic individuals of any type seem to be a bit distanced from society, which is virtually a prerequisite to doing most kinds of creative work. One of the challenges in life for these individuals may be connecting with other people. At the same time, when they do connect, it may seem to be a deeper kind of connection than non-melancholics enjoy.

Most melancholics seem to need things to be "a certain way" so that they can work productively. Their special demands may make it harder to find a spot for themselves in the workplace, where conditions are adapted for the average person's needs (at least theoretically). On the other hand, given ideal conditions, the melancholics can be particularly productive and creative.

In terms of interaction, too many melancholics or non-melancholics together may be a bad thing. Melancholics may tire of the excessive seriousness, while non-melancholics may tire of the lack of substance. Both groups have something important to offer, and they tend to intermix to a degree.

Wikisocion Needs a New Home and Site Manager

Wikisocion.org needs a new home and site manager. Our current hoster, Siteground, has awful customer service and is basically unavailable to help with problems that arise on the site. For instance, 2 years ago the Russian version of the wiki had a database error of some type that was never resolved, because there was no one to help and I was unable to follow the procedures recommended by people on the self-help forum.

Now, something similar has happened to the English version of Wikisocion. For two days the site has been down due to some kind of database error. This is looking very much like what happened to the Russian version 2 years ago. Unfortunately, there is no site support at Siteground to address the issue.

I have a database backup from last year that would restore the vast majority of the material at Wikisocion, but would miss changes from the last several months. I have never attempted to restore a database, so I am not 100% sure it would work or if the database backup was performed correctly in the first place.

In the worst case scenario, all information that can be retrieved will be obtained from Google cache and uploaded to a subsite of Socionics.us. Wikisocion will cease to exist as a wiki, but most of its valuable information will remain available for public viewing.

How you can help Wikisocion to survive

1. I need referrals for a website hoster that supports Mediawiki software and offers good customer support (live chat is best).

2. I need a website manager to help choose the hoster, set up the site, and import the database, and also to perform periodic site back-ups and address any technical issues that might come up. This is a long-term volunteer position.

Update February 27

Thanks everyone for the quick response. The two points above have been resolved. The database corruption is indeed serious and cannot be fixed. However, most of Wikisocion's content will soon be accessible at Socionics.us, and Wikisocion.org will soon be relaunched. There will be quite a bit of work to do to bring good content back to Wikisocion from cached files. Your efforts will be greatly appreciated!

Basic Human Psychological Needs

My experience hiking the PCT in 2009 provided me the perfect setting to reflect upon basic human psychological needs. For over four months I lived a scaled-back existence comprised of simple tasks like walking (for roughly 12 hours a day), eating, sleeping, basic hygiene and gear maintenance, and basic logistics. In addition to the simple everyday tasks, I spent much time talking to other people and sharing experiences. Our conversations alternated between the mundane, the humorous, the raunchy, the social, the personal, and the philosophical.

Here is a summary of the needs I discovered through introspection and comparison with "normal" city life.

Physical needs
(I leave out obvious needs such as "eating, drinking, sleeping, sex")

1. Physical interaction with one's environment. We have bodies that our built for physical interaction with our surroundings, and we feel better (physically, mentally, and emotionally) when we use them in this way for at least a couple hours a day. This includes large body movements (working out, physical labor, sports, dancing, etc.) and fine motor movements (arts and crafts, playing musical instruments, building things).
   
2. Outdoor visual stimulation. It is a natural thing to want to go on a walk and look at the world around you and see what's happening in one's habitat. A stroll through one's neighborhood or a large outdoor market or any place where people congregate is enough for more socially oriented people, while others need to have more natural visual backdrops and need to take walks in parks and forests. 20 to 30 minutes a day is about the minimum.

Social needs

1. Friendly interaction. The basic minimum is one conversation with a friend per day (for me at least). A "friend" is defined as someone with whom you can let down your barriers and speak and act spontaneously. After two full days with no friendly connections mental fatigue sets in. Normal activities lose their allure, and one really starts to feel down.
   
2. Superficial interaction. It turns out friends are not enough. One needs to interact with other people at different levels of intimacy. 4 or 5 superficial interactions a day with strangers or people you don't know well can fill this need (for me at least). You practice developing your social persona, being useful to strangers and receiving utility from them, and sharing information with a wider social circle.
   
3. Solitude. Not surprisingly, one tires of continual social interaction. I personally prefer to spend about half of my time alone "doing my own thing." Not getting enough solitude leads to irritability and moodiness. Getting too much of it leads to mental fatigue and deprivation. Solitude does not necessarily mean the absence of people. If two or more people are comfortable enough with each other to not have to always talk or otherwise interact when they are together, then one may attain a state of solitude in the companionship of others. Solitude allows one to think clearly and deeply, engage in complex activity, and feel centered.

Intellectual needs

This category seems to be the weakest of the three, meaning that one can forego them the longest with the least ill-effects. They are also very hard to tease from social needs because they are usually filled through social interaction.

1. Exchanging information independent of the present time and place. A long but accurate definition. One finds oneself actively discussing topics that have nothing to do with the activities and needs of today. Backpackers inevitably find themselves engaging in social and political criticism, discussing the history of religion, and arguing about how to live a healthy life -- in addition to more proximate concerns such as food, gear, inflammation, and trail logistics. These "abstract" concerns exercise the mind's ability to think generally and convey information that might be applicable to other people as well as oneself.
   
   There were very few things besides food that I craved while hiking the PCT, and they were intellectual outlets. Despite my very frequent intellectual conversations, I craved stimulating books and the opportunity to write. While I did learn to pick up books (paper and audio) along the way and listen to or read them while I walked, I did not figure out a way of satisfying my need to write. I would have been very happy to have 2 hours a day to write about various topics that I spent so much time mulling over. Journaling can satisfy some of this need, but I simply did not have enough time and paper!
   

Conclusion

The needs described here may differ a bit from person to person, but I believe they are universal. One of the main things I took away from my experience was that I need to, and want to, organize my life in such a way as to fill every one of these needs. This realization solidified my resolve to not live a typical suburban American lifestyle, which I came to view as even more inadequate as before. Such a way of life is not nearly as good at fulfilling basic needs as a long-distance backpacking trip. Needs for physical activity and interaction are typically very poorly met unless one's work is physical. Also, 8-hour day jobs often overload your need for superficial interaction and fail to meet your needs for friendly interaction and for solitude.

Clearly, I will have to continue shaping my own counter-culture lifestyle to fill my basic needs. Physical needs can be met in an urban setting by rigorous exercise and physical activities (music, dancing, cycling & walking to one's destinations, etc.) or by taking a physical job that leaves the mind free to enjoy substantial amounts of solitude and moderate levels of social interaction. With a bit of land, my wife and I could practice some agriculture to enjoy a physical connection with our environment. Social ties need to be enjoyed more by developing connections with people who share our interests and values and have time to do things together.

At any rate, a typical urban 9-to-5 job with its ensuing lifestyle demands seems out of the question for me. Physical activity needs to be built into one's lifestyle rather than performed as a guilt-driven afterthought. There need to be many hours a day available to perform interesting, non-compulsory work. Friends need to be drawn in closer, and antagonistic elements need to be moved further away.

That is my formula for leading a happy life and filling my human needs.

Afterthought
I don't mean to suggest here that everyone's happiest lifestyle will be just like mine or that giving up a 9 to 5 job is a prerequisite to being fully happy (though it probably is for a significant number of people). The most important thought here is that our individual psychological needs exist and are quantifiable. In this post I have tried to quantify my own and speculate how they may differ somewhat for different people. I wish everyone could have an experience such as my own (not necessarily backpacking) where they are in near-ideal circumstances for the development of personal happiness over several months. With a bit of reflection, perhaps, this could lead to long-term changes in how you live your life.

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.

Socionics in Public: Ukrainian Politics

An article just came out on a leading Ukrainian news site, Pravda.com.ua, called "Between SLE and ESI: a Socionic Portrait of the Leading Candidates" (article text provided in English through Google Translate; original is in Ukrainian).

Some readers may know that Ukraine just had its first round of presidential elections since the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. This article talks about the types of the three main figures from the Orange Revolution. Yuschenko became president, Tymoshenko spent much of the past 5 years as Prime Minister, and Yanukovych was defeated in the past election and spent the 5 years as the head of the opposition. So, these three figures have been the most prominent politicians of recent Ukrainian history.

The article's author, the "head of a socionics academy" (my experience suggests this is an exaggeration; "socionics instructor" would likely be more accurate) proposes the types of SLE, ESI, and LIE for Tymoshenko, Yanukovych, and Yuschenko, respectively. Setting aside the issue of whether these types are correct (my opinions can be found on my wikisocion page), I want to look at the usefulness of this article in general.

First of all, do the descriptions provided fit the individuals? Yes -- they are perhaps 80-90% accurate, as least as far as the average reasonably informed viewer/reader is able to judge.

Were the type descriptions modified to be more relevant to the specific person being described? Yes, obviously so. For instance, as an LIE Yuschenko "craves freedom of speech and individual actions in society." With her EIE subtype Tymoshenko is able to "achieve her ends with military cunning and punish demonstratively." Obviously, these are "politicized" type portraits that would have much less relevance for your average representative of the type.

How are multi-faceted aspects of their personalities addressed? Using subtypes -- not one, but two. Tymoshenko's IEI subtype allows her to "portray a weak woman when needed." Her EIE subtype allows her to "sense and provide what her audience wants to hear." Yuschenko's ILE subtype allows him to "study ethnic characteristics and value and develop ethnic culture," etc.

Are non-Ego functions at all described? Yes. Some of these are addressed under the headings: "Sympathises with," "Needs," and "Is activated by."

Are intertype relations addressed? No. For instance, how does Yanukovych and Yuschenko's supposed dual relationship manifest itself, if at all?

What do you think of these kinds of socionic portrait appearing in mass media?

Socionics on the PCT

Some of my readers may know that I spent the summer hiking the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail), a 2660 mile long trail through the great coastal ranges of the West that starts at the Mexican border and ends at the Canadian border. My journey lasted over four months and provided ample time to reflect on many different things, including socionics and other psychological topics. Here's my write-up of the adventure, if readers are interested. 

I began the trip alone but quickly met dozens (actually, over 100) of other long-distance hikers who began the same day I did. I noticed that while I was in the stage of just getting to know people, the mere half-thought of trying to guess their socionic types was revolting to me. This continued for quite some time; I actually began to wonder if perhaps socionics had finally lost all relevance to me. People's types clearly weren't important to me. I needed to make some friends and alliances quickly, and doing so based on instincts and largely unconscious criteria is the best way to do that. 

However, in just a couple cases, a kind of "deja vu" sensation would strike me when found myself talking to someone in a very familiar and intimate way. "Probably, this is a dual," I would think, particularly after noting some common SLI traits such as practical-mindedness, an affinity towards animals and the natural world, an ability to simultaneously bring out both my intellectual and my comical sides, etc. In all other cases, however, I didn't care to even think about socionics. 

At first, I found it a challenge to connect with other thru-hikers (the standard term for long-distance hikers). I didn't know what to talk about and was turned off by many of them, especially those who quickly banded together in groups or seemed to focus too much on smoking or drinking. I was quite often lonely and keenly felt my lack of belonging to any group. Events near the start of the hike had also put me days behind all the people I had begun to make friends with, so what few connections I had made were promptly lost for the time being. 

After a few weeks, things began to turn around. The "herd" had had the chance to spread out a bit, and the number of thru-hikers in my immediate vicinity dropped to a low enough number that I was starting to recognize people I had met before. No longer did I feel I was trying to break into a hopelessly large group of people; instead, I was seeing individuals with whom I might or might not have something in common. 

Somehow, I gradually learned how to talk to other thru-hikers. Over the next few months, starting a conversation became more and more natural, and just a month or so into the hike, I was able to dispense with all typical formalities when meeting other thru-hikers. Introductions were shortened and often just skipped over until the end of the conversation, and I (and other thru-hikers) would begin expressing our true thoughts and feelings almost immediately, even if we had never met the other person before. So, a conversation might go like this:

- Hello.

- Hi. You must be a thru-hiker.

- Haha, of course. How's your hike going?

- It's going great. I just had the most awesome experience...

etc.

This openness and spontaneity would also often carry over onto interactions with day-hikers, weekend hikers, and people in trailside towns. Needless to say, it brought a freshness to conversations that I had rarely experienced before outside of close friendships. I hope it stays with me. It feels like a more harmonious state of mind that is less concerned with appearances and conventions and more centered on emotional experience and realizing one's personal desires. 

After a month, I was more or less at the front of the pack and had just a dozen or two other hikers in the vicinity. I soon built up a history of interaction with almost all of them and felt comfortable (though in slightly different ways) with each of them. At some point, the thought of identifying their types occurred to me naturally, and the typings came easily. From here to the end of the trip I was able to identify the types of people around me with fairly little effort, provided I had time to have at least a few good conversations with them.

What I found was that every, or almost every type could be found among thru-hikers, even though, on the whole, most thru-hikers shared a pretty specific set of traits: intelligent, articulate, individualistic, liberal, anarchistic, agnostic or atheist, interested in natural science. Yet these same general traits could be found among many different types. There were also differences between hikers at the front of the pack and those who were in the middle of the "herd." Those at the front tended to have even more of the listed traits, and also to have a more serious attitude about their hike, having generally done more planning, training, and more careful gear selection. 

The only types I do not recall meeting (but could easily have missed) are EII and LII. Unexpectedly, I discovered an apparent predominance of irrational types -- as much as 2/3 of the thru-hikers I got to know. Among these, base  and  types seemed most common. Irrationals seemed to be very flexible in their group alliances and more prone to join up with or ditch someone on the spur of the moment, whereas rationals seemed to hike much longer with the same person, or to even do the entire hike without ever teaming up with anyone for more than a few hours, because they would not adjust their pace or schedule for anyone. Irrationals, on the other hand, tended to fall out of spontaneously formed groups not because of their rigidity and singlemindedness, but because of their ever-changing sleep schedule, daily mileage, eating habits, hiking speed, etc. I myself was a perfect example of this, never permanently settling on any particular hiking style. Instead, I tried to learn to adjust my speed and schedule to what my body felt like doing rather than try to have my body do what I decided it ought to do.

I met many people who seemed to be "typical" representatives of their type ("typical" is in quotation marks because anyone is atypical when viewed from a certain angle), such as ESEs who welcome vast numbers of thru-hikers into their homes and treat them with great hospitality and unwavering good cheer, or a voluptuous, husky-voiced SEE girl whom others assumed (wrongly) was "sleeping her way" down the trail. However, even more common were the openly atypical: an oldish ILE with a very muscular, chiseled frame, an effeminate LSE male, a rail-thin ESI girl with incredible speed and stamina, etc. Who's to say what is typical and atypical in socionics, though? What I mean to say is that while there is certainly -- theoretically, at least -- some elusive set of "core" traits for each type, experience with real people constantly whittles away at any preconceived notions about what the types should look like, what things they should be interested in, what talents they should have, etc. 

I found that in the setting of a long-distance hike, type did not seem to be as important for establishing a connection with someone as shared attitudes and shared hiking styles. Simply for practical reasons, another hiker who walks the same pace you do for the same amount of time each day will be easier to connect with than one who hikes faster or slower, no matter how psychologically compatible he is. If another hiker has chosen to use ultralight gear, like me, that automatically gives us something to talk about. Furthermore, by this time in the hike we have all been through so many similar joys and tribulations that there is enough material to talk about with nearly any other thru-hiker for at least an entire day. 

This and other thoughts left me in a quandary. I still don't know to this day whether socionics is at all worth promoting. To so strongly oppose faith-based worldviews on philosophical and psychological grounds and then promote socionics seems hypocritical; as no proper proof of socionics' claims exists, adherents must take large portions of it on faith, which spawns a culture in which people declare things as if they were true and easily forget that no one actually knows for sure that they are. Socionics' proper place in science is as a conjecture -- a hypothetical answer to the questions "how do people differ?" and "why are some relationships good and some bad?" To promote socionics as something much more than a conjecture would be intellectually dishonest of me. At other times, I would think about approaching the subject in the spirit of classical socionics, but with copious reminders that this is just a hypothesis that remains to be proven. Still other times I would think, "to hell with socionics!" and prefer instead go back to square one -- the basic questions of personality and interaction -- with a purely empirical approach, speaking of socionics only in a critical light.

Some of the books I read or listened to this summer during my hike have strengthened my interest in the third approach. For instance, I have read William James' famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience and was quickly convinced of the superiority of the strictly empirical method of study, applied with unwavering neutrality to even such subjective phenomena as religious experience. Certainly that same kind of thinking could shed much light on the muddled topic of individual differences and varieties of interaction. I have read (listened to) Nietzsche's The Antichrist and have reflected upon the general effect of socionics upon the human spirit: is it something that strengthens the spirit -- the "will to power," as Nietzsche would put it -- or weakens it? The answer seems to be that it largely depends on the person; socionics can be a tool to achieve a useful end, or a means to reaffirm one in one's weaknesses using a whole new set of excuses clothed in fancy technical jargon. Yet I can't help thinking that there is something in socionics that generally spawns weakness. Perhaps it is the tendency it brings to analyze what must be lived -- to apply conscious thinking in place of instinctive doing. Surely this cannot be an effective formula for augmenting one's personal power. Unless, that is, the student of socionics previously suffered specifically from a lack of mental analysis regarding himself and his interactions. 

In a word, I'm more uncertain than ever about what to do with socionics. I don't know if there is much personal value left in it for me. My hike left me with a resolve to promote ideas of real importance, such as routes to achieve greater personal freedom and happiness, reconnect with the natural world, and increase overall fitness and health while reversing our society's runaway consumption. Now, socionics appears to me to be an intermediate step towards something greater, a temporary training ground for bigger and better things. If socionics were widely accepted as the final answer, our world would quickly become intolerably stuffy and restrictive. 

 I find myself increasingly drawn to wholly suspend socionic categories in my analyses of things, because there is more to be learned that way (for me at least). And yet, socionics has trained me to pay close attention to psychological phenomena in the first place. 

The Math of Predicting Marriage Success

I came across a remarkable study that could open up some avenues of empirical research into socionic phenomena. 

Some British researchers learned to predict with 94% accuracy whether a new couple would get divorced or not in the next four years based on data from just 15 minutes of conversation. 

I highly recommend this radio discussion transcript from 2004. Basically, they would film newlyweds discussing a contentious topic such as family finances and attach point values to various displays of positive and negative emotion, such as humor or contempt. "Marriage success" was defined simply as remaining together after four years. The more positive a couple's points, the greater their chances of staying together. Successful couples, they found, had up to five times more positives than negatives, whereas unsuccessful couples had an equal number or more negatives than positives. 

Furthermore, by looking at the data and observing couples, they were able to distinguish five general patterns of interaction: (source)

Stable couples

1. "the validating couple" -- calm, intimate, companionable, like to back each other up

2. "the avoiders"-- do their best to eschew conflict. 

Unstable couples

1. "the hostiles" -- neither person wants to talk about contentious issues

2. "the hostile-detached couple" -- one is fiery and argumentative, and the other isn't.

Borderline couples (can go either way)

1. "the volatile couple" -- romantic and passionate, but have heated arguments 

If you're interested in learning about their methodology and findings in depth, their book The Mathematics of Marriage is available online at Google books. 

Brain Chemistry and Typology

Evolution of typologies and thought systems in general

It seems that brain chemistry is the current typological fashion, somewhat like the concepts of "information" and "information processing" in the mid-20th century. The idea of personality types is ancient, but with each new period of philosophical or scientific development it seems that the types are reformulated in contemporary terms, leading to an evolution and inevitable drift of the types themselves through cumulative subtle changes in descriptions and emphasis. 

Today a dominant philosophical/cultural trend is the increasing scientific understanding of how the brain functions. More and more, you hear words like "serotonin" over the church pulpit and in everyday conversation. Typologists realize that in order to remain culturally relevant, they need to somehow respond to the dominant trends in psychology and philosophy, much like the Pope feels pressure to formulate some sort of official stance on issues such as AIDS and climate change. 

An important effect of the need to remain culturally relevant is that thought systems evolve to encompass ever more phenomena. For instance, sects founded on a few narrow doctrinal principles over time expound views on virtually all culturally relevant matters. Or, limited typologies such as the forerunner to the Enneagram gradually evolve into general typologies of personality. If there's a greater market for a system of general personality types than for a system of, say, vices and how Christian hermits can overcome them, then why not try to break into that market? If other typologies offer relationship descriptions, then why don't we add some on, too? These are classic examples of memetic competition among overlapping thought systems. 

Personally, I am most sympathetic to science and less so to thought systems based on imagination and mental constructs. I feel that science memes are more lasting and tend to build on each other and generate permanent, tangible progress, whereas other kinds of thought systems basically run around in circles with a periodicity of 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, or whatever with almost no innovation. When innovations in thought systems do occur, it seems to often be the result of an "injection" of scientific, or factual knowledge. But I digress... 

Typological applications of brain chemistry

If any readers are aware of other typologies that have attempted to link brain chemistry to personality types, please leave me a note. 

1. Helen Fisher's types (discussed in depth in previous post) -- based on neuroscience from the outset, but with the choice of four types possibly influenced by millenia-long typological traditions. Uses 2 neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin) and 2 hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

2. Enneatypes. See article "The Enneagram and Brain Chemistry" which links the 9 enneatypes to 3 different neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinepherine) and 3 different levels thereof, which technically produces 27 types, but only 9 are given. 

3. Keirsey Temperaments. According to a poster at the enneagraminstitute.com forum, the book The Edge Effect "ties in neurotransmitters in the brain with the four Keirseyan temperaments (NF, NT, SP, SJ). Naturally, that means he focuses on four neurotransmitters: acetylcholine, dopamine, seratonin, and GABA."

To further quote this poster ("Patrick"), "I did a little Googling, and it seems there are actually ten or more known neurotransmitters. But of course fans of four-type systems will pick four, and enneagram fans will go for three or nine." Exactly my thoughts. While we like the idea of there being 2 x 2 (4) or 3 x 3 (9) or 4 x 4 (16) combinations because it makes for much easier subcategorization, it is unclear whether nature actually needs us to have such a tidy number of important neurotransmitters rather than, say, 6, 11, 17, or 26. 

The attempts to link the Enneagram and Keirsey temperaments strike me as amateurish, and the article linking Enneagram to neurotransmitters seems to suffer from trying to immediately relate new entities (neurotransmitters) to existing thought structures (Enneatypes) without learning about the new entities in sufficient detail first. Lofty language such as "We hereby propose a theory of personality whereby high, medium, and low activity of each of these three neurotransmitters systems are distributed in an enneagrammitically logical way" only serves to cement that impression. But this is, of course, just a hypothesis, and hypotheses are often like that. 

In any event, attempts to link type and brain chemistry will probably grow more sophisticated as more information from research becomes available. 

Prospects

Right now, many people are testing the waters by suggesting hypotheses about the correlation between brain chemistry and personality types. Based on my experience studying religions and the history of their interaction with science, I would predict that either the neuroscience ends up radically changing the typology, or the typology abandons attempts to correlate types with brain chemistry altogether. Ultimately, typology and neuroscience are driven by different and often incompatible approaches; one has a system in mind and needs "meat" to put on the bones of that system, whereas the other has no system in mind, just a collection of observed facts, and begs some systematic explanation. In practice, it seems, typologies are rarely willing to give up their systems, nor science -- its facts. 

For a perfect illustration of this quandary, read the article "Enneagram and Science" at wagele.com.

Helen Fisher's Types: Explorer, Builder, Director, Negotiator

In a previous post I wrote of a personality and matching test at Chemistry.com that was developed by researcher Helen Fisher. We are already seeing some possible patterns in how her types correspond to socionic types, and I encourage readers to take the test if they haven't already and share their results in that post. 

The best introduction to Fisher's research is this half-hour interview with her by Nicole Simon. Here Fisher talks about the history of her research, her main findings, and the types themselves. Each type is supposedly related to one of four chemicals that broadly influences personality: dopamine (a neurotransmitter), serotonin (neurotransmitter), testosterone (hormone), and estrogen (hormone). 

Explorer: (more dopamine expression) -- risk-taking, curious, creative, impulsive, optimistic and energetic

Builder: (more serotonin expression) -- cautious but not fearful, calm, traditional, community-oriented, persistent and loyal

Director: (more testosterone expression) -- very analytical, decisive, tough-minded; they like to debate and can be aggressive

Negotiator: (more estrogen expression) -- broadminded imaginative, compassionate, intuitive, verbal, nurturing, altruistic and idealistic

(descriptions taken from Fisher herself in Time article)

These types have a fairly clear biological basis:

There was a great deal of data that people vary in terms of their expression of dopamine and norepinephrine, serotonin, estrogen and oxytocin and testosterone. I culled from the academic literature all of those data points that show that these particular brain-chemical systems are related to certain aspects of personality. And I saw constellations of temperament traits that seemed to be associated with these chemicals.

(source)

Why Fisher did not include the neurotransmitter norepinephrine or the hormone oxytocin in her system is unclear. Perhaps the related personality traits were less obvious or fundamental. In the interview she states that people have been talking of 4 types for thousands of years, and she feels there's a reason for that. This is another case of the form of an idea being more lasting than its content (which I talked about in the previous post on the Enneagram) -- in this case, that there are four types. How these types are defined has varied widely. And is the four-based system an actual attribute of nature, or simply how our logical, order-seeking brain would like to see things? 

Fisher attaches a second type to the first as a sort of auxiliary feature, creating a system of 12 possible combinations. 

Socionics and Fisher's types

From the summaries given by Fisher, it appears that each of these four chemicals corresponds at least somewhat to more than one socionics category:

Dopamine: extraverted intuition, extraversion, irrationality

Serotonin: rationality, introversion, sensing

Testosterone: logic, sensing

Estrogen: ethics, intuition

So, a common type for an ILE might be "EXPLORER/director," for IEE - "EXPLORER/negotiator," for IEI "NEGOTIATOR/explorer," for ILI "NEGOTIATOR/director," for LSE "DIRECTOR/builder," etc.

Fisher says that Explorers are the rarest type (8%), and builders the most common (>40%). 

Fisher identifies herself as an EXPLORER/negotiator. 

Type development

Fisher says that while our natural propensities are genetically determined, much of our brain chemistry is dependent on situational factors, and our type may change or become more or less evident. This is a different view than socionics, but not necessarily a conflicting one, since the two typologies are based on different principles. 

I find this possibility intriguing. I would say that my "Explorer" type fully awakened only at the age of 23 under the influence of a host of external factors. If I had remained in the situation I was in, I might be a different type today or simply a less obvious Explorer. If you find a natural Director working away at a dull job and make him the coach of a college football team, the experience could trigger a metamorphosis in him and a long-term change in his career direction. 

Before a string of deeply "exploratory" experiences (spending extensive time abroad in Slovakia and Russia), I was a star math student planning on majoring in math in college. After spending 3 years abroad speaking two different foreign languages and being exposed to new ways of life, however, I could no longer focus my mind on math. It simply did not provide the rewards I had now come to expect from my activities: experiencing new things, seeing new places, meeting new people, and perfecting and applying my language skills. I think all these activities had activated my dopamine system in some way such that my brain had become reliant upon dopamine stimulation, which I could not get from mathematics. The propensity for this "dependency" was certainly built into my system to begin with. Had I had been a different "Fisher type" to begin with, my experiences abroad may not have had such a lasting impact on my path in life. The vast majority of people who went through the same experiences I did returned to life in the U.S. with only slightly modified career plans at most. 

Intertype attraction

I have found conflicting views on which types attract which, seemingly from Helen Fisher herself. One view is that each type is attacted to its own. The other view is that Explorers and Builders attract (despite there being 5 times more builders) and Directors and Negotiators attract. My type profile (I am EXPLORER/negotiator) said I "tend to naturally gravitate to EXPLORER/director." 

The conflicting statements on mutual attraction suggest that the correlation is weak or borderline, and that Fisher herself is not entirely sure yet. But she may not be able to say that outright, since she is being paid by these matchmaking websites to provide a matching algorithm. Correct me if anyone has read her latest book and has more information.

Prospects

I think the study of chemicals and their effects of personality is a high-prospect direction of inquiry. It is based on a body of scientific research and lends itself to empirical study, meaning that strangers can work on research all at once and build on each other's findings with ease -- quite the opposite of socionics or the Enneagram, where people have to communicate closely and extensively to transfer knowledge. 

Emerging patterns of correlation between socionic types and Fisher's types open up the possibility of discovering the roots of certain socionic categories in brain chemicals. The four Fisher focuses on are not the only chemicals known to influence personality, but certainly some of the most important and best researched ones. 

Commentary on the Enneagram of Personality

I have written a bit on the Enneagram of Personality over at Wikisocion, and here I will compile my writings into a single piece. 

Enneagram basics

(slightly adapted from Wikipedia)

Although mostly understood and taught as a typology (a model of personality types), the Enneagram of Personality is also taught in ways intended to develop higher states of being, essence and enlightenment. Each of the 9 personality types associated with the Enneagram represents a map of traits that highlights patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. By learning one’s type and the patterns and habits associated with that type, one can use the Enneagram system as an effective tool for self-understanding and self-development.

Adherents of the theory believe that each Enneagram personality type, or style, is based on a pattern of where attention goes. They believe that by learning about what kinds of things one habitually attends to and puts energy into, one can observe oneself more accurately and develop more self-awareness, and that by enhancing one’s self awareness with the help of the Enneagram, one can exercise more choice about one’s functioning rather than engaging in patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior in an automatic, habitual, unconscious way.

Types are named "One", "Two", "Three", etc. A secondary type, or "wing" can be present and is generally supposed to be one of the two types adjacent to the base type. This allows for a manageable diversity of types (roughly 18) similar to that of socionics or the MBTI. 

As you can see from the description above, a self-perfection concept is more strongly built into the Enneagram of Personality than into socionics or Myers-Briggs Typology. Along with each type, there are different levels of development that show the type at its best and its worst. Further type differentiation is possible through the application of three subtypes: self-preservation, sexual, and social. 

Scientific criticism

All categories of the Enneagram are fundamentally qualitative and thus subject to divergent interpretation. The advantage of this is that the Enneagram of Personality is safe from scientific inquiry and cannot be disproven. By comparison, socionics has elements of a scientific system (concepts such as "information processing" and the claim to predict relationships to some degree) and a general prescientific bent, which makes it vulnerable to eventual debunking (or proof through scientific evidence). The Enneagram is in about the same position as the writings of Nostradamus; nothing is unequivocal, and after-the-fact interpretation provides enough intrigue to ensure the longevity of the idea system in the minds of curious inquirers.

Just to be clear, I don't intend to say that the Enneagram is worthless. On the contrary, for some people it can be very useful as a guide for self-improvement. The difficulties I mention become evident when people try to get together and discuss the Enneagram and discover that each person understands it a little bit differently, and these cumulative differences of interpretation and experience make conveying conclusions and knowledge extremely difficult. The Enneagram is far more easily applied personally than in groups of strangers.

I have read a few different sets of Enneatype descriptions, and each was different, placing more or less emphasis on different aspects of each type. Depending on which set of descriptions people resonate with more, their type identification will differ as well. 

Possible correlations with socionic types

This is a hotly debated topic, and I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but here are some parallels I saw between Enneatype descriptions from Wikipedia and socionic types as I see them. If I were basing my assessment on a different set of descriptions, I might see different correlations. I'm not totally set on these, but these were my initial thoughts:

One — EII, IEI

Two — ESI, EII

Three — LIE, EIE, LSE, ESE

Four — ILI, IEI

Five — LII, LSI

Six — EIE, IEI, LIE, ILI

Seven — IEE, ILE, ESE, EIE

Eight — SLE, SEE, LSI, ESI

Nine — SEI, SLI

My own Enneatype would be "7w1." Read how I came to that conclusion here. This time, I was basing my self-typing on a different set of descriptions, but one that seems compatible with those at Wikipedia. 

Historical roots of the Enneagram

This is the really interesting part. What follows is a direct quote from my post at Wikisocion:

OK, I tracked down the supposed Plato connection through the thread at metasocion.com. First observation: it's not Plato, but the neoplatonic movement of the IV century AD, and the role of the 9 passions was proposed by people who were not necessarily part of the platonic tradition — Christian hermits living in the deserts:

It was Evagrius who was to reveal that the Christian aesthetics of the Byzantine deserts had discovered that 9 passions − anger, pride, vainglory, envy, greed, incontinence, gluttony, lust and acedie, distorted human perception and consigned the human search for the divine to the banal and ordinary.

So, the link to Plato himself is extremely tenuous, or simply nonexistent.

The article is mistaken about the term "aesthetics." They mean ascetes who practiced an ascethic lifestyle of self-denial. It doesn't make sense otherwise. Here's more on ascetism and the "desert fathers" who practiced it in the IV century. So the original "9 passions" were formulated in the context of trying to purge oneself of earthly desires and unite with God through a hermit lifestyle. Each person who chose this path encountered different obstacles on his pursuit of self-denial and godliness, depending on his personal makeup. That's where the basic idea of the Enneagram came from, and the idea of transcending the weaknesses inherent to each type.

Ascetism as a philosophy was preserved for centuries in Christian monastic traditions. At some point it connected with Islam through the Sufi tradition: "Sufism evolved not as a mystical but as an ascetic movement, as even the name suggests; the word Sufi may refer to a rough woolen robe of the ascetic. " [source]. A typology such as the Enneagram of the time could be a useful tool for helping understand the challenges different disciples faced on their ascetic path.

Often, in the evolution of ideas, the form is more memorable than the content. For instance, that there are 4 elements (earth, fire, air, water) as opposed to the specific interpretation of these elements. What I find is that the form of philosophical ideas such as this is more resistant to change over time than their content. In other words, although people remember the four elements from 2 millenia ago, the meaning they attribute to them isn't necessarily the same as that of 2000 years ago. That means that, in the case of the Enneagram, what may have been passed down is simply the existence of 9 types, whereas the content and interpretation of those types has almost certainly undergone considerable evolution.

Gurdjieff himself was probably not an ascetic in the sense of the early Christians. For instance, he advocated living a normal sex life. He also did not see spiritual development as taking place through overcoming moral weaknesses. It seems that by this time the 9 types had lost much of their initial content. Today, the proponents of the Enneagram are not ascetics by any stretch of the imagination, but believe in self-perfection by transcending one's weaknesses, which is a more general philosophy than ascetism. Today's Enneatypes preserve some of the form of the original 9 ascete types, but now the main emphasis has shifted from describing and overcoming vices to describing personality. If the original emphasis had been preserved, I would expect to see type descriptions that focused mainly on the 9 passions, their influence in personality, and the route for that type to overcome its particular vice. Today, when you read "the 7's vice is gluttony" tacked on to a type description, it seems like a totally peripheral aspect of the type as opposed to the central aspect that it originally was.

So that's my assessment of the Enneagram's roots. Today's enneatypes are similar in form but different in content from the original ones, which can only be understood within the context of the Christian ascetic tradition where it was born. 

Mixture of ideas in descriptions

As a result of the Enneagram's historical legacy, today's descriptions contain a mixture of esoteric-sounding tidbits and modern personality descriptions. For instance, at the end of the Sevens description at Wikipedia one finds the following morsel of wisdom:

Ego fixation: planning

Holy idea: work

Passion/Vice: gluttony

Virtue: sobriety

How these four vague concepts interrelate, and what their relationship to the rest of the description (which reads like a modern personality description), one can only guess. I personally relate to the description of Sevens, but not to these added four aspects. 

"Gluttony" was one of the vices upon which the original typology was based, and it's pretty clear in the context of the list of vices that gluttony was meant literally: pigging out on food and getting drunk. The antidote to this is to learn the virtue of sobriety -- abstaining from pigging out and drunkenness. Planning and work have no obvious connection to this and sound like a much later addition ("Ego fixations" is certainly a very modern concept). The main description itself now has nothing to do at all with gluttony. 

So, we see that the types have clearly undergone considerable evolution and are not the same as they used to be. Yet, tradition and the elusive link to antiquity dictates that these esoteric atavisms remain and continue to feed the imagination.

How to restore clarity to the Enneagram

I see today's Enneagram as a hodgepodge of modern popular perspectives on personality and some old ideas that have lost their central role. Many popular ideas about the types seem mutually exclusive or at best totally unrelated to each other. To restore clarity and consistency to the Enneagram, I would return the vices to their central position in the understanding of each type. This would probably entail a retyping of most people, since today people are basing their typings on type descriptions that have strayed far from the original nine vices. 

So, in order to restore clarity to the Enneagram, the following formulation, or one much like it, would have to be accepted as the basis for the system:

Enneatypes describe the most difficult challenges, or "vices," that a person encounters on his path to self-perfection. 

So, Enneatypes would no longer be about personality in its entirety, but about a certain specific aspect thereof. Going down the list of vices, I would no longer be a Seven ("gluttony" is certainly not my problem), but perhaps a Two ("pride" is the vice). 

Under this understanding, the descriptions should then describe the vice, the difficulties it creates, and how to overcome it. That is probably what the original system was about. 

Help Support Wikisocion.org

Because of some financial difficulties this year, I am asking for donations to help pay for Wikisocion hosting and domain renewal in May. I need $100. Find out more at Wikisocion. Thank you.

UPDATE MAR. 30, 2009:

$100 has been received. Thank you very much!

Introduction to Neuroscience and Personality

I'm an amateur in neuroscience, and it will probably show in this and subsequent posts. Nevertheless, it is useful to write down what one is learning about in any case. If you see that I am wrong on a matter of fact, please tell me about it. 

History

Human personality has been an object of study for thousands of years. Starting in the middle of the 20th century, advances in neurobiology made it possible to begin to study neurophysiological processes that might be linked to personality. Before that, personality researchers were only able to observe and classify general behavioral traits. While this approach allows for a holistic approach to personality (seeing the "forest," not just the trees), definitions and classifications are inherently inexact, subject to misinterpretation, and lacking in scientific rigor. Socionics and other personality typologies fall into this category. 

The development of technology for studying brain functioning has opened up new avenues for exploration. A nuts-and-bolts understanding of how the brain works and how behavior is generated can ultimately show us the "trees" of which the "forest" of personality is made. Most likely, the coming years will see many new ideas about personality that increasingly integrate data from neuroscience. Indeed, both the academic world and the educated public have grown accustomed to neuroscientific explanations for psychological phenomena and have come to expect them. This is part of the century-long advance of biology into the behavioral and social sciences, with darwinian natural selection as the overarching explanatory paradigm. 

Definitions

There are a number of partially overlapping terms in this area, so here I will give some definitions:

• Neuroscience - the scientific study of the nervous system. Considered a branch of the biological sciences. An umbrella term than encompasses most of the other fields listed.
• Neuropsychology - the applied scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors. Considered a branch of psychology.
• Neurobiology - the study of the cells of the nervous system and their organization. Considered a subdivision of neuroscience and biology.
• Neurophysiology - the study of nervous system function.
• Neurology - a medical field dealing with disorders of the nervous system.

Usefulness of neuroscience for the study of personality 

The defining feature of personality is that it differs from person to person. Therefore, for neuroscience to be integrated with personality psychology, neurobiological parameters must be discovered that vary significantly between people. It seems natural that researchers' attention will first be focused on general properties of the nervous system, and then on variations of those properties as they come to understand them better. 

Though neuroscience is still in its infancy, some such brain characteristics have already been discovered that seem to have a bearing on personality (list is probably partial):

• levels of neurotransmitters (there are many)
• size of different parts of the brain
• localization of brain activity

In addition, though not specifically relating to the brain, varying levels of hormones produced by the endocrine system have also been found to influence personality, such as testosterone, estrogen, and cortisol. The effects of these hormones are felt throughout the body, not just in the brain. 

Neuroscience methods and tools

Neuroscience studies phenomena that can be observed directly through the use of special equipment. Assessment of individual neuropsychological characteristics can take place through direct (brain scanning and other neurophysiological measurements) or indirect (observing performance during tasks known to be associated with kinds of neural activity) means. 

Brain scans are used to investigate the structure and functioning of the brain directly and include the following tools. The first two capture brain structure, while the last two depict its current functioning:

• MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagine) - shows tissue composition of body/brain through the use of magnetic fields
  
• CAT/CT (Computed Axial Tomography) - shows structural makeup of body/brain through the use of x-rays which are computer processed to produce a 3-D model.
• fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) - uses magnetic field to show blood flow activity in the body/brain, which correlates highly, but not absolutely, to neural activity.
• PET (Positron Emission Tomography) - shows how and where body/brain responds to a particular molecule that was injected in the bloodstream and contains a radioactive tracer isotope. 

In addition to brain scans, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) may be performed to record the levels and characteristics of electrical activity and magnetic fields, respectively, associated with neural activity.

Indirect methods are also used to study brain functioning. These include standardized neuropsychological tests of performance on tasks linked to specific neurocognitive processes, such as memory and verbal proficiency tests, and experimental tests measuring reaction time and accuracy on a particular task thought to be related to a specific neurocognitive process.

Prospects and difficulties 

Some of the tools listed above have been used on a limited scale to study people with different personal characteristics (skills, destructive behavior patterns, etc.), sometimes revealing observable differences in brain structure or functioning. Neurotransmitter levels probably play a significant role in shaping personality, but they are hard to measure directly because the brain doesn't leak them out to the rest of the body, and invasive procedures involve considerable risk of harm. Some commercial sources claim that neurotransmitter levels can be determined through urine tests, but this is debatable. Personality and behavior questionnaires such as those developed by Helen Fisher at chemistry.com may or may not accurately predict the level of neurotransmitters and hormones they are supposed to reflect. To their credit, the object of study is known and measurable in principle, even if there are difficulties at the present.

People of the same socionic type (or MBTI type, or whatever) could be run through brain scans to find commonalities, but this would require determining their types beforehand through inherently nonobjective means or by using a test of questionable validity. I doubt such a project could receive academic funding. I will continue to look into this topic. 

UPDATE APRIL 1, 2009: I just received a new book in the mail called Neurodynamics of Personality that talks in depth about the connections between physiology and psychology, and how new knowledge of the brain's workings sheds light on personality. I plan to read this book soon and incorporate it into new blog posts. 

Personality/Compatibility Test at Chemistry.com

I mentioned anthropologist and love researcher Helen Fisher two posts ago. She has put her observations and ideas about love and compatibility into test form at Chemistry.com. There, in about 20 minutes, you can take a test that tells you about your personality, strengths and weaknesses, and who you might be most attracted to. 

Please take the test (I'm sure you'll find it interesting) and report back in the following way:

1. your socionic type (self-typing)

2. your Chemistry.com test result

3. your opinion of the accuracy of the description (0% to 100%)

There are people from the MBTI or Keirsey camp who see a correspondence between Fisher's types and Keirsey temperaments or MBTI types, but I think these correlations are baloney. It's the same old fallacy of assuming that types are literally real and that only one set of real types can exist, therefore two different systems of types must either correspond closely, or one of the systems is bogus. 

In further posts I will discuss Fisher's types in greater depth. 

Experiments in Socionics

In previous posts I have discussed the pervasive lack of scientific method in socionics. All socionic studies conducted so far have been one of two types:

1. Studies of type-related behavior that accepted as a given that participants' types had been identified correctly.
2. Studies of socionists' opinions regarding socionics and socionic types.

Neither of these types of studies is of much use to researchers outside the socionics community. None prove the existence of types, intertype relations, or other concepts, or demonstrate the precise physiological or mental characteristics associated with socionic categories. I know of no ways of proving any of socionics experimentally. If you do, please leave a comment after the article. 

However, if we broaden our interests to include psychological compatibility, personality differences, and perception, then we can potentially create lots of good studies with real  scientific value that would touch on -- but not prove -- theoretical elements of socionics. Here are some ideas for such experiments. 

Does psychological compatibility exist?

Purpose

Try to determine whether different combinations of people living or working together closely experience significantly different levels of compatibility, and whether these levels are dependent upon particular pairings of people. 

Measures

"Compatibility" could be measured physiologically (levels of hormones in the blood associated with stress, contentment, irritation, etc.) verbally (using questionnaires), or through observation (how much time people spend talking, characteristics of conversation, etc.). A combination of the three would be most informative, but if the subjects knew that the object of the study was to measure psychological compatibility, that might color their responses to the different people they are paired with. To avoid this, questionnaires could be about subject's general emotional state, mood level, and well-being in order to not give hints about the real purpose of the study. Subjects would be told the purpose of the study was to find out more about their physiological responses to living conditions, for instance. Questionnaires and blood tests should be administered once daily at the same time each day. Daily routine would be the same each day. Observation would be conducted through hidden microphones that would record the amount of time each day that the people spend talking. If other patterns are discovered, researchers could analyze conversations for other parameters as well, such as the amount of laughter, emotional tone, or range of topics discussed.

Necessary conditions

To allow for compatibility to be clearly felt, subjects would ideally need to spend at least one week together in an isolated setting. They should have some kind of work to do, but nothing that would involve anyone other than each other. 

Setting

Possible settings include:

- a prison where inmates spend most of their waking time in their cells without external contact

- a hospital ward or sanatorium where people are recovering from long-term illnesses in a stationary setting

- an artificial setting, such as a summer camp in the woods specifically for the experiment

Process

Participants of a single sex and heterosexual orientation (to rule out confounding sexual factors) are paired randomly multiple times (say, 4 times over 4 weeks) and made to spend most or all of their time together. Blood tests and questionnaires are given daily at the same time each day. Participants may be given tasks that require them to interact more closely with their roommate. A hidden microphone tracks the amount of time each day that roommates spend talking, and can be used to analyze conversation content. At the end of each week, participants are abruptly moved to a different location (room) where they are paired with another person they have never met before. 

Variation 1: Participants could be reunited with one or more previous roommate at some point in the experiment. Researchers would be checking to see whether compatibility levels are the same as the first time together. 

Variation 2: Pair partners with people of the opposite sex (if they are both heterosexual) to see how results change when gender factors are introduced. This could make things complicated. 

Variation 3: The study could be duplicated for both sexes to allow for comparison of results between the sexes. 

Possible findings

Such a study would produce a large and very interesting body of data with a myriad of possible conclusions. Here are some questions that might be answered:

• Do people have stable compatibility levels with others? Or do levels (as measured in the experiment) fluctuate?
• If they are stable, how quickly are those levels achieved? Within one day? Five days?
• Are all people equally susceptible to compatibility? Or are there people who tend to be compatible, or incompatible, with everyone or nearly everyone?
• How widely do compatibility levels fluctuate? Is the fluctuation the same or different for different participants? 
• How well do people's self-reports correlate with blood test results? Is their perception of their own state correct?
• How does audio data from hidden microphones correlate with blood tests and self-reporting? Do more compatible partners always talk more? What, if anything, is different about their audible interaction? What about incompatible partners?
• When people are paired repeatedly with the same person, how closely do the results of the second period together match those of the first? Are there any patterns, such as that incompatible partners get even worse, or compatible ones get even better?

Most likely, many other things would be discovered that aren't on the list. 

Implications for socionics

Such a study could support or refute some of socionics' basic claims and assumptions about intertype relations and compatibility.