Something New on the Horizon - a new Institute

 Yesterday evening I attended a Zoom meeting of the NYC Socionics Society, after two years hanging around the margins of two Socionics groups on Facebook.

I feel like the game has suddenly changed. I told the group that I want the concepts of Socionics to take their rightful place in the American landscape, going head to head with the MBTI and the Enneagram. And folks liked the idea. One person in particular seems to be right with me-- she said "We need to get a better name!" (i.e., than Socionics-- not just for American ears, but for the global academic community, I assume she also meant.)

What needs to be done? I believe that we need to excavate the source material used by the architects of both the MBTI and Socionics-- Jung's type descriptions in Chapter 10 of Psychological Types. Do we all need to read the previous nine chapters? I don't think so, but it would be nice to pull in a collaborator who has actually read the whole book and understands it.

I have the outlines of a new type system, something that will stand out from the systems that have come before. Our system will have 8 types, corresponding to the eight in the book, and each type will have two subtypes, so:

The rationals:  Ti (S or N), Te (S or N), Fi (S or N), Fe (S or N)

The irrationals: Ne (T or F), Ni (T or F), Se (T or F), Si (T or F)

Next, we implement the concepts of Model A using a 3-D model. Eight unit cubes, arranged in a cube. The four vertical pairs of cubes we label T, F, S, N. There is a horizontal plane that bisects the top cubes and the bottom cubes. One side of the plane is "conscious", the other side "unconscious".

We view the cubes from above and we label clockwise from top left. I don't have the labels perfectly clear in my mind yet-- that's what we have all these smart people for! But the point is that what Model A calls Base and Ignoring, we will call one thing, Creative/Demonstrative, one thing, Role/Suggestive, one thing, and Vulnerable/Activation, one thing.

ESI squares (cubes viewed from the top) will be, clockwise: F(i), S(e), T(i), N(e).

What am I doing here? I am keeping very close to Jung's concepts. He only provides us with E and I (which he describes richly and confidently) and then T, F, S, and N.

When we unveil this model to the world we will be mostly introducing Jung's concepts, not reintroducing them. The MBTI, while well intentioned by the creators, severed these eight types ("functions", to them) from Jung's whole way of viewing psychology, from his esprit. They tried to make them accessible to the general public, and especially to business leaders.

Now-- in their defense, Jung himself only knew for sure that each person has one of the eight types predominating in their makeup, and sensed that the "functioning" of other types helped to bring equilibrium to the psyche. The Socionists discerned the actual pattern of functioning, once it was known which "types" (they said "information elements") occupy the primary/base/dominant position and the auxiliary/creative position.

Stick with me here-- so, in ESI there is a powerful, "minimally noisy" component, F. From above we are viewing the conscious, Fi. The cube hidden under it is Fe. The two cubes are a "rod" of F. If we flip the whole structure over and follow the same "strength" pattern, you have Fe, Si, Te, Ni.

Part of what I intend to do with this model is to steal ground from the Enneagram, which is the high-performer in the religious / spiritual "market". We can call the Role/Suggestive "rod" (T for ESI) a source of "idolatry", for example. That is how it maps, actually!

The new model will be simpler, and spiritual, and global-- the global part comes from the fact that there are practicing Jungian Analysts around the world. We need to come to those Analysts as the rightful heirs to Jung's typology. They are a critical link into psychotherapy and coaching.

Anyway- the group is meeting again on 6/25 and I'm hoping to present some of the high-level ideas there. We are going to create a new global institute.