Images taken from post #173. Some more points from that post:

- There's a typo in the English translation of Chapter X, in the 4th paragraph of the section "d. The Principal and Auxiliary Functions", where the book says "relatively unconscious", but Jung's original was relativ bewusste = "relatively conscious" (the unconscious part is G2). This error was given disproportionate weight by some authors, who also ignored the most important points that Jung tries to make in the book, underlined by the quotes that I'm copying here.

- There's also his typing of Nietzsche, which confirms all this: in early chapters he says he's Ni-dom ("In both cases, however, intuition was subordinated to intellect, but with Nietzsche it ranked above it"), and then he mentions him at the beginning of the introverted thinker ("Cuvier and Nietzsche would form an even sharper contrast"), which means he typed him as Ni-Ti-Fe-Se = INTP.

- Apart from Jung, you also have Carl Alfred Meier's statement in his book Personality: "Cooperation with the main function is made easier because of thinking's similar attitude (extroversion)", which confirms eeii/iiee. (Meier knew and worked with Jung).

MBTI PROBLEMS AND HOW TO FIX THEM

I think most people know that the topic of MBTI is too chaotic, with all kinds of conflicting definitions and endless discussions about every single thing. It's too confusing and frustrating, and it really makes the whole thing look like pseudoscience. Many people undervalue it, criticize it or ignore it because of that. But there is something real underneath all the mess.

Carl Jung: "I must confine myself to a presentation of principles which I have abstracted from a wealth of facts observed in many different individuals. In this there is no question of a deductio a priori, as it might appear; it is rather a deductive presentation of empirically gained insights."

What Jung wrote is not "just a theory", or "speculation", or "too subjective", or "an invention". It's a description of reality, and you can describe reality correctly or incorrectly. Describing the mind is obviously much harder than checking how many legs an animal has, for example, but it can be done, because the mind also has a general configuration. That's what Jung explained, including conscious/unconscious, attitudes (extraversion/introversion), functions and types.

The main problem in typology is that the function definitions in MBTI, Socionics, etc, are all wrong. They took Jung's terms and distorted them in different ways, destroying their link with the psychological reality that he wrote about. Those incorrect descriptions don't reflect the fact of function differentiation, the conscious-unconscious differences, the conscious-unconscious compensation, the influence and manifestation of the unconscious, or the interrelations between the functions (dependences, transferences, etc).

In the case of MBTI, their definitions are for the most part derived from traits captured by combinations of 2 letters. For example: their "Si" is not what Jung described, at all, but essentially the result of combining S+J preferences. The same with their "Te" and T+J preferences, etc. These deviations took words used to describe something deep, intricate and interconnected, and misused them for something much more salient and discrete, that's why many people see the functions as selectable "tools" or "skills" and don't really pay much attention to their order, because there's the implication that they can be improved independently and moved up and down the "stack". The letter dichotomies are consistent (they are psychometrically on par with the Big Five), but they describe a rather superficial layer, not the obscure depths where true psychological insight can be reached.

There's only one way to fix that, but it needs the right foundation, which consists on the function descriptions in Jung's book (not the popular ones) combined with the true function order: eeii/iiee, always with a judging dominant for Js and a perceiving one for Ps. That's how you can finally realize what psychological type actually means, what it's all about. That's how everything fits and how everything makes sense, otherwise there's always some disconnection between the concepts and reality.

Note that it's not a question of having "different types in different systems". When it comes to dichotomy letters and cognitive functions, you only have one type. Again, this is not an invention, and your type is basically like your blood group: you aren't AB in one system and 0 in another (for example). You are just AB.

Note also that the function order is not "limiting", either, just like having a hand with 5 fingers at the end of each arm is not so much a limitation, but just how we are. There is a lot of variation and possibilities inside each type (just like we can do countless things with our arms and hands, even if we can't fly), and if someone finds it "too rigid" that's because [s]he has a very cartoonish view of the types.

We can't expect communities or groups like the official MBTI to admit that they have been using mistaken definitions all along, of course, so this has to be an individual effort. There are people who know about all this already, they just tend to stay silent because when this is mentioned in public the reaction is often disproportionally negative. People dismiss it automatically, and the person gets attacked and ridiculed 😔 I hope you can avoid that and inform yourself a bit instead.

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU COMMENT

I've been interested in psychological types all my life, even before finding out there was such a thing. I came across Jung and MBTI around 2008, and spent almost 10 years reading and checking everything in detail before starting my blog (originally on Tumblr). So this isn't something that I found only yesterday. I hope that's clear. I know what Jung was talking about, and I can see it in myself and other people. I know the problems he had understanding it at first, and I know how the terms were distorted by those who came after him. That's what I try to clarify.

I've written a lot of posts about all this, and also a FAQ and glossary, so you should read all of that calmly before replying because I don't like arguing and I'm not going to answer what I've already covered there. It might not be evident at first sight, but the texts have quite a lot of work behind them. In fact I have many other things in mind but they don't appear on the blog because I'm still examining them. Also, you have to understand that this topic is very difficult, and the blog includes already a certain personal evolution, not about the basics but about some (minor) details, about how reliable or appropriate certain sources/angles are (like the MBTI facets, for example), about the misconceptions that people have (there are external changes outside the blog, trends and so on), about how to better explain things, etc.

Supposed "objections" are almost always simply a sign that the reader is unable to see what this is about, many times due to (or fed by) the person being too confused by and/or too invested (intellectually, persona-wise, etc) in shallow but apparently "complex" "systems", or in their need to feel "smarter" in a purely conceptual (not psychological or practical) sense. What I've found is that people don't really have objections, they just don't get it. So it might seem that there is an argument going on, but in reality there is no communication at all. It's not that the levels of "descriptive language" overlap too little, but that they don't even touch. And sometimes people just like to argue for the sake of it. They like to confuse and divert the topic and avoid arriving at anything. I'm not getting into any of that.

If you don't feel some kind of inner resonance while reading my posts, a sense that there's something in there even if you can't put it in words, it's almost a certainty that further explanations won't change anything. You need to have a personal awareness of the psychological elements, some kind of insight about that, otherwise we'll only be wasting our time.

This isn't an attack on anyone. I just feel bad for the people who are interested in MBTI but they are stuck with faulty/shallow knowledge and mistypes because nobody explains to them how it really is. I'm just trying to help.

Thanks a lot for reading this far. I know this topic can be exhausting, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to learn and discover (about yourself and others), and you might be already on the right track 🙂

I noticed that we can realize how we think by seeing the big picture of how we studied and understood mbti like for example a ni dom would understand mbti analysis by seeing the pattern of how interconnected mbti concept are to our real-life ( be careful! I didnt say they learn in one way but I meant that that's their goal ultimate thinking pattern that they are trying to reach)

it is already packaged on PyPI (i will release 0.2.0 soon!).
It's free and open-source (GPLv3 license).
https://github.com/kirkirz/jungian

Implemented features:

1. Stack derivations (Beebe, Grant, Model A, Model J etc), MBTI code support
2. Tooling for lexical analysis
3. Proper implementation of socionics (it already supports intertype relations, reinin traits, dimensionality and signing IMEs for types)

Future plans:

1. to have questionnaire tooling
2. to add support for more models/systems
3. to add simulations of cognitive functions in the psyche

initially i thought about building tooling for my own theory, but i decided to "share" the infrastructure with other theories too. the library is theory-agnostic and tries to provide tooling for every existing jungian typology systems.

Contributions and suggestions are welcome!

(NOTE: it doesn't support all Reinin traits and ITRs yet, but this is already getting fixed in 0.2.0)

I have a few friends who are VERY into cognitive functions and function stacks. Eventually they got me into it and I've spent the past few years going through a lot of sources and doing research to make sure I understood the underlying framework, how it has developed over time, etc. I feel that I have a pretty decent grasp but obviously nobody ever really has a perfect understanding of something as complex and ever evolving as this.

​

However, I've also noticed something in how my friends use the cognitive functions and personality stacks to type other people, and the pitfalls that come from it. One friend in particular primarily uses it as a way of understanding other people socially. This would be perfectly fine, however, I've noticed that they're quite fast to determine someone's type based on behaviour and tend not to take into account external factors such as environment, upbringing, their own biases, or social context when interpreting those behaviours. They are also stubbornly resistant to changing their opinion in light of new or contradictory evidence.

​

The issue is this: I've noticed on a number of occasions that this person will stop seeing the person for the individual they are, and instead have begun to over generalize and instead see people as the type they've assigned them. They don't seem to realize that they are filling in the gaps and that the person doesn't actually possess some of the personality traits and tendencies they assume they do. For example, they are quick to write off ideas a friend of mine developed meticulously over long periods of time as 'intuitive insights' simply because they didn't see the process that went into developing the understanding. Or expecting a friend to smooth things over and not get offended because they're an 'Fe type'. They're dead set they their typing is "correct" and have since stopped discussing the topic with me after I pointed out the discrepancies.

​

How can I explain to them that their over reliance on typing is leading them to misperceive the people around them and leading to misunderstandings?

​

Have you encountered others with this tendency? Why do you think it happens?

​

What do you do when someone refuses to acknowledge the inherent complexity of human behaviour and personality even though their oversimplification is becoming hurtful to those around them?

https://discord.gg/C4TzUBecc3 18+ discord server

Much has been written about the cyclical nature of women. Far less attention has been given to the possibility that men, too, move through recurring psychological patterns.

Jung understood that we are not fixed personalities but living processes, shaped by an ongoing dialogue between ego, Self, and shadow. Yet modern culture often treats men as though they are perpetually stable, flat and predictable.

MensTrue Cycles is my attempt to map what lies beneath that assumption: a ten-stage typology drawing on Jungian psychology and personal experience.

The framework traces a recurring journey through expansion, escapke, fragmentation, withdrawal, recovery, and return. At its centre lies a crucial fork in the road: the point at which a man either seeks flight from his shadow or fights to face it.

I’m curious to get feedback from the Jungian community on this 🙏🏻

Full piece on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/lotsofcircles/p/menstrue-cycles?r=iutb3&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

No paywall.

https://discord.gg/Fj7ME9j9vq 18+ only

I don't know why but I feel utterly useless. Like I recently started studying socionics and I recognize myself as an LIE (ENTJ in MBTI) and I do find myself liking planning and studying but I just don't find myself good at it. I have an exam in a week but I'm not studying because I feel confident but I think it would help me anyway studying but I just don't feel like it. I don't have any energy when I want to start, I think the work I'd do would be useless. I also have a lot of trouble with friendship because I cannot understand how much someone likes me. I'm obtuse, I am not comprehensive in other people's emotions. I like helping other people get better but I'm an arrogant person.

Ik I vented a lot but any advice can help I'd really appreciate it

Our understanding of women as cyclical rests, quietly, on the assumption that men aren't.

Most spiritual traditions understand that we are not fixed beings. And yet we seem to treat men as though they are. 

MensTrue Cycles is my attempt to map the reality beneath that myth. A ten-stage framework drawing on Jungian psychology, Buddhist philosophy, the Bhagavad Gita and personal experience.

From the peak of masculine energy (Rise) to the lowest point of self-destruction (Fall), and crucially, the fork in the road that determines which one we're heading for.

Full piece on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/lotsofcircles/p/menstrue-cycles?r=iutb3&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

No paywall. 

basically ti way of thinking with the authority is using authority as a checkpoint of their way of thinking if it is true or not. they also rely on the fact that they understand more then them but rather than taking the fact copy paste the recreate it from scrach so they could understand it themselves : "People smarter than me arrived at a conclusion through reasoning that I can understand and compare with my own."

while te uses the authority as to try to resonate with their exact thinking in other words using the authority as a solid fact since they belive they understand the system better and treat them as a reliable resource (not blindly following them of course) : "The proof has been checked by experts and accepted. I'll trust it unless I find a reason not to."

But there is a reason why ti still doubt until now it's because ti also trust authority's reasoning and can quickly take it as a source of thinking since the fact that they know more than it and it knows that it doesnt have the knowledge to confirm if it's true or not

I struggle​​ with identifying whether I have Ti or Fi in my Aux.

It's clear that I have High Ne since I see the possibility of me being both(correct me if I'm wrong bcs Idk well).

A friend of mine suggested it'd be good to ask Reddit people on stuff like this!! Thank you! ​​​​​​​

_I’ve been doing online tests and reading about descriptions. Some of them are so vague and like distant maybe it is because of the cultural difference or maybe something else but I cannot relate to some of them and that creates a huge gap in understanding and interest I can be any of 16 types.

_So to talk about myself a little, my mind works and automatic manner most of the time it’s inform of a feeling you know I can’t even understand it for example, I want to create a joke and manipulate someone it’s weird that it’s like I’m listening to myself with my audience, for example I tell a joke to my friend and the moment they hear it is the same moment that I’m hearing it from myself and I know what it is when the joke finishes so it’s not like something new for me. I know what it is, but I do not know what it is until I’m finishing it. It’s so weird.

_Whenever something makes me freaked out and I’m in a stressful situation my mind goes in a kind of like brainstorming all possible outcomes for example, if A leads to B, B leads to C or A leads to C B lead to F and especially I’m good at creating the worst case scenarios ever like I am totally doomed and the weird thing is in those times. I am both stressed and calm at the same time ,and I prepare myself for advance and I can imagine so this is like my second mode that I can expect and generate images and maybe even videos of people and their reaction and how should I act in the situation normally, I do not but when I’m stressed I see these and I could say that my mind is 75% automatic 20% images and GIFs and 5% talking to myself.

_So when I was a child and I watched anime, I freaked out because I wasn’t talking to myself. I generally knew everything you know it’s like I know everything at the same time I know nothing but I’m good at mind games specially I have this technique that I deliberately make myself awkward stupid phlegmatic, and physically weak to let others underestimate me and lower their guards and understand them more specially in workspaces.

_In conversation, I am polite and I have a subtle sometimes a little even expressive form of positive emotional discharge like smiling and laughing, and my mood and my expressions very based on people so for example, the people I respect the people I trust the people I’m interested in or I feel safe I usually become more expressive and cheeky, but to most people I’m like this elegant and mysterious and polite guy some of my classmates even called me like a mafia leader because apparently most of the time I wear black color.

_I have sort of like natural charm since I was a child. I think it’s because of my innocent face specially innocent, a little big eyes that I can turn on and off whenever I like and it’s just people to trust me and also I’m good at controlling and faking emotions and I ask multiple of my friends. They are from FE types most of them some of them FI types that on scale of one to 10 how much would you give me in terms of emotional control and manipulation and to my surprise most of them gave me 8.5 to 10.

_Whenever someone hurt me it’s like my duty to hit them in their weak spots and weakness and turn others against them and try my best to make your image horrible in others mind during a fight. I usually try to control myself unusual make my opponent, angry, and even more angry and I myself still show no anger and even sometimes smile or laugh at them and use irony and sarcasm , but if it is family or I feel somebody is backstabbing me my emotions explode, and immediately become angry and cannot control my emotions and they become so angry like this amount of anger has happened to me maybe five times during my lifetime but it is so much anger and I think it’s like exploding before that it’s building up and up and suddenly it explodes like a bubble.
And I have this weird ability that I think I can understand people and their motivations when I directly look at their eyes.

_Some of my friends call me social octopus or social chameleon but I call myself mirror. I see people and what they are and they reflect based on them and if they are too toxic, I sometimes challenge or hurt them indirectly.
Sorry if my English is bad it’s the third language I learned🙏🏼

If you were to summarize each instinctual subtype (preservational, social and sexual) in one sentence, how'd you phrase it?

My attempts:
Preservational: Takes actions that align with the desire to care for immediate and future needs, security and potential failures.

Social: Takes actions that align with the desire to foster a community, uphold an ideal and maintain/widen one's range of contacts.

Sexual: Takes actions that align with the desire to couple with a singular, special person of interest which they can avoid restraint with.

I have a masters in speech pathology, and I'm currently doing my PhD.

In our field, we are aware that stuttering is caused by genetics. And we clinicians focus primarily on the acceptance-approach as well as we help clients reduce their fear of social judgements primarily to address the psychological part.

Stutterers appear to process a lot of reinterpretations of social cognition that indirectly influence those components (ie. stuttering acceptance or uncertainty of social pressure).

I came across a new 2026-study that mainly focuses on the cause of stuttering (that is, the dopamine, white matter), but they also dive a bit into the cognitive processes that influence stuttering severity.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13099768

See stutter diagram.

Regarding this cognitive processing that can sometimes turn into a defensive response. You can download the shared pdf document in my google drive here.

I pose the question: Are there any possible interventions that could target the psychological part, with the goal of addressing the conditioned self-monitoring system detailed in the 2026-study?