Re: CHAT: The Fabulous Personalities of Conlang

Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> wrote:

>I'm a INTJ (with preferences of 11% 33% 33% 33%) according to this test.
>While the description of an INTJ seemed reasonably close to what I think I
>know about myself, I must say many of the questions seemed slightly
>ill-formulated; how difficult to excite/enrage is difficult? How easy to
>communicate in social settings is easy?
>
>Also, I don't like the implication that I'm an intuitive thinker! I do wish
>to believe my conclusions are generally legitimately deduced from objective
>observations ...
Well, actually INTJ's *do* make decisions that way.  They are
secondarily extraverted thinkers.  It's where they get their
information from that is introverted-intuitive (on balance).
Which is to say, they generally rely a lot on finding patterns
(intuiting) in remembered observations (introversion).  They use
these patterns in their objective judgements (thinking) about
the outside world (extraversion).  Which sorta explains why they
often like science.

Sorry if that's confusing.  What I wanted to point out is
that Myers-Briggs notation obfuscates the underlying Jungian
theory, unless you know how to decipher it.  Here is a
super-brief sketch of what Jung had in mind:

There are four _functions_: intuition (N) and sensation (S)
are _perceiving_ functions;  thinking (T) and feeling (F) are
_judging_ functions.  Perceiving means getting your data; judging
means evaluating your data.

In addition, there are two _attitudes_: extraversion (E) and
introversion (I).  These terms are almost vernacular by now, but
they originated with Jung.  They refer to where the attention
and mental energy tend to get focused, externally or internally.

Jung said that every person has all the functions and attitudes,
but that one of each will be _dominant_.  Which is to say,
more exercized than the others.  For example, a person could
be basically an introverted thinker, an extraverted sensor,
etc.  This gives us the eight basic Jungian psychological types.

In addition to this, for every person, one function and attitude
will be _auxiliary_, which is to say, it helps out the dominant
function.  However, the auxiliary function can't be just anything;
there are contraints.  If your dominant attitude is E, then your
auxiliary must be I, and vice versa.  In addition, if your dominant
function is perceiving (N or S), then your auxiliary must be
judging (T or F), and vice versa.  Without this necessary balance,
you'd be a basket case.

The result is that each of the eight basic Jungian types can be
subdivided into two subtypes.  Dominant introverted thinking can
be coupled with auxiliary extraverted sensing, or extraverted
intuition;  Dominant ES can be coupled with auxiliary IT or IF;
and so on.  This is where the sixteen Myer-Briggs types come from.

Now, the most straightforward method for encoding these types
would have been using the six letters (S, N, F, T; I, E) and
directly writing the dominant and auxiliary functions in order:
Thus, we'd have ITEN's, ESIF's and so on.  A more sophisticated
approach would be to drop the third letter, since we know that
it will always be opposite the first letter.  Thus we'd have
ITN (not to be confused with INT!), ESF, etc.  But neither
of these methods was how they chose to do it.

I said this would be super-brief, but I suppose I should explain
the rest.  What happened was that Myers and/or Briggs observed
that there were very marked differences in behavior depending
on whether a person's strongest extraverted function was
judging or perceiving, regardless of whether this function
was actually dominant or auxiliary.  Because this distinction
was relatively easy to measure, they decided it would be
worthwhile to use it in their encoding.  Thus the MBTI system
gives P for perceivers-those who *extravert* their perceiving
function (and introvert their judging function), and J for
judgers -those who *extravert* their judging function (and
*introvert* their perceiving function).

Nota bene: P and J do *not* mark the dominant function; they
mark the function that gets extraverted.

Here's a quick summary of how the MBTI letters work:

First letter:  E or I = the dominant attitude = the attitude
of dominant function (which can be any: N, S, F, or T).

Second letter:  N or S = the stronger perceiving function.
Can be *either* dominant or auxiliary; can be *either*
introverted or extraverted.

Third letter: F or T = the stronger judging function.
Can be *either* dominant or auxiliary; can be *either*
introverted or extraverted.

Fourth letter: J or P = the strongest function that gets
extraverted.  Can be *either* dominant or auxiliary;  can be
any function.

In case the above is clear as mud, here is a breakdown of
the sixteen types by Jungian attitude-function combos.

MBTI = dominant + auxiliary + tertiary + inferior

ENFJ = EF + IN + ES + IT
ENFP = EN + IF + ET + IS
ENTJ = ET + IN + ES + IF
ENTP = EN + IT + EF + IS
ESFJ = EF + IS + EN + IT
ESFP = ES + IF + ET + IN
ESTJ = ET + IS + EN + IF
ESTP = ES + IT + EF + IN
INFJ = IN + EF + IT + ES
INFP = IF + EN + IS + ET
INTJ = IN + ET + IF + ES
INTP = IT + EN + IS + EF
ISFJ = IS + EF + IT + EN
ISFP = IF + ES + IN + ET
ISTJ = IS + ET + IF + EN
ISTP = IT + ES + IN + EF

I hope that someone finds this curious :-)


Regards