Subtypes?
There is a widespread misconception that adding subtypes can make a system more general, i.e. work better for more people, so that the categories cover more people and the boundaries between types are clearer. But adding subtypes makes a theory more specific, not more general, and in practice tends to "warp" the existing types and change their meaning. Making the boundaries clearer comes from clear semantics, not additional categories.
This is why I have been focusing on refining the semantics of the existing categories in socionics before adding other ones.
Reinin dichotomies?
See here. tldr: Reinin dichotomies are not useful for typing, and no appropriate semantics have been found that are observable in the typing process.
Model G?
I agree on the significance of energy metabolism, but personally I do not see why Model G needs to exist. As noted by Augusta in Socion, energy metabolism is already included in Model A:
Every change in the organism itself or its position is not only an act of energy metabolism, but also an information signal to other living beings. Energy metabolism is also information metabolism. Four phases of EM correspond to four phases of IM. One cannot exist without the other. [source]
Model G has the main effect of introducing a lot of ad hoc categories (like DCNH subtypes and social spheres) that let you type anyone as anything you want and ultimately reduce the explanatory power of the theory and the significance of the base types, since most people are Beta rationals in his view. What I have heard from Model G users is that the DCNH subtype is supposed to be even more observable as well as more important for compatibility than the actual type. Gulenko does not actually use Model G in his typing analyses so it seems more like a marketing move than actual theoretical advancement.
Difference between Te PoLR and Se PoLR (etc.)?
When typing someone it's better to compare the same IME in different functions instead of different IMEs in the same function, because the IME is what you actually observe of the person. The function is a long-term trend in IME usage over time, its value and strength or weakness.
Differences between socionics and MBTI, and correlations with other theories?
There are so many interpretations of MBTI and Enneagram out there (some of which even borrow socionics concepts) that any comparison (say, between functions/IMEs and types) will not be very useful for understanding socionics. It's best to learn socionics in its own right. If you can't do this while also thinking about MBTI then maybe dropping MBTI is for the best.
I have some thoughts on socionics correlations with Enneagram core types (which do seem to be referring to something that exists in reality), but they are still preliminary and not useful for understanding either theory in its own right.
If you understand and apply the systems individually then the correlations question will answer itself, but if you only think about correlations all the time then you will never understand the systems individually.
When you actually type someone you have to do it by condensing observations into a theoretical category. If you have direct access to the observations then it makes no sense to make reference to another typing which is a highly condensed form of the observations and leaves a lot of stuff out. E.g. if you know someone's MBTI type it shouldn't be used as input to find their enneagram type (for example), just use the actual observations of them as a person.
If you don't have access to the direct observations then it's even worse since the other typing itself isn't something you can verify in the first place — it might be wrong or based on a very different understanding of the typology. So it's next to pointless to take someone's self-typing in MBTI and use it to derive information about their actual type in enneagram etc.
Type descriptions?
I have avoided writing type descriptions up until this point. Personally I never used them beyond the first few months of learning socionics. Often they contain extraneous details that don't apply in every case, and are mostly useful for people who just want to know their type quickly and be done with it. I am focusing more on content that will be useful for people who want to deeply understand socionics. If you really need them then I suggest sticking to Western authors (native English-speakers).
Eventually I plan to give type definitions rather than descriptions. See here for some progress on this point.
Relationship descriptions?
Unlike types, relationships are hard to get a large sample of to observe, and the uncertainty is multiplied. If you are 70% sure of two people's types then you're only 50% sure about the relationship so it requires high certainty.
Most of the classical relationship description seem far too specific. It is clear that certain patterns exist: generally same-quadra relationships fare better and opposite-quadra relationships don't as well, but also Se valuing types have more conflict overall, even (and especially) with their own quadra types which also value Se. For them, duality may be very good in the best case but not the worst or even average case. But if you're looking at the friends and relationships people actually have then it's the best case that matters, and I do think same-quadra relations are overrepresented at that level, if not duality specifically.
There is something to the classical idea of dualization as getting comfortable with your suggestive function, but getting along with duals is not a very good measure of personal growth. Some duals are just not that compatible or good people.
Stereotypes?
A "stereotype" is just a (common) conception of a type that is thought to be wrong and/or oversimplified. So it can be used to dismiss any idea you don't agree with and is essentially an empty criticism — types themselves are stereotypes, just accurate ones.
Application of socionics to relationships?
Socionics shouldn't be used to limit who you interact with solely based on type. It's good for recognizing when you feel a certain way about someone, and if those feelings and interaction patterns are likely to persist and become bigger issues later on. At that point you can either decide you are ready to deal with them or if it's not worth it. People tend to ignore a lot of the early warning signs.
Application of socionics to personal development?
First your type should help to pinpoint your weaknesses (primarily the weak and 1D functions). Notice what specific failings you have in these areas, taking into account criticism from others. Make consistent effort to improve them in an observable way. This requires leaving your comfort zone and going against your natural instincts and tendencies.
There is not much theory of development for socionics, but I have thoughts on how it might work. Jung spoke of "shadow integration" and something like that seems inherent in the model: self-development comes from incorporating your opposite, i.e. developing the functions opposite to the lead such as the role, suggestive, and ignoring functions. But all the IMEs are opposites in a way, so it ultimately means developing proficiency in all of them so that you can fulfill their basic needs for yourself.
This differs from Jung's theory in that the opposite here is not just any part of yourself that you don't like or don't want to see, the IMEs have inherent value and therefore should be integrated.
Visual identification?
Visual identification (VI) can refer to two typing methods, static VI or dynamic VI.
Static VI uses facial features. It seems that some facial features may be weakly related to type but the correlations are far too inconsistent to be useful, there are no set rules. Discussion on them by its nature must be purely empirical if they don't relate to the underlying psychological theory. But then a very large sample size must be found and agreed upon by authors.
Dynamic VI uses mannerisms and nonverbal communication. I use mannerisms and nonverbal information for typing people as a kind of "shortcut" but they need to be confirmed with observations that can be explained in psychological terms. For example you may note that someone is particularly enthusiastic, or rough, or energetic, or monotone, etc. But if it's just because they remind you of someone you've already typed, then it isn't really worth public discussion, won't apply all the time, and can be based on previous mistypings.
Mental illness and type?
First of all typology should not be used to stigmatize people, it should be used to identify their natural strengths and weaknesses and aid in self-development. That said, it is dishonest to rule out a priori the existence of correlations between certain types and disorders, and there do indeed seem to be correlations in practice. Further research on the topic is needed.
What school of socionics do you follow?
I consider myself a part of the School of Western Socionics (SWS), which refers to English-speakers who learned socionics directly or indirectly from Rick DeLong. WSS is a part of SWS but WSS's current membership is not responsible for most of its main ideas, like focusing on IM elements for typing, strengths and values, and emphasizing quadras.
Thoughts on classical socionics?
First of all, it's necessary to distinguish Augusta's early, incomplete version of socionics from 90s Eastern classical socionics, which was also developed and solidified by Bukalov and Gulenko after Augusta had largely moved away from socionics research. Augusta's version is more properly called pre-classical socionics since it is no longer used by any major authors, even in the East. In particular pre-classical socionics emphasizes concepts like accepting/producing, mental/vital, and information flow through supervision rings which are largely not in practical use today, either in Eastern or Western schools. It shares emphasis on type dichotomies with classical socionics, although some Eastern schools are said to emphasize functions more than dichotomies.
Pre-classical socionics should largely be regarded as an early attempt to make sense of the theory, but which contains many speculative ideas that didn't pan out (like Reinin dichotomies). Augusta herself viewed her ideas as speculative and incomplete: “This is not science at all. What I wrote is a lot of hypotheses, it still needs to be proved and proved."
Classical socionics on the other hand is much closer to Western socionics (SWS). Its definitions of the IMEs are quite close — for example as described in Mironov et al's 2006 book on IME semantics. Some semantics I would change are Ni as unqualified "time" and being on time, Ni as urgency (which has Se elements), Ne as luck, and associating Te with action rather than Se. But overall they are quite close.
Other baseless claims have been made about pre-classical socionics, such as the idea that relating Se to fighting and action is a new idea invented by Western authors. But Augusta writes in Socion:
Information about what one could call “kinetic energy” of objects. For example, how externally organized someone is, their physique and energy-related qualities, their ability to successfully exercise their will and use their official position. This perception provides an ability to see how much “kinetic energy” a particular person has and how useful they can be in action. It determines one’s ability or inability to exercise their will in opposition to the will of others, and use their energy against the energy of others.
Clearly fighting is nothing but the exercise of one's will in opposition to the will of others. And people like Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin who were all classically typed as Se base types, were all fighters, people who engaged in struggle for dominance and power.
SWS does emphasize quadras more, but quadras have been used since Augusta, and Gulenko used the concept of valuing an IME in his 1991 report "Quadras and Their Socio-Psychological Features". Quadras are also the first thing you see on his website, so this is not without precedent. Overall SWS derives directly from Gulenko's views from the 90s.
The type dichotomies also tend to be misleading in type diagnosis, and especially static/dynamic and rational/irrational are virtually unobservable. Eastern typists like Gulenko rely heavily on the Jungian dichotomies for typing (notably he does not use Model G functions in his analyses).
Reinin dichotomies are a contentious topic in the East but are rejected by most Western authors.
The understanding of types in pre-classical socionics is quite different from SWS — for this the reference is Weisband's brief descriptions which were reportedly based on Augusta's notes. Some examples: LSE is described as a Beta ST, LIE is described as something more like ILE or LSE, LII as a Beta introvert, SLE sometimes as an Se creative type, IEI as being totally positive, and ILE was a catch-all type for intellectuals. Gulenko (again, talking pre-Model G here) notably corrected the conception of LII to basically what it is today in SWS, and probably ILE was de-generalized somewhat. Most of the other misconceptions seem to persist.
In bringing socionics to the West Rick DeLong emphasized sticking to the mainstream of socionics at the time (2005-2006), and SWS is the school that evolved from those views. Most of my research has been directed towards justifying the basic definitions used in socionics and figuring out why Model A has the structure that it has. This has led to an approach that emphasizes IM elements and quadras primarily, and any changes in semantics are in service of this goal. I am not aware of any similar attempt by Eastern authors to rigorously define concepts and justify the structure of the models that they use.
Thoughts on Wikisocion?
Wikisocion was created by Rick DeLong in 2007 as a wiki to house consensus, mainstream views on socionics (in other words, the classical socionics mentioned above). I was one of the early (albeit less prolific) contributors, and I wrote a bot in Python to automate certain tasks. The site was subject to a database failure and much of the content was lost, at which point I lost interest in working on it.
It was later bought by He Mu (hkkmr, the owner of the16types) and is no longer open access but is controlled by a small number of editors. Most of the content changes that have been made since then have been for the worse, for example, here.
Russian translations have also been added, they should (along with all other Russian socionics translations) in general be treated as obsolete due to the large body of original English-language material that now exists.
Is socionics pseudoscience?
Socionics could potentially be tested empirically by clinical means (questionnaires etc.) and types could be diagnosed (speculatively) by physical tests like brain scans, blood tests, DNA tests, etc. which may then correlate with the expected behavioral traits. As far as I can tell no rigorous empirical tests have actually been done despite claims to the contrary by Eastern authors, so socionics is more accurately described as protoscience.
In the short term, it's more likely that we will achieve mathematical/logical verification of socionics' basic concepts before empirical verification.
Is socionics about cognition or behavior?
Behavior is a result of motivation: we do what we want when we can. So while in a particular situation a person's inner traits may not be apparent they always come out in the long run. So the right model is what is called purposive behaviorism. Socionics models both the cognitive resources (strength and boldness) we use to accomplish certain outcomes (IM elements) as well as our innate motivations (quadra values).
The more a model or interpretation rejects outward behavior as evidence, the less it is able to explain behavior, which is basically the only information that typology needs to explain in the first place. And a personality theory that doesn't explain behavior is useless.
What are some other misconceptions about socionics?
- Supervision isn't an action where you somehow boss around the supervisee. Yes, your supervisor may criticize you when you don't do well at their leading function but some types are a lot less likely to criticize others in the first place. And harsh criticism can occur in other relationships too.
- Typing via relationships - there is too much variation in relationships to do this, you have to identify the types before the relationship. If you know your type with certainty then you can gauge how you react to different kinds of behavior and maybe use that.
Socionics is about behavior and MBTI is about cognition?
The (mostly irrelevant) distinction between behavior and cognition has been addressed above.
Attempts to define one typology as being about X aspect of human nature as opposed to Y are extremely speculative as they claim to know the essential nature of the entire system itself, and as it stands we don't even know the essential nature of their types or other theoretical elements. And obviously even if we did know what it was there would still be correlations.
What we can say is that socionics is about information metabolism but information metabolism overlaps significantly with just about every aspect of a person's personality, including skills, values, priorities, motivations, perceptual lens, and thought process.
What is socionics a theory of?
Socionics is a theory of types of information metabolism ("TIM"), and of information metabolism in general. It gives information about intertype relationships but these are far from a fundamental or well-defined part of the theory. I see the fundamental building blocks of the theory as the IM elements (or aspects) and functions. Quadras are also important (both as groups of IMEs and of types) but clearly socionics is not just a "theory of quadras" or else there would only be four types and not 16. It's more correct to say that it's a theory of IM elements.
Augusta viewed it in terms of dyads, dichotomies, and information metabolism, and focused very little on quadras among all the other theoretical categories that she used — they are not even mentioned in 2 of the 3 main works she wrote on socionics as a whole. If anything Gulenko is the Eastern author who seems to use quadras the most (even post-Model G), and who popularized them prior to their prominence in Western socionics.
Why is MBTI more popular than socionics?
- MBTI has been around a lot longer (in development by 1945, whereas socionics research began in the 70s)
- MBTI was developed by Americans, in English. Socionics was only starting to be translated around 2005-2007.
- MBTI is indeed simpler but socionics could probably be presented in a simpler fashion given what we know now.
- MBTI was aggressively marketed almost from the get-go, Isabel spent her life disseminating it to corporations and other organizations.
What do you think about psychosophy/psyche-yoga/attitudinal psyche?
I don't actively use psychosophy and I cannot really vouch for its validity. My focus is on socionics and to a much lesser extent Enneagram.
Psychosophy was developed in the Russian-speaking sphere so clearly the creator was aware of socionics and drew certain elements from it, including:
- a functional model
- relationships between types (duality/conflict)
- similar "IMEs" like physics/sensing, emotions/Fe, volition/Se, logic/logic
- subtypes
- terminology like Process/Result
- historical figures as type monikers (and Dumas is used for both)
The author also mentions the influence from socionics in The Syntax of Love:
...psychosophy is not something completely original and has its own prehistory. It really does. The starting point for the creation of psychosophy was the ingenious, I dare say, psychological research of the Vilnius sociologist Aušra Augustinavičiūtė.
Psychosophy is sometimes erroneously attributed to the author Alexander Afanasyev but The Syntax of Love also references Jung, and Afanasyev died before Jung was born. The author of TSOL may just have the same name or maybe it is a pseudonym.
What do you think about classical Jungian typology?
Jung's theory was one early step towards the creation of Model A, but it is not socionics and there is no reason to use it now that socionics exists. Jung was not a socionist. Clearly, if Jung's typology was already perfectly accurate then Augusta would not have felt the need to make any changes to it. She also was not merely "reinterpreting Jung" but actually changed much of the semantics drastically. (Jung's definition of Introverted Sensing is almost unrecognizable, for example.) She also did not see herself as a mere Jung-interpreter and wrote a whole paper about the differences between socionics and Jung's theory:
"Some of Jung's hypotheses and positions are clearly out of date, and it is already possible to replace them with others."
You can say that all Jungian typologies are mere approximations to, or flawed versions of, socionics, but this doesn't mean that their terminology and types should be conflated. For example there is no unique translation between MBTI and socionics types due to the "J/P flip" and indeed semantically neither way gives a very high correlation for all types.
Are you affiliated with WSS?
I initially learned about socionics in 2006 and I was a member of WSS diagnostics for a short period, from 2015 to 2016. I am not currently affiliated with WSS.