Post by fangoriousfae on Sept 5, 2014 11:50:45 GMT -5
Hello, forum. I've had an account for a little over a week now, but I hadn't gotten around to introducing myself or posting at all until now.
I was introduced to Jungian typology stuff about two years ago by a friend during a discussion about our different interpretations of the characters of MOTHER 2, since that game isn't too heavy on inter-party dialogue. To this day, we maintain a spreadsheet of fictional characters that we try to type in various systems. Unfortunately, that variety of Jungian typology happened to be Myers-Briggs; even though the both of us looked at it based on functions rather than letters, I still started noticing problems with the theory. I tried to ignore the lack of empiricism, brushing it off as the test being flawed rather than the theory, but I couldn't ignore that the descriptions of the different mental functions were often vague, overlapping, and contradictory. Some reactions of mine included "Okay, how is Te any different from Ti and Se working together?", "So, if Si is memory and Se is sensation, how do people without Si remember things and how do people without Se see?", and "Yes, but what does Ni do? Does anyone even know what it is?". It didn't help that all the forums were full of people who believed in every single misconception about mental functions anyone could possibly have; I remember one thread where people tried to type characters from Doctor Who, and this one fellow there simultaneously claimed that the Tenth Doctor was "halfway between T and F" and had strong Ne--what?!
Thank God I found this place. This site and the first few days of Psychology 100 helped me realize the fundamental flaw of MBTI: it's trying to take a theory of cognition and shoehorn it into the field of personality. That's why it has the misleading four-letter code, the questionnaire that treats the theory like four sliding scales, and the stereotype-ridden, Forer Effect-inducing profiles. That's why people these days are so quick to dismiss Jung altogether and become champions of The Big Five.
But enough about the problems with MBTI, which I'm sure you guys are all too familiar with; the reason I'm here is because Erifrail's stuff is so much better. The naming conventions here are so much less misleading, the functions are defined specifically and consistently, and the theory actually has observation, neuroscience, and falsifiability! Some of the posts here about people who have cognitive types and skills/occupations that break stereotypes have been rather helpful; I remember scoffing when I first found out that Socionics considered Einstein to be IEE, but all the stuff here about what the functions really are and how they can be observed and that one post about all the NeFi physicists turned me around.
As far as other typology systems go, I quite like the Enneagram and D&D Character Alignment, and I've used the Four Temperaments for a while but am now considering using the Big Five instead.
I have to say I'm still not entirely clear on what all the functions are and do, but there doesn't seem to be one place on this site that has all the relevant information about all the functions. I'm curious about something as well: what is this site's stance on shadow functions?
I was introduced to Jungian typology stuff about two years ago by a friend during a discussion about our different interpretations of the characters of MOTHER 2, since that game isn't too heavy on inter-party dialogue. To this day, we maintain a spreadsheet of fictional characters that we try to type in various systems. Unfortunately, that variety of Jungian typology happened to be Myers-Briggs; even though the both of us looked at it based on functions rather than letters, I still started noticing problems with the theory. I tried to ignore the lack of empiricism, brushing it off as the test being flawed rather than the theory, but I couldn't ignore that the descriptions of the different mental functions were often vague, overlapping, and contradictory. Some reactions of mine included "Okay, how is Te any different from Ti and Se working together?", "So, if Si is memory and Se is sensation, how do people without Si remember things and how do people without Se see?", and "Yes, but what does Ni do? Does anyone even know what it is?". It didn't help that all the forums were full of people who believed in every single misconception about mental functions anyone could possibly have; I remember one thread where people tried to type characters from Doctor Who, and this one fellow there simultaneously claimed that the Tenth Doctor was "halfway between T and F" and had strong Ne--what?!
Thank God I found this place. This site and the first few days of Psychology 100 helped me realize the fundamental flaw of MBTI: it's trying to take a theory of cognition and shoehorn it into the field of personality. That's why it has the misleading four-letter code, the questionnaire that treats the theory like four sliding scales, and the stereotype-ridden, Forer Effect-inducing profiles. That's why people these days are so quick to dismiss Jung altogether and become champions of The Big Five.
But enough about the problems with MBTI, which I'm sure you guys are all too familiar with; the reason I'm here is because Erifrail's stuff is so much better. The naming conventions here are so much less misleading, the functions are defined specifically and consistently, and the theory actually has observation, neuroscience, and falsifiability! Some of the posts here about people who have cognitive types and skills/occupations that break stereotypes have been rather helpful; I remember scoffing when I first found out that Socionics considered Einstein to be IEE, but all the stuff here about what the functions really are and how they can be observed and that one post about all the NeFi physicists turned me around.
As far as other typology systems go, I quite like the Enneagram and D&D Character Alignment, and I've used the Four Temperaments for a while but am now considering using the Big Five instead.
I have to say I'm still not entirely clear on what all the functions are and do, but there doesn't seem to be one place on this site that has all the relevant information about all the functions. I'm curious about something as well: what is this site's stance on shadow functions?