Chapter 10

The Problem of Socionic Diagnostics

“I see right through you,” said the Fly, striking against the windowpane. — F. Krivin

Unconditionally, the determination of the socionic type of a concrete person presents a problem. Sometimes the TIM is determined easily — literally at first glance — which by no means guarantees even a minimal level of reliability, and can always be regarded as a hypothesis. At the same time, there exists a large quantity of cases when such a determination is given with great difficulty and much time goes into it — which likewise guarantees neither reliability nor consensus. On the other hand, consensus too does not guarantee reliability, although it does create an atmosphere of greater confidence. A previous result can always be disputed by any new skeptic — often a beginning socionist — because “that is how he sees it.” Moreover, a TIM may be determined incorrectly, and this is by no means a rare case; yet in doing so, the one who has committed the error may preserve a deep confidence in his rightness. Therefore it is understandable that highly reliable instruments are needed, permitting the procedure of the diagnostics of the TIM to be reproduced by any professional. However, even such a, it would seem, obvious wish may turn out to be an unrealizable hope, by virtue of the unelaboratedness of methodologies for the limitation of subjectivity. After all, if at the final stage of the procedure the decision all the same has to be made by a professional, then the subjective factor remains. Partially the subjective factor is compensated at the expense of the joint work of a group of experts, but this only shifts the problem of subjectivity from one level to another. It would seem that the solution of the problem ought to be computerized diagnostics — but, alas, the decision about its reliability will also be made by experts, and, consequently, some other experts can always doubt the reliability of the evaluation made by their colleagues. Such a course of thought in the theory of cognition is connected with the concepts of skepticism and agnosticism — philosophical varieties of the uncognizability of the world. But, fortunately, there exist other points of view as well, instilling optimism in questions of the solution of cognitive problems. Therefore let us hope that the iterative process of the perfection of diagnostic procedures in socionics will one day close, and humanity will receive a solid instrument for the determination of the TIM. But for now one must work on this.

At the present time many cases are known when new determinations appear of the types of well-known people with respect to whom a tacit agreement existed in a large group of socionists. Most often these determinations appear in articles or new books without particular proof — simply as the opinion of the author. Thus, in V. Stratievskaya [1], Beethoven and Yankovsky are placed in the group of Robespierres, while in the lists of Aušra Augustinavičiūtė and Onufrienko they were counted as Hamlets. S. Kashnitsky [2] assigns the president of Belarus, A. Lukashenko, to the type Zhukov; part of the Kyiv socionists assign him to the type Gorky.

To show how the grounding of a type could be conducted, let us consider the personality of the outstanding German philosopher G. Hegel. Aušra assigned him to the type Napoleon, and V. Stratievskaya to the type Robespierre. Thus, one can see that in the given case the type has been determined “to the exactness of a conflictor.” So, all the same — to which type does G. Hegel belong?

The works of G. Hegel constitute several volumes of highly theoretical text. However, let us turn attention to the fact that all these volumes constitute parts of a single whole. This is only the description of various stages and sides of the development of one and the same object. Everything in these volumes is written from a single point of view and, from the point of view of logic, irreproachably. This is a logically strict and systemic embodiment of the basic idea of the great thinker. G. Hegel, with maximal qualification, discusses the results of the philosophical work of other thinkers, points to the merits and shortcomings of their results, and finds them a place in his system. Already this is sufficient to assign G. Hegel to the logicians. Thus, the hypothesis that he belonged to the type Napoleon becomes less probable.

Now let us consider more attentively the content of the philosophy of G. Hegel. Above all, let us note that G. Hegel created a new type of dialectics, which in European thinking did not exist before him and which could only partially be compared with what existed in Ancient Greece. Hegel’s dialectics overcame the limitedness of rationalistic formal logic. Here we see an entirely definite sign of socionic irrationality. At the basis of this dialectics lay several found and exactly formulated principles. The dialectics proposed by Hegel is a good example of an irrational construct — the transition of quantity into quality and back, the identity and struggle of opposites, the negation of negation. These principles could not have been obtained using formal logic, as was the case, for example, with I. Kant (Robespierre). This is the result of a subtle intellectual intuition, directed at the logical comprehension of the internal laws of ideal entities. This can be accepted in the capacity of sufficient grounds for the hypothesis that in G. Hegel’s EGO block were located intuition and logic — and, moreover, intuition in first place. But what was their “vertedness”?

G. Hegel expresses his ideas in a highly abstract language. These ideas represent an attempt to penetrate into the very essence of the universe, to cognize its deepest laws, which precede any physical manifestations, any physical phenomenology. Moreover, G. Hegel was sure that he had discovered such laws — and now one can assert that, at least in some approximation, this is indeed so. This is a hint that G. Hegel was an intuitive logician — that intuition in him was in the position of the PPF. The becoming of the absolute idea in Hegel occurs inside it itself; it, as it were, “stews in its own juice” — this is a possible marker of introversion.

The principles found by G. Hegel gave him the possibility of creating a description of the continuous becoming of the world’s first principle, up to the arising of nature, and then of society as well, with all its laws and institutions. In the reading of this description there arises an image of the continuous unfolding of the primary entity in time — of the merging, the immersedness, of this entity in the flow of time, its inseparability from it. Here we come out onto the semantics of intuitive-logical introversion. Of course, the considerations adduced are insufficient for drawing too categorical a conclusion, but they are sufficient for advancing the hypothesis that G. Hegel belonged to the type Balzac.

This hypothesis becomes still more probable if one takes into account the industriousness and assiduousness of Hegel, who wrote many volumes. The external appearance of Hegel, with his puffy features (renal insufficiency), does not contradict the advanced hypothesis. In any case, I have not encountered arguments in favor of assigning G. Hegel to the type Napoleon or Robespierre — but I would willingly discuss them. Of course, an abundance of opinions is possible here.

Freud, in Aušra, is assigned to the type Don Quixote. And there are grounds for this. This is the discoverer of a new direction in psychology — and not simply of a new direction, but of a principally new approach to the understanding of psychic causality. That for such a discovery an experimental and theoretical base had been prepared by other researchers (Charcot, Janet, Bleuler) does not change the essence of the matter. Freud managed to see, behind the accumulated clinical data, what others did not see. Having used these data and having taken as a base concept the unconscious — which had already been introduced into usage by philosophers, but was used by them without reliance on empirical data, and moreover in a rather abstract, and not concretely psychological, sense — Freud obtains a psychodynamic explanation of hysteria, and following this an explanation of a wide spectrum of psychic disorders as well. In his methodological complex the idea of theoretical connectedness is distinctly singled out, which he consciously opposed to empirical classification-mongering. He advanced the idea of metapsychology. This is a highly theoretical idea, and it belongs to the number of those which are born with greater probability in the heads of intuitive logicians. On a new theoretical basis he creates the psychoanalytic method of the treatment of neuroses. These data are sufficient for advancing the hypothesis of Freud’s belonging to the type Don Quixote.

However, not all socionists agree with such a conclusion. And what is one to do with Freud’s constant care for his external appearance, his love of beautiful things and surroundings? What is one to do with his constantly maintained tidy haircut and the almost daily trimming of his beard? These arguments may seem to someone not so very important — but in the general picture of the type Don Quixote, pointing to elements of behavior uncharacteristic of this type, they require explanation. Using a significant quantity of arguments taken from biographical sources, some socionists advanced the entirely grounded supposition that Freud belongs to the type Dreiser. Thus, again we have a divergence to the exactness of a conflictor.

There also exists the supposition that Freud belongs to the type Balzac. Balzacs, like Don Quixotes, splendidly discover causal connections, and therefore part of the arguments in favor of Freud belonging to the type Don Quixote can also be assigned to the supposition that he belongs to the type Balzac. However, Balzacs, in contradistinction to Don Quixotes, are significantly more practical and more inclined — or, more exactly, more assiduous — in experimental work. In the biography of Freud there are moments pointing to his scrupulous laboratory investigations. But for the determination of his type it is very important to turn attention to the fact that he easily renounced theoretical work in favor of the significantly better-paid work of a psychoanalyst. Let us turn attention to the fact that this “post,” and the psychoanalytic methodology — that is, something directly applied in practice — was thought up, discovered, or (perhaps the best word here) worked out by Freud.

The examples adduced show that the technique, procedure, or algorithm of the diagnostics of the type still remains a problem. The hope that one can build tests that will give the possibility of determining the socionic type with one-hundred-percent reliability has so far not been justified.

Tests have long become an inalienable part of the instrumental arsenal of the psychologist. Many of them have recommended themselves not badly in practice, and some have acquired the character of classical standards. “Not badly” in the given case means that the recommendations given on their basis often turned out to be effective. In connection with the importance of test methodologies, a significant quantity of methodological investigations has been performed in this direction [2, 3, 4]. And, nevertheless, many tests worked out by professional psychologists, capable of taking into account the known theoretical subtleties, all the same do not attain possible perfection. This means that the theory of testing still contains white spots. However, there is hope that the latest attainments in the field of pattern recognition [1] will give a highly reliable answer to the question of the possibility of highly reliable — in essence, and not by consensus — psychological and, in particular, socionic diagnostics.

There exists one purely formal, and in the theoretical sense immature, relation to tests, when the result prescribed by the test is considered absolute. This is only an ideal toward which the composer of a test ought to strive; but, as practice shows, it is attained only in special cases, when the parameters of the object of testing are set with an exactness adequate to the requirements of the task. Unfortunately, socionic tests have not yet attained such a level, while the tests used in American typology — and, above all, the “Myers–Briggs test” — are, from the psychological point of view, used in a very strange regime. Among the Americans this test is considered valid, reliable, and exact — by default. This means that if a respondent has signed the protocol of typological testing, he thereby juridically acknowledges the type ascribed to him, and henceforth no claims of his will be considered. Of course, this saves the typologists from juridical prosecution — but what relation does this have to science? For that matter, in contemporary society, where “shady specialist-werewolves” have received wide dissemination — “shady archaeologists,” “shady doctors,” “shady judges,” “shady policemen,” “shady pedagogues,” “shady deputies,” including “shady jurists” — using their professional possibilities for gain by any means, the indicated approach to testing has its advantages.

At the present time, in many of those who conduct active work on the determination of socionic types, their own more or less effective diagnostic toolkit is being formed, which ensures subjective confidence for its author but by no means guarantees the objective validity of the means used.

Perhaps the most economical in volume is the “Digital test of Megedʹ–Ovcharov.” From the Myers–Briggs test this test differs only by the reduction of the volume of the dichotomous explications and their presentation in a more compact form. As for the Myers–Briggs test itself, it in no way satisfies the theoretical notions about such parameters of a test as validity, reliability, and exactness. This is, rather, more or less suitable preliminary material for the explication of the Jungian dichotomies. Nevertheless, it quite successfully performed the function of a tuning table for the operator-expert, who, after some — sometimes prolonged — work with the dichotomous explications, acquires an intuitive, almost unformalizable image of how the corresponding dichotomies manifest themselves in the manifestations of a person. The same can be said of the test of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. In the most simplified and adapted form, both these tests are presented in the “Dichotomous test of I. Vaisband,” where the dichotomous explications were reduced to vivid (but, alas, blurred) polar concepts. The author worked very conscientiously, but the unelaboratedness of the theme of socionic testing at that time had not yet been sufficiently recognized. For example, the opposition of the concepts SERENITY — PLANNED ADVANCEMENT was, by the author’s thought, supposed to oppose irrationality to rationality. Each of such concepts was accompanied by a brief annotation filling the generalizing category with more concrete meaning. For example, SERENITY was explained as freedom from obligations, unconstraint, smooth feline movements, chance luck, adaptation to a changing world, the capacity to catch new tendencies and notice presenting opportunities, impulsiveness of acts, inquisitiveness; while PLANNED ADVANCEMENT — as advance preparation, systematic work, the set not to put things off to the last minute, to bring what has been begun to the end, to do it and admire the result, precise sharp movements, responsibility for acts, emotions, decisions. But let us pose the question: can it really be that, for example, the “irrational” Zhukov renounces advance preparation in the solution of strategic tasks, does not conduct systematic work, puts everything off to the last minute, does not bring what has been begun to the end, is not capable of “doing it and admiring the result” — and are the representatives of this type really not distinguished by the precision and sharpness of movements when giving orders, and does it really follow from the model of this type that responsibility for acts, emotions, and decisions is uncharacteristic of him?

Having chosen between SERENITY and PLANNED ADVANCEMENT, the subject was to choose between the next pair of presumably polar categories — correspondingly, between PROSPECTIVE POSSIBILITIES — HERE AND NOW, and REASON — FEELINGS — where each of the polarities had its own refining sets of concepts. For example, PROSPECTIVE POSSIBILITIES: new complex tasks, abstractions, theory, the cognition of the unknown, a global approach to problems. HERE AND NOW: concreteness, sounds, colors, smells, I see everything, I hear everything, readiness to react immediately, a piercing sensation of reality. That is, HERE AND NOW I. Vaisband apparently understood as the equivalent of socionic sensing — and so on. As a result of sequential choices between the proposed dichotomies, the respondent came out onto a concrete type. However, despite all the work done, I. Vaisband did not manage to bring the refinement of the Jungian dichotomies up to the level of unambiguous definiteness, and the cause of this is the blurredness of the concepts used by the author, when very different semantic shades, depending on the sets of the subject, can be invested in the concepts. As a result, his test turned out to be no better than the Myers–Briggs test — and in something even worse, since, on the one hand, it created a heightened illusion of the definiteness of the result, but in doing so lost the character of a tuning table. Approximately the same can be said of the Megedʹ–Ovcharov test, which quite probably works in the hands of its creators, because they, as operators, passed their training on the Myers–Briggs tables, and for them, as professionals, simplified instrumental support is sufficient.

His own variant of a digital test — without calling it that — was also composed by V. V. Gulenko. V. V. Gulenko, a talented scientist, trying in his own way to rethink and refine what had been done before him, departed significantly from the conceptual base of the Myers–Briggs test. For example, as one of the pairs of assertions distinguishing extraversion from introversion, he accepted (apparently leaning on the works of O. Kroeger and J. M. Thuesen): “I expend more energy than I conserve” — “I conserve more energy than I expend.” The first of these assertions he connects with extraversion, and the second with introversion. It is understandable that with extraversion a greater expenditure of energy is connected, and with introversion a lesser one; but, as I understand it (possibly erroneously), this correlates not with the conservation of energy but with its production — however, in that case it is significantly more difficult to formulate differentiating statements. Possibly, extraverts are arranged by nature in such a way that they produce more energy and therefore have the possibility of expending more of it, and simply cannot not expend it; and it looks as if people by nature do not have the set to “conserve” energy and cannot evaluate “how much energy they conserve.” Of course, there are people who can say of themselves that they work very much and get very strongly tired — but this, after all, can relate in equal degree both to extraverts and to introverts. Therefore, again and again, one can assert that in this case too we are dealing with non-clear concepts, and the test works in the hands of its creator because he (the creator) passed preliminary training on the Myers–Briggs tables.

A more detailed dichotomous test was presented in her book The Personality in the Mirror of Socionics by E. S. Filatova. Here a somewhat different mode of the organization of the test material is applied. The questions are divided into twelve groups of four questions each, per each Jungian dichotomy. So that, in contradistinction to the Myers–Briggs test, here the respondent “scores points” on each dichotomy not at once, but over twelve cyclic passes. The advantage of such an approach consists in the fact that the alternation of the dichotomous semantics presumably raises the reliability of the self-determination of the respondent. The majority of the questions in this test differ significantly from the material presented in the Myers–Briggs test, which can be regarded as an essential contribution to the socionic understanding of the Jungian dichotomies. In the same book there is also a “direct” socionic test, representing sixteen groups of assertions corresponding, by the author’s design, to one or another type. If the recipient, in one of such groups of assertions, finds a consonance with his essence, then, consequently, he belongs to the corresponding type. Unconditionally, this is a good idea — but, unfortunately, it is difficult to realize. One who knows socionics can guess which description corresponds to which type; but for a person unacquainted with socionics it will not be so simple to determine the choice of a concrete group of assertions as a whole, since he will be able to find much that suits him in the other groups as well. The problem here is the same — the blurredness of concepts. True, Filatova in this test managed to reduce such blurredness significantly, since her assertions are tied to the functions of Model “A” — so there is hope of bringing this test up to a high level of validity.

A large — even a very large — work on the creation of a socionic test was performed by A. V. Filimonov [11]. His introduction of three levels of testing — the trait level, the positional level, and the block level — is a valuable contribution to the theory of socionic testing. The trait part of his test, the most worked-out, leans on the notion of the Augustinavičiūtė–Reinin traits (ART). The positional test is connected with the determination of the position of one or another IA in the structure of the psyche, and the block test with the determination of the semantics of each of the four blocks of the respondent. In A. Filimonov, the last two parts, by his own admission, were insufficiently worked out.

The work of A. Filimonov can serve as a graphic demonstration of what difficulties await the researcher on this path. The chief problem here is the theoretical unelaboratedness of many socionic concepts. If the Jungian dichotomies, by virtue of their greater habituality, seem understandable, then the “understandability” of the remaining ART bears an altogether problematic character. Yes, Aušra Augustinavičiūtė made the first step in the understanding of the ART. The Augustinavičiūtė–Reinin traits represent a unique — and, apparently, not yet fully understood — scientific discovery in the sphere of typology. G. R. Reinin pointed to the existence of these distinctive constructs and indicated some of their properties. Aušra managed to concretize these difficult-to-express entities, having correlated them with Model “A.” She gave their primary explication. Nevertheless, the “clarity” of their understanding by many socionists — as is evident from the socionic literature — is apparent, not real. And until the meaning of the ART is clarified to the end, all attempts to include them in test complexes will lead to doubtful results.

The ART are archetypal entities, and therefore their concrete expression remains highly relative. This means that we are trying to express the inexpressible (well, the almost inexpressible) with the help of more or less concrete concepts — but, alas, the result remains approximate and problematic. Therefore such concepts as statics-dynamics, questimity-declatimity, positivism-negativism — and, all the more, carefree-provident, merry-serious, and the like — must be understood as terms only pointing to the archetype, but in no way equivalent to it, not exhausting it. This is one of the causes for which the Myers–Briggs list of traits is not a test. An analogous defect will be had by all tests whose authors do not take into account that in socionics we are dealing with archetypes of different levels, and not with maximally concretized traits, like the galvanic skin reflex or the frequency of blinks per second.

Even the ART whose semantics seems obvious — for example, questims-declatims, positivists-negativists, statics-dynamics, tacticians-strategists — stand in need of deep theoretical comprehension and working-through. Above all, these are new scientific terms, which before Aušra Augustinavičiūtė simply did not exist. Although such words existed or could have existed, Aušra Augustinavičiūtė invested in them a completely new meaning. For example, tacticians and strategists, in the general-scientific meaning, are not at all what they mean in socionics. A strategist, in the general-scientific sense, is what we call a person who determines the chief goals and the paths of their attainment. A tactician is one who works out and carries out the concrete devices for the solution of the practical tasks arising on the path of the attainment of the strategic goals. Aušra considered that in a dual pair the partners, by this trait, are located at different poles. Thus, for example, in the pair Don Quixote — Dumas, according to Aušra, the strategist is Dumas, and Don Quixote is the tactician. However, in accordance with the general-scientific use of these words, everything ought to be the other way around: Don Quixote marks out the perspectives of existence, which often bear a character far from life and even utopian, while it is Dumas, with his practical grip and everyday resourcefulness, who is capable of finding the means and paths of the attainment of these perspectives. However, in another pair — for example, Hugo — Robespierre — it is easy to imagine that the strategic goals are set by Robespierre, while their practical realization is fully accessible to Hugo. Analogous evaluations are applicable to all the remaining dual pairs as well.

However, the question of the relations in a dual pair can also be evaluated somewhat differently. One can fully imagine that, for example, a woman-Dumas somehow expresses her needs connected with the provisioning of the family. Such, possibly not very clear, “hints” Don Quixote can probably understand, leaning on his extraverted intuition — but will he be able, other conditions being equal, quickly to find sources of sufficient means in order at least somehow to satisfy the needs of his wife? Cases are known when the wives of socionic Don Quixotes became disappointed in their chosen ones because of their incapacity to provide the welfare necessary for the family — from the wives’ point of view — and left them. Of course, this happens to just about anyone; but, from the point of view of “tactics-strategy,” it is obvious that the Don Quixotes turned out to be bad tacticians, since they did not solve precisely tactical tasks. One can even suppose that in a dual pair — and possibly not only in a dual one — each of the partners, independently of his type, can come forward both in the capacity of a strategist, determining the perspectives of collaboration, and in the capacity of a tactician, solving current tasks. Thus, in accordance with the socionic results available to the present time, the assertion that Don Quixote is a tactician looks extremely problematic. From such reasonings it should be understandable that the understanding of strategy and tactics proposed by Aušra, and the general-scientific one, are not at all one and the same. The terms proposed by Aušra must be regarded as preliminary. She used them so that one could at least somehow begin to orient oneself in the archetypal structure of the new scientific constructs. Now it is becoming clear that many of her terms stand in need of refinements.

Aušra named tacticians those types in whom, in one of the functions of the contact block, introverted or extraverted sensing is located. This she interprets as the presence of the capacity to give tactical advice — which does not obligatorily coincide with the capacity to solve practical tasks operatively. For example, Don Quixote, although he can give advice on how one ought to act in one or another situation, his advice may turn out to be unacceptable for the one to whom he gives it. So that what is at issue here is the capacity to give tactical advice, and not the capacity to solve tactical tasks. At the same time, the advice of a Hugo or a Stirlitz in a similar situation will most likely turn out to be apposite. Thus, the impression is created that the terms “strategist” and “tactician” began to be fixed in socionics, to a significant degree, because of an insufficient understanding of Aušra’s creative process. The point is that Aušra proposed, in the capacity of an interpretation of the same position of sensing in the model, other terms as well. She wrote that these same types are capable of rendering “short-term material help,” and in doing so “they do not demand an account of how this help will be used.” Therefore she considered that “they can be called patrons or philanthropists” — and also Maecenases; that is, if, for a start, one were, for example, to rename the tacticians into Maecenases, then in this case the semantic filling of the term would be more adequate.

As for statics-dynamics, it looks as if these terms turned out to be significantly more successful — but here too not everything is so simple. The origin of these terms is entirely transparent. In dynamics, in the mental ring are located the IA that are connected with the necessity of producing movement — this is, above all, extraverted logic, on whose position in the model technological activity depends — or, to put it more simply, the direct performance of physical actions. In the static, however, there are located there the IA that must fix his attention on the picture showing the final goal. This is extraverted intuition, connected with potential possibilities — to which relate, for example, ideals — and extraverted sensing, setting concrete goals — for example, an object that someone wants to get into his possession. Since the picture showing the final goal is, in its essence, static, a person who visualizes such a picture can quite well be called a static. Turn attention to how exactly Aušra interprets the model of the static: “The mental ring of the static is oriented toward the form, the internal content of the object, needs and requirements (desires). To the thinking of the static is inherent the mental suspension of universal movement.” And further, developing her thought, Aušra adds: “…in the static, only the mental blocks are static; the vital ones are dynamic. Therefore the static thinks and speaks about the static aspects of the external world, but his vital ring is dynamic (emphasis mine — S.Ch.); he is usually more mobile than the dynamic. This is, as it were, a double life: the individual thinks about the static surrounding world and simultaneously tries to adapt to it by greater external and internal activity.” However, large practical experience of the observation of people, it seems, contradicts this conclusion of Aušra’s. For example, the Jacks [Londons], being dynamics by definition — that is, by the mental ring, since “extraverted rationality” is located there — are, obviously, dynamics by life as well: sportiness, springiness, a high degree of inclination to tourism. Does this really not go by the vital? Let us not hurry with the answer. Possibly, we do not yet understand Aušra to the end. The point is that dynamics are less impulsive in their activity in comparison with statics. The vital ring of the dynamic contains static IA, which ensures, as I understand it, the high level of the stability of the actions of dynamics — which can be interpreted as pushfulness. At the same time, the dynamic IA in the vital ring of the static manifest themselves in his behavior as a greater or lesser degree of impulsiveness. Thus, the pushfulness of the dynamics is opposed to the impulsiveness of the statics. Pushfulness is the steadiness, the stability, of dynamics, ensured by the static vital ring of the dynamic. Impulsiveness is the unsteadiness, the mobility, of statics, ensured by the dynamic vital ring of the static. The static, “having detected a goal,” experiences an impulsive rush toward its attainment, and his trajectory of advancement toward the goal has a “hunting” [yawing] character. All the same, one must acknowledge that the concepts used here are far from unambiguous — they are used only as a more or less suitable interpretation of the corresponding archetypes to which Model “A” points.

If the concepts positivism-negativism are well motivated by the sign of the mental ring, then with the questims-declatims there are obscurities. From Aušra’s texts it is difficult to understand why, for example, the extraverts with plus-statics — to whose number belong Don Quixote, Hamlet, Napoleon, and Stirlitz — must give preference to interrogative intonations. Of the basis for these terms Aušra says only that “questimity-declatimity is determined by the place of Model ‘A’ in the ring of social progress” — but it is not understandable how from this it follows that precisely the extraverts with plus-statics must have a questim tendency. Their static ring is positive, and this ought to mean that they will formulate goals in an affirmative key. So where, then, would the questim set come from? On the contrary, in the extraverts with minus-statics the goals will be formulated in a negative key, and one can imagine that such extraverts could experience in doing so certain doubts — which, of course, is not obligatory, but at least some motive for doubts could be seen here. In any case, sufficient grounds must exist for the concepts with whose help we can interpret the work of Model “A.” In the case of “questimity-declatimity” I do not see such grounds. Moreover, for example, in the case of Don Quixote one can sooner expect the manifestation of declatimity. Recall the famous “Eureka!” of Archimedes or the “And yet it moves!” of Galileo. It is precisely Don Quixotes who are inclined to “proclaim on the spot,” trying to notify humanity of their discoveries. In any case, the character of the Don-Quixotic intuitive insights is already more or less understandable to socionists, and it is easier to assign it to the declatims. Sooner, it is the polite, tactful introvert Dumas who ought predominantly to use interrogative intonations.

Perhaps I fail to understand something here, but it is difficult for me to rid myself of the impression that the difference between these groups of TIMs is subtler than the supposed predominance of interrogative or affirmative intonations. It is understandable that the extraverts with plus-statics must, on the whole, differ from the extraverts with minus-statics — but it is not understandable why this difference is expressed precisely in intonation. In any case, the question of the predominance of concrete intonations in one or another type stands in need of experimental verification. One can also pose the question in this way: are the intonational differences typological? That is, is it really true that approximately half of humanity, with statistical reliability, is inclined to ask questions, while the second half asks noticeably fewer questions and noticeably more proclaims assertions, without doubting their truth? Or does no statistically reliable typological accentuation of this kind simply exist?

The reasonings adduced only slightly point to the existing problem in the interpretation of the ART — and the unsolvedness of this problem brakes the theoretical solution of the problem of socionic diagnostics.

In the fourth issue of SMiPL for 2002, a description of the LOT test was published. Someone ascribed the authorship of this test to V. L. Talanov, deciphering the abbreviation LOT as “Talanov’s personality questionnaire.” However, in a personal conversation on September 21, 2006, at the XXII International Socionic Conference, Talanov told me that he has no relation whatsoever to this test, and that the deciphering of the abbreviation LOT is “Personality–Relations–Temperament” [Lichnostʹ–Otnosheniya–Temperament], and that this whole elaboration was performed by one of the students in the capacity of a student scientific work. However, from the point of view of socionics, the quality of the work done does honor also to the one who supervised this student work. Be that as it may, within the framework of socionics the ideology of LOT, and this test itself, looks like perhaps the most consistent and grounded attempt in the working-out of a socionic test. In LOT an original metaphor is used, presenting the set of Jungian dichotomies in the form of an interconnected set of balance-beams and levers, in order to support a series of arguments in favor of the fact that in the attempt at a test evaluation of the Jungian dichotomies a significant loss of typological information occurs, in comparison with when each pole of a dichotomy is determined separately. This is because in reality, as the author of LOT considers, between the poles of the dichotomies there is no one-hundred-percent inverse proportionality — and this is confirmed by the statistical evaluations of the correlations among the functions, whose magnitudes were obtained by them in the use of their questionnaire. Both from the practical and from the theoretical point of view this is a very valuable and interesting result. However, if the use of this result for the practical construction of tests can, of course, evoke no objections whatsoever, its theoretical comprehension is necessary.

The author of LOT, critically evaluating the work of socionists on the working-out of a test, points to a series of shortcomings which, in his opinion, are present in their works. In connection with this he made a series of remarks.

1. He considers that it is “methodically more correct” to measure in experiment not the dichotomies, but separately the magnitude of all the basis functions. Let us note that the author of LOT speaks of the direct measurement of intuition, logic, sensing, and ethics — by which, of course, one must understand the emotional aspects of human behavior. Thus, according to the author of LOT, a serious defect of the overwhelming part of the diagnostic questionnaires known in Jungian psychology is that they measure not the functions, but the four dichotomies between them. By the direct measurement of the socionic functions the author of LOT means the use of a base of assertions whose subsets relate to the evaluation of one of the eight functions of Model “A.” The points (or stens) scored on each function precisely characterize its manifestedness, or magnitude. Mathematical operations on these magnitudes give the possibility of determining the balance of the dichotomies, which brings us out onto the TIM.

Here let us at once note that the refinement “methodically more correct” presupposes a well-grounded theoretical view of the essence of the socionic types; but since up to the present time such an approach, unified for all socionists, does not yet exist, to acknowledge any of the understandings of its essence now existing in socionics as “methodically more correct” would be methodically incorrect.

2. The author of LOT considers that his predecessors in the composition of a socionic test incorrectly selected the diagnostic features. In the capacity of an explanatory example he adduces the evaluation of the difference between irrationality and rationality by the majority of socionists only on the basis of the predisposition to planning in rationals and the spontaneity of acts in irrationals. This remark does not seem convincing, since already in Myers–Briggs there are contained at least seven such features for rationals and seven features for irrationals. Are such features as “likes concepts to be established and sorted onto shelves,” “makes decisions quickly,” or “does not like to interrupt current work in order to switch over to something more urgent” really identical to planning? The same relates to irrationality as well. Nevertheless, the conceptual base of the key concepts of socionics, of course, does need to be developed.

Very true-looking is the remark of the author of LOT about the limitedness of the feature base for extraversion–introversion. These concepts were not full-fledgedly understood either by the Jungian typologists or by psychologists — even such outstanding ones as, for example, Eysenck. Just about the only feature of this concept was considered to be sociability.

However, one cannot agree with the statement of the author of LOT that in socionics sensing “is in general deprived, in the diagnostic features of the majority of questionnaires, of its own ‘face,’ and comes forward rather as the negation of intuitive properties.” The point is that the socionic questionnaires trace their beginning from the Myers–Briggs and Keirsey tests, and were also borrowed by socionists from one another. Therefore, although one can say that in these questionnaires there are few valid finds, the differences between the poles of the dichotomies were, for better or worse, designated — and as tuning tables for the preparation of experts they performed their role.

Nevertheless, one can agree with the author of LOT that the feature base of the socionists on all the dichotomies was limited to a small quantity of positions — somewhere within a dozen. Perhaps the first who began to speak of the necessity of large feature bases was A. V. Filimonov.

3. Almost all socionic questionnaires do not presuppose contemporary mathematical processing, and in this sense their ideology is hopelessly outdated. This remark is true, but one must take into account that at the first stages of the development of socionics it was difficult to recognize all the subtleties of socionic testing and the possibilities of the use of mathematical apparatus — and, in addition, at the “dawn” of socionics computers were not yet in everyday use. I personally first saw an adequate application of the statistical processing of socionic questionnaires in the works of the remarkable enthusiast of socionics from St. Petersburg, A. M. Elyashevich, only in 1999.

4. An essential shortcoming of the questionnaires applied in socionics, built on the basis of foreign sources (and we had no others), is that “they are not adapted and have not passed standardization on a domestic sample — psychologists often blindly use methodologies in which, after translation into Russian, not only were the semantic shades of the questions distorted, but the meanings were even outright (to the exactness of the reverse) garbled, because of the different tradition of the use of the particle ‘not’ in the two different languages. Similar ‘phony’ versions of the questionnaires and of the keys to them at times migrate from book to book.” With this one can fully agree, and accept it as a serious reproach for the absence of the corresponding scientific qualification in many socionists — including those writing books.

5. Many socionists use popular short versions of the questionnaires, supposing that this economizes the time of the subjects, and — apparently through lack of understanding — strongly sacrifice the exactness of diagnostics on this. Whereas in the theory of testing it is known that “the optimal exactness of practical diagnostics is attained with the use in the questionnaire, for each independent scale, of a minimum of 30 questions, while for questionnaires used for research purposes 40–50 questions per scale are already required.” This is a very valuable remark of a professional.

The author of LOT himself has quite definite views on socionic testing, which, taking into account his high professional qualification in psychology, presents special interest. For example, he considers that “the extra/introversion of a type must be measured as the difference of the sums of the extraverted and introverted components of all program functions, and the balance rationality–irrationality as the difference of the sums of the four rational and four irrational functions.” Here it is not fully understandable what he has in mind when he speaks of “all program” functions — after all, in socionics it is accepted that a type has only one program function — but possibly this is some terminological misunderstanding.

Having thus evaluated the inferiority of the test work of socionists, and leaning on the idea laid into the Singer–Loomis personality questionnaire, intended for the separate measurement of the four Jungian functions, the author of LOT created his own typological test, based on the direct measurement of the functions, and not of the balances of the dichotomies. Unfortunately, the Singer–Loomis questionnaire, created as early as 1980, was not known to socionists. As the author of LOT says, the questionnaire was created “for the diagnostics of the full individual profile of the Jungian functions.” Naturally, in doing so the possibility appears of “a more exact determination of the psychotypes in the capacity of a small particular consequence.”

One must note several valuable moments in the LOT questionnaire. Besides the transition to the direct measurement of the magnitude of the functions, important is the introduction of a large quantity of control scales, which corresponds to the contemporary psychological standard in the construction of tests — whereas the socionists simply ignored this side of diagnostic procedures. And, unconditionally, new for socionic tests is the possibility of building an individual personality profile, which brings socionic testing closer to the needs of practical consulting.

Valuable in LOT is also the fact that it not only poses the question of the physiological substrate of the socionic functions, but also proposes an entirely grounded hypothesis, proceeding from the fact that the correspondence established in experiment between the structures of the human brain and the solution of sensory-cognitive tasks, on the one hand, and search-heuristic tasks, on the other, can be collated with the socionic functions of sensing and intuition. Of course, all this stands in need of further refinements, but this is good material for further discussion.

In the working-out of LOT, colossal work was done. First a “bank of potential questions-assertions” was formed, which had to be subjected to evaluation by concrete bearers of the types, and then subjected to correlational analysis. Into this bank fell questions from many diagnostic questionnaires; the basic features of all the psychotypes were included, corresponding to the manifestations of the program function, taken from the descriptions of several authors; and hypothetical features were also used, answering to suppositions about the physiological nature of the functions being diagnosed. From this set the non-working questions were culled and new ones were added, corresponding to new ideas. More than 1,500 questions were subjected to correlational and factor analysis. The respondent sample constituted 5,000. This is impressive! No one in socionics had previously done such work. It is important that in the capacity of respondents people were attracted in a wide range of ages — from schoolchildren to pensioners. It is interesting to note that many schoolchildren knew their type from other questionnaires, and in 80% of cases it coincided with the one determined by the preliminary versions of LOT. This is a very high preliminary indicator — after all, one cannot consider that the type of the schoolchildren by the other questionnaires had been established one hundred percent; in any case, this has not been proven.

An assertion or question for the testing of a concrete function was accepted as valid if its correlation with “its own” dichotomy was large — exceeding, by modulus, the correlation with the opposite dichotomy by not less than one and a half times — and simultaneously there was a non-negative correlation with the corresponding pole of “nality” and with the corresponding pole of “vertedness.” However, even after this, work on the questions continued by the “method of the self-refinement of the scales.”

Scales of insincerity and of social dissimulation were added in order to compensate for the situation of testing; but from the corresponding questions those were removed that correlated “with the pole of rationality by a magnitude of more than three-quarters of the correlation with the scale of insincerity.” Thanks to this, the “parasitic and artificial common dispersion with the factor of rationality” was reduced. From the number of the remaining ones, an equal number of questions was selected having a dominant loading on the positive and negative pole for each of the eight base diagnostic scales. All this gave the possibility of eliminating a significant percentage of dispersion of the “raw” answers extraneous to the Jungian functions, and “the maximally possible orthogonality of the scale of insincerity to the base scales of the questionnaire” was ensured. The “coefficients of correlation between insincerity and the base scales” remaining after this “served already for the subsequent straightening of the base scales themselves.”

For LOT a scale of “intellectual independence” was built, not connected with the socionic functions and ensuring control of the level of competence of the respondent. To eliminate the correlation of such a scale with the Jungian functions, additional work also had to be done. For this, intellectual tests were used, which presumably ought to correlate at least with socionic logic, intuition, and rationality. Therefore preliminary work was done on the selection of questions in which this correlation is reduced to a minimum. The questions selected in this way passed one more cycle of selection — but now for the greatest correlation with the intellectual factor. Thus there appears a notion of an intellectual factor free from the influence of the Jungian functions, which in itself presents great theoretical interest. This factor precisely represents “intellectual independence,” which can be understood as the competence to understand adequately the questions posed and to give answers to them maximally corresponding to reality. As a result of this work, the criterial, facade, and empirical validity of the intellectual scale of the questionnaire was ensured.

Into LOT is also included a scale correcting the “inclination to acquiescence,” connected with suggestibility. It is not singled out into a separate block, but is realized on the whole massif of all the questions of the questionnaire. As a result of the action of this scale, all the answers are eliminated that were given by inertia under the influence of the suggestive components of a question. This stage of the testing procedure is by no means elementary — it consists of several steps. First one must find the mean score for the eight socionic scales and the scale of intellectual independence, separately for the confirming and for the denying part of the scales. Then, for these averaged indicators, their mean value is computed. It is precisely this that characterizes the indicator of the “inclination to acquiescence,” and in accordance with it one must correct all the answers, so that only those of them remain that did not depend on suggestion. But this is not yet all. The point is that the factor of the “inclination to acquiescence” correlates positively with intuition and with ethics. This is understandable — after all, an ethicist may agree out of politeness, and an intuitive because he is inclined to broaden the meaning of the situation. Therefore, in the elimination of the effect of suggestibility, part of the information on these scales may be lost, and it must be restored.

LOT also takes into account the individual style of the respondent in answering the questions of the test. Someone answers cautiously, someone is categorically self-assured — and this leads to a different magnitude of the standard deviation of the answers. Knowing this magnitude, it is not difficult to eliminate the influence of the individual style, having brought all the answers of the respondent to a normalized form with an identical standard deviation.

Into the scales of LOT are included questions close in meaning but differing in formulation. The set of such questions forms a scale of the internal consistency of the answers. It is understandable that if a person answers differently to questions identical in meaning, this must have a definite cause. This may be the result of inattentiveness connected with some emotional state — excitation, depression, or, for example, alcoholic intoxication — but it could also be the result of a non-understanding of the meaning of the question in view of disinterest or not-high intellect. Partially such non-understanding is corrected by the scale of intellectual independence, and partially it can be neutralized by the scale of internal consistency. In the case where the indicator on this scale sinks below the critical level, the results of the testing are considered unreliable. It turned out that in mass examinations about 7% of the answers of schoolchildren and 2% of the answers of adults fall into the number of the unreliable — and this too is a valuable scientific result connected with the use of LOT.

For the first time in socionic practice, the test takes into account the difference in answers connected with age and sex peculiarities. And this too is a valuable scientific contribution to the development of socionics. It turned out that the age differences tell in the greatest degree on the indicators of the scales of introversion and rationality — in doing so, introversion increases with age more than rationality — while the sex differences manifest themselves more on the scales of logic-ethics. The correction for age is performed always, and the correction for sex depending on the task standing before the psychologist. If what is at issue is, for example, professional orientation, then the correction for sex is not made. If, however, it is necessary to take into account the gender peculiarities of the respondent, then the correction for sex is needed. Incidentally, the use of LOT confirmed the existence of the higher indicator on logic in men and the higher indicator on ethics in women, intuitively evaluated by socionists. Thus, the existence of gender differences between the types, of which socionists intuitively knew from their experience of diagnostics, can be considered proven. But whether a physiological explanation of this fact exists is for now not known. From physiology it is known that specific female and male hormones exist, determining the gender style. The different hormonal balance of testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen ensures the higher, in comparison with men, female emotionality, which gives its contribution on the scale of ethics, and the greater competence of men in the sphere of logic — but does everything reduce only to this? This explains the difference between men and women, and only indirectly points to the possibility of gender differences inside a type.

I have deliberately described the peculiarities of LOT in sufficient detail, so that socionists — both experienced and beginning — might be able to evaluate the sweep and depth of the work done by the author of LOT. For greater details, those who wish may turn to the primary source.

The work of the author of LOT — vivid and valuable — also reflects the unsolvedness of a series of theoretical questions in socionics and their different interpretation by socionists. For example, the notion of the author of LOT about the “vertedness of the individual” as the mean value of the vertednesses of “all four functions,” against the background of the understanding of extraversion/introversion attained in socionics, looks like a concession to empiricism — which, of course, for the practical solution of the questions of socionic diagnostics may not have great significance, but lowers the theoretical potential of socionics. The magnitude of vertedness may look greater or lesser at the expense of various circumstances, which will find its reflection on the individual personality profile; but this is, above all, a qualitative, and not a quantitative, characteristic of the personality, and it is discrete, pointing either to extraversion or to introversion, without any intermediate variants whatsoever between them. Moreover, a person may be an extravert but, by external features, behave as an introvert — and often over significant stretches of his life. The same can be said of introverts.

The TIM is an intensive entity — that is, an entity that represents an undecomposable integrality; but this integrality can be expressed through an extensive — that is, disparate — set of psychological traits and functions. Precisely expressed through it, and not reduced to it! It is on this that the majority of the methodologies of the determination of the TIM were built. Therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that each socionic function can be determined directly — without recourse to the dichotomies. In the end, one does manage, at least occasionally, to see the TIM at once as something integral — similarly to how we see sex or racial belonging. There exist — there must exist — direct indicators of the functions, blocks, rings, and TIMs; the problem is only to reveal and ground them. And something in this direction has already been done. Not very reliably, not very authentically — but this instills the hope that sooner or later this work will be done. Therefore, when the author of LOT says that his questionnaire “permits the determination of the integral values of all the basis functions” independently of the dichotomies — then, of course, this is remarkable. The only thing one would want is that in doing so the socionic functions be determined as Aušra Augustinavičiūtė represented them, and not their simplified empirical substitutes. As for the “individual peculiarities of the personality profile not fitting into the standards of the four-factor model,” determined by LOT in passing — then, of course, this too is good; but this relates to the further refinements of the psychological profile of the personality under investigation, which are necessary in practical work but which may have no direct relation to the TIM. In the end, in psychology several methodologies exist for the determination of the personality profile, but they have no direct relation to the determination of the socionic type.

Promising, from the point of view of research work, looks the assertion of the author of LOT that his questionnaire makes “possible the independent determination of the magnitudes of the functions located in any informational channel of the models ‘J’ and ‘A,’ and the possibility appears of a direct and easy collation of the Jungian psychological model with other factor models — for example, the model of Eysenck,” and also the direct “investigation of the physiological substrate separately for each Jungian function by way of collation with neuropsychological questionnaires and the results of psychophysiological and electroencephalographic measurements.” However, all this does not remove the necessity of working out the theoretical side of socionics and bringing the contours of the new scientific direction marked out by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė up to the possible limit — and not stopping at the level of practical sufficiency.

It is remarkable that “the deciphering of the psychotypes is automated,” and this too favorably distinguishes LOT from the majority of its predecessors — although the types themselves “are determined in the generally accepted way, that is, by the indicators of the four dichotomies.” As we see, what is at issue is not only the direct computation of the magnitude of the functions, but also the optimization of the dichotomous method — and this, of course, is a useful step in the working-out of the theory of socionic diagnostics.

One of the base premises of LOT is the direct determination of the functions, which, in the opinion of its author, is attained, among other things, by a change of the format of the assertions — when not a dichotomous choice is proposed, but the manifestedness in the respondent of one of the eight socionic functions is confirmed or denied. In this case, for example, instead of the question “which is closer to you — thought or feeling?”, the respondent needs to confirm or refute an assertion like “I like to reflect on abstract problems.” It is understandable that the more “direct” points you score, the more vividly the corresponding function is expressed in you. Now, computing the difference between separate functions or their groups, you obtain the balance of the dichotomies. Thus, “the balance rationality-irrationality is the difference of the sums of the four rational and four irrational components, while the balance logic-ethics, or intuition-sensing, is computed correspondingly as the difference of the sums of the two logical and two ethical components, or of the two intuitive and two sensory components.” Analogously the question is also solved with respect to extraversion-introversion — that is, the difference is computed between the four extraverted and the four introverted functions.

However, the testing assertions of LOT themselves — despite the supposed statistical confirmability of their validity — evoke strong doubt as to their “theoretical correctness,” and some seem simply not to correspond to the declared thematics. Here are examples.

Extraverted logic.

“The logic of business, the logic of struggle — this is what is within my powers and what I like very much.” — This assertion from LOT is interesting in several respects. Above all, the logic of business and the logic of struggle are not one and the same, although in practice they may intertwine. The logic of struggle can be identified with the logic of war, and this relates to the aspect of extraverted sensing. The logic of business often uses the logic of competition, but it is broader than forceful struggle. The uniting of these non-identical concepts significantly blurs the meaning of the test assertion. On the other hand, this phrase can be regarded as a “direct” assertion concerning practical interests — almost the same as if the respondent had to answer a direct question about which type he belongs to. As a result, any prospering businessman can answer this question positively, independently of what type he is. Therefore such a question, although it makes a contribution to the building of the individual personality profile — and this, of course, is useful — it remains a problem how typological this question is, that is, how directly it leads to the determination of the TIM. Most likely, it will sift out eI, sE, iE, and Il — but it is clear that such sifting goes not at all by extraverted logic.

“I am a person who is rather hard than soft.” — This assertion will be answered positively by the majority of men-extraverts, and above all by extravert-sensorics — which, again, gives a contribution to the building of the individual personality profile, but does not point to the position of the declared function in Model “A” and does not work toward the determination of the balance of logic and ethics.

“I will not miss demanding what is mine, what is due to me, and I will do this without any embarrassment.” — Hardly will iL answer this question so categorically, although his extraverted logic is in a strong position; but the extraverted sensorics will answer it positively.

“By character it would suit me to be the director of a large factory, a military commander, the leader of a party.” — This question could be answered positively by at least Zhukov, Stirlitz, London, Napoleon — but in this role there are not a few Hugos as well. So this question is only rather indirectly connected with the semantics of extraverted logic.

“I know how to use a favorable moment, and, when there is interest in me, I know how to set hard conditions, attaining my own.” — A positive answer to this question could be given by all extraverts except, perhaps, Don Quixote. A positive answer to this question could also be given by such introverts as Gorky and Dreiser.

“I want people to fear me.” — Can it really be that a normal, non-accentuated Jack or Stirlitz, with their extraverted logic, want this? It is more probable that this assertion will be acknowledged not at all by the extraverted logicians, but by Dreiser, Napoleon, Zhukov. For that matter, in the last two this will sound not as a wish, but as the acknowledgment of a real fact.

“My reference points are directed not at my internal, but rather at the external, world.” — This assertion, as some psychologists consider, ought to characterize pure extraversion — but, as has been established in socionics, this is not so. It is the sensorics who are directed at the “external world.” But in some measure the assertion under consideration may work toward the determination of the balance of logic and ethics. Presumably, logicians (both extraverted and introverted) ought in greater measure to be interested in the external, and not the internal, world. In Aušra Augustinavičiūtė this is connected with the opposition of endogenics and exogenics — but this opposition does not relate to extraverted thinking.

Critical remarks of this kind can be made about more than half of the assertions of LOT. In any case, theory must accept the empirical challenge contained in LOT and find explanations for why “theoretically incorrect” assertions all the same give a positive result.

Of course, one must take into account that into the list of questions for the revealing of any function in LOT, questions of the control scales may be inserted — and they, in content, may differ from the thematics of the section in any way whatsoever; and therefore the evaluation of such questions or assertions is impossible without taking into account all their systemic connections.

It remains a problem what the direct measurement of the socionic functions represents. Judging by everything, LOT measures the magnitude of the functions with respect to the program position — but, after all, by socionic concepts, each function has its own intrinsic essential manifestation. Therefore it is not excluded that the individual personality profile corresponding to the socionic functions may have a completely different appearance than what comes out by the calculations in accordance with LOT. But this still needs to be investigated.

Unfortunately, several of my chance diagnostic trials of LOT, alongside very high-quality results, also gave results that did not confirm a long and well-known “expert” TIM — when, for example, an irrational extravert intuitive Il turned out to be a rational introvert sensoric lS. Of course, these could have been chance failures or some single case — but all the same, when three dichotomies turned out to be knocked off, this puts one on guard. For that matter, since an early version was used, one can hope that further versions work faultlessly. Incidentally, the author of LOT accepts the variant of a probabilistic evaluation of the possible belonging of the respondent to one or another type — which in itself is also a valuable result.

Giving a general evaluation of LOT, one can say that such an instrument could not only cover all the needs of socionics in verbal testing, but it presupposes additional possibilities connected with scientific research. Of course, this does not mean that one need no longer work on the creation and perfection of tests — but it does mean that LOT sets a high scientific standard for a typological test, and everything that will be below this standard cannot be considered seriously.

Following the author of LOT, an interesting and promising work on the creation of a socionic test was done by M. F. Lytova and D. A. Lytov. The key idea for them became the thought — earlier expressed in different forms by other socionists as well¹ — that test questions must reflect not only the Jungian dichotomies but, above all, the structure of the model, and the TIM as a whole. True, the authors worked out their test leaning only on the program and creative functions — which, of course, is fully understandable and theoretically acceptable, although it is not excluded that one can build a test working with all the functions. And even if for practical needs this may seem excessive, from the theoretical point of view it preserves its importance. In the work of the Lytovs one wants especially to emphasize the deep comprehension of the methodology of the working-out of a test, which is confidently opposed to the superficial-intuitive choice-assignment of testing questions by socionists who are not professional psychologists. Their methodology, at whose basis lies the idea of self-consistency, is worthy of special analysis. And although this work, without doubt, was performed under the influence of LOT, it has its own features and deserves acknowledgment. If the author of LOT oriented himself only toward the program function, the Lytovs worked with the program and creative functions.

The authors conducted large preliminary work on the selection of questions valid, in their opinion, with respect to the program and creative functions of the TIMs. In all, 300 questions were selected: 20 for each program function and 17–18 for each creative one — which significantly exceeds the question massifs of the “economical” socionic tests and, other conditions being equal, ought to raise the reliability and exactness of testing.

All the same, certain convictions of the authors, having a clearly expressed methodological character, do not look irreproachable. When the authors, for example, say [12] that “most often the questions of socionic tests are thought up by the principle ‘how the type looks from the outside’” — moreover, “…from the outside of definite types,” or even of personalities — then such an assertion, although plausible, cannot be accepted without proof. First, it is limited by the refinement “most often,” and this means “not always” — and, consequently, according to logical norms, one cannot draw general assertions from it. Consequently, it can be evaluated as, predominantly, an emotional exclamation; but in science one would want to deal with theoretically verified assertions, and if they bear a hypothetical character, this must be stipulated. In any case, how test questions must evaluate the type — from inside or from outside — can be regarded as a problem that must be solved, above all, theoretically. And then the authors’ assertion that “from inside the type everything looks and is motivated completely otherwise” would not look like an intuitive supposition. Where are the investigations of how “everything looks and is motivated from inside the type”? There are none. But, after all, socionics itself is built on how “everything looks from the positions of the type,” and not on how “someone from the outside evaluates how ‘everything looks from the positions of the type.‘” Such inexactitudes in the reasonings of the authors place in doubt the correctness of their remaining assertions as well. In particular, doubt is evoked by their assertion that “not a priori, but precisely a posteriori, should the ‘typal’ groups of questions be singled out” [12]. As far as I understand, the work on the singling-out of typal questions must be conducted from two sides: both a priori and a posteriori. Otherwise it will be one-sided. It is precisely this thought that the a priori work of many socionists on the creation of a socionic test suggests. Therefore the “a posteriori” work of the authors of the “Multi-factor self-consistent socionic test” is a valuable challenge to the “apriorists,” but itself requires critical analysis and theoretical grounding. And indeed the authors of the MSST themselves did large a priori work, collecting the questions valid in their view, which then passed experimental verification with the help of the algorithm of self-consistency worked out by the authors — as a result of which these questions precisely became a posteriori. Thus, the authors write: “Part of the most, in our view, successful questions on the program functions (about a third) was taken (and in a series of cases reformulated and critically rethought) from the LOT questionnaire. The remaining two-thirds of the questions were formulated by us on the basis of our own notions, checked by consultation with representatives of different types, and also with the use of the socionic literature” [12]. In the end, what, in the socionic context, ought “a priori” to mean? To assign testing assertions knowing nothing about the peculiarities of the socionic types? That would indeed be strange. It is another matter that one can intuitively suppose the validity of definite assertions, proceeding from one’s notions about the TIMs — but afterward one will all the same need to check such assertions in practice.

Of course, it is necessary to explain theoretically why, for example, such a question as “I easily switch over to different kinds of activity; moreover, a frequent change of occupation during the day helps me not to go stale and to be in tonus” is assigned to the diagnosing of extraversion, and not of irrationality; and why the question “during rest I more love to discover places new for me than to visit habitual ones” must, in the authors’ opinion, reveal extraversion, and not intuition [12]. In similar cases the “a priori doubts” remain, despite the “a posteriori plausibility” and the supposed statistical groundedness.

An important reference point for the authors was the task they indirectly expressed with the phrase: “It is one thing how a dichotomy is perceived by separate representatives of certain types; it is something completely different how it is perceived by the general mass of those tested” [12]. As I understand it, what is at issue here is to select questions in which individualizing semantics is fully absent — that is, that which may characterize a concrete person, to whatever type he may belong — but which would characterize all people without exception belonging to one type. If I have correctly understood the phrase adduced above, then here, strange as it may be, the question again arises of what a type is. After all, a type is by no means obligatorily a socionic type — that is, a phenomenology determined by the four Jungian dichotomies — but also a phenomenology determined by any psychological feature whatsoever. For example, if we take such psychological traits as impudence or wittiness, then one can speak of the type of the impudent person and the type of the witty person. Despite the seeming simplicity of such typologies, they are quite substantive — after all, to know of a person that he is impudent, or that he is witty, may be very important both in personal life and for professional selection. Moreover, if one considers the combinations of these two traits, we obtain already four types (table 10.01).

Table 10.01

Impudent	Witty	Resulting type
Yes	Yes	A witty impudent fellow (a show-off)
Yes	No	An impudent fellow lacking a sense of humor (a swine)
No	Yes	A non-impudent humorist (a jester)
No	No	A non-impudent person, but one who doesn’t understand humor (a bore)

All four such types are widely represented in society. I have adduced this example to confirm the obvious thought that the Jungian dichotomies set not only the final combined types, but also the elementary types of extraverts and introverts, rationals and irrationals, sensorics and intuitives, logicians and ethicists, represented by the corresponding octaves of socionic types — that is, each such octave represents a quite definite type: not a socionic one, of course, but a monotype, set by one dichotomy. The dichotomies, united by twos, set types determined by foursomes of socionic types. If, however, the dichotomies are united by threes, we obtain types determined by pairs of socionic types (to them, among others, belong the eight primary Jungian types — but not only they). And, finally, four dichotomies determine the sixteen socionic types. Thus, dichotomous tests unconditionally have their meaning, and it would be not bad at all if there existed valid and reliable dichotomous tests, and the corresponding partial types were described with the possible degree of detail. Yes, this work has already been partially performed — after all, we know, in general features, what extraverts and introverts, rationals and irrationals, sensorics and intuitives, logicians and ethicists are like, and certain types determined by pairs of dichotomies (here large work was done by V. V. Gulenko) — but the types determined by triples of dichotomies, apart from the eight primary Jungian types, have hardly been worked out at all. All the same, one has to acknowledge that all these partial typologies have not been brought to perfection, and with the testing of the corresponding partial types the very same problems remain as with the testing of the full socionic type. In the end, if we could determine the monodichotomous types with one-hundred-percent reliability, then there would obviously be no problems whatsoever with the determination of the polydichotomous types. But, of course, the necessity of such tests does not at all contradict the necessity of creating tests that diagnose the socionic type — while the algorithms of such tests can be diverse. An example of an original test algorithm is precisely the test of the Lytovs — although the ideology of such a test must not be directed against the creation of dichotomous tests.

One cannot agree with the assertion of the Lytovs that “it is precisely LOT that should be considered the first genuinely socionic test” [12] — since all the tests created for the determination of the socionic type, even if inexact and unreliable, were socionic. The correct assertion ought to look thus: “LOT should be considered the first genuinely effective socionic test at whose basis lies a well theoretically argued algorithm.” The same can be said of the tests of Filimonov and of the Lytovs.

And so, the Lytovs, having done preliminary a priori work on the selection of socionically valid questions, subjected them to experimental verification with the help of the algorithm of self-consistency built by them.

The multi-factor test of the Lytovs consists of 300 statements. The test was subjected to verification on a sample of 903 people (as of the end of 2004) [12]. Three gradations of answers are used: strong agreement (2 points), weak agreement (1 point), disagreement (0 points). Upon the arising, for the respondent, of ambiguity in his perception of complex test questions, it is proposed to him not to agree with the possible positive meaning — in order to eliminate arbitrariness in the understanding of the question, which, by the authors’ idea, ought to place the respondents in equal conditions. The respondents were divided into 16 groups on the basis of a primary expert assignment of each respondent to a definite type; in doing so, essential for the algorithm of the validation of a question was the supposition that “the groups can be distinguished among themselves by the answers to the 300 questions of the MT, and that the overwhelming majority of the representatives of each group belongs to only one socionic type.” Each question of the initial massif was evaluated by the mean value of the answers of the group’s representatives to each question of the massif. For this it is sufficient to divide the sum of the points of the group by the doubled number of its members. Thus, the limiting mean evaluation of a question is one — that is, if all the members of the group choose the variant of strong agreement. Having the mean evaluation of each question, it is not difficult to compute the standard deviation from this mean — for which it is sufficient to find the differences between the limiting value of the answer (2 points) and the concrete answers of the members of the group, raise these differences to the square, add the obtained quantities, divide the sum by the quantity of the members of the group, and extract the square root from the obtained result. It is understandable that all these actions are performed by a computer program and present no particular labor. On the other hand, the obtained result mathematically strictly characterizes the magnitude of the deviation of the type of the respondents from the supposed type of the group. Now the authors of the test have two essential quantitative parameters of each question — its mean evaluation and the standard deviation from this mean. Presumably, the higher the mean evaluation of a question by a group in which respondents of one type predominate, and the lower the standard deviation, the higher the validity of the question with respect to the evaluation of the type to which the group is assigned. At the same time, the problem of the degree of generality of a question remains. If one poses to a group a too-general question — for example, “do you consider yourself a human being?” — or a too-particular question, like “have you been to the North Pole?”, then in the first case, on condition that all the members of the group are normal people, the mean evaluation and the standard deviation will take the values 1 and 0 correspondingly, while in the second they will differ from 0 and 1 only with insignificant probability. Of course, the expert in the given case — unless he uses special scales, like those of lying, social acceptability, and others — will not choose such questions; but there exists no guarantee that the questions he does choose will have a hypothetically adequate degree of generality. And yet even a small deviation from the adequate degree of generality, indistinguishable to the expert, may lead to the non-distinguishing of a factually weakly valid or invalid question from a valid one. Therefore, if a question has been chosen or rejected by a group, this is by no means a guarantee of its socionic or concretely typal validity. This is one of the causes why the literal use of tests like Myers–Briggs or Keirsey — presumably valid — gives extremely unsatisfactory results; that is, they turn out to be both inexact and unreliable, though valid.

At a certain moment, the work of the Lytovs on the verification of the massif of questions for functional validity suddenly acquired a dramatic character — since, as the authors write, “the initial supposition was confirmed: although initially each question had been ‘appointed responsible’ for one or another function, in fact it worked on a whole complex of socionic aspects.” And further: “At this same stage we collided with the following typical situation: an essential part of the questions, just for some separate type, is often rejected both by its kindred and by its business types. It is obvious that if in such a situation one ascribes the question to some function (in its program and/or creative position), such averaging will introduce an error into the computations: for one type the price of the question will be overstated, for another understated. Proceeding from such considerations, we passed with time to a test in which the weight coefficients for the questions were from the very beginning given not to functions, but directly to types” [12]. This is a strong and logical move — although one could have come to this conclusion theoretically from the very beginning; after all, as the authors write: “It goes without saying that from the very beginning it was clear to us that a series of questions works not simply toward the revealing of one or another program/creative function, but entails also an appeal to the role, painful, and other functions of Model ‘A’” — from which it is a stone’s throw to the conclusion they drew.

Here it is interesting and important that the authors formulated this idea in the process of the working-through of their test algorithm. And further follows a very important theoretical summing-up: “In our view, such an organization of the test is completely natural — after all, the type is an integral phenomenon, and not simply a sum of traits and functions (which, in addition, simply do not exist in pure form); decomposition into component parts is only one of the ways of facilitating the understanding of a complex phenomenon, not exhausting all the properties of this phenomenon. We observe precisely the type; the functions and traits are the results of generalizations of subsequent orders.” And here, in a first reading, one may disagree with the authors — let us recall the theme of partial types. Are the monodichotomous types really less real than the polydichotomous ones? Does the type of the extravert really exist somehow otherwise than, for example, the type Don Quixote? As we see, there are theoretical problems here. It is precisely for this reason that one cannot assert that the dichotomous approach to the determination of the TIM is incorrect, only on the basis that in doing so “37% of the ‘free’ dispersion for each function is lost — which gives this psychological function (be it logic, ethics, intuition, or sensing) the possibility of slightly ‘fluctuating’ both in its magnitude and in its vertedness, independently of any measured dichotomies whatsoever,” as the author of LOT writes.

However, in a second reading, one wants to agree with the Lytovs. It is not excluded that the socionic type is simpler to determine than a partial, monodichotomous type — which is precisely what the work done by the authors of the MT testifies to. And if their test (the present one, or one brought in the future to one-hundred-percent perfection) really will guarantee high reliability of the diagnostics of the socionic type, then it will be possible to use it also for the diagnostics of the monodichotomous types — since up to now, going from the monodichotomous to the socionic types has not worked out very effectively.

Further the authors bring into action the algorithm of self-consistency. If, by the mean value of the answer to some question, a group enters into the eight leaders, then for this question the group receives a positive bonus (so that the sum of the bonuses over all questions constitutes 1). The magnitude of such bonuses is directly proportional to the mean value of the answers of the representatives of the group to the concrete question, and inversely proportional to the square of the standard deviation. The positive bonuses are received by half — that is, eight groups — while the other half of the groups receives negative bonuses, which in sum constitute −1. True, in this case the bonus, by absolute magnitude, is directly proportional not to the mean value of the answer to one or another question, but to the difference between two points and this mean value, and inversely proportional to the square of the standard deviation. Thus a double strengthening of the status of a question occurs: the magnitude of the positive weight (bonus) increases with the increase of the mean answer and, independently of this, with the decrease of the dispersion — which depends not so much on the mean value of the answers as on the deviation of these answers from the maximum equal to 2 points, which is equivalent to the degree of the deviation of the type of the group from the possible maximum.

The authors also provided for the case when a clear division of the types into two halves depending on the answer to a concrete question does not occur. In this case the weights of the types distributed near zero may be fictitious, and this will become a source of error. To avoid this, the authors found a way of evaluating the possible error of the positive weight of a question — and if this error turns out to be greater than the magnitude of the positive weight itself, then this weight is equated to 0. This preliminary part of the algorithm permits the authors to form a matrix of positive and negative bonuses — that is, of coefficients strengthening or weakening the status of the socionic validity of each question. One must note that the size of this matrix is equal to the product of the quantity of groups — that is, 16 — by the quantity of questions, which in the given case is equal to 300. After this it is already not difficult, for each type, to calculate the sum of the positive and negative weights over all the questions — which precisely is the measure of the typal validity of the whole massif of questions. As a result, the authors obtain a means with whose help they can calculate the relative coefficient of the belonging of a respondent who has answered all the questions to a concrete type. Factually, this coefficient determines the probability that the given recipient has one or another concrete TIM. It is understandable that this probability becomes equal to 1 — that is, turns into certainty — if the respondent, with respect to all the questions with positive bonuses, chooses the variant of strong agreement, and with respect to the questions with negative bonuses chooses the variant of disagreement. If, however, the respondent, with respect to all the questions with negative bonuses, chooses the variant of strong agreement, and with respect to the questions with positive bonuses chooses the variant of disagreement, then the probability that he belongs to the corresponding type will be equal to 0. In reality this probability, for various causes, does not attain the extreme values — and, consequently, the belonging of the respondent to a concrete type preserves a definite degree of problematicity. Thus we see that even a carefully thought-through algorithm of the validation of a massif of testing questions does not guarantee one-hundred-percent reliability of the belonging of the tested person to a concrete type. Nevertheless, having calculated all the coefficients of the possible belonging of the subject to one or another type, one can, by the comparative magnitude of these coefficients, judge the most probable type of the tested person. Of course, the case is not excluded when two or more such coefficients will be equal or differ only insignificantly between themselves — and then we again turn out to be in a situation of indefiniteness. But, it seems, all the same significantly less than was the case in the simplified tests. Still, since the authors do not use correction scales — as, for example, the author of LOT does — the non-typological problems of testing remain. Of course, this shortcoming can be attempted to be eliminated.

And all the same, the conviction of the authors in the exceptional merits of the test worked out by them (the MT) bears a subjective character, and much with respect to this test remains unclear. Possibly I have not understood something (that is a usual matter), but I would want to sort out how the authors of the MT managed to convince themselves of its high reliability. Through the Internet they received 1,500 blanks of their test filled in by respondents. It is easy to imagine that their computer programs permit the quick processing of this material. But what did they obtain as a result? Did they really determine the types of all who filled in the blanks? Or, more exactly — do they really consider that they managed reliably to determine the types of their respondents? Therefore, only after the “running-in” of the MT by the socionic community will it be possible to draw some more or less final conclusions.

Summing up, one can say that the authors did work valuable both in the theoretical and in the practical respect, and their test deserves close attention — but it also raises not a few theoretical questions.

One of the problems connected with testing can be seen in the conversations, repeating from time to time, about the type never being pure. This is a misunderstanding connected with an unclear definition of what a type is. A type is a classificational unit, and as such it is always pure. There cannot be more or less of it — it either is, or it is not. But numerous characterological peculiarities may be superimposed upon it. The impression of it may be blurred; it may be masked, or simply not yield to diagnostics because of the imperfection of the testing methodologies. Unconditionally, this is one of the moments hampering its identification. One of the tasks of diagnostics consists precisely in sifting out all the more or less secondary details and discovering the primary, base, and single TIM of a person. All conversations about a person being able to have several TIMs stand in need of a special theoretical grounding — and until it has been made, conversations not only about the multiplicity but about any blurredness whatsoever of the type bear the character of vague intuitive visions.

But after the base TIM has been found, further typological and characterological refinements are possible — and in many cases simply necessary.

Turning to the problem of testing, one can pose the following questions:

1. What quantity of information is necessary for the determination of the TIM of a personality?
2. How is such information to be obtained?
3. Does the mode of obtaining such information influence its quality — including its reliability?

The last refinement is by no means idle: a person, having sensed or guessed that he is being observed, may consciously or unconsciously distort the verbal and non-verbal message and manipulate the observer, covertly intercepting the initiative of the leading.

The question of the quantity of valid and relevant information is important, since with it is connected the volume of the informational massif. If it turned out that the volume of such a massif is very large, then the chances of an effective determination of the TIM manually, by separate people, would turn out to be insignificant. On the other hand, it would be not bad at all if the procedure of diagnostics were not only reliable, but also maximally simple. In the capacity of an answer to this question, in a first approximation, one can say that it is sufficient to determine reliably only the four Jungian dichotomies. It is plausible that the volume of valid information in this case can quite well be processed manually.

The answer to the second question seems obvious — information must be collected by all accessible means. However, here we at once meet with ethical limitations. Of course, for the special services such limitations may bear a completely different character than for an ordinary psychological laboratory or group — but one has to reckon with them all the same. External observation carried out by professionals, video filming, the collection of data in official organizations — school, institute, personnel departments — the questioning of relatives, acquaintances, chance witnesses: all this must somehow be ethically and juridically justified. But after such a justification has been obtained, the methodological problems remain, connected with the effectiveness of such means.

Of course, about a person one can obtain some quantity of information, but by no means “all” of it. As a rule, one manages to obtain information concerning separate periods or sides of the life of the subject — for example, what work he performed, in what posts he was, how successfully he coped with his duties, how many times and on what occasion he turned to the doctor, and the like.

One of the approaches to socionic diagnostics is the method of expert evaluations — which, of course, requires its adaptation to this subject domain.

In socionics one can discover at least three situations relating to the work of experts. First, this relates to a group of experienced socionists who, in the determination of the TIM, work together. Unconditionally, they can in a certain sense be called experts — if only because they have large experience of practical work. But, of course, more important here is their capacity to determine the TIM rather quickly and confidently. I have heard some socionists say that they spend no more than three minutes on the determination of a TIM. But here again the problem of subjectivity and reliability arises. Who knows what people say about themselves. However, one can suppose that the capacity to determine the TIM depends on length of experience, and, on average, people who have spent more time on this process can in greater degree be considered experts.

One can suppose that people who conduct socionic diagnostics jointly acquire the necessary experience more quickly — especially if the group includes bearers of different types. I have had occasion to see how, in such groups, different suppositions are advanced by different experts concerning the TIM of the subject, and how other members of the group — sometimes of the very same type as the expert who expressed the supposition — express more or less argued doubt and advance their own variant. After a certain discussion the group comes to agreement. And although this whole process by no means guarantees the reliability of the result, it unconditionally raises its plausibility. In any case, for the members of the group.

Second, the “expert situation” arises when several experienced socionists seek consensus concerning the TIMs of well-known people — for example, politicians — which in our time can be very topical. I have had occasion to take part in expert discussions concerning the types of Clinton, Putin, Yushchenko, and others. Perhaps the most piquant thing in these discussions was that several unconditionally experienced socionists came to such a discussion already with different diagnoses. And in the course of the discussion no arguments of colleagues re-persuaded anyone, and each expert remained with his own opinion. Concerning the type of Yushchenko, at least five (!) assertions (not hypotheses!) were advanced: Stirlitz, Gorky, Hamlet, Dostoevsky, London. As we see, a scatter from full opposition to the kindred and dual type. Of course, this is an extreme variant — in the majority of cases consensus is attained; but, as an example of expert disagreements, it is demonstrative. For that matter, about 5% of people testify that different “experts” enrolled them in almost all the types. A preliminary scatter of 2–3 types is quite understandable — this is the phase of diagnostic search; but a scatter of the size of the socion is, most likely, testimony to the theoretical unelaboratedness in socionics of the diagnostic problematics, or to the low qualification of the evaluators.

Third, since books ought to be written by experienced socionists (unfortunately, this is not always true), the results of the author’s typing contained in them can be regarded as the opinions of experts. And here too, in many cases, we observe scatter.

Precisely because experts can give very different results, the problem exists of the determination of the reliability of an expert.

But if in psychology, for example, the directly observed peculiarities of the personality under investigation (“L”-data) are obtained by way of the formalization of the evaluations of experts observing the subject in definite situations and over some period of time, then in socionics it is apparently impossible to obtain a reliable evaluation of some Jungian dichotomy by way of the averaging of expert evaluations. Of course, it is not difficult to think up a mathematical algorithm of averaging, but this will not make the result reliable. This is simply because the Jungian dichotomies — and together with them the ART — are not additive; that is, they are not subject to addition, and, that means, it is senseless to speak of an arithmetic-mean dichotomy.

In addition, one cannot dismiss the fact that, in any case, a conclusion from observations is the result of the intuitive induction of the expert. Logic ensures only the formal correctness of the conclusion, but does not touch its content. An expert may have definite subjective limitations — up to the full falsifiedness of the possibilities he presents, as, for example, in the case of imposture and charlatanry, which in our world is by no means a rarity.

In psychology, rules have long been worked out that could raise the reliability of the work of an expert. It is held that [5]:

1. No fewer than ten experts are necessary per one person being evaluated — but the more the better. Probably this requirement is attainable in well-financed research work, but in socionics this does not yet exist. However, a virtual expert ten may arise as the result of attempts to determine the TIM of one and the same person by different people at different times. Socionic practice shows that the convergence of results in such cases is very low, and to compute “mean-expert” indicators makes no sense, in view of the non-quantitative character of the socionic parameters.

2. The expert must have the possibility of observing the behavior of the person being evaluated for a sufficiently long interval of time t. Apparently, this requirement bears a basically formal character, since the magnitude of this interval is not indicated even approximately. It is clear only that the condition 0 < t < ∞ must be fulfilled. But this is clear by default anyway.

3. The traits being evaluated must be determined in terms of observed behavior. As applied to socionics, one can agree with this if behavior is understood in a maximally generalized sense — that is, if, at the least, spoken words are also assigned to behavior. On the other hand, in this requirement is contained the condition that the primary protocol of observation must not contain terms designating socionic parameters. This gives the possibility of transmitting one and the same protocol for processing to different experts — and then, in the case of essential divergences in interpretations, the experts could use various procedures of coordination.

4. The effectiveness of the work of experts will be higher if they rank the respondents by only one trait at a time. Such an order also permits raising the reliability of the work of the expert and introducing elements of control over it, proposing to him to conduct the ranking of the same subjects by another trait, but after a sufficiently large interval of time, when he will have forgotten the results of the previous trial. With sufficiently large massifs of subjects this is quite real.

In socionic diagnostics such an approach is quite possible, but it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that such a procedure is very cumbersome. And all the same, in some cases it could be used. For example, it is a pity that such a procedure was proposed by no one at the Great Socionic Experiment in 1998 in Dnepropetrovsk. The results obtained then could have acquired yet another dimension.

5. The experts must not be bound among themselves by administrative, official, group, or personal dependence. In some existing socionic groups this rule is not observed. A “dependent” group may be effective at the stage of the preparation and training of socionic experts, but in production regime such a group must be regarded as one expert — true, one who turns out in doing so to be more powerful. In any case, an independent and a dependent group are rather different variants of expert work, and each of them has its advantages and shortcomings.

An important moment in the raising of the reliability of the work of socionic experts could be the collective attestation of experts. And here, in the capacity of an instrument for the “calibration” of experts, one could propose precisely the ranking or sorting of a series of previously typed photographs of people, specially prepared for such a case, and certainly unknown to the subjects. So that questions do not arise like “and how do we know that the typing corresponds to reality?”, such preliminary work would have to be conducted by a group composed of representatives of various socionic schools. Another instrument for the calibration of experts could be not photographs but clips, where people are shown in movement in natural situations — when they communicate, perform some work, discuss, present reports, and the like.

A definite interest for the theory of socionic testing could be presented by cases of the avoidance of any testing procedures, conscious simulation, and the distortion of socionic markers. Although, possibly, this is a purely theoretical moment — after all, if a person does not want to be tested, or consciously distorts the possible impression of his type, why should anything be imposed on him? But at the same time, if for some reasons interested persons need to know someone’s TIM, this can, after all, be done in remote regime as well.

It is highly plausible that the basic object of socionics — the TIM — despite all the problems we now have in its determination, is by its nature significantly simpler than the whole remaining set of psychological features having significance for the more detailed prognosis of the behavior of a concrete person, be it in the everyday or the professional sphere. Therefore socionists, in their tests, may not even need various control procedures and scales, like the scales of lying, social dependence, correction, and the like. After all, in the end, everything that is in a person over and above the TIM can be measured by already existing psychological tests. Of course, on the condition that these tests are valid, exact, and reliable. But that is already a matter of honor for psychologists, and not for socionists. However, if, out of theoretical or practical considerations, some special scales are needed, then, of course, they can be introduced. One would only want them not to be introduced formally, as a tribute to fashion.

Of course, socionists can, in suitable cases, avail themselves of the rich arsenal of psychological devices distracting the attention of the subject from the goal of the testing: the masking of the true goal of the investigation; the unexpected posing of the task, neutralizing, at the expense of suddenness, the defensive sets of the respondent; the indefiniteness and unclarity of the goals of the testing, knocking the respondent off track and not giving him the possibility of understanding the requirements and strategy of the experimenter; an abundance of diverse assignments, among which is presented a multitude of vivid but, for the experimenter, unimportant assignments, though externally similar to the important ones; the creation of a sharpened emotional situation during testing, placing the subject in an awkward position; the saturation of the content of the tests with emotional elements, which is equivalent to the preceding device. “The content of the tests may be unethical, poetic, funny, ugly, and so on” [5]. If only the result be reliable.

From the most general theoretical reasonings, one can suppose that the perception of the behavior of a person by other people is always, in one or another measure, distorted in connection with the peculiarities of the personality of the observer himself. Even if professionals come forward in the capacity of observers, the results of observations may differ rather much. Since different experts may give different evaluations, the problem arises of the measurement of the reliability of an expert. This problem has been investigated by psychologists, and at the present time methods exist for the determination of the mean reliability of experts for the case where the evaluation is carried out by several people.

About a dozen different kinds of systematic distortions connected with the work of experts are known.

1. The physiological reaction — one and the same person feels differently in the presence of different people, and his capacity to conduct psychological observation and draw conclusions may depend on this within wide limits. The case of being in love shows that such dependence can be very strong, and the distortion of reality unlimited.

2. Expectation — the subconscious formation of an evaluative judgment of the possible actions of the partner, programming the anticipation of the partner’s behavior. The unrecognized or half-recognized desire that the partner act in a definite way may be so strong that it is transmitted to the other person, sometimes leaving him no choice. What is not meant here are the various kinds of direct inducement and compulsion.

3. The first impression at the meeting of two people may exert a rather strong influence on their further relations. What exactly occurs in doing so has been insufficiently investigated in psychology. However, within the framework of socionic concepts, the first impression can be evaluated as one of the effects of the socionic relation. Of course, it is by no means obligatory to reduce everything to socionics — probably there may be other causes and other explanations — but it would be interesting to reveal also the socionic releasers,² which presumably must exist. It is understandable that if the first impression is connected with some exceptional circumstances — for example, a feat or, on the contrary, immoral behavior — then the further relations between the participants of the corresponding event will be colored, above all, by the tonality of this event. This situation is quite predictable and can in some measure be corrected in the work of a professional. But a subtler — and, correspondingly, more masked — case of the distortion of the evaluation of one person by another is the case where an obvious and recognized cause is absent, or bears an indefinite, unacceptable, or “enigmatic” character. It is precisely among these causes that one should, possibly, seek the action of the socionic releasers.

4. The relation of the expert to the subject may be influenced by the opinion of other people. This is a widely disseminated and quite understandable everyday phenomenon. This is one of the sources of the formation of prejudice. And if someone has named to you in advance the type of the subject, this may exert an influence on your evaluation.

5. The expert may be led into error by the charm of another person. From the psychological point of view, charm can be evaluated as a variety of unrecognized or partially recognized hypnotic action. Such action may turn out to be so subtle and unnoticeable that it will be impossible not only to avoid it, but even somehow to take it into account. Here, in particular, belong the cases when it is said of someone that he has fallen under someone’s influence.

6. Artistry — the innate, or attained by special trainings, ability to depict one or another psychological manifestation, without relation to what a person may really be experiencing. In contradistinction to charm, artistry leans, in the first place, on the technical command of one’s body and emotions. For example, some people lie so artistically that it is difficult to suspect them of it, while a person not commanding this ability may evoke the suspicion of lying even when he speaks the truth.

7. The halo effect — this is the case where the positive or negative peculiarities of a person in one sphere are transferred by the observer onto all the rest of his behavior. This too is a phenomenon widely disseminated in everyday life. A person who has recommended himself as decent, balanced, and socially adapted will hardly evoke suspicions — even if he commits a crime but manages to conceal it. Is it not on this that the werewolves in all spheres of human activity hold themselves? What a normal, decent, and simply pleasant person the criminal looked who had abducted two girls and kept and raped them right in his own yard, in a well-equipped bunker, over the course of two years. This same effect manifests itself in the relation of teachers to good or bad pupils.

8. Not rarely one can also meet with a difficult-to-explain non-objective relation to different people — some are forgiven everything, and everything gets away with them, while others are hounded, persecuted, overloaded with work. This can be called the daughter–stepdaughter effect, a good illustration of which is the fairy tale about Cinderella. Of course, this effect manifests itself not only in relations to relatives and non-relatives. It is not excluded that this is one of the manifestations of the socionic relation. It seems that toward a conflictor or a controlled one it is easier to relate with unmotivated dislike.

9. Stereotypes — personal or social prejudices coloring the relation to any phenomena of personal or social life, including to people. These are judgments of the type “we know these Germans… all Americans are identical… Russians are talented but do not know how to use their possibilities… Ukrainians need nothing except salo…“. But a subtler effect here is that a really existing national aura may rather strongly distort the typological releasers. Thus, a European needs a definite adaptation in order more or less confidently to type Japanese, Chinese, or Koreans, who to some may seem “all of one face.” Here too belongs the case where the expert assigns the subject to a definite type simply because he resembles someone who belongs to this type.

10. Not rarely the general evaluation of a person is influenced by his psychic state at the given moment. Psychological stress, depression, unexpected euphoria from success, being in love may so distort the manifestation of the deep peculiarities of a person that even professionals may commit a significant error in giving an evaluation, a recommendation, or forming one or another psychological judgment.

11. The taking-into-account of the dominant need. If some base need of a person is not satisfied — and, all the more, is accentuated — the impression the person produces may strongly differ from the one that corresponds to his deep nature. For example, the behavior of a very hungry person may be so inadequate that the observer will simply be shocked — especially if the cause is unknown to him.

12. If a non-professional observer does not know of the existence of such a universal phenomenon as psychological defense, his testimony may contain a systematic error concerning the possible behavior of the subject.

13. The manipulative stance — an acquired, or imposed on a person, stereotype of unreflected behavior directed at self-affirmation at the expense of other people. The theme of the generalized manipulative stances is well worked through by Virginia Satir, and presented in more detail by Everett Shostrom in his small but exceptionally useful book Man, the Manipulator.

Of course, all the causes of the distortion of the results of observation enumerated above are themselves important information about the object of observation, and if they enter into the program of observation, then, of course, no error is at issue. However, in the conduct of socionic diagnostics, the ignorance or ignoring of the enumerated non-typological phenomena will one way or another tell on the reliability of the determination of the type.

A good confirmation of the above is the results of the Dnepropetrovsk Experiment on the reliability of socionic diagnostics (April 1999), when, with protocol exactness, serious divergences were established in the results of diagnostics obtained by expert socionists with different preliminary preparation, with different terms of practical work in this direction, and with different theoretical sets. However, the results of the Dnepropetrovsk Experiment testify only to the unelaboratedness of socionic diagnostics — and by no means to the principal defectiveness of socionics as a science, or the impossibility of reliably determining the TIM.

After all this introduction, let us try to seek an answer to the principal question of whether objective socionic diagnostics is possible in principle.

Fortunately, there exists a large, objectively fixed database, leaning on which one can, with a high degree of reliability, show that objective socionic diagnostics is possible. I have in mind such spheres of human activity as philosophy, literature, music, painting — and also all cases when in a material product (hard copy) a trace of the personality remains, including of its TIM.

Let us begin, perhaps, with the most difficult sphere with respect to diagnostics — with music. Once it occurred to me that the creative work of the bards — that is, of people composing both the text and the music — could serve as the basis for a distinctive calibration of diagnostic methodologies in musical socionics. The point is that, since the creative work of a bard can be considered a single product, his personality — and, presumably, his TIM — must find expression both in the texts of the songs and in their melodies; and, consequently, one can find approaches to the evaluation of socionic markers in music, leaning on the socionic features of the text, more accessible at the present time. Large work in musical typology was in its time conducted by A. Didenko.

Let us take, for example, two maximally popular Russian bards — Vysotsky and Okudzhava. Even without any special investigations it is clear that all the songs of Vysotsky as a whole — not separately, but as a single mass — differ from the whole mass of the songs of Okudzhava. The melodics of Vysotsky’s songs, in comparison with the melodics of Okudzhava’s songs, is simpler. One can even say that it is located at the limiting level of simplicity characteristic of the Russian urban song, which one can meet with, for example, in declassed circles — which reflects one of the heaviest human dramas of Russia. Of people relating to such circles there turned out to be so many in Russia that it is simply impossible not to reckon with their state and existence. Vysotsky’s songs are distinguished by a precise and hard rhythm; they are sooner severe than lyrical. Their thematics is closer to the extreme, and in the lexicon predominate elements of sporting, military, and “semi-criminal” jargon. A hard rhythm, from the socionic point of view, is quite comparable with a strengthened logical component colored by sensing. Severity and extremeness contain in themselves the semantics of sensing. Socionic irrationality can be discerned in the thematic problematics. To identify the markers of extraversion-introversion is more complex, and therefore I shall not dwell on this here. What is important for me here is to show the principal possibility of the revealing of the Jungian dichotomies fixed in the creative work of a personality.

The melodics of Okudzhava’s songs is unconditionally subtler. Their lexicon is often romantically ennobled, and their thematics combines lyricism (ethics) with romanticism (irrationality). The chamber, “room” character of many of the songs — as if intended for a narrow circle of close people — is quite identifiable with introversion. The other socionic markers still need to be sought, but in the capacity of a hypothesis, already at this level, one can propose irrational sensory-ethical introversion.

If we now glance at the creative work of the third outstanding bard of ours, Rosenbaum, we shall find here both a refined melodic richness (recall his “Waltz-Boston”) and high poetic mastery — a subtle logical opposition of meanings — not yielding to the mastery of the two preceding titans on whose shoulders he stood. Evaluating his type by physiognomic data, by plasticity, emotional figures, and manner of performance as sensory-logical introversion — with what could this be confirmed on the material of his song creativity? Let us pose the question directly: in what is he closer to Vysotsky, and in what does he differ from Okudzhava? Both Vysotsky and Rosenbaum, from the point of view of emotional style, are either severe restraint (Vysotsky’s song about the friend who did not return from battle; Rosenbaum’s Afghan cycle) or on the verge of emotional breakdown (Vysotsky’s “Horses”; Rosenbaum’s field-and-smoke song), while in Okudzhava, in his highest attainments, it is sad, sentimental, or piercing lyricism — correspondingly, his songs of the Danish king’s drops, of the woman in the window, and the road song. Of course, these are only first estimates, and deep and careful investigations by musical and poetic theorists are necessary here.

That literary works contain a large quantity of markers by which one can diagnose both their authors and the heroes of these works (often, not all of them) has been shown by several researchers. I shall here, in the capacity of an object of socionic diagnostics, “touch lightly” on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. That is, I shall not occupy myself here with diagnostics in great detail — that could become the theme of a separate investigation — I shall only mark out the very possibility of such diagnostics.

Let us first try to find data for the socionic identification of the main hero.

1.04 (first chapter, fourth stanza; all stanzas are given here in literal prose gloss). Onegin was, in the opinion of many (judges resolute and strict), a learned fellow, but a pedant: he had the happy talent, without compulsion in conversation, to touch upon everything lightly; with the learned air of an expert to keep silence in an important dispute; and to arouse the smile of the ladies with the fire of unexpected epigrams.

This is one of the very first sketches of the generalized image of the hero in the novel. Here “learned fellow” is used with the light humorous shade constantly present in Eugene Onegin, and sooner points to educatedness than to an inclination to science — but this, of course, still needs to be confirmed by other references. “Without compulsion in conversation” — the absence of clampedness, timidity, embarrassment. These are the first hints at extraversion. “To touch upon everything lightly” — he demonstrates his competence, easily entering into contacts with interlocutors (ethics as opposed to logic). “With the learned air of an expert to keep silence in an important dispute” — this is only an air, only a pretext for maintaining a certain image, and can be understood as an indicator of logic in the Superego — even, moreover, in the position of the adaptive-loading function (ALF). “And to arouse the smile of the ladies with the fire of unexpected epigrams” — here the ethical component is obvious, and its dimensionality is high, which can be understood as its position in the EGO block.

1.07. Having no high passion to spare no sounds for life’s sake, he could not, however we struggled, tell an iamb from a trochee. He berated Homer, Theocritus; on the other hand he read Adam Smith, and was a deep economist — that is, he knew how to judge of how a state grows rich, and what it lives by, and why it needs no gold when it has the simple product.

In the first four lines Pushkin performs a special task — to eliminate the biographical resemblance to his hero. In the further text he brings this task up to the necessary level. “He berated Homer, Theocritus” — this may mean that he not only knew them, but was versed in the subtleties of their style and plots, and somewhere turned out to be on a par with them. At the least, of subconscious vanity and ambitions he had enough. “On the other hand he read Adam Smith and was a deep economist” — as is evident from the further text, he was not a deep economist, and in general he had no desire whatsoever to occupy himself with economics. But he was interested in the possibility of a simple solution of the economic relations with his serfs — which can be understood as a manifestation of extraverted sensing: to have riches, but by no means at the expense of one’s own labor. Therefore one must understand that the words “deep economist” Pushkin uses with a shade of the light humor widely used by the poet throughout the novel.

1.08. All that Evgeny knew besides, I have no leisure to retell; but that in which he was a true genius, what he knew more firmly than all sciences, what had been for him from youth both labor, and torment, and delight, what occupied the whole day of his yearning idleness — was the science of the tender passion…

The last line of this stanza, in the capacity of a socionic indicator, can be understood as a pointer to socionic ethics in a strong position. This is not simply curiosity or the expression of a biological need — this is the essential side of the personality: “in which he was a true genius.” “Yearning idleness” — here in the novel there appears for the first time a pointer to weak extraverted logic: in position 2.1 or 2.2. Already at this stage one can begin to form a hypothesis about the TIM of the hero: a sensory extravert, an ethicist, with logic in a weak position — which is equivalent to irrationality. Thus, one can suppose that Eugene Onegin presented himself to Pushkin as a sensory-ethical extravert (Se), or Napoleon. Naturally, not in these theoretical terms.

1.09, 1.11, 1.12. (1.09: How early he could dissemble, conceal hope, be jealous, dissuade, make believe, seem gloomy, languish, appear proud and obedient, attentive or indifferent! How languidly he was silent, how flamingly eloquent, how careless in heartfelt letters! Breathing one thing, loving one thing, how he knew how to forget himself! How his gaze was quick and tender, bashful and audacious, and at times shone with an obedient tear! — 1.11: How he knew how to seem new, jestingly to astonish innocence, to frighten with ready despair, to amuse with pleasant flattery, to catch the minute of tender emotion, to conquer the prejudices of innocent years with mind and passion, to await involuntary caress, to beg and demand avowals, to overhear the heart’s first sound, to pursue love — and suddenly to attain a secret rendezvous… and afterward, alone with her, to give lessons in the quiet! — 1.12: How early he could already trouble the hearts of inveterate coquettes! When he wanted to annihilate his rivals, how caustically he slandered! What nets he prepared for them!)

These three stanzas do not contradict the advanced hypothesis, and if it is true, we obtain additional information for the characterization of the type Napoleon. Of course, these three stanzas, in themselves, only point to ethics in a strong position, and to extraversion. Extraversion here is presented by the great energetic saturation of the semantics of the ethical indicators and their abundance. Therefore such a description could be matched, besides the sensory-ethical extravert (Se), also by the ethico-intuitive extravert (Ei), the ethico-sensory extravert (Es), and the intuitive-ethical extravert (Ie). However, the indications of irrationality and sensing compel one to give preference to the sensory-ethical extravert (Se). Nevertheless, the information obtained is for now not quite enough for final conclusions — but for the advancement of a hypothesis it is sufficient.

Let us read further…

1.23, 1.24. (1.23: All that inventive Paris, having chosen a useful trade, invents for amusements, for luxury, for fashionable delectation — all adorned the study of the philosopher at eighteen years. — 1.24: Amber on the pipes of Tsargrad, porcelain and bronze on the table, and — delight of pampered feelings — perfumes in cut crystal; combs, little steel files, straight scissors, curved ones, and brushes of thirty kinds…)

Here one can suppose extraversion: by the abundance of this “all” that adorned the study. Here the abundance and multiplicity characteristic of extraversion is well presented; but, in addition, by the concentratedness of the hero on what relates to the maintenance of his external appearance, the sensing of the respondent is here again confirmed. Thus the hypothesis of extraverted sensing receives additional arguments. Here one can also discover a feature characterizing no longer the hero, but the author himself. Turn attention to the fact that the description of the interior of the study is distinguished by staticness. And this is not one chance stanza — this is in general characteristic of the whole of Pushkin’s poetry.

This staticness, as an instrument of genius, acquires in Pushkin’s execution a monumental character. That is precisely why such grandeur wafts from his lines “I have raised to myself a monument not made by hands…” Here already the first word “I,” supported by the solemn verb “raised” and the unique epithet “not made by hands,” looks like a monument. The great master irreproachably chooses adequate means for self-expression.

Here one can pose the question: “What, does Pushkin have no movement at all (with a hint at dynamics)?” However, the point is that movement and dynamics are not one and the same. Movement can become a means for the expression of dynamics, but it can also be static. Recall how Pushkin says of the emperor: “And with a weak motion of the hand he moved his regiments upon the Russians.” In this line there are two verbs of movement, but the movement of the hand here is minimized to the limit, while the movement of the regiments — of course, powerful in itself — looks here like the moving of a piece on a chessboard. And if, for the better representation of the phenomenon, one performs an equivalent transformation of the last words of the line, it comes out that the regiments “were moved” — and this, as we see, is the passive voice: one of the possible expressions of statics. As a result, one single line becomes a code disclosing a monumental picture: the monarch, standing on an elevation with his suite, is almost motionless, and with a barely noticeable movement he sets in action an enormous mass of people.

Even the words “flying in the dust on post-horses” in the first stanza of the novel — do not hurry to evaluate them as dynamics, since this is only the background for the quite prosaic reflections of the “young rake” calmly sitting inside the carriage and reflecting on the virtues of his uncle. Pushkin has a mass of unique, staggering descriptions of nature, but their monumentality is ensured precisely by statics.

The dawn rises in the cold gloom; on the fields the noise of work has fallen silent…

Yes, the dawn rises. This is movement, but it is slowed down — approximately in the way it is recommended to perform the plastic figures of wushu. As a result, the whole stanza is perceived as a monumental picture from the life of nature, and the author reaps the laurels of a great artist. In this stanza there is a dynamic insertion: “…the road horse snorts, and the cautious traveler rushes up the hill at full speed” — but its specific weight in the whole picture is small; it is one of the concrete details of a single picture, which looks like a fully static but very realistic map, an “iconic image” of the autumn landscape of the central Russian zone. But let us return to the hero of the genius’s novel in verse.

1.44. And again, given over to idleness, languishing in spiritual emptiness, he settled down — with the praiseworthy goal of appropriating another’s mind to himself; he set up a shelf with a detachment of books; he read and read — and all to no avail…

The first line points to extraverted logic in a weak position and confirms the observations made earlier. “Languishing in spiritual emptiness” — this, in psychological concepts, can be understood as the expression of an existential vacuum. From the socionic point of view, these words can be understood as the absence of motivation and non-mobilizedness. For Napoleon this is extraverted logic in the position of the motivational-mobilizational function (MMF), which correlates well with the “idleness” that, for example, a rational logician could by no means permit himself.

Of course, to give a well-argued diagnosis one would need to analyze the whole novel in detail; but our task in the given case is to point to the potential possibility of the diagnostics of the TIM by a written text. I shall not analyze the other heroes, but for the curious I shall at once state the results of my investigation. Tatyana is an intuitive, irrational, logical extravert — which corresponds to the type Don Quixote. The psychological underpinning of the main intrigue of the novel, in this case — if I am right — is connected with the fact that between the main heroes there takes place the relation of superego. Two natures equal in strength alternately experience a spiritual attraction to each other, but it, for various causes, does not find the answer expected by the other.

It is plausible that Lensky belongs to the type Yesenin (iE), and his relations with Evgeny must be assigned to the category of the comfortable ones — duality, activation, semi-duality — for with him Evgeny was distracted from his “spleen,” being drawn into disputes. Taking into account the hypotheses about the types of our heroes, one has to settle on semi-duality; and if it has been divined by the poet with genius, then one can obtain additional impressions of this relation from the Pushkinian stanzas (2.13, 2.15, 2.16).

2.13. But Lensky, having, of course, no desire to bear the bonds of marriage, wished heartily to strike up a shorter acquaintance with Onegin. They came together. Wave and stone, verse and prose, ice and flame are not so different between themselves. At first, by mutual difference, they were boring to each other; then they came to like each other; then they rode together on horseback every day, and soon became inseparable. Thus people (I am the first to repent of it) are friends from having nothing to do.

2.15. He listened to Lensky with a smile: the poet’s ardent conversation, and his mind, still unsteady in judgments, and his eternally inspired gaze — everything was new to Onegin. He tried to hold back the cooling word on his lips, and thought: it is stupid of me to hinder his momentary bliss; even without me its time will come; let him live meanwhile and believe in the world’s perfection; let us forgive the fever of young years both its young heat and its young raving.

2.16. Between them everything gave birth to disputes and drew them to reflection: the treaties of past tribes, the fruits of the sciences, good and evil, and age-old prejudices, and the fateful mysteries of the grave; fate and life in their turn — everything was subjected to their judgment. The poet, in the heat of his judgments, read, forgetting himself, meanwhile, fragments of northern poems; and indulgent Evgeny, though he understood little of them, listened diligently to the youth.

Lensky’s beloved Olga is an introvert, ethical, irrational — but data on intuition-logic for her I did not manage to discover. Perhaps I did not search carefully enough. For that matter, by many difficult-to-verbalize features, the more probable hypothesis seems to be that Olga was iE, and with Lensky she had the relations of identity. However, the supposition is also not deprived of meaning that Olga belonged to the type Dumas — which turns Tatyana’s family into a quadra, since there is a small number of indicators on whose basis one can suppose that Tatyana’s mother belongs to the type Hugo (Es), and her father to the type Robespierre (lI).

Incidentally, let us note that to Pushkin’s type (Napoleon) corresponds the relation of superego — and it is very plausible that precisely for this reason he so brilliantly concretized this phenomenon in his immortal novel. That is, one can say that this novel is built on the relation of superego of its main heroes, and it makes its unique contribution to the aesthetic, psychological, and moral effect that accompanies the reading of this masterpiece.

I in no case insist on the unambiguity of my results, and if someone has a different opinion, I am ready to discuss all disputable moments with any critic and doubter.

With a remarkable technology of socionic typing works the professional psychologist E. K. Lomonosova. Her method represents a verbal projection of the personal perception of a testing configuration consisting of two small toy bears of different colors. This configuration is distinguished by aspect universality — that is, it can be perceived from the point of view of any of the IA. In the assignment it is proposed to write a fairy tale about these two little bears. As early as 1940 the German psychologist L. Düss used the methodology of the telling of fairy tales for the examination of children with the aim of revealing in them such entities, topical for psychoanalysis, as the complexes of “weaning from the breast” or the “fear of castration” — so it is quite natural to use “fairy-tale methodologies” for the revealing of characterological and, among them, typological peculiarities of the personality. The intuitive, the sensoric, the logician, the ethicist, composing a fairy tale on the theme of the testing configuration, will be able to see in it what is typologically closest to them, and to express this in the text with the corresponding words, turns of speech, and images. In accordance with socionic notions, the intuitives ought to touch on themes one way or another connected with potential possibilities. The sensoric will most likely turn attention to the external peculiarities of the toys — their fluffiness, size, color — and describe what is connected with well-being, comfort, or usefulness. For the logician, essential turns out to be the comparison of the objects, a possible hierarchy, professional skills. In the ethicists, at the center of attention, with the greatest probability, will be relations and emotions. But these fairy-tale protocols are presumably capable, given sufficient length, of reflecting not simply the generalized IA, but also the work of separate functions and blocks, and also the dominants of the whole TIM. Nevertheless, the concrete use of the given methodology showed that the matter does not stand so straightforwardly as it seemed from general theoretical considerations. Thus, for example, in short fairy tales or stories one can often discover the indicators of one or two dichotomies, which is clearly insufficient for full-fledged diagnostics. As for the complex indicators pointing to the functions, blocks, and dominants of the types, at the present time we have insufficient information for their confident identification.

It goes without saying that a testing configuration can be composed of almost any objects whatsoever — but on the condition that it is characterized by aspect universality. Following the methodology of E. Lomonosova, I proposed to subjects any pair of objects that turned up at hand — up to two matches: one whole, one slightly burnt. The results are quite satisfactory. Of course, two matches for a scientific experiment is, one may say, unserious; but what is important for us is that the method itself, proposed by E. Lomonosova, is distinguished by socionic validity. A fairy tale in which two given objects figure turned out to be an adequate projective means revealing the typological peculiarities and preferences of the personality. True, as it seems to me, the assignment need not obligatorily be given in the format of a fairy tale — it can also be in the format of a story. Sometimes genre preferences may turn out to be an additional indicator of rationality/irrationality, and for further investigations this may be interesting. In addition, one must stipulate that the text should be sufficiently long — somewhere around two pages — otherwise not all respondents have time to unfold the dichotomous indicators. Possibly, besides the genre, one should set compositional parameters: introduction (exposition), inciting incident, development of events, the most important event (culmination), denouement, epilogue, moral. Such a structure of the text, from the diagnostic point of view, permits the forcing of the presentation of typologically significant indicators — although it increases the load on the respondent. But, in the end, this is a testing situation, and the task of the psychologist is to optimize it. One can also ask the respondent, after the writing of the test, to supply the text with a title — and perhaps also with an epigraph.

This method is good also in that it presupposes the documentary fixation of the creative text generated by the respondent. And this gives the possibility of its independent evaluation by different experts, and group discussion — including deferred discussion. Of course, work in this direction must be continued, but its beginning is very encouraging.

I selected the most vivid results for each type, but, not wishing to overload the text, I shall limit myself to only a few examples.

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Part 2

N.S. (male, 37 years, a scientist)

Wursthöppel, the Delighter of Sausages (a legend)

Long, long ago there was a time when people did not yet know that matches could be used to light fire, and everyone used them as he could. Some played the remarkable and mysterious game “Heads-and-Tails” — well, the one where you had to move the matches lying heads-up over the matches lying tails-up, and whoever gathered all his matches at one end got the winnings in triple measure. Others used matches as building material — what did they not build out of them: houses, and tractors, and airplanes; true, it never came to using them, because all this crumbled from the wind, and gluing they had not yet thought of at that time. A third sort stoked their stoves with them. True, for this purpose they selected the thicker matches, but they did not disdain the thin ones either. There were also those who considered matches a powerful narcotic. And some even baked little pies with matches — this was considered a special chic. But for this special case the matches were made of thinly sliced carrot candied in honey. Now this recipe has long been lost, and only, they say, somewhere in the Himalayas lives a sage 900 years of age who remembers even more than that.

But then one day a young Austrian scientist, Wursthöppel — which means “the delighter of sausages” (well, this is an untranslatable play on words from High German, meaning a person to whom everything is as nothing) — made the astonishing discovery that matches could be used to light fire. This happened completely by chance. Once he had sat up in his Laboratory of Great Discoveries longer than usual, because he needed, come what may, to finish his nine hundred thirty-seventh discovery by four in the morning. He did not yet know in what exactly it would consist, because it had not yet come into his head — but it was already somewhere quite close, somewhere near the crown of his head, and he felt it scratching against the skin of his head. He himself had already begun lightly scratching his head in that place, when suddenly a strong gust of wind noisily flung open the windows, and a whirlwind that burst into the laboratory put out all the candles, and there set in such a darkness as Wursthöppel had never seen in his life. And at that moment the idea of the still-unknown discovery penetrated into his brain, and at once in his head there appeared a strange little picture: some peasant with a beard, somewhere in the far depths of the cosmos, rubs the head of a match against a rough surface, and the match flares up brightly, illuminating the cosmos with bright light.

That was it. The discovery had taken place. Wursthöppel was now the only one in the world who knew that if you rub a match against some rough surface, the match will catch fire — and, that means, one would be able to manage without flint and steel. True, he did not yet know against what one must rub the matches, and forty-two years of persistent experiments still awaited him ahead. But not even three years had passed before he attained this remarkable result, and people received from his hands a simple and remarkable discovery that glorified him for all times. And even when people had long ceased to use matches, because magnetic and plasma lighters had been invented and it had become unprofitable to produce matches, on the old square in the city of Höppelstadt one could see a monument to Wursthöppel with an eternal flame bursting from his palms. And so that it would be clear to everyone in all times what the essence of Wursthöppel’s invention had been, on the pedestal two matches were carved — one whole, and the second burnt — symbolically designating Wursthöppel’s key idea. Simple, but with taste.

This story is perceived as somewhat strange. Already its title may nonplus one — although it is easy to collate it with a strongly developed imagination, which is one of the signs of the leading position of intuition. But here one can even speak of schizothymia, quite characteristic of people with strong extraverted intuition. The presence of the schizo-radical in normal form makes the intellect open to the informational flow and contributes to the search for original solutions of arising problems. The genre of the legend has been chosen, which can be understood as a creative relation of the respondent to the assignment. It is also important to note that the whole story represents a light parody of popular-science texts about discoveries and inventors — and this is comparable with the presence in the respondent of a sense of humor. The introduction assigns the beginning of the story to “far-off times” (one of the indicators of intuition). In the very first phrase there appears the indicator of the proposed theme — the matches — true, in a paradoxical phrase returning us to the times when their base property was not known. Paradoxicality is an indicator of irrationality. Further goes the enumeration of the kinds of use of matches “in those times,” where the respondent demonstrates a high level of invention (intuition), while the energetic density of this list suggests the thought of extraversion. Logico-intuitive indicators: the description of the “mysterious game” and the use of matches in the capacity of building material. Here one can already propose a hypothesis — Il. It is interesting to note that the phrase about the little pies with matches — very sensory in its content — can nevertheless, in the context of the other indicators, be understood as a projection of the expectational-resource function (ERF), and this fits well into the introverted sensing of Don Quixote. From the theoretical point of view, it could present interest that we here, possibly, are dealing with an indicator of a weak function. The mention of the sage from the Himalayas quite resembles a projection of the respondent’s own personality (auto-projection).

In the second (main) part of the story there appears a young scientist with a strange but quite German surname, Wursthöppel, accompanied by an equally strange translation — “the delighter of sausages” — which, true, is partially compensated by the explanation about the untranslatable play on words from High German. All together this may point to the person’s competence in linguistics; but I, not knowing High German, tried to find the translation in dictionaries. Wurst is indeed translated as sausage; but a word resembling “höppel” I did not manage to find. The closest in sound turned out to be the German word hoppeln — the verb “to hop” — so the closest literal translation could sound like “the one who hops after sausage,” or “the sausage jumping-jack,” which makes the translation proposed by the author of the story something like a practical joke or a “gag.” This strengthens the version of the story’s parodic character. One must also take into account that if the name thought up by a respondent bears a bookish-scientific character with a non-obvious meaning, then, by the concepts of psychoanalysis, this is a sign of demonstrativeness — when a person tries to shine with his own erudition or intellect. In socionics, demonstrative behavior is most simply connected with the combination of extraversion with intuition, which does not contradict the earlier-advanced hypothesis. As for the combination “delighter of sausages,” here the incorrect word can be understood as a projection of the introverted sensing of Don Quixote in the position of the ERF — that is, to put it simply, in this way his subconscious expresses its relation to food products and to the process of the taking of food, but at the same time, as far as possible, masks this relation with an incorrect term. However, the respondent masks this meaning also with another enigmatic combination: “a person to whom everything is as nothing.” Of course, one can say that what is at issue here is a parodic improvisation, and therefore hardly anything serious can be hidden behind it. But what is at issue is a projective test, and here improvisation is precisely regarded as the basic source of subconscious information. In the given case it is difficult to interpret this expression unambiguously — and, for that matter, subconscious processes rarely admit an unambiguous interpretation. One of the possible interpretations could be the evaluation of the respondent as a person without prejudices, or a person who fears nothing — but the respondent’s subconscious communicates this not directly, which could be perceived as boasting, but allegorically.

Further along the text goes an almost unambiguous indication of the leading position of intuition in the respondent: an astonishing discovery that occurred completely by chance. The set toward time — to make it before four in the morning — also does not contradict the advanced hypothesis. And further — practically a natural model of the intuitive process: the thought has not yet come into the head, but is already somewhere nearby; and the scratching of the crown, the gust of wind and the whirlwind, comparable with inspiration and ecstasy; and the strange little picture — the insight. In general, the irrational combination of intuition with logic is expressed rather clearly. On the basis of the analysis conducted, one can suppose that the respondent, with high probability, belongs to the type Don Quixote. Nevertheless, such a conclusion is no more than a hypothesis, and additional data are necessary. For the expert, in the process of communication with the respondent, such data can become various non-verbal features: external appearance, facial features, mimicry, build, plasticity, gesticulation, and the like — which can ensure a quick transition from hypothesis to full confidence. But this already lies beyond the limits of the projective test.

Yes, in projective methodologies it is not easy to attain one-hundred-percent reliability. Possibly, one must create conditions so that the respondent has more possibilities of manifesting himself. Let us recall the hint of the author of LOT: not to insist on the minimality of the testing procedure, but to increase it gradually to the point of attaining stable reliability.

Incidentally, the story adduced above contains almost all the compositional elements — only the epigraph is missing.

The following example points to the insignificant typological validity of a short projective test.

N.G. (woman, 33 years, unmarried, type Don Quixote)

A Fairy Tale about Two Matches

On a shelf in the storeroom, forgotten by everyone, lay two matches: one burnt, crooked and black, and the other completely new. For ten years now they had lain quietly, looking at each other with yearning and sympathy. And then, one fine day, a miracle happened — the matches began to speak. The new match said: “It is understandable why I look at you as I do. You have burnt up and turned into a handful of ash. It is frightening for me to think that sooner or later the same fate awaits me too. But, burnt match, why do you look at me with such horror? Am I not new and beautiful?”

The burnt match answered: “Because it seems to me that everyone has forgotten about us, and no one will ever burn you…”

This is too short a text, in which there are insufficient typological markers, and even knowing the type of the person who wrote it, it is difficult to make any definite collations. It seems that all one can see here is a vague experiencing of one’s own uselessness, projected into the moral: “it is good to be new and beautiful, but one must not be forgotten, and someone must burn you.” “Lay two matches” — passivity, absence of enterprise. Here it is easier to suppose introversion — but the woman writing the tale is clearly an extravert. “For ten years now they had lain quietly, looking at each other with yearning and sympathy” — passivity, indefinite expectation. And that is all that one manages to discover here.

Here is one more example of a quite finished, but too short, fairy tale by a woman respondent, 55 years old, whose type, by expert evaluation, is sE, Dumas.

I.V.

The Thread of Life

Once upon a time there lived two matches: one whole, the other burnt. They were friends. The whole one, seeing how other matches were lit, kept rushing forward to flare up and turn into that wondrous shining sphere; but her friend stopped her several times, saying: “Wait — I can do it one more time!” — and kept up the fire over the hearth.

But one day she said to her inexperienced friend: “For me the last time remains. I beg you, after it happens, take me and draw with me a Sun on the white wall.”

Of course, this text is too short, and the respondent did not have time to unfold a sufficient quantity of the indicators necessary for a confident judgment about her type. And nevertheless certain indicators are present here. “They were friends” — an indication of ethics; “to flare up and turn into…” — irrationality; “to turn into that wondrous shining sphere” — sensing. “Wait — I can do it one more time!” — ethics; “and kept up the fire over the hearth” — ethics; “after it happens, take me and draw with me a Sun on the white wall” — altruism, ethics, and sensing. That is, one can already suppose that the type of the respondent is sE. However, because of the brevity of the test, it is impossible to assert this too confidently — above all because the solitary indicator of introversion, altruism, is not supported by other features; but obviously this theme is still insufficiently worked out.

The story considered, despite its brevity, represents a plot-wise finished integrality and possesses artistic merits that are in themselves a typological indicator. However, because of the insufficient theoretical elaboration of this theme, we cannot here confidently draw too definite conclusions. All the same, knowing the expert evaluation of the respondent, one can suppose that this is one of the stylistic variants characteristic of Dumas. To live in order to keep up the domestic hearth and be friends with the other “matches.” To live with the dream of turning into a wondrous shining sphere, giving oneself to the end, when she can do it for the last time. And even after that, to remain a Sun on the white wall. Well, that is for the future.

And here is a significantly more unfolded story with similar indicators.

K.F. (woman, 41 years)

Mama and Daughter (a magic tale)

“Ah, what a beauty of a daughter is growing up for me,” said Mama Burnt-Sunburnt Match, looking at her slender and graceful daughter. “How she dances! What pirouettes she performs! Well, surely she is to be a ballerina. Only let me sew her a lace dress such as no one has ever had. Thin, graceful, all so airy and so transparent.” No sooner had she thought this than the Fairy-Craftswoman appeared before her and said: “Your thoughts are so elevated and beautiful that they are worthy of every encouragement, and therefore I have wanted to help you myself: I shall myself sew your beautiful daughter a dress, and I shall give it to her when she turns sixteen — and soon the moment of her triumph will come as well.” She said it and at once vanished.

And the daughter, feeding on the exquisite salads of Vietnamese cabbage, African asparagus, and Korean nut sauce that her mama prepared, from that moment began to grow not by the day but by the hour, and in two months she turned sixteen. She opened her eyes one morning — and look: next to her bed, right in the air, hangs a beautiful dress such as no one in the world had yet seen. No sooner had she gotten up than the dress put itself right onto her — and so deftly that it fit at once. And this dress turned out to be not a simple one, but a wondrous one: it itself led her everywhere, prompted everything to her, and enchanted other people so that the daughter enjoyed success with everyone.

And as it had to happen, the director of the biggest theater saw the beauty and at once addressed her in the most exquisite manner.

“Madame,” he said to her, “you are so graceful, and your qualities are so unsurpassed, that any self-respecting Frenchman will count it an honor to admire your charming dances.” And he at once offered her the role of prima ballerina. And two days later, at the first performance, there appeared backstage her admirer, who turned out to be the prince of that kingdom, and he confessed his love to her. Soon they celebrated the wedding as well.

Here the person easily accepts the genre and theme of the fairy tale. The ethical component is felt at once; but since it is a woman writing this, let us not hurry to enroll her among the ethicists. However, in the further exposition we discover no signs of socionic logic, and this makes the version of ethics more probable. Above all, a significant quantity of indications of a strong position of introverted sensing is noticeable — the ballerina, the pirouettes, the lace dress, the salads of Vietnamese cabbage, and the like. The appearance of the fairy — the semantics of BPM-I. The compression of the “intermediate” time — “she grew so fast that in two months she was already sixteen” — is one of the indicators of irrationality. The “curtsies” and compliments: “Your thoughts are so elevated and beautiful… You are so graceful, and your qualities are so unsurpassed…” — a good confirmation of ethics. A somewhat hasty ending (irrationality), but for a fairy tale — all the more a magic one — it is quite suitable. Hypothesis: sensory-ethical irrationality. But which one — Dumas or Napoleon? The energetics of the text does not seem large — this inclines one toward the supposition of introversion. In addition, in favor of introversion speak the peculiarities of the wondrous dress, which put itself on and itself led the daughter “where needed.” The physiognomic data inclined the expert to make the final choice in favor of Dumas.

One more example with a rather unfolded text.

B.R. (male, 39 years)

An Interrogative Tale

So they’ve given the assignment to write a fairy tale about two matches, and I don’t know — why is this needed? Are there no other themes, or what? Well, all right, maybe something will come of it. But let us begin everything in order.

I don’t even know how it happened that I ended up at a psychological get-together where these very psychologists proposed to everyone without exception, including themselves, to write a fairy tale about two matches — one whole, one slightly burnt. I can’t even imagine how one can make two such matches the heroes of a fairy tale. Now, if they were two whole matches, one could write about their production, transport, and sale, and also about management and marketing. And advertising, of course, would also come into play here. For example, draw on a billboard two matches: one whole, one burnt — and it is at once evident which is better and what we pay money for. And in general, one can make a big business on matches. Even on burnt ones. Now, here, possibly, someone will ask how this can be at all — and I shall answer that I don’t know yet, but one must think about it. And the idea in itself is not bad, although it is not at once understandable how to realize it.

So then, listen…

There was in the city of Kaluga an inventor — only no orders came to him from anyone, and no one paid him any money for it.

“Well, no,” he said one day, “this won’t do. I shall make you pay me. I need only think a little.” He put his finger to his forehead, and exactly three and a half seconds later a remarkable thought came into his head — to sell people something they do not need at all, and moreover for good money. And what can be more unneeded than burnt matches? But only — where to get them? Of course, there are heaps of them — but only somewhere over there, and we need them to be here. That is the first step. We shall carry it out thus: we shall announce a competition for adolescents — whoever brings the most burnt matches, him we shall declare the most… well, it doesn’t matter what — the most something-or-other. We’ll think it up there. Further, one must turn the burnt matches into a value. That is the second step. But how to do this? For example, one can organize a local craft — to make souvenirs out of burnt matches. Or one can tell fortunes by them. How? That is not a problem — a scheme can easily be thought up. One can organize all-Kaluga games with entry fees and prizes, and use the burnt matches as game material. Well, whatever else.

A year later, in a new microdistrict of Kaluga, there appeared a combine for the production of Russian souvenirs from burnt matches — something like the Dymkovo toy: lacquered, painted burnt matches went at $10 apiece at a cost price of 5 cents (this, of course, taking into account the payment of the masters’ work and overhead expenses). And a year after that, all world industry was working for the “Dymkovo Match.” People of the whole world competed among themselves for the possession of the best collection of Dymkovo matches in the anticipation of a Jackpot.

In this story it is evident how a person far from the romantic atmosphere of a fairy-tale plot tunes himself up, but only with some difficulty renounces the pragmatism habitual for him. Subconsciously he resists “being led on a string” by anyone whatsoever, and tries to find a variant of the fulfillment of the assignment acceptable to himself. Already in the introductory part of the story his life set toward business is evident, and elements of professional knowledge in this field are discovered. By difficult-to-formalize indicators, one can already here suppose that this is a rational logician extravert. The searching character of his judgments can be understood as an indication of intuition; and, in addition, indications of active sensing are absent. Here one can already make the supposition of the type London. The appearance of the Kaluga inventor strengthens this hypothesis. All the thoughts of the respondent are directed at profit and gain.

Further there unfolds a “stormy” mental activity on the working-out of the project, which, besides extraverted logic, confirms extraversion by its energetics. And the appearance of a quite real industrial solution leaves almost no doubts. The external data confirmed the hypothesis Li. Of course, not all Jacks will write a text with precisely such indicators, and many of such indicators may turn up in the texts of other types as well — but it is precisely this that scientists need to sort out. There are texts typologically very vivid, and there are ones very difficult for interpretation, by which it is almost impossible to say anything typologically definite.

One would like to adduce examples of fairy tales composed by representatives of all the types, but since this is after all a theoretical text, let us not overload it with concrete material, and let us adduce only one more fairy tale, written by a woman eS.

M.Ya. (woman, 32 years, divorced)

Yes, in our world there are both whole matches and burnt ones. There is nothing reprehensible in this, if everyone strictly adheres to the rules established by our ancestors. Here is for you an old, old fairy tale, which teaches life and everything else. The tale begins with how the Dragon Three-Match attacked the city where there lived a beautiful, graceful beauty — the thin and tender Cinderella-Burnt-Girl. In our language this name may seem homely, but that is because we have no suitable word to translate it from the Matchish. There this word means something like a tender golden tan — the shining of the solar corona during a solar eclipse. She had beautiful black hair, which she knew how to arrange into such remarkable coiffures that matches came from all over the world to look at her. And there was not a single day when her coiffure repeated any previous one. Everyone oohed and aahed on seeing her remarkable skill. Artists from all over the world tried to capture the inimitable beauty of her art, and poets, looking at her, could not restrain themselves from composing some next masterpiece:

Of inimitable beauty / a Moment of tender shining, / the Source of a flaming dream / and of sorcerous charm.

And of the musicians there is nothing even to say — in her presence they simply burst into flame, which in the Matchish language means the highest degree of ecstasy. Such tender music no one had ever heard.

But then one day the sky over the match city was covered with darkness and clouds of smoke, out of which lightning bolts simply poured, and from the thunder one’s ears were stopped up, and the peaceful paradisal life turned into a real hell. And the Dragon Three-Match threw himself upon the inhabitants of the city from above, set them on fire with his green flame, and swallowed them burning. Fear seized the city, and everyone prepared for the worst.

But at that moment Prince Whole Match came to the rescue of the unfortunate townspeople. He galloped in from far-off lands as soon as he learned of the cruelty and perfidy of the Dragon, and at once entered into battle with him. The Dragon wanted to burn the Prince with his green flame, but the Prince threw over him a net of incombustible spiderweb and tangled his heads so that they burned themselves up. The Dragon flared up with a black, pitchy flame, and soon nothing remained of him except a tiny heap of ash. And the gloomy dragon clouds also dispersed, and the Sun shone out in the sky.

The inhabitants of the city came out to greet the Prince, and ahead of them all the beautiful Cinderella-Burnt-Girl. No sooner had Prince Whole Match seen her than he understood at once that he had found the one without whom he could not live even a day. And he at once offered her his hand and heart. The whole people was in raptures, and the celebration continued for seven days and seven nights. True, it was so bright in the streets that no one even noticed how the time passed. But then the festive wedding ended; Prince Whole Match took Cinderella by the arm, seated her on his horse, and carried her off to his mountain kingdom, where the sun never sets, and the apples are so ripe that they shine from within with the eternal light of perfection.

The introductory phrases of an ethical character at once tune one to an epic and fairy-tale key. A Dragon attacks the city — an indicator quite characteristic of BPM-III. The image of the beauty Cinderella-Burnt-Girl is an example of the ego-projection of the tale’s author, containing indications of the difficult-to-express: “we have no suitable word to translate it from the Matchish.” Quite demonstrative is the playing with the black and golden colors. The gender indicators connected with the desire to please are quite understandable and characteristic of women. The world of aesthetic perfection and diversity, the highest forms of relation to the subject of the ego-projection, almost exclude doubt as to the ethical content of the author’s first function. In the second part there appear clouds, lightning, smoke, thunder, and hell — very vivid indicators of BPM-III; in addition, the theme of struggle and of the forceful defense of one’s right to life is a strong indication of extraverted sensing. Introversion can be read in the set toward the necessity of a strong defender — although the impromptu verse contains indicators of extraversion: “flaming” and “sorcerous” are very energetic concepts. Therefore here one can suppose the combination of sensing and ethics within the framework of the third quadra — but which type exactly, Dreiser or Napoleon, there is insufficient information. The general energetics of the tale can be evaluated as relatively large — the struggle, the fire, the dragon, the lengthy wedding — but whether this is a manifestation of sensing or of extraversion, to answer this question more careful statistical investigations are necessary. But the image contained in the phrase “shine from within with the eternal light of perfection” can be assigned to the strong indicators of introversion. The type Napoleon would lay claim to something more material. The expert evaluation gave the type eS — but to say that the tale gave an unambiguous result, that I could not.

Apparently, tests based on the Lomonosova methodology are very difficult to automate; but it is obvious that they have their own possibilities, absent in trait tests like Myers–Briggs. For example, one can reveal such integral characteristics of the text as its general energetics, which correlates well with extraversion/introversion. So the further working-out of this methodology seems promising.

Let us now turn to the sphere of the fine arts and the possibilities of graphical means for the diagnostics of the TIM.

As early as 1947 the English scholar H. Read, in his book The Innocent Eye — being an adherent of Jung’s typology and analyzing children’s drawings — found that by their formal peculiarities they can be divided into eight groups, each of which corresponds to a definite type of the perception of the world, relation to life, base state of the personality. It is important that Read had a theoretical reference point — that is, he at once sought suitable groupings corresponding to the Jungian typology. Here the theory of types, performing a heuristic function, was for him a guiding star. One must note that his qualification fully corresponded to the work done by him — after all, he was not only an art critic and professional art scholar, but also occupied himself practically with the aesthetic upbringing of children. The categories proposed by him characterize a drawing in a maximally generalized variant and bear a rather conditional and approximate character. From the logical point of view, the concepts proposed by him relate to the category of the blurred, and will point to the type of the executor of the drawing only with a certain — often quite small — probability.

Let us try to analyze the constructs proposed by H. Read.

1. The structural drawing, according to Read, shows the whole and its parts, the structure and the connection among its elements. Without special stipulations, practically any drawing can be understood as the depiction of something whole consisting of some parts. Greater definiteness could be attained if to such a category were assigned only those drawings that represent the depiction of something that can be understood as a distinctive scheme showing the interaction of parts. However, in this case too a large scope for subjectivism remains.

2. The emphatic drawing is based on the striving to convey a vivid impression, an emotional surge.

From the point of view of socionics, such a manifestation of the personality may be connected with the PPF of Es and Ei, with the CPF of sE and iE, with the ALF of Ls and lI, and also with other functions of other types. This depends not only on the type, but also on the current state of its bearer and many other factors. Let us also note that the concepts “vivid impression” and “emotional surge” relate to the category of the blurred, and very different emotional manifestations may correspond to them. Es and Ei are constantly immersed in an emotional “aura” (this is a factor of the third order). They, as it were, “sit” in emotions — but their emotional auras are very different. Exact terms here would be “sensory emotions” for Es and “intuitive emotions” for Ei, but they stand in need of sufficient explication. For example, to say of Hugo that he generates, radiates, or is immersed in major-key, sunny, life-loving emotions would be a great stretch — since the bearer of such a type may be a coarse, spiteful, and even simply gloomy person; but even his gloominess will preserve a sensory shade, in contradistinction to the intuitive gloominess, or the manifestation of joy, in Hamlet. However, in a testing situation, tuned to a positive key, Hugo will with great probability depict something really sunny.

In classical painting, to the projections of the archetype of Hugo quite correspond the paintings of Rubens — for example, The Boar Hunt. The scene depicted in the painting is filled with “wild passion.” Everything is in movement — dynamics. The riders rushing on horses, anticipating the “moment of truth.” The beaters in active fighting poses, with boar-spears aimed at the victim. The enraged dogs, mixed into one tangle in the wild apotheosis of the baiting. And in the vectorial center of the painting we see a powerful and ferocious animal — this is the boar itself. The forces are too unequal, and the pursued animal is doomed — but it does not look unhappy: it fights not for life but to the death. This is its world, this is its battle! The background of this whole passionate scene is a beautiful forest landscape with a blue sky and bright solar illumination.

The projection of the archetype of Hamlet can be seen, for example, in Bryullov’s painting The Last Day of Pompeii. We see a gloomy — in essence, infernal — scene of a nocturnal eruption of the volcano. Black clouds of smoke and the red color of the flow of lava, accompanied by the flashing of lightning. Collapsing buildings, beautiful sculptures falling from the height of columns, and people fleeing in horror. This is the limiting dramatization — human society at the moment of catastrophe.

Stirlitz and London can also demonstrate strong emotionality, but with them this occurs in a state of affect — when they are angry, curse, or try to inspire someone. If they perform the drawing test in such a state, it is not excluded that their drawing will fall into the emphatic category.

Taking into account that the concept of the emphatic drawing turns out to be all too blurred, one can propose other categories of drawings connected with the manifestation of emotions: drawings with positive emotional self-affirmation, and drawings with dramatic self-affirmation.

3. The haptic drawing depicts situations connected with the conveyance of an internal state — like illnesses, experiences: the teeth ache, one wants ice cream. Here one can at once point to the intersection of the semantics of the haptic drawing with the semantics of the emphatic drawing. Are emotions really excluded in the conveyance of an internal state? In addition, the teeth can ache in any type, and any type can want ice cream; and when the teeth ache in the process of the performance of the test, this may find its reflection in the drawing. Since, from the point of view of Jung’s typology and of socionics, this category is semantically closest to the projection of the first function of the introverted sensoric (state, well-being, comfort), the corresponding drawings could be called sensory. Of course, here too one must take into account that socionics distinguishes two introvertedly sensory projections — the emotional one (in Dumas) and the technological one (in Gabin).

4. The rhythmic drawing Read understands as connected with movement. This may be any movement: a moving train, a galloping horse, a woodcutter chopping down a tree. From the point of view of socionics, this category of Read’s reflects one single socionic trait — dynamics — and therefore may characterize at least eight socionic types. And in no way can it be unambiguously connected with any one of the eight Jungian types.

5. The organic drawing conveys depictions of living nature with an accent on their naturalness. It seems — but this needs to be investigated — that this category reflects the aspect of extraverted feeling, according to Jung, or the aspect of extraverted ethics, according to Aušra Augustinavičiūtė. Thus, this variety of drawing may appear in at least four socionic types: Es, Ei, sE, iE — and, that means, its differentiating validity remains low.

6. The enumerative drawing presents separate objects, as a rule not united by a common theme. With a very great stretch, one could suppose that such drawings will be characteristic of logical rational introverts. Well, if only because they presumably think sequentially, and with them everything must be sorted onto shelves. But one must not forget that they also think systemically — and therefore they could quite well make structural drawings.

7. The decorative drawing — the leading theme in it is adornments, some kinds of patterns. With the greatest probability, adornments and patterns ought to be drawn by sensory introverts — something light and cheerful. However, this does not correspond to reality: they can, with greater probability than the other types, use patterns and adornments in their drawings, but this is not strictly obligatory.

8. The imaginary drawing corresponds to the reproduction from memory of scenes from artistic works — and, as a variant, these are invented situations appearing in the imagination of introverted romantic natures. Generally speaking, such drawings are beyond the powers of a person who does not know how to draw, whether by nature or as the result of training. It is not excluded that Read, working with children who drew, excessively generalized his observations — having transferred his conclusions, relating to children who know how to draw and are capable of conveying by the means of drawing any image surfacing in their imagination, onto all people.

Nevertheless, if Read’s conclusions are just even only for people who draw, this too is a good result. Incidentally, those who do not know how to draw, or experience certain difficulties here, could be asked to describe what they would want to draw.

H. Read considered that to the thinking extravert corresponds the enumerative drawing; to the thinking introvert the organic; to the emotional extravert the decorative; to the emotional introvert the imaginary; to the sensation extravert the emphatic; to the sensation introvert the haptic; to the intuitive extravert the rhythmic; and to the intuitive introvert the structural. A simple and understandable scheme. Let us extend the correspondences proposed by Read onto the socionic types and bring them together in table 10.02.

Table 10.02

TIM	Type of drawing according to H. Read
Il	rhythmic
sE	haptic
Es	decorative
lI	organic
Ei	decorative
lS	organic
Sl	emphatic
iE	structural
Li	enumerative
eS	imaginary
Se	emphatic
iL	structural
Ie	rhythmic
sL	haptic
Ls	enumerative
eI	imaginary

After all that has been said above — and also taking into account the socionic characteristics of the types — it is almost obvious that the correspondences adduced in the table are far from perfection (that is, they may sometimes manifest themselves, but this is not obligatory) and stand in need of further reworking, while diagnostic assertions on such a theoretical basis will be of low reliability.

It is not difficult to understand by what considerations H. Read could have been guided. He could have matched, to the external features of a drawing, a generalized behavioral characteristic of the TIM. For example, the thinking extraverts — and to them belong Li and Ls, both rational — that means, everything is thought through, everything is sorted onto shelves; they lean on facts and do not soar in the clouds. Evidently Read considered that such dominants must generate the enumerative drawing, representing a weakly connected aggregate of depictions of separate objects or, perhaps, of some abstract objects, including symbols — while to draw a picture with a single plot would evidently simply not come into their heads. This is a very superficial judgment. Long practice of socionic testing on the basis of the self-expression of the respondent in a drawing gives grounds to draw the conclusion that the bearer of any type can, depending on circumstances, draw a picture of any “Readian” type — and the differences between the types will be expressed in completely different parameters of the drawing.

From the point of view of socionics, Li and Ls, although they are rational thinking extraverts, differ rather strongly from each other in details. One is an intuitive and the second a sensoric — and therefore it is insufficient to indicate only that they relate to extraverted thinking rationality. It is necessary to indicate also the differential characteristics of these types.

Presumably H. Read considered that the thinking extravert, being in the highest degree rationally-pragmatic, would subconsciously begin to depict separate objects among which there would be no connection; the thinking introvert would draw objects of living nature; the emotional extravert would immerse himself in the depiction of patterns and ornaments; the emotional introvert would recall the scenes that had agitated him from a recently read novel; the sensation extravert would sketch something expressive; the sensation introvert would obligatorily depict something conveying his state; the intuitive extravert would choose moving objects; and the intuitive introvert would draw a complexly structured object with a noticeable correlation of parts and whole. If everything were so simple, there would long since have been no problems with socionic testing.

Without denying the value of H. Read’s searches, one all the same has to state that his conclusions are hasty and too straightforward, and his list of drawing types must be assigned to the category of fuzzy sets, the boundaries between which are too washed-out. Nevertheless, the categories proposed by him unconditionally reflect reality — in the sense that they can be used for the characterization of drawings in themselves, without relation to the testing of the type. For that matter, the set of categories proposed by him is not perceived as complete — and this is all too significant a shortcoming of a theoretical construct.

Acknowledging that a drawing is a projective means and, by definition, contains in itself identifying signs of the personality, by which some of its sides can be identified — let us note that these signs, first, may have a subtler and non-obvious character, and, second, may characterize the personality not only from the typological side. In them may be reflected the current, sometimes fleeting mood, the cultural milieu, ideological sets, the social milieu, communicative adjustments, current and long-term cares, or, for example, the imitation of someone’s manner — and simply the ability or inability to draw.

At the present time, in connection with the establishment of socionics, one can consider that Jung’s psychological theory has been deciphered, and its adequate interpretation continues to develop. And now, on the basis of socionic data, we can say that Read’s scheme is only the first sketch of a typological approach to the drawing; and in the form in which he imagined it, the validity of his classification of drawings as a typological test hardly attains 20–30% — that is, it is located below the threshold of probabilistic guessing.

One can basically agree with E. S. Romanova [18] when she writes that the results of her investigations “give grounds to speak out definitely about the fact of the existence of the 8 kinds of depictions singled out by H. Read (although rather often one could speak only of the combining of these kinds in one drawing — a depiction usually included no more than 3 different kinds).” However, her optimistic conclusion that “these kinds of drawings on the whole ‘fit into’ the psychological interpretation of the type of the person who drew them” stands in need of significant refinement. The point is that, although from general theoretical considerations it ought to follow that in a free or relatively free drawing indicators of the type of the personality will be present, the differentiating validity of Read’s indicators, as the analysis conducted above testifies, turns out to be very low.

In the capacity of an example of the possibility of different interpretations of drawings by different professionals, let us adduce the case with the drawings of Ronald Reagan (fig. 10.01) and John Kennedy (fig. 10.02) — analyzing which, professional American graphologists drew the conclusions that the first “is distinguished by cheerfulness,” while the second “has confidence in himself, and an intuitive feeling of organization is vividly expressed.” Probably such conclusions could have been drawn even without any drawings — simply knowing these people as public figures. But the drawings themselves, on the basis of the indicators present in them, can be interpreted somewhat differently.

Look more attentively into these drawings! Here is the drawing of Ronald Reagan (fig. 10.01). For some reason the professional graphologists interpreted this drawing as the cheerfulness of its author. But what is drawn there? Above all, what strikes the eye is the almost limiting filling of the field of the paper by the drawing, with its vertical, skyscraper orientation. You see a spiderweb of lines, in which one can notice several blocks differing to some degree in their texture. Here there are at least two spiderweb-like blocks: one in the form of a four-layered letter Y, closer to the upper right corner (let us call it the YB — the block in the form of the letter Y), and a second in the form of a fishing net, closer to the lower right corner (let us call it the RB — the block in the form of a fishing net). Already these two blocks can be interpreted as the sensation, by the author of the drawing, of his own entangledness — and this entangledness has its structure and dynamics. The YB, as it were, performs a seizing function — it catches and entangles (with its funnel open at the top), binds and strangles (with its lower loop). The RB below fixes the image of entangling marked out above, draws the final summary, and characterizes the whole situation as hopeless, having no perspective and no positive development. The dramatism of such an interpretation is quite confirmed by the presence, at the bottom of the picture, of the drawn words “HELP ME,” which can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a cry for help. In doing so, above the letter “H” you see the stylized face of a person with wide-open eyes (the standard projection of fear) and a wide-open mouth, leaving no doubt as to the meaning of the inscription located below. But if one evaluates the vertical lines above the upper part of the head as hair standing on end, then one has to speak no longer of fear but of horror! The little figure of the stylized man — a square head, a trunk formed by the letter “H,” and four inclined strokes forming legs — also speaks of a burden beyond his strength, or on the verge of the possible, which the “little man” has heaved onto his shoulders. In addition, he is backing away — and for this too an explanation must be sought.

In this drawing the upper left and central part are packed densely, while the right and lower part have a looser structure. The right edge can be understood, in general, as disintegrating as a result of a beginning loss of control; while the lower part is more complex, but in it one can see both the signs of collapse and the bewilderment of disorganization that has replaced the primary confidence. For that matter, this confidence bears an illusory character, since, although it includes a block of regularly packed elements (to the right of the stylized square head), above them the regularity is lost, and the observed structure corresponds to the collision of contradictory informational flows. In this structure, two symbolic blocks located one above the other draw attention to themselves (by their central position and graphic individualization) — the SBV and the SBN (the upper symbolic block and the lower symbolic block). The contour of the SBV represents a concave hexagon, deserving of separate interpretation and serving as a frame for two cross-shaped stars: a large white one and a small black one. This block is not difficult to understand as a truncated symbol of the American flag, in which a large but slightly buckling good seeks a compromise with (covers with its left wing) a relatively smaller but real and “pushy” evil — which, for that matter, can also be interpreted as the presence of problems: they are palpable (on the left, where the heart is), but under control. Besides the preceding indicators, this is also spoken to by the fact that the bases of both star-crosses are located at one level. The frame part of the SBV can also be understood as a fragment of a still larger star. In this case the star can be understood as a goal, and what will be at issue is a sequence, a prospective row, of goals, part of which are as yet only being marked out. However, the frame part of the SBV can also be understood as an arrow pointer directed downward and to the right. Standardly this is interpreted as “everything is in the past, everything is behind” — a hint at the “good old times” and a non-acceptance of the future.

The SBN is harder to interpret — here more concrete and exact information about the worldview of the author of the drawing is necessary. Nevertheless, a generalized-energetic interpretation of this block can be given. Above all, let us turn attention to the fact that the frame of this block represents two round parentheses. This, in accordance with the usual semantics of round parentheses, can be understood thus: the symbolic content enclosed in these parentheses is always kept in mind, and although it bears a background character, it is a background that sets the basic parameters of what occurs as the main thing. The sign located in the parentheses can be understood as a reduced Christian (most probably Protestant) religious symbol. This symbol is significantly richer in its content, but at the given level of analysis it is difficult to extract from it anything more concrete. For example, one should turn attention to its incomplete symmetry relative to the horizontal axis and the vertically rhomboid character of its elements. In the first seme is contained a hint at a rational relation to the making of decisions, strategic planning, and adherence to principle in the formation of tasks and the making of decisions; and in the second — persistence, insistence, and inflexibility of will in the realization of one’s goals. In general, vertically rhomboid elements are rather vividly represented in the drawing. On the whole the drawing can be characterized as static, where even the falling-away elements in the left part of the drawing look like elements frozen in a photograph made with a long exposure. These two elements (one in the form of the letter “L,” and the other a vertical rhombus with the letters “Yo” inscribed in it) can be interpreted as indications of the possible generalized causes of the catastrophicity and as its generalized consequences. “L” is the beginning of many words, of which important ones are, for example, logic, lie, love, left, lift, and so on — but possibly also some name, more probably a woman’s; however, at the level of the graphic projections of subconscious impressions, all such possibilities are replaced by one single rigidly traced letter. “Yo” is one of the possible meanings of “you” — but in the vertical rhomboid frame (an “aggressive shield”) it can be understood as an opposing and obstinate “you.” On the whole the drawing can be read as a symbolic depiction of a big American city with its motley flickering of cars, lights, and advertisements (introverted sensing). Such an interpretation of R. Reagan’s drawing does not deny his supposed cheerfulness, but strongly limits its manifestation, pointing to the existence in him of serious problems. On the other hand, the whole aggregate of the generalized characterological elements present in his drawing fits quite well within the framework of logical-sensory extraversion.

Completely different looks — and completely different associations are evoked by — the drawing of John Kennedy. It has a different — horizontal — orientation, and a spacious, free, but at the same time even filling. Let us note that in both drawings a rigid hierarchy is absent, which combines quite well with the generalized democraticness of both leaders. Kennedy’s drawing is dynamic — filled with the movement of sails swelled by the wind (extraverted logic). This is both a sporting regatta of competing vessels and a menacing armada of medieval sailing ships whose victory is inescapable. In all this one feels the subtle presence of “over time” (introverted intuition), the confidence in one’s actions and victory (extraverted logic in the position of the PPF).

The two drawings differ also in the quality of the lines: precise lines, ending exactly and in the right place, in Reagan, setting sensory definiteness; and a free, improvisational stroke, according with the spaciousness of the unsaid (introverted intuition), in Kennedy.

Presetness, with a certain shade of conservatism, in Reagan — and adventurous unpredictability in Kennedy. Reliance on stability in Reagan — and a powerful strivingness, conscious of its own strength, in Kennedy. The fundamentality of Reagan, calculating all the details — and the risky adventurousness of Kennedy, acknowledging no limitations but confident in its victory. Even a superficial analysis of these two drawings helps one to imagine and understand the difference between logical-sensory and logical-intuitive extraversion — these two kindred types of generalized reaction to the environment.

Already on the example of the drawings of R. Reagan (presumably Ls) and J. Kennedy (presumably Li) one can see that two thinking extraverts, first, drew pictures of different types, and, second, neither of these drawings is enumerative — as ought to have followed from H. Read’s hypothesis. Kennedy’s drawing is sooner rhythmic, since there not only is movement present, but a rhythm is clearly set by the arrangement of the sails. Of course, H. Read could have understood all this somehow in his own way — but this is precisely the problem of qualitative explication so often encountered in psychology. In Reagan’s drawing there is present both a haptic element (the man calling for help) and a structuredness, expressed in the joint depiction of clearly non-identical blocks — which, however, at the same time represent a single whole filled with a single meaning, which, however, is not obvious, but is read intuitively at the level of the subconscious. However, in his drawing there is present also decorativeness, expressed in the patterned generalizedness of the depiction executed by him.

There exists the opinion that from free drawings (B. Edwards) “one can obtain the possibility of conducting an analysis of the subconscious at a deep level” [18] — however, scientifically grounded methodologies, apparently, do not yet exist. Socionics permits an approach to this question with the use of the trait indicators known to it.

One of the variants of the scientific working-out of typological testing with reliance on the graphic projection of the personality could be the statistical, multi-factor, and aesthetic-theoretical processing of a large massif of drawings by people with a previously known type.

Encouraging results in the attempt to adapt the “Nonexistent Animal” test to socionic diagnostics were obtained between 1992 and 1996 by S. Malashka and S. Churyumov. Even on the small massif of material that was collected (several hundred drawings), the possibilities of such testing could be sensed in advance. Knowing the type of the person who drew, it was interesting to find the dichotomous markers of extraversion-introversion, intuition-sensing, logic-ethics, irrationality-rationality, and the like. But this is testing, or diagnostics, “in reverse” — from the type to the drawing: knowing the type, we understand the drawing better. But, alas, the task of diagnostics is the opposite one.

To the test assignment of drawing a nonexistent animal I added a list of questions concerning the conditional parameters of this animal: what color it is; what the form and color of its flag are; where it lives; what color its enemies are; what sounds it makes; what it feeds on; what its mode of life is; what it says when it steps on someone’s foot; who its parents are; what its age and length of life are; and others. It is understandable that the questions about color relate to the group of the Lüscher methodology, and the choice of the color of the animal itself by the author of the drawing was always informative — at least in the “Lüscherian” sense. However, the question about the color of the enemies contained almost no information, because the majority, without thinking long, chose black. Still, though rarely, it could be gray, violet, and even black-and-white or black-and-yellow striped. In this one could discern a hint at the rejected color, but this hint was insufficient for confident conclusions. Possibly, the rejected colors should have been introduced more softly: not through the color of the enemies, but, say, through the color of poisonous plants — or in general not through enemies and not through poisonousness. In addition, the introduction of color structured by form — stripedness, spottedness, checkered, polka-dot, concentric circles, and the like — is unconditionally informative, but almost uninvestigated in psychology.

I consider the question about the color and form of the flag very informative. From the point of view of the Lüscher methodology, this question contains in itself the projection of the goal and cause of activity — that is, what the respondent strives for and for the sake of what he tries. Whereas the question about the color of the animal itself contains in itself the projection of the means of the attainment of the goal — since a normal subject subconsciously regards himself as a means. But, of course, all such suppositions stand in need of statistical verification.

Even the answer to the standard question from this methodology about the name of the animal can carry information of typological content. As the experience of the use of this methodology shows, if the respondent projects onto the unknown animal his structural position of the Child (Eric Berne), then, consequently, its name too will always be infantilized. Even when full everyday names are used, like Ivan Ivanovich or Karl Yevstigneyevich. It is understandable that the contrast, well recognized by the respondent, between the form of the nonexistent animal and a quite serious name has a more or less expressed comic character. From this the animal acquires a double importance: first, calling it so, one relates to it with respect; and, second, this importance, being incommensurate with social standards, is perceived with a shade of irony. However, it is difficult to imagine that onto a nonexistent animal — which, of course, is a projection of the subconscious — the position of the Adult or the Parent would be projected. Such projections would already be an indicator of psychic deviation.

The other varieties of names are quite typologically informative. Affectionate diminutives statistically predominate among ethicists; scientific-sounding, and especially Latinized, names gravitate toward the combination of logic with intuition. Pure abracadabras are more characteristic of irrationals, while realistic onomatopoeias (“yum-yum,” “crunch-crunch”) are chosen with greater probability by rational ethicists. Other correlations were not revealed. All the same, the enumerated indicators bear a probabilistic character: the bearer of any type can choose any variety of name, but the probability of such a choice will be different. Presumably, the causes influencing the choice of a name may be not only typological but also chance ones — a minute’s mood, imitation of someone, and the like. Nevertheless, in statistical investigations probabilistic indicators can find application.

A more complex modification of the NA test is also possible. One can propose a blank with a 3×3 table presented by nine fields. In one of the fields it is proposed to draw the NA. In this case the positioning will bear a forced character. In the remaining cells, at choice, to draw: the locality where the NA dwells; its enemies (if there are any); the dwelling of the NA; the banner of the NA; what the NA feeds on. In the cells not drawn in, to place written answers: what the NA is called; what sounds it makes; what its hobby is and what its profession is. However, we have no data that the positioning of the image of the NA on the sheet of paper has typological meaning — although the general-psychological meaning of positioning is known, at least at the level of a hypothesis, and described in the literature. One can suppose that, with some probability, the right and upper fields will more often be preferred by extraverts, and the left and lower ones by introverts — but for now this is not statistically confirmed. Possibly there are still too few statistical data.

The same can be said of the turn of the body, legs, and head of the NA. At the basis of the psychoanalytic conclusions connected with the depiction of the NA lies the conception of the psychomotor connection. In psychology it is considered proven that between the parameters of movement and the parameters of space, and also its projections, there are homological correspondences. Of course, one would want to have contemporary confirmations and refinements of such correspondences from the point of view of the typology of the personality. It is highly plausible that, since movement is always displacement in space, and in drawing, space is represented by its projections on the sheet of paper, the characteristic tendency to movement — the stable sets relating to movement — must find their expression in the positioning of the depiction on the sheet of paper and in its static-dynamic manifestations. The most important peculiarity of movement is its connection with time. From this the conclusion ought to follow that the projections of time on the sheet of paper must carry information about the characteristic dynamic sets of the personality. The projections of time on paper, however, have a culturally conditioned character, manifesting itself in the direction of writing: for the European this will be the direction from left to right, for the Semite from right to left, and for the Chinese from top to bottom.³ Thus, in the European milieu the left side of the drawing field is connected with the beginning of movement, which is located in the past. Here too ought to be placed the lesser degree of activity, the absence of activity, and the reflection preceding activity. In addition, on the left a person has the heart, and therefore subconsciously a person defends this side, evaluates it as an internal zone. Therefore the positioning of a depiction on the left is more probable for introverts. And if the indicated dependencies were direct and obvious, then the introverts, in European culture, at least statistically, would have to prefer the left and lower positions, and the extraverts, correspondingly, the upper and right ones. However, in socionics there exist further subdivisions of extraverts and introverts into dynamics and statics. The dynamic, above all, is inclined to the practical materialization of his action. The static, however, will sooner model the practical action in intellectual, emotional, or aesthetic codes. That is, he will create a theory, a strategic plan, a methodology, a project, a work of art (a melody, a song, a symphony, an oratorio, a painted canvas), or with an emotional performance will inspire people to new labor feats or help them rest from them (singers, clowns, variety artists). But will the actions of statics and dynamics find reflection in the position of the depiction on the field of the drawing?

There exists a large quantity of dynamic modalities and submodalities: to move — to preserve immobility; fast — slow; forward — backward; toward the center — away from the center (toward oneself — away from oneself); inward — outward; up — down; near — far; approach — withdrawal; attraction — repulsion; and so on. What expression do these dynamic parameters find in a projective drawing?

A person who minimizes energy expenditures, who postpones the time of the beginning of active action, who contents himself with a comfort-aesthetic substitute for the transformation of reality, who fences himself off with a barrier of ethical norms, limitations, and prohibitions, who chooses as the habitat of his presence in the world the past, or hides behind the palisade of bureaucratic structures — ought, in projective procedures, to choose the graphic markers of the passive variants of the dynamic modalities. But it seems that the markers of current psychological states often outweigh the representation of such base structures of the personality as the trait components of the TIM can be assigned to.

In psychology, since the times of Freud, the psychological defenses have been understood, above all, as means of compensation. However, it is not excluded that in them is contained a component of the projection of the predominant energy-expenditure set. With a base set toward the minimization of external manifestations, the personality will spontaneously choose the passive psychological defenses (avoidance, repression, sublimation, and the like), while with a base set toward energy-expending manifestations, the personality will subconsciously prefer the active psychological defenses (aggression, regression, substitution, projection, immersion in practical activity, and the like). Investigations of the graphic projections of the psychological defenses are not known to me in psychology.

The author also undertook other attempts to work out drawing testing as applied to socionics, gradually forming his own combined graphical test — partially using stimulus material from the well-known test for the determination of artistic abilities, and also from other popular tests. Of course, this form can for now be called a test only conditionally. For now it performs the role of additional material, which raises the probability of the correct determination of the TIM by other methodologies — if its parameters support, or at least do not contradict, the base parameters of the supposed TIM. In the contrary case it is necessary to conduct additional work on the verification of the TIM. Nevertheless, this material in itself can be regarded as an object of investigation. It is precisely so that it must be evaluated.

Fig. 10.03. The blank of the graphical test. The blank of the graphical test used by me since 2000 represents a 3×5 matrix of square cells of identical size. The first two columns are “warming-up” ones and contain inside a simple and relatively neutral figure, whose meaning consists in initiating the imagination of the respondent, encouraging in everything else a spontaneous psychological projection. Each figure has its generalized semantics, its formal designation, and its ordinal number from top to bottom by columns, from 1 to 15. The division of the form of the test into three columns has principal significance. Each column represents a separate subtest — since the respondent, filling in the cells of a column and moving from top to bottom, passes through a series of set-states, and, returning to the beginning of the next column, begins the next cycle of five steps. From the theory of M. Lüscher it is known that the first step of a projective methodology provokes the representation of the personality’s means of mastering the habitat, while the second step is connected with the mapping of its generalized goals. The subsequent steps, formed in a definite way, also switch on one or another set-state — thus, the color rejected by the respondent points to the peculiarities of his problems. Proceeding from this, one can suppose that the position of an assignment in the subtest, and its generalized semantics, initiate a quite definite set-state of the respondent — and it is this that becomes the basis of the interpretation of the result of the working-through of the whole test.

The proposed form, oriented toward the revealing of several interconnected ego-projections of the respondent, is built in such a way that the first assignments of the columns initiate the mapping of his instrumental means. The second assignments of the columns activate the projecting of generalized goals. The third assignments concretize the nearest goals, though they also present them in a generalized symbolic form. Table 10.03 represents the specification of the projective form under consideration.

Table 10.03

No.	Field
01	two vertical parallels (2V)
02	circle (KR)
03	acute angle, vertex up (UV)
04	three horizontal parallels (3G)
05	acute angle, vertex down (UN)
06	horizontal wave (GV)
07	configuration X (KX)
08	configuration Z (KZ)
09	ascending straight line (VP)
10	vertical wave (VV)
11	nonexistent animal (NZh)
12	composition around a point (KT)
13	I in the world (YaM)
14	drawing on a free theme (ST)
15	personal data and motto (DD)

Commentary on the table.

01. The 2V, presumably, switch on the neurons evaluating vertical stripedness. The superficial trance arising in doing so facilitates the projection of vertically elongated objects. Vertical straight lines — symbols of upright standing — provoke the activity of the subject contemplating them; and since the first impulse in projective methodologies is directed at the projecting of the instrumental means of the personality, the depiction leaning on this configuration must contain the corresponding indicators. In doing so, the task is subconsciously solved of the choice of the 2V as object or as background. In the first case the task is solved of the uniting of the lines in one figure — a strongly centered position, presetness, conservatism (not obligatorily all at once). Here the rational set of the personality is realized somewhat more easily (6:4). The subconscious of part of the respondents reads this configuration as the basis of a phallic symbol, but forms it with a different degree of frankness. In the psychological literature, for example, one meets the interpretation of the completion of this configuration in the form of a tree as a set toward the identification of sexual life with marriage; and if on such a tree there are many fruits, this may be an indication of love for children and the desire to have corresponding progeny. The variants where the phallic realization of this figure is strongly masked, it is proposed to understand as the result of modesty in questions of sex.

In the reading of the configuration under consideration as background, the depiction represents an element of open space — a gap-slit-passage. This is a searching position, a going-out beyond the limits of the stereotype, with greater probability (7:3) corresponding to irrational and intuitive sets. The sexual component of the interpretation of this symbol is connected with the vaginal meaning.

Of course, besides the sexual interpretation of this figure, all the other possible projections have meaning too.

The very procedure of subconscious choice mobilizes the respondent for further work. In the shaping of the configuration as a figure, on condition of a strong choice, there appear such images as a house, a staircase, a rocket taking off, a horizontal bar, stylized figurines of little men, pieces of furniture, and the like. In the shaping of the configuration as background, an important case is the drawing of a door, as an indication of the search for an exit; of a window — the view from inside; the perspective of a street between the corners of the outermost houses, and the like. Intermediate variants also occur, like two trees, two people, two columns, an “endless fence,” and others. All these images, taking into account the rational or irrational set manifesting in them, can be interpreted as projections of generalized instrumental means.

Logical variants of a weak choice give a closed rectangle and the letters П, Н, Ц — which can also be understood as the result of a strong censorship of sexual thematics. Interest is also presented by symbolic figures, like the sign of “Gemini,” but they most likely point to a specific awareness on the part of the respondent. A weak choice, and in general a lowered energy of the depiction, is a possible indicator of introversion. However, a weak choice may also be an indication of weak motivation toward the testing — of disinterest and avoidance. In the absence of any other strong indicators, the results of the filling-in of the test form should be assigned to the typologically low-informative.

02. The KR concentrates and harmonizes the attention of the respondent, removing the tension connected with the work on the preceding field. The generalized semantics of the circle in a separate test assignment is connected, above all, with the ego-projection of the persona. Various little faces point almost unambiguously to the current state of affairs, the general worldview set, and the possible typological dichotomy ethics/logic. The transition to the second procedure of the projective test includes the representation of the generalized goals of the personality against the background of the solution of the subconscious task connected with the singling-out of figure from ground. It is simpler to take the circle as the figure, and the space surrounding it as the ground. It is more difficult to accept as the figure the space surrounding the circle, and to perceive the circle as free space. The ratio of the choices approaches 8:2. More often the second choice is made by irrational intuitives. In the shaping of the configuration as a figure, there not rarely appears a depiction of the sun, clocks of various construction, little faces, planets, UFOs, balloons, and so on. A strong irrational-intuitive indicator is the depiction of the cosmos with a multitude of planets, one of which is represented by the initial circle. In the shaping of the configuration as ground one can meet such images as a mirror with the reflection of the author or part of his face, the field of view of a spyglass through which the cosmos is visible — or, in the case of a microscope, microbes. A weak, passive choice gives the letter “Ф” (also a vaginal symbol) and the like. Such a choice can also be evaluated as the realization of the psychological defense of avoidance or withdrawal. Often such a choice is justified by the respondent as an inability to draw. And since the ability or inability to draw in the case under consideration is not a typological feature, then, presumably, for those who have chosen the weak variant of answer such testing has almost no sense.

03. The UV has the generalized semantics of activity, of mobilizedness, and sharply centers the attention on the apex of the angle — which, with a probability above 0.9, forces the singling-out of the angle in the capacity of a figure: a mountain, a tent, a pyramid, a jet aircraft taking off vertically, and the like. As a choice intermediate between figure and ground, one can in a certain sense consider the perspective of a road receding to the horizon — especially when the whole landscape surrounding the road is drawn in detail. The position of the assignment in the subtest initiates the mapping by the respondent of more concrete tasks — travel, tourism, flight. However, here additional investigations are necessary.

The phallic meaning of this configuration also takes place, and the degree of deviation from it can suggest much to the psychologist.

In the capacity of a simplified choice, in this configuration a triangle and the letter А are often encountered. This choice is met somewhat more often in introverted logicians.

04. The 3G. Base semantics — obstacle, barrier, stop, cessation of active activity, rest, relaxation. This configuration represents a complex constructive task of searching for a suitable standard. This field, in its working-out, gives the greatest time of delay — especially if the overall time of the filling-in of the blank is limited. Cases occur of the postponing of the elaboration of this field to the end of the assignment. One meets images of a bookshelf (rest is reading), of a musical staff (rest is music-making), the façade of a two-storey house (the house as a place of rest), and so on.

This element almost unambiguously separates the sensory extraverts (concrete, “materialized” things) from the introverted ethicists and logicians (signs, figures, contemplation, aesthetic experiences). For the division by this feature of the remaining groups of types there are for now no sufficient grounds. In a ratio of 8:2, here the choice of a figure is made more often. Then there appear shelving units, boxes, sofas, beds, couches, and the like. In the capacity of a background choice, a musical staff is often encountered — which is almost unambiguously connected with the respondent’s occupation with music, without relation to his type, but more often with introverts. To the background choice one can also assign the depiction of a road with two-way traffic seen from above (passive examination from above). Apparently, to the intermediate variant between object and ground one can assign the drawing of hurdle-stands for hurdling — especially if the surrounding space is emphasized or a figure of a runner appears (sport as preparation for possible activity). Sometimes such original drawings turn up as, for example, a biplane standing on the ground and turned toward the viewer with its propeller. In the capacity of a logical choice, complicated geometric figures are encountered.

05. The UN — the angle with the apex downward — a figure opposite to the angle with the apex upward. This is a symbol of threat, of danger, of the necessity of defending oneself. It, in a ratio of 6:4, forces the choice of the space of the angle in the capacity of ground — a cutout on a dress, the space between mountains, the gap between the wings of a diving bird, and so on. The choice of ground with high frequency gives the bowl of a wineglass or sharp-snouted creatures. More rarely the upper part of a male torso is encountered.

The vaginal meaning of this configuration should also not be let out of view.

A logical, passive, often introverted choice gives a closed triangle or variants of the letters У, М, Х. Such a choice is easily interpreted as the predominance of verbal thinking — predominantly logical introversion. A sharp domination of this tendency is confirmed by an analogous completion of fields 07 and 08.

06. The GV — a symbol of energetic fullness, one of the most vivid symbols of the libido. At the beginning of the second subtest, the GV sets the projection of the instrumental resource. In the choice of object it easily provokes the depiction of living creatures — snakes, whales, swans, flowering branches (ethicists — 8:2); and in the choice of ground — the surface of the sea or of hilly terrain (irrationality — 7:3). Intuitive logicians, inclined to abstract thinking, easily come out onto the sign of infinity — a horizontal figure eight.

07. The KX — a diagonal cross is subconsciously interpreted either as a prohibition, a closure, a taboo, or (in Western culture) as the generalized designation of the unknown. The joining of the semantics of the goal and of the unknown or forbidden often leads to the arising of images of waiting, of deferral, of indefiniteness, or of search. The choice in the capacity of a figure (9:1) gives the depiction of an hourglass (an indication of the control of time, of waiting, and often of intuition), straw huts with branches sticking out on top (sensory ethics), crossed flags or swords (sensing + logic). Strong extraverted-logical variants — a three-dimensional letter Х; and weak introverted-logical choices — flat geometric figures. The choice of three-dimensional variants of letters and geometric figures is an example of heightened energetics, more characteristic of extraverts. The choice in the capacity of ground I personally have not encountered. Presumably, such a choice would point to a low level of conformism and a strong set toward creative search, and also a rich imagination — which maximally correlates with intuitive logic.

08. The KZ. For the respondent this is one of the most difficult configurations. On the one hand, it initiates decisiveness, suggesting a sharp transition from one level to another, while two oppositely directed acute angles represent a symbol of confrontation. However, on the other hand, it represents a strongly bound and low-valence figure. A rather large energy is necessary in order to overcome the projective inertia of this configuration. In addition, this configuration possesses a doubleness admitting the uniting of figure and ground — and then there appear the prow of a ship or an open mouth with part of a face. Extraversion often gives unexpected choices in the capacity of ground — for example, in the perspective of a chessboard field, of the upper-left, middle, and lower-right lines of an open book, sometimes a widened built-up seven, and others. In this case, to overcome the inertia of the imagination, significant uncommonness is required — which, from the socionic point of view, can be understood as an increase in the probability that the respondent’s intuition is in a strong position.

09. The VP, in a ratio of 6:4, is chosen in the capacity of ground as the boundary of a mountain slope up which one can clamber, applying efforts and overcoming difficulties, and down which one can ride on a sled, on skis, and by other means, demonstrating an inclination toward amusement. The choice in the capacity of a figure gives variants of flying arrows, spears, swords, and the like — upward or downward. Both choices are strongly connected with a set toward success or defeat, but with additional shaping may also have a typological significance connected with extraversion or introversion. An aggressive solution (arrows, bullets, sticks) is by semantics closer to an irrational set. Variants of the overcoming of difficulties (clambering up a mountain, dragging a load along) correspond more to an extraverted logical set.

10. The VV is almost never chosen in the capacity of ground. Capable of this are individual respondents in whose Ego block intuition and logic are present. A weak choice is most often realized in the form of the numeral 8. A formal but sufficiently strong, though trivial, choice is the sign reverse to the dollar symbol. Extraverted rational logicians easily form the figure of a snowman, as the result of productive activity. Ethicists easily generate vertical little snakes, curved branches with leaves, birds climbing along a trunk — in particular, woodpeckers. More rarely one encounters ugly faces with round noses, which almost unambiguously points to introversion. Strong choices give the curved backs of benches in perspective — this points almost unambiguously to rational extraversion.

11. The NZh represents one of the most informative ego-projections, and within the framework of the methodology under consideration represents an adaptation of the test “Nonexistent Animal.” The difference from the standard test is, above all, that a large field of A4 format is not used, but the same field is left as for all the other depictions — but on the other hand a frame has been added from the popular test “Draw an Elephant in a Frame.” Such a modification neutralizes the indicators of the positioning of the object in one or another field of the format, but provides variants of the location of the NZh relative to the frame. The point is that the positioning of the object in one or another field of the format is, it seems, low-informative with respect to such Jungian dichotomies as rationality/irrationality, logic/ethics, and sensing/intuition. At the same time the positioning of the object relative to the frame has a certain validity (0.65) with respect to extraversion/introversion and rationality/irrationality (0.8). Extraverts more often go beyond the frame or include it in the composition of the object. Presumably, in a ratio of 7:3 — taking into account, of course, right-handedness — an orientation of the NZh to the right ought to point to extraversion, and to the left to introversion; but the current orientation may also be explained by other causes — mood, depression, fixation on the past, and the like. Irrationals more often (8:2) go beyond the frame.

Earlier I proposed at this place the test “Draw an Elephant in a Frame.” The approach of the contours of the elephant to the frame, and, all the more, the going beyond the frame, is traditionally interpreted as a readiness for deviant, non-standard, or creative behavior — which, in particular, may be expressed in a disregard for moral and ethical norms; but does this have any relation to the Jungian dichotomies? With a frequency of 2:8 there turn up frontal and rear positions of elephants relative to the number of profile depictions — this too can be assigned to a strong choice; however, the two values adduced differ strongly in interpretation. Frontal positions (8:2) point to people ready to accept a challenge, open and self-confident, often aggressive, but who can be assigned to the category of the predictable. It seems that this is one of the variants of extraversion. With positive sets, these are people on whom one can rely, with whom one can come to an agreement and be confident that they will keep their word. With negative sets, these are often bold and even impudent people, which among extraverts is encountered more often. Elephants turned with their tail toward the viewer point to an inclination toward gags and pranks, and in a ratio of 7:3 these are unreliable, egoistic people ready to affirm themselves at the expense of others, but distinguished by independence and initiative — which in a proportion of 7:3 also points to extraversion.

The “elephants” I replaced with the “Nonexistent Animal.” It turned out that this optimized the test. Of course, the “elephant” has its own semantic peculiarities: it is a large animal, and to place it in a frame is a specific matter; but the assignment to draw a nonexistent animal on a test field where a frame is already present is more unconstrained, since it does not have to be formulated in the form “draw a nonexistent animal in the frame,” as in the case with the “elephant” — it is sufficient to write simply: “draw a nonexistent animal”; and just how it is placed relative to the frame will have an additional meaning.

Following the “Elephant” test I also used the likewise popular test “Draw a Crocodile.” This test, above all, divides people by the feature “aggressive — non-aggressive,” which is equivalent to the partial content of testosterone in the blood. In a ratio of 8:2, by the toothiness of the crocodiles, it separates extraverted men. The orientation of the crocodile to the right or left is likewise significant, as in the case of the elephant. The two orientations did not always coincide, and such cases require additional investigation. Without the “crocodile” one can also do, since the “nonexistent animal” fully covers its semantic field as an element of a projective test.

12. The KT — generalized semantic meaning: minimal element, seed, germ. The KT, after the work already done, sharply concentrates attention on the point and provokes the projection of the generalized life position, and often becomes an indicator of sex as well. One of such indicators is a flower, as a symbol of femininity (9:1), with a dominant desire to please. A flower in the test in men is one of the indicators of relative softness, of a relatively low content of testosterone. This is also a partial equivalent of high indicators on the scale of masculinity/femininity in the MMPI and SMIL methodologies.

Other frequently encountered images: a spiral (left or right) — a symbol of development and unwinding; a target — a symbol of goal-directedness; a model of the atom (logic + intuition); a bundle of rays (a symbol of objectivity and unprejudicedness).

Indicators are also encountered of the generalized life position concerning the means of the attainment of a goal: independently and actively, or passively and through reliance on others, the exploitation of someone, or parasitism. Of course, all the images of this field must be interpreted taking into account the other parameters of the filling-in of the blank.

13. The YaM — a social ego-projection; it maps very well the set toward equality or hierarchy.

14. The ST meets the respondent already cleansed of numerous interferences and prepared for the representation of his goal set — as happens in an assignment like: what would you occupy yourself with on your own initiative and at the level of a hobby? The drawing in this field very generally, but quite adequately, describes the contours of the worldview, or the key (sacramental) concepts which in symbolic form point to strategic programs. The depiction of a prestigious thing points with maximal probability to a pragmatic — and sometimes frankly materialistic — position of thing-ism, when apart from the earthbound possession of property a person needs nothing more. Such an indicator may be, for example, the depiction of a car or a house — however, one should take into account all the parameters of the filled-in table. Other sets may turn out to be: a romantic aspiration into an indefinite distance in space and/or in time, often with a hope for a positive outcome; a rational intention to sort out the complexity of the world and only then, with grounds, to make an optimal decision; an immature indefiniteness, expressed in a passive and trusting waiting for an external impulse; a readiness to labor persistently, but with an unclearly outlined goal. Sometimes this is a ready choice of an interesting subject area — among which there may also be such a variant as a departure into mysticism. Sometimes this is a standard for imitation, embodying in itself a full package of behavioral programs.

15. The DD: full name, date, time and place of birth, contact telephone or its equivalent, personal motto and personal signature, date of filling-in. The verbal expression of the dominant set in the form of a personal motto permits establishing whether you are dealing with a person of goals or a person of means. “Don’t hang your nose,” “Only forward!”, “The more knowledge and persistence, the more wealth” — quite usual examples of the mottos of people of goals. “Keep your word,” “Don’t repeat others’ mistakes,” “If you fear wolves, don’t go into the forest” — quite usual examples of the personal mottos of people of means.

As can be understood from the commentaries adduced, the matrix under consideration is far from perfect and cannot serve as an unambiguous support in the diagnostics of the TIM; but the use of this matrix at the stage of the collection of information helps to establish contact with a large group of respondents, to organize the data, and moreover to have a set of markers against which newly arriving information can be checked. In any case, the graphical matrix represents a good object for further scientific investigation and easily lends itself to extension. Into it one can introduce a multitude of new fields, both graphical and verbal, documentary (for example, photographs and biographical data of the respondent) — to say nothing of fields of objective physiological indicators.

Significantly better results in the adaptation of the “NZh” test were attained by L. A. Kochubeeva and M. L. Stoyalova [20]. Being professional psychologists, they managed to attract a large quantity of respondents to the work and to plan the experimental part of the work qualitatively, having expanded the thematic base of the classical NZh test at the expense of the subtests “an angry nonexistent animal” (NZhZ), “a nonexistent animal at work” (NZhR), “a nonexistent animal in the circle of friends” (NZhD), and “a sick nonexistent animal” (NZhB). The empirical material obtained was analyzed by the researchers, as a result of which conclusions were drawn about the presence of graphical features of the typological peculiarities of people. The choice of the thematics of the subtests is dictated by the semantics of the socionic dichotomies, which is one of the manifestations of the heuristic side of socionics. In the opinion of the authors of the elaboration, the NZhZ permits judging of the position of extraverted sensing in Model “A.” The NZhR gives analogous information on extraverted logic. The NZhD points to the position of extraverted or introverted emotions; but, in addition, from it one can extract information on the dichotomies ethics/logic, extraversion/introversion, and partly, as the authors consider, aristocrats/democrats. The NZhR and NZhD, especially in their collation, in 90% of cases, as the authors write, unambiguously determine ethics-logic. The NZhB permits judging of the position in Model “A” of introverted sensing. Especially palpable differences exist between introverted sensing in the EGO block and in the CCF — which on the whole differentiates sensorics and intuitives. Let us note that, in contradistinction to the “Myers–Briggs test,” the semantics of the aspects is, at least in part, tied to the position of the aspect in Model “A.” The authors of the methodology also managed to discover markers of such dichotomies as aristocrats/democrats, positivists/negativists, and statics/dynamics, part of which are known from the works of other socionists (G. Shulman, O. Karpenko, A. Bukalov, and others).

For example, the authors established that in sensorics the NZh is more firmly connected with the earth, has more reliable limbs, and is in a more stable pose; while in intuitives the NZh often as it were hangs in the air, has too thin or not-fully-drawn limbs, and is often in an unstable pose. This marker is present also in the classical NZh test, but is interpreted differently: as an indication of the degree of solidity, deliberateness, rationality. At the same time the opposite form of this feature — the weakness or defectiveness of the supporting elements — is treated as an indication of superficiality and unsoundness of judgments, frivolity in conclusions, sometimes as impulsiveness in the making of decisions. This is a quite plausible interpretation, and it was made by professional psychologists. So we are dealing with two different psychological interpretations of one and the same fact, which unconditionally stands in need of explanation. Either one of the interpretations is incorrect (by the principle of the excluded middle), or they are identical, or they stand in some hierarchical subordination. For example, it is possible that the socionic interpretation is more concrete and represents a refinement of the more diffuse psychoanalytic interpretations.

Let us try to compare the semantic fields of the socionic and the psychological interpretations. Into the psychological interpretation of the feature under consideration there enters the concept of rationality, to which the concept of deliberateness does not contradict. Solidity, however, corresponds to rationality only by one of its semes, connected with logical groundedness. However, in this concept there are also other semes: fundamentality and realism, which enter into the semantic field of sensing. In socionics, however, rationality enters into the composition of “nality,” a separate dichotomy, and therefore sensing in socionics is orthogonal to rationality. From this one can draw the conclusion that the psychological interpretation included, at least partially, two socionic dichotomies: rationality/irrationality and sensing/intuition. Thus, the socionic interpretation only partially contradicts the psychological one, refining some of its less worked-out concepts.

Still more noticeable semantic divergences can be discovered in the analysis of the interpretation of the second pole of the feature under consideration. Unreliable, not-fully-drawn limbs, an unstable pose, and hanging in space, in the socionic interpretation correspond to intuition; while in the psychological one this same feature is understood as superficiality and unsoundness of judgments, frivolity in conclusions, sometimes as impulsiveness in the making of decisions — which only partially, and with a great stretch, can be correlated with irrationality (impulsiveness in the making of decisions), while to intuition this has no relation whatsoever. After all, one cannot assign superficiality and unsoundness of judgments, and also frivolity in conclusions, to the manifestation of intuition. These considerations incline one in favor of the conclusion that the psychological interpretation has less foundation under it than the socionic one, with its clear notion of the dichotomies.

So which, all the same, of the interpretations adduced above is closer to the truth — that is, more exactly reflects reality? From the point of view of what we now know about the socionic dichotomies, the reliability, the firmness of the supporting part of the depiction, correlates more understandably with sensing, and not with rationality. Therefore, taking into account all that has been said above, one has to give preference to the socionic interpretation of the feature performed by L. A. Kochubeeva and M. L. Stoyalova.

Theoretical analysis is necessary also in the evaluation of all other interpretations — especially those made on a psychoanalytic basis, where there is much intuition and insufficient analysis.

Let us note that L. A. Kochubeeva and M. L. Stoyalova managed to find a socionic interpretation of many markers of the classical variant of the NZh test, where these same markers were understood in a general-psychological feature sense. Despite the probabilistic character of some of the markers revealed in this work, the work done by L. A. Kochubeeva and M. L. Stoyalova represents significant value and can serve as a basis for further investigations in this direction.

One must note that, despite the rather large quantity of psychologically significant graphical markers proposed by the authors of such tests as “House, Tree, Person,” “Nonexistent Animal,” “Free Drawing,” and many others, they are practically all oriented toward pathology. Therefore the work of socionists on the revealing of graphical markers having a typological semantics, characterizing a healthy person, appears exceptionally important.

However, besides the statistical accumulation of typologically significant drawing indicators in testing, there exists yet another quite promising path of the discovery of graphical features of the TIM. This is the path of the aesthetic-psychological investigation of the painterly and graphical creative work of well-known artists. Quite plausible is the initial supposition that an artist — whether professional or amateur — creating a depiction, and all the more an integral image, leaves on it a certain quantity of markers closely connected with his personality. Unconditionally, part of such markers carries biographical information (culture, social position, ideology, life experience, personal contacts, and the like); but one may suppose — and this still needs to be proven — that part of the markers is conditioned by typological dominants and constitutes their direct or indirect psychic projections.

It would seem, what can such artists as the almost scandalously famous Salvador Dalí and the well-known-in-the-cultured-strata-of-our-country Karl Bryullov have in common? In any case, Bryullov’s famous painting The Last Day of Pompeii has attracted the attention of many people. These artists are far from each other in time, and in culture, and in painterly doctrine: it would seem, how can one compare the romantic classicism of Bryullov with the anarchic surrealism of Dalí? They do not even have similar subjects. But they both belong to one type of ethico-intuitive extraversion. From the positions of H. Read, Bryullov’s works can be assigned to the emphatic group — in them one can find an emotional surge and a vivid impression, recalling the impression from a recently read novel. On this basis he ought to be assigned to the ethical introverts. But the general energy contained in his works, and also his physiognomic data, push one toward the supposition that he was an extravert.

The works of Dalí, from the point of view under consideration, fall into different rubrics — in them one meets movement (the rhythmic group of depictions after H. Read); in them one often meets objects of living nature (The World of the Burning Giraffe) — so that one would have to assign him to at least two types: intuitive extraversion and thinking introversion by the first function, which is paradoxical.

And all the same, in these two brilliant representatives of the type Hamlet, the common and typologically significant invariant mood is the dramatic, on-the-verge-of-catastrophe atmosphere of the depiction. This is always a limiting challenge, a dramatic question addressed to everyday consciousness, an épatage. If, however, we place beside them a representative of the same type, the equally distinctive and brilliant M. Vrubel — whose works are permeated by a mystical spirit, sometimes obvious and sometimes on the verge of and beyond the verge of perception — then, despite all the biographical and other chance differences from the two preceding artists, one can say the same thing of him: a limiting challenge and catastrophic dramatism. Not for nothing is one of the central heroes of his paintings the rebellious Demon. In the painting The Fallen Demon these semantic components are maximally visualized. “What more could one want” — this spirit is depicted falling from the heavens, literally, in the last moment of his contact with the earth. He falls almost horizontally to the earth, back downward, having raised his head and his straightened legs. Death is inevitable and final, but the stubborn, irreconcilable, and almost non-malicious grimace-gesture that has fettered his face does not foretell repentance. However, still more dramatic looks this rebel in the painting The Seated Demon. A firmly built young man — one may even say, a lad — full of strength, a gifted sensory extravert (Napoleon); arms and legs are there, what more is needed? But here, almost without direct visualization — that is, in the absence of zero-order factors, as a psychologist would say — we intuitively sense the atmosphere of an existential vacuum: the absence of positive meaning in life. Everything possible was accessible, and everything impossible he permitted himself — and there is the result: the senselessness of further existence, spiritual suicide.

Into the list of Hamlet artists there fall, presumably, for example, such giants of painting as I. Repin and V. Surikov. To extraversion here points, in particular, the significant quantity of large-sized, and often panoramic, canvases. In Repin this is, for example, The Religious Procession in Kursk Province, and in Surikov The Boyarynya Morozova (by type Hamlet) and The Morning of the Streltsy Execution. These canvases are extremely dramatic in their content, which fully accords with the ethico-intuitive component supposed in their authors. These artists are, with their paintings, as it were in the very thick of popular life, and for them, with a deep penetration into human nature, the conveyance of vivid emotional states of large popular masses is characteristic. Surikov is more dramatic than Repin, but the latter seems more universal in the depiction of emotions. His Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan is a painting by no means gloomy, and it could be correlated with the emotional stylistics of Hugo. This is one of the problems that ought to be investigated more attentively. However, Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son returns us again to ethico-intuitive extraversion.

A maximally gloomy — tragically gloomy — atmosphere is inherent in many works of the Spaniard Francisco Goya. Such “gloom” as in Goya one will hardly meet in anyone else. Not even in Dante (Hamlet). In Dante the sinners, both boiling in pitch and devoured by worms, are simply reaping what they deserved. The righteous philistine, rereading Dante, may even experience something like a just satisfaction that for his God-pleasingness a different lot is prepared for him. In Goya, however, there is an atmosphere of metaphysical horror — a horror motivated by nothing, a horror which it is almost impossible to withstand. But, it seems, this is not Hamlet. I incline to the view that this is Balzac. Saturn Devouring His Children, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters — these are symbolic generalizations pointing to the essence of the epoch experienced by the author. Thus the brilliant painter expressed his sensation of a time at the fracture of epochs, when the dreadful power of the Inquisition was coming to an end, but the light “at the end of the tunnel” had not yet appeared. Contemporary horror films seem like children’s scarecrows in comparison with what Goya shows.

But here is for you a completely different artist, a representative of another TIM: Alexander Ivanov, who painted the famous picture The Appearance of Christ to the People. He is a contemporary of Bryullov. Ivanov belongs to the type Gabin. His chief and almost only painting is very difficult for quick evaluation, since it is not so simple as it may seem at first glance. At first glance it is simply impossible not to evaluate it in the most flattering expressions. An enormous canvas — 7.5 meters in length by 5.4 meters in height, 40.5 square meters — occupies fully one of the end walls in a spacious hall of the Tretyakov Gallery. A solid gilded frame. A remarkable biblical subject, and moreover one not worked out in painting from such an angle by anyone before Ivanov. The painting is executed with quality, well, convincingly. All the personages are drawn in a psychologically recognizable way. And indeed he worked on it for 20 years — this too is impressive. Many dozens of sketches and studies, each of which can be assigned to the masterpieces of industriousness and of the ability to bring a design to limiting completion and perfection, and also of depth of psychological penetration into the human essence. In general, Ivanov fully deserves a high evaluation as a talented painter. Talent — yes; but genius suits Vrubel better.

But when you begin to look closely at this painting — that is, as it were cast a second glance at it — you begin to catch a certain non-correspondence, a certain unnaturalness. For that matter, experienced people, professionals in painting and art criticism, may sense this even at first glance. You peer at the people in the foreground and see that although they are frozen in completely plausible poses, these are poses fixed in staged studies and transferred almost without change onto the large canvas. These poses are gaudily elegant and theatrically accentuated. And gradually the impression arises of overexposure, of a certain luminous strainedness of the painting. As if it had once been young and full of strength, but now elderly age has come, and the strength is still there, but something in it is already not right. And, of course, you recall its twenty-year history and somehow, humanly, you understand that in such a term not only an artist but also his work may become elderly. In any case, in such a term the painting could have lost the freshness of immediacy and acquired a shade of strainedness. At the time it occurred to me as a joke that in order to perceive this painting adequately, one needs to examine it for the same twenty years. But it so happened that I have been acquainted with this painting for significantly longer.

And therefore I can say that there is something in this painting that, as if by a magnet, attracts the gaze, and you return to it again and again, in attempts to understand its riddle. And only when you have lived into it do you gradually begin — at first only vaguely, as in a pre-dawn mist — to recognize that you are a witness of a miracle. The formal features of the painting begin to become effaced, to recede into the background of consciousness, and you remain alone with the monumental grandiosity, the fundamental monumentality, of the first moment of the appearance in this world of a new civilizational quality. That moment, compressed into an instantaneous photograph of the people standing in the foreground. As in the children’s game “Freeze,” the moment is stopped so that it can be better sensed — and, possibly, recognized. But this does not work at once. A critical mass of time is necessary. And gradually the painting turns into an astonishing pearl, into a source of metaphysical light. What subtle harmony is concentrated in this painting! How subtly distributed and dosed is the balance of statics and dynamics! The foreground of personages is frozen as in a shot with an exposure of one five-hundredth of a second; but the closer the crowd is to the semantic center of the painting, in which Jesus is located, the freer and more relaxed the people are; and the horsemen on horses, and the horses themselves, are altogether as if alive, though painted in oil on canvas. Peer at them, and you will feel how the steeds prance, and the springy muscles play under their skin.

But the dynamic center of the painting is Jesus Himself. As the compressed spring of a watch, remaining almost motionless, ensures the complex movement of the whole mechanism, so too the energy of Christ, spreading almost imperceptibly into the surrounding space, spiritualizes it by His presence. The specific weight of the painterly depiction of Christ in the picture is quite small, but He, like a seed cast into the earth and germinating in it, contains in Himself a colossal potential of cosmic energy. Toward Him stretch the threads of all the souls of the people present here — He is their Soul. That is why they have frozen in the ecstasy of numbness.

In the figure of Christ, statics and dynamics have merged into one. He has stood forth before the people, as if having wondrously arisen in this place of space and in this moment of time. And in this standing-forth of His He is motionless and simultaneously approaching the people — but it is almost impossible to find words to describe the way in which He does this. To say that He walks or approaches would be too strong a distortion of what we see. A combination, staggering to the depths of the soul, of modesty and grandeur, of presence and detachment. This painting represents a most incredible masterpiece, in whose existence it is simply difficult to believe. It is like a miracle of astonishing luck — but behind it, after all, stands a colossal, many-years — twenty-years! — labor of infinite perfecting, finishing, and fitting of details. And then, alongside the unconditional evaluation of the artistic talent of A. Ivanov, there appears a sensation of his unshowy and unobtrusive genius.

To the type Gabin I would also assign such an unsurpassed master of limiting perfecting as I. Shishkin. Peering at his Pines Lit by the Sun or The Ship Grove, you see almost every needle in the crowns of the trees, every detail on the surface of the bark of the trunks. I know that there are socionists who consider Shishkin a Stirlitz, but I discern in him a series of features of introversion. Above all, here one should assign the elements of the intimate life of nature, its presence for itself. Toward the acknowledgment of introversion the physiognomic appearance of the artist also inclines one. Confidently to the type Stirlitz I would assign I. Glazunov — an unsurpassed portrait draughtsman, known throughout the world thanks to the commissions of influential and rich representatives of the world establishment. But he is famous also for his panoramic multi-figure composition-problems. To their number belongs, for example, his Eternal Russia, where on an enormously sized canvas are presented the portraits of all (!) the well-known people of Russia. This is a vivid example of painterly extraversion. Rationality and logic here manifest themselves in the “frontal-enumerative” character of the depiction, when the whole synclite of Russia is presented by documentarily exact full-face depictions, tightly adjoining one another.

Zhukovs among artists are not often encountered, but, it seems, a good example here could be A. Deyneka. Glancing at his painting The Defense of Petrograd, you at once understand that it was painted by a logician — a clear opposition of two equally significant planes (“thither” and “back”), a cyclic element in the composition. Here one can also discover sensory markers, but more evidently they are presented in his The Defense of Sevastopol, where two irreconcilable forces are emphatically opposed — the hero-defenders and the predator-aggressors. This is not simply a documentary report about a certain battle, as one can often see in battle painting; this is a maximally realistic symbol of the collision of two irreconcilable forces. I suspect that to the number of Zhukov artists one might assign the famous French painter P. Cézanne, but I lack biographical data to assert this confidently. In favor of such a diagnosis speaks his volitional tendency in the construction of the artistic image. Thus, for example, creating his famous painting Mont Sainte-Victoire, he altered the elements of the setting at his own discretion — he shifted and united the contours of the mountains, the forest massifs adjoining them, and the structures located there. So the capacity imperiously to intervene in a spatial situation and to change it in application to a design is evident — but another hypothesis is also possible: Balzac.

I would like to see how Yesenin artists might paint — in what the mirror type, the intuitive ethical introvert, might differ from the ethical intuitive extravert. Unfortunately, I could not select, among the artists known to me, anyone whom I could more or less confidently assign to the type Yesenin. Possibly painting in general does not suit Yesenins, since it requires colossal physical labor, and, as we know, in their model this archetype is in the position of the conservative-critical function (CCF). Presumably, they could create lyrical landscapes, like The Rooks Have Arrived of A. K. Savrasov (lyrical authenticity, emotional recognizability of the features of the native and the lived-through) or Before the Rain of F. A. Vasiliev, in whom nature comes forward as an active subject; but the first, it seems, was a Don Quixote, and the second a Huxley — though I lack data to give a more definite answer. I would not be surprised if F. A. Vasiliev turned out to be a Yesenin, since, as is written in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, in his painting the images of nature acquired a special poeticality and depth of feeling, and his works, full of intoxication with the sensuous beauty of the world, are permeated with spiritualization and romantic agitation, capturing the life of nature in vivid, striking moments. But this, after all, does not contradict the type Huxley either. In his landscapes it is not difficult to see an intuitive penetration into the soul of nature. This is always some deep process, being accomplished in its subtle structures. Look, for example, at the storm clouds in his painting Before the Rain (see the color insert). Of course, all this needs to be investigated specially.

V. D. Polenov, known to the wide public by his painting A Moscow Courtyard, most probably belongs to the type Dostoevsky. This famous painting of his is a splendid model of the embodiment in painting of the idea of humanism. A remarkable pedagogue, who not only taught such outstanding artists as Levitan, Korovin, Arkhipov, Golovin, Malyutin, but was also a heartfelt, caring elder friend and moral mentor, to whom his charges related as to an “old nanny.” I would also assign to the type Dostoevsky such a remarkable Russian fairy-tale artist as V. Vasnetsov was. His Alyonushka and The Snow Maiden contain well-noticeable features of introversion and ethics. One does not have to doubt his intuitiveness — but with rationality the matter stands more complexly. His epic-fairy-tale subjects — The Three Bogatyrs, At the Crossroads, The Flying Carpet — would be simpler to connect with irrationality, and this would bring us out onto the type Yesenin; but for this one must still prove that such a connection is unambiguous, and of this I have doubts. The turn to antiquity, to the fairy-tale tradition, is, above all, a projection of ethics. However, I so far lack the knowledge to indicate unambiguously the painterly markers of rationality. Therefore in the given case it is probably simpler to come out onto the type Dostoevsky through the dichotomy statics-dynamics. And, in fact, all of Vasnetsov’s paintings are distinguished by staticness. Even his flying Flying Carpet is simply suspended in the air. Probably a Yesenin would be more dynamic.

The lyrical landscape attains one of its possible extrema in the execution of I. Levitan. The piercing exactness in the conveyance of the state of nature as a unique independent entity awakens the thought of a painterly formula which this brilliant artist was capable of generating at the price of his health. This was heavy labor for an introvert; but, having found his painterly niche, he bore its cross through his whole short life (40 years). Paradoxical as it may be, his lyricism is a manifestation not of the ethical but of the logical pole. And indeed, from where does it follow that lyricism is a projection of ethics? More exactly, this is logic in combination with intuition. Such an evaluation will become more understandable if one turns attention to the fact that in his landscapes people are almost never encountered. This is nature alone with itself. Recall his Golden Autumn. This painting is as it were closed to entry (by outsiders?). In its foreground are a slope and the current of a river, which creates a distinctive barrier, quite perceived at the level of the subconscious. And his Vladimirka? This is one of the possible embodiments of the archetype (!) of Russian roads. It is depicted at the moment when there is no one there, but the aura of hundreds of thousands of people who have magnetized it with their labors and cares turns it into a symbol of national significance. Taking into account Levitan’s obvious introversion, and also in accordance with other biographical data, I incline toward the supposition that he belongs to the type Robespierre.

Somewhat apart stands another Russian artist — V. V. Vereshchagin (1842–1904). His paintings are maximally documentary. These are painterly representations of really occurring events or really existing objects. He is capable of conveying reality with almost photographic exactness. Of this it is easy to be convinced if one looks at such paintings of his as The Doors of Tamerlane or The Taj Mahal. However, Vereshchagin’s capacity to create documentary canvases was joined in him with the talent of disclosing to the viewer a hidden semantic plane standing behind the depiction. For example, examining The Doors of Tamerlane, you really experience the presence of Timurlenk — the “Iron Cripple” — not shown in the painting.

With Vereshchagin’s documentary style several subtle moments are connected. The point is that with the development of photography, among part of the artists there appeared a tendency to oppose something to the new technical means of mapping the world. It is precisely on this wave that such directions in painting develop as impressionism, cubism, and later fauvism, dadaism, and abstract painting. To convey reality with photographic exactness was becoming unfashionable. But Vereshchagin discovered his unique talent at a time when photography was only beginning, and in Russia the capacity to convey the observed maximally realistically was still in demand. This was the time of the flowering of Russian realist art. So that everything concerning painterly form in Vereshchagin was honed to the highest perfection. Vereshchagin permitted no simplification or conventionality whatsoever in depiction. His paintings are painterly protocols of observed events. It is not difficult to understand that this requires great capacity for work and colossal expenditures of energy. Vereshchagin had periods when, over the course of a long time, he worked from morning to the moment when there was enough daylight in the studio, and this work was extremely strained, as a result of which at the end of the working day he was so tired that he did not even hope to begin everything again tomorrow. But on the following day everything repeated itself.

But what, then, was concealed behind this irreproachable form and colossal capacity for work? Behind the documentarily drawn scenes in Vereshchagin there always stands Truth, which his merciless intuition, as if by X-ray, illuminates through the motley surface of the manifest factuality. He sees this Truth and communicates it to his viewers by the means of documentary painting. Vereshchagin could easily have become a rich court painter, had he undertaken to depict with photographic exactness the glitter of the regalia of their high nobility.

But he was interested not in riches, but in Truth. He was merciless toward himself and never went to compromise — not even with his parents, who were preparing for him a career as a naval officer. Nor did he go to compromise with those holding power, who were dissatisfied with the cast of thought that many of his paintings evoked. As the critic N. Kruzhkov writes of him very exactly, in the nature of Vasily Vereshchagin there were laid down from childhood the features of a sharp, seething, stormy character — features strange and little comprehensible to his relatives and to the milieu surrounding him. In this brief characterization the socionist easily discovers the markers of an irrational-intuitive extravert. There was no artist before Vereshchagin who told the truth about war with such convincingness — and this, as always, did not suit the court camarilla. In order to know how “it really is,” Vereshchagin directly participated in combat operations, bore all the burdens of military life: extreme physical loads, cold, hunger; he was gravely wounded, but again and again continued to fulfil his duty as artist and citizen. And if he depicted something on canvas, then so it really was. And he perished in a naval battle at Port Arthur, during the explosion of the destroyer on which, until the last instant of his life, he continued to make sketches of the combat action. All that has been said above permits the supposition that Vereshchagin was an intuitive-logical extravert.

A selection of the paintings of several artists and their portraits are presented in the color insert. (Translator’s note: the insert on pp. 113–116 reproduces, in order: K. Bryullov, “The Last Day of Pompeii”; V. Polenov, “A Moscow Courtyard”; S. Dalí, “The Relativity of Time” and “The Burning Giraffe” (fragment); V. Vereshchagin, “The Victory at Shipka”; A. Ivanov, “The Appearance of Christ to the People”; A. Deyneka, “The Defense of Sevastopol” and “The Defense of Petrograd”; F. Goya, “The Execution of the Patriots”; P. Cézanne, “Mont Sainte-Victoire”; I. Shishkin, “Rye” and “Pines Lit by the Sun”; V. Vasnetsov, “Alyonushka” and “The Three Bogatyrs”; A. Savrasov, “The Rooks Have Arrived”; together with portraits of Savrasov, Shishkin, Vasnetsov, and Vereshchagin.) All the typological evaluations of the artists and their paintings adduced above should be considered hypothetical, since none of it has passed verification in a strictly controlled laboratory experiment.

By the present time, psychologists have, with varying degrees of reliability, revealed a large quantity of psychologically significant graphical indicators. Among them: the arrangement of the drawing on the sheet of paper, the general intensity or saturation of the drawing, the generalized character of the thematics, the choice of subject, the mood of the drawing, connectedness, the degree of involvement of the executor, the level of concreteness and abstractness, the degree of detailing, the texture of the lines, the vectorial directedness of the depiction, the degree of mastery, features of sexual identification, and many others. Theoretical aesthetics proposes a multitude of other categories. For example, the difference between impressionism and expressionism has a typological character. Impressionism lays claim to a maximally exact graphical conveyance of the sensory parameters of the observed object. Expressionism has an almost opposite task — to convey, maximally adequately by graphical means, the experiences from what has been perceived. From the point of view of socionics, these are differences in the primary typological sets of sensorics and ethicists.

The task of psychologists is confidently to identify with graphical markers at least the four base Jungian features. This is the minimum program. The optimum program is to reveal the fifteen ART — the Augustinavičiūtė–Reinin traits. And the maximum program is to work out the theory of the Shepetko–Gut traits and gradually to begin the mastering of their hypothetically enormous space — if, of course, reality stands behind this, and not the fantasy of an intuitive.

An expert, conducting diagnostics — despite the professional preparation directed at the preservation of neutrality — may experience a whole series of half-conscious sensations-experiences. For example, in the presence of the subject he may feel himself easy and free, may become tense, may feel toward him sympathy, contempt, compassion, dislike, suspicion, trust, distrust, fear. All this may turn out to be signs of a socionic relation.

Usually people unrecognizedly or half-recognizedly carry out the evaluation of a whole series of parameters of a partner, but the expert could do this quite consciously. For a more exact and concrete evaluation of the socionic parameters it is desirable to evaluate a series of cultural peculiarities of the respondent. These peculiarities are not innate, may vary within wide limits, and may interfere with the socionic markers; but the professional should give himself an account of their existence and peculiarities. Thus, educatedness or erudition may change the impression from the thinking function of the respondent, when it may seem to be leading without being such in essence. And, on the contrary, in a poorly educated logician the leading thinking function may be masked — and this will become an additional cause of possible errors in diagnostics. Therefore, in the process of work with a subject, it would be useful to reveal what may be the result of upbringing or of the influence of a concrete cultural milieu — including of a way of life.

It is desirable to reveal the presence in the subject of assimilated behavioral skills existing in the given culture: general culture, good breeding, the capacity to maintain a definite level of order in everyday life, relations to the surrounding environment, respect for the labor and property of other people, whether the person adheres to accepted norms of behavior. A person may be well-bred, polite, refined, diplomatic, coarse, somewhat coarse, blunt, ill-bred; he may turn out to be a boor, an impudent fellow, an insolent one. What a person is like — tidy, careless, refined in dress, dressing fashionably or neutral, indifferent to fashion — correlates strongly with the circumstances of his life and the milieu in which he finds himself. Even industriousness and laziness may, to a definite measure, depend on upbringing and ethnic culture.

A person may have a definite worldview, which in one or another measure may influence the representation of certain socionic markers. The behavior of an idealist, a romantic, a realist, a pragmatist, a religious fanatic, an anarchist — all other conditions being equal — may significantly change the manifestation of the TIM. For example, vandalism, the senseless destruction of public values, manifests itself more easily in extraverted sensorics; but in a group or a crowd, as a result of psychic contagion, representatives of all TIMs may occupy themselves with pogroms and looting, as we saw during the flood in New Orleans, or in Baghdad after its capture by American troops. Probably the statistical distribution by types of the people who participated in the looting and pogroms will be different — this, of course, needs to be investigated; but that there were not only sensory extraverts there was visible to the naked eye. Completely differently will patriots and nationalists, cosmopolitans and internationalists build their social behavior.

On what does the ability to ground and defend one’s life position depend? Only on general development, or is it typal? One can suppose that to extraverts this is given more easily and comes out more freely than in introverts.

But there exist also such generalized indicators connected with worldview as ideological commitment and its absence, consciousness and unconsciousness — which, from the typological point of view, can be understood as the capacity to perceive programs forming definite boundaries of permissible behavior.

It is necessary to investigate whether the presence or absence of strong convictions has a typological sense — that is, whether the capacity to form strong convictions or to remain conformist is innate or situational. Do fanaticism and tolerance have a typological sense? After all, for example, it seems that the inclination toward subjectivism is greater in the feeling types (ethicists), while intuitive logicians on average more often demonstrate an objective approach to the evaluation of situations. Ethicists, apparently, incline more easily toward superstitions, while for the thinking types (logicians), in order to believe in something, an unfolded argumentation is required. It would be interesting to clarify how and under what circumstances prejudices are formed and how they are connected with the TIM.

A person’s TIM may be emphasized or masked by his physical data and reactions. A person with one and the same TIM may be very healthy and may be in various degrees ill and sickly. A person may care for his health, or may neglect it. Not rarely, care for health may acquire hypertrophied forms — and then we are dealing with hypochondria. A person may be vigorous or tired, full of strength or worn out, exhausted.

Many representatives of the type Jack London (lI) at once look sporty; but, of course, a sporty appearance may be acquired as the result of occupation with sport by other types too.

Sharp vision, a musical ear, a fine sense of smell, high skin sensitivity, high taste sensitivity — all this may testify to the high development of one or another function, and, consequently, has diagnostic significance.

It is relatively easy to clarify and enter into the corresponding protocol information about whether a person is strong or weak (sthenicity), whether he is enduring or tires quickly, whether he is dexterous or clumsy. Other dynamic, plastic, and tonic characteristics also have significance: mobile or inhibited, quick or slow, easy or hard to get moving, plastic or angular, trim or relaxed, movements calculated or natural.

Unconditionally, for the determination of the TIM, height and body mass have significance. And although these parameters in a representative of any TIM may vary within wide limits, it seems that there exists such an anthropometric invariant as “reduced mass” (RM). This indicator can approximately be computed by the formula RM = M : (RC × H), where M is the body mass of the respondent, H is the height, and RC is the reduced circumference of the body, equal to (SG + WG + HG) : 3 — SG being the girth at the shoulders, WG the girth at the waist, HG the girth at the hips. It is understandable that the taller a person is, the greater, other conditions being equal, his mass will be; but one and the same person may put on and may take off weight, which will be reflected in the change of his RC. Possibly the formula for reduced mass can be refined; but it is highly plausible that the weight index of extraverts is higher than that of introverts. Unconditionally, this is one of the problems of anthropometry.

Thus, everything concerning the anatomical, physical, and physiological peculiarities of a person can be reduced to several generalized indicators: sensory indices connected with sharpness of vision and hearing, and with taste, olfactory, and tactile sensitivity, and also indices characterizing the dynamics, plasticity, tonus, and mass of the body.

A psychological projection of part of the physiological indicators (dynamics, tonus, strength, plasticity, speed reactions, and the like) is the diverse manifestations of emotional-volitional qualities, which can also be connected with the notion of temperament. Strong-willed or weak-charactered, imperturbable or hot-tempered, active or passive, thrifty or wasteful, greedy or generous, restraining or encouraging, courageous or fainthearted, self-confident or timid, tight-fisted or open-handed, cautious or risk-taking, merry or melancholic, good-natured or bilious, cheerful or dejected, unresentful or touchy, an optimist or a pessimist, judicious or reckless, realistic or adventurist, decisive or indecisive, restrained or excitable, self-possessed or arrogant, brave or fearful, calm or anxious, independent or dependent, stable or explosive, self-confident or not, goal-directed or lacking goals, energetic or sluggish, persistent and insistent or quickly giving up and retreating, an enthusiast or indifferent, enterprising or not, having self-control or not, taking initiative or not, practical or impractical, not tolerating tutelage or inclined toward dependency — which of these polarities has a typological sense, and what depends on the milieu and circumstances; which of them correlate among themselves, and to what degree? Partially the answers to these questions are given by psychology; but, unfortunately, its answers are frequently not tied to typology and are to a significant degree based on blurred concepts. An exception here is, perhaps, Cattell, who strove to specify the categories he found with maximal exactness; but his concepts too, since they are not tied to the structure of the personality, can be regarded as a solid but only preliminary psychological product.

The evaluation of generalized intellectual qualities could also point to the scale of the thinking function of the TIM. To the number of such qualities one can assign: peculiarities of imagination (rich, poor); the actualizedness of the parameters of attention (concentration, distribution, switching, noise immunity…); the predominant kind of memory (imagistic, logical, technological…); the type of thinking (analytical, algorithmic, combinatorial, programmatic, systemic, strategic, tactical, critical…); characteristics of thinking (quick, slowed, superficial, systematic, original, improvisational, tenacious; inquisitiveness, quick-wittedness, comprehension, perspicacity, thoughtfulness, judiciousness, frivolity, flexibility, inertness, inventiveness…); leading intellectual operators (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction…); erudition, breadth of outlook, level of education, informational content of speech. An essential parameter of the individual profile is the general energy of a person.

The evaluation of the communicative peculiarities of the respondent is important in several respects. Above all, here we may discover additional arguments relating to extraversion-introversion, and also to the other dichotomies. Does a person like company or is he inclined toward solitude; is it easy for him in company, or, on the contrary, does he feel tension in company? Of course, the company may be chance, official, or consisting only of close people — and this must obligatorily be taken into account. There are also extreme cases when a person shuns people; but, of course, this case too cannot be unambiguously interpreted in the typological sense. This may be connected with special circumstances in life — for example, with a period of mourning, with peculiarities of professional behavior, with the taking of some vow, and the like. The absence of other features of introversion should push the expert toward the search for other causes. Does the respondent present himself in the role of the toastmaster or only in the role of the listener? How relaxed, unconstrained, or even free-and-easy does the respondent usually behave; how timid, bashful, shy, or modest is he; in what measure is he self-confident or inclined to boasting; is a heightened sense of importance characteristic of him; is he eloquent or tongue-tied, talkative or taciturn, friendly or unfriendly, reliable or unreliable, dominating or submitting; does he easily go into contact; how touchy, hot-tempered, hysterical is he; kind or malicious; faithful in friendship — or does he easily leave, abandon, betray; disinterested in friendship — or does he “pull the blanket toward himself”; trusting or suspicious, naïve or experienced, insistent or yielding; does he not adhere to templates, or is he pedantic; disinterested or self-seeking, altruistic or egoistic, polite or coarse, sincere or hypocritical, initiative-taking or not, peace-loving or aggressive, independent or content to be led, a humorist or a bore, sociable or closed, frank or secretive, organized or unorganized; how capable is he of organizing other people; responsible or irresponsible, responsive or indifferent, quick to forgive or rancorous; principled — unprincipled — devoid of principles; punctual or unpunctual, self-critical or not, truthful or mendacious, honest or dishonest; does he keep his word or not; just or unjust, tactful or tactless, exacting or liberal, respectful or arrogant, sensitive or callous, generous or tight-fisted; does he have a conscience or is he conscienceless; does he adhere to moral-ethical norms — does not adhere — is he a lawless one; is his speech expressive or inexpressive; conscientious or unconscientious, disciplined or neglectful of discipline, a leader or led; does he strive to be first or does he easily remain in secondary roles; a high level of aspirations or a low one; noble or base; searching or settled; socially active — a collectivist — an individualist; does he relate to rules and laws pedantically or liberally; an innovator or a conservative; a fan, a fanatic, or tolerant of the opinion of others; a hypocrite or not; a cynic, or a person acknowledging universal human values; is spirituality inherent in this person, or can he sooner be characterized as unspiritual — and so on.

What, in general, do psychologists diagnose in a practically healthy person? The answer to this question is important not only for the evaluation of the final result of the testing, but also for the analysis of the testing procedures themselves. Let us recall how differently, depending on theoretical sets, one and the same observed phenomenon can be evaluated. For example, the psychoanalyst evaluates the weakness of the supporting elements in the NZh test (“nonexistent animal”) as frivolity, superficiality; while the socionist sees in this an indicator of intuition. The difference is obvious and requires theoretical explanation.

In psychology, thanks to J. Lilly [21], as early as the sixties of the twentieth century there appeared — but, unfortunately, was never fully formed — the idea of evaluating behavior from the point of view of the programs standing behind this behavior. Lilly, in his dramatic⁴ experiments with the subconscious, revealed the existence of two program levels — programs of the lower level, or simply programs, and programs of the higher level, maximally generalized programs, or metaprograms. Within the framework of the computer metaphor, such programs can be called frame programs. Such programs set the general contours of behavior, and into these contours all the remaining concrete details are then inscribed. Taking into account the contemporary attainments of psychology and socionics, one can designate the maximally generalized types of program structures determining the behavior of the personality.

Types of program structures

1. Base innate — the classical temperaments (common with other mammals); they set the most generalized type of reaction to changing circumstances. Here too, apparently, belong the instincts.

2. Typological innate — only in humans: the TIMs; they set the human type of reaction, depending on the dominant informational aspects and including in itself the projections of the generalized division of labor at the level of the clan or tribe.

3. Generalized social programs — worldview, cultural sets, the sets of the social niche, sociotypes, manners. These programs set the contours of behavior taking into account the peculiarities of the culture and subculture to which the personality belongs, and form goals, sets, and motivations. At this level social classes and strata of the population are opposed — workers, the middle class, the elite, the military, politicians, oligarchs, bureaucrats, criminals…

4. Concrete professional knowledge, skills, abilities, habits — everything that determines the concrete actions directed at the attainment of a professional or everyday result.

The most general structural units of the psyche can be designated as metaprograms, since these structural units have an entirely definite functional semantics and ensure — though maximally generalized, yet entirely concrete — forms of behavior. Within the framework of the computer metaphor, the metaprograms correspond to program shells, such as DOS, Windows, and the like. The metaprograms represent the environment in which the work of programs of a lower level unfolds. To the most general structural units of the psyche one must in the first place assign the EGO, SUPEREGO, SUPERID, and ID. The EGO block imperatively pushes the personality toward self-realization. The SUPEREGO block compels the personality to reckon with social requirements. The SUPERID block makes a person dependent on the support of other people. The joint work of these two blocks is precisely what makes a person a social being. The ID block, connecting the psychic with the physiological, ensures the materialization of the programs of the personality formed on the EGO block.

Taking into account what has been said, one can look more concretely at the process of psychological diagnostics in general and of socionic diagnostics in particular. The individual psychological profile can be represented as a superposition of the manifestedness of the programs of all levels. However, depending on the task standing before the researcher, this profile may be presented with the necessary degree of completeness; and, in addition, the four generalized components of this profile can be investigated separately.

The division of behavioral programs by degree of generality permits the refinement of what, properly, in the behavior of people is innate and what is acquired by upbringing and learning. Unconditionally, this problem stands in need of more careful investigation, since it is not excluded that the innate and the acquired levels are connected among themselves by a more complex dependence than simple superposition. The point is that the trainability of innate possibilities has limitations not only by magnitude and modality, but also by time, by combinability, and by sequence — which creates a nonlinear picture of the becoming of the final result.

(Translator’s note: the three paragraphs above are printed twice in the source, in identical wording, at two places within this section — evidently a duplication introduced in the preparation of the text. They are rendered once here.)

Of course, one must not forget yet another class of programs — the physiological programs, ensuring physiological metabolism; however, to draw a hard boundary between physiological and psychological programs is not at all simple, and perhaps impossible. The point is that the genetic programs coded in the molecules of DNA not only ensure the construction of the human body in accordance with its unique parameters, but apparently also form the primary psychological structures with which a child comes into the world. Probably these structures begin to work at some stage of the development of the embryo in the womb — and, apparently, this is not a matter of indifference for the becoming of the future personality. To this testifies a simple but very interesting fact established by scientists. It turns out that children carried near sources of heightened noise — for example, airports receiving jet aircraft — after birth perceive such noise as something natural and, for example, continue to sleep calmly at its arising. But children carried in quiet places perceive such noises as a strong irritant that disturbs their sleep.

For socionics, the first two program levels have paramount significance — properly, it is with them that socionics deals as a scientific direction; but, it goes without saying, in work with a concrete person the psychologist will use the whole range of the manifestations of the personality.

Taking into account what has been said, one can understand that socionic testing is by no means obliged to ignore the extra-socionic parameters of the personality; but the psychologist must give himself an account of which parameters exactly he is dealing with in each concrete case.

In socionics, from the very beginning, there are factors by which one must evaluate the semantics of any concepts, and such work has already been begun. Good results on the grouping of concepts in accordance with the IA have been obtained by E. Shepetko with co-authors and by V. Ermak.

A peculiarity of Model “A” is that the mental and vital rings represent parallel processes mutually reflected in each other. The composedness of the blocks from two half-strokes presupposes a more complex operation for their determination than merely a choice from two possibilities, as is laid down, for example, in the “Myers–Briggs test.” The presence in Model “A” of sixteen varieties of EGO block presupposes the possibility of a choice from a corresponding quantity of variants. Therefore it is necessary to have a corresponding quantity of groups of questions or groups of objects from which the subject could choose. The same can be said of the SUPEREGO, SUPERID, and ID blocks as well.

It is understandable that the unambiguous determination of any one of the blocks is sufficient for the determination of the TIM. This circumstance can be used for increasing the reliability of testing. Thus, what may be at issue is four groups of choices, each of which is connected with the corresponding block of the model.

The EGO block is connected with conscious action upon the world, with the conscious choice of activity, occupation, pastime. And, in the case of the realization of efforts by this block, a person demands recognition corresponding to his abilities. Therefore, for the determination of this block one can propose questions or objects connected with the choice of activity, profession, pastime. However, here not everything is simple. Hardly can a simple enumeration of professions of the type agronomist, programmer, administrator, military man, and so on unambiguously ensure the determination of the EGO — since at the present time, apparently, in any professional sphere one can meet people of any TIM, although possibly they came there not always as the result of free choice. If the hypothesis were true that a TIM is capable of freely realizing itself only in a strictly definite set of professions differing from such a set for another TIM — although possibly such sets could have a common part — then the determination of the EGO block would reduce to the discovery of such a set. However, such a hypothesis stands in need of serious statistical verification.

One could propose generalized definitions of activity oriented toward concrete EGO blocks. Thus, for the EGO block of the intuitive-logical extravert (Il) one could propose in the capacity of a testing generalized activity something like “the search for new ideas connected with a qualitative change of people’s view of nature, of society, and of their own essence.” Of course, under such a definition would fall the activity of Darwin, Einstein, Mendeleev, Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky, Marx, Freud, and many other people of this type — but not all Il occupy themselves with such activity, to say nothing of the fact that not all attain the highest results. Nevertheless, it is obvious that questions of the indicated type may be useful for orientation in the type of the subject.

Another type of question may be connected with possible situational activity. For example, what would you, say, at identical pay, undertake to do: organize a disco, edit a wall-newspaper, sit an evening with a group of small children, sit as a nurse in a ward of the gravely ill, lead a group of schoolchildren into the forest, organize sports competitions, sell a lot of goods at the market, work on the construction of a house or in an automobile workshop, spend several evenings as a ticket-taker in a theater, and so on. Here it seems plausible that a testing activity can be found for each TIM. Apparently the EGO of the type Il at a market would feel not very comfortable, or its behavior, from the point of view of a conventional social standard, would be ineffective. At the same time he could quite well take active part in a debate on the theme of extraterrestrial forms of intelligence. Of course, at such a debate other types could also speak — in the first place all those in whose EGO block there are intuition and logic. It seems that to the types Ls, sL, and Sl such a debate would be curious rather as a curiosity than as a serious pastime, while lS would relate to it with great interest. If, however, to the types in whose EGO there are logic and sensing one proposed, as an alternative to the mentioned debate, the viewing of a video film about the technique of hand-to-hand combat, then this could differentiate them from the intuitives. All the same, it seems that the differentiating procedures by the EGO block must be more complex than what is discovered in simplified tests.

The SUPEREGO block is connected with social expectations, with what it is there not considered possible to violate. Since in the SE block there are located two functions — the withstanding of the pressure of the environment and critical evaluation — the block can be interpreted, taking into account the semantics of SE, as the interiorization of generalized social norms, in the following way. The semantics of function 1.1 (ALF) presupposes the use of the means to which the informational aspect of the function points, in a critical situation, in a situation of the necessity of withstanding the forceful pressure of the surroundings. To such situations one must assign not only the case of self-defense and individual survival in extreme conditions, but apparently — and even in the first place — the defense of the nearest group, which is precisely what could explain the superego as supra-individual control. The function of critical evaluation 2.1 (CCF), working jointly with function 1.1, determines what exactly (in the generalized sense) is inadmissible — so that the superposition of these two semantics sets a set that can be verbalized as “what must not be allowed, and by exactly what means.” And this may be represented by such verbal formulas: “On no account may one exert forceful pressure, limit freedom, criticize…” and the like, in accordance with the IA of the function. The result of the application of this operator to the SE formulas of all TIMs is collected in table 10.04.

Table 10.04. Verbal interpretation of the SE archetype. The superego expresses a generalized prohibition, formulated in terms of “by the help of what means what may not be done.”

Formula	SE	TIM
On no account may one manipulate a good attitude toward a person; one may not exert forceful pressure (S) on the ethical sets (e) of another person — “I do not intend to offend anyone.”	Se	Il
On no account may one limit the freedom (i) of another person in the choice of a regime of labor (L) — “I myself choose what to do; do not overload me with physical work.”	iL	sE
On no account may one limit a person performing work (L) by temporal frames (i) — “if work must be performed, one cannot be limited by any temporal frames.”	Li	Es
On no account may one rigidly dictate ethical norms; one may not criticize (e) the volitional efforts of another person (S), one may not critically evaluate the will of another — “I condemn (e) the application of violence (S)”; “few love justice (e), and that is why one must fight (S) for it above all.”	eS	lI
On no account may one labor only for the sake of comfort; one may not work and expend one’s physical strength for the sake of momentary comfort — “I live and work out of necessity, and not for the sake of some comfort or other.”	Ls	Ei
On no account may one use everything possible (I) at the cost of spoiling relations (e) with people, of introducing additional chaos into them — “the observance of propriety is more important than the demonstration of one’s own abilities.”	eI	lS
On no account may one clown before the public and make a laughing-stock of oneself; one may not refer to some special circumstances (I) for the justification of individual notions about ethical norms — “there are no sufficient grounds for not changing settled notions about ethical norms, if circumstances demand it.”	Ie	Sl
On no account may one justify by utility (s) the necessity of physical work (L) — “do not compel me to perform physical work for the sake of utility.”	sL	iE
On no account may one spend one’s whole life in empty emotioning — “one may not substitute emotions for utility.”	Es	Li
On no account may one stuff one’s head (l) with abstract things (I) — “one may not abuse one’s social position (l) to inflate one’s own price.”	lI	eS
On no account may one spend one’s abilities on empty reasonings — “I shall not spend my abilities on thinking about how the world is arranged.”	Il	Se
On no account may one live by superficial emotional impressions — “I shall not spend my life resource on empty emotioning.”	sE	iL
On no account may one by force (S) compel people to submit (l); one may not compel others to do what they do not like — “I shall never command people for the sake of self-affirmation.”	Sl	Ie
On no account may one spend one’s time (i) on empty emotions (E) — “I shall never squander my time on empty amusements.”	iE	sL
On no account may one lure people with ideology; one may not occupy others’ time with emotions — “I cannot permit myself to spend time on empty emotioning.”	Ei	Ls
On no account may one turn a person into a soulless element of a system; one may not abuse one’s official position (l) in order to exert pressure (S) on other people — “I never abuse my official position.”	lS	eI

The sentences written out represent a variant of the deciphering of the corresponding brief SUPEREGO formula of the corresponding TIM. These sentences, of course, express the sense of a prohibition limiting people’s behavior. However, to convey this shade of sense to a person of the corresponding TIM in the process of testing, the instructor will have to display no little resourcefulness. An active form of work with such a set would be its ranking, when one would not have to choose too rigidly among universal human values.

The SUPERID block is connected with the character of the claims and reproaches that a type presents to its surroundings. On this can be built a set of sentences directed at the revealing of this block. Thus, for example, the SUPERID of Don Quixote — sE — can, as a variant, be interpreted as “my mood (E) directly depends on my well-being (s)”; while the imperative formula expressing the generalized program could sound like “Provide me with minimal comfort and a good mood, and all the rest I shall do myself.” This same imperative is the generalized formula of the SUPERID of any type; but in each type it acquires its own, more concrete formula, depending on the IA filling it. A still more general formulation of the SUPERID of any type could sound like “provide me with dual conditions of existence, and all the rest I shall do myself” — or, even more briefly, “provide me.” It is understandable that, in the case of each concrete type, the sense of dual conditions of existence will be deciphered differently. To facilitate the interpretation, a good hint may be such a formulation of the SUPERID as “provide me with the support of a dual.” This is especially important in the interpretation of the mirror formulas of the SUPERID — for example, the SUPERID of Don Quixote (sE) and the SUPERID of Robespierre (Es). Don Quixote needs the conditions that Dumas, naturally — that is, by virtue of his TIM — is capable of providing: “unobtrusive service and flexible emotionality”; while Robespierre needs what Hugo produces: “an abundant emotional atmosphere and all-round care.” Nevertheless, to separate mirror duals is not at all simple, since at the level of limiting generalizations with which socionics deals, the interpretation of the mirror formulas of the SUPERID may look simply like a transposition of the very same concepts. Therefore I do not lay claim to the finality of the formulations, but only propose a preliminary variant (table 10.05).

Table 10.05. Verbal interpretation of the SI archetype. The SUPERID expresses a generalized claim of the personality upon its surroundings, formulated in terms of “provide me with such-and-such, and all the rest I shall do myself.”

Formula	SI	TIM
Provide me with minimal comfort and a good mood, and all the rest I shall do myself.	sE	Il
Provide me with an understanding of what is going on around, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Il	sE
Provide me with an effective infrastructure, and all the rest I shall do myself.	iL	Es
Provide me with emotional support and everyday care, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Es	iL
Provide order and legality, and all the rest I shall do myself.	lS	Ei
Provide me with emotional cover and a life perspective, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Ei	lS
Provide me with a justification of my actions and emotional inspiration, and all the rest I shall do myself.	iE	Sl
Provide me with forceful cover and order, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Sl	iE
Provide me with a human attitude and confidence in my own rightness, and all the rest I shall do myself.	eS	Li
Provide me with sources of existence and confidence in the morrow, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Li	eS
Provide me with an understanding of my life perspective and the means of existence, and all the rest I shall do myself.	iL	Se
Provide me with forceful cover and human interest in what I am doing, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Se	iL
Provide me with everyday care and the means of existence, and all the rest I shall do myself.	sL	Ie
Provide me with inspiration and understanding, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Ie	sL
Provide me with a kind attitude toward me and creative support in all my undertakings, and all the rest I shall do myself.	eI	Ls
Provide me with a source of existence and minimal comfort, and all the rest I shall do myself.	Ls	eI

The ID block, socially programmable, connected with physical demonstrativeness, can be tested by the ranking of possible praises, compliments, approvals. Thus, for example, the differences by this block between Hamlet (Ei) and Dreiser (eS) could be determined by the choice between a compliment relating to the tactfulness of one’s manner and a compliment relating to refinement of taste in the choice and evaluation of things — although both concrete bearers of these TIMs may possess the mentioned qualities, the accent will all the same be different. The generalized formulations of the ID for all types are collected in table 10.06.

Table 10.06. Verbal interpretation of the ID archetype: “What one must do in order to attain success.”

Formula	ID	TIM
All one’s time, without remainder, must be spent on work.	iL	Il
One must have a reserve of material values in order to ensure oneself a worthy position in society.	Se	sE
My attitude toward those close to me is such that I am ready, for their welfare, to use all the values I have.	eS	Es
The result of my labor economizes the time of others.	Li	lI
My attitude toward those close to me is such that I shall do everything so that they become real people.	eI	Ei
My labor is directed at making existence become valuable.	Ls	lS
My physical tonus is so high that I am capable of performing any work.	sL	Sl
My feeling for human nature permits me effectively to establish relations.	Ie	iE
My capacity to process information permits me to create new sources of welfare.	lI	Li
My subtle emotionality permits me to create such an atmosphere that the existence of a partner is sensed by him as a value.	Es	eS
My physical tonus is so high that I am capable of filling others with energy (inspiring them) to any extent.	sE	Se
My creative abilities are such that I manage easily to sort out the logical structure of a situation.	Il	iL
I spend all my time on maintaining the high emotional level of a partner.	iE	Ie
I direct my will and my material resources toward there being order in everything.	Sl	sL
My capacity to process information permits me to accumulate significant material values.	lS	Ls
My subtle emotionality permits me to create such an atmosphere that the existence of a partner acquires perspective and meaning.	Ei	eI

(Translator’s note: in tables 10.04–10.06 several cells of the SE/SI/ID and TIM columns are corrupted in the printed source. They have been restored from the internal logic of the model, which the author states explicitly in the surrounding text: the SUPEREGO pair of a TIM is that of its conflictor with vertedness inverted; the SUPERID pair is that of its dual with vertedness inverted; and the ID pair is the TIM’s own EGO pair with vertedness inverted. Each restored cell is consistent with the accompanying formula text.)

The formulations adduced bear an approximate and preliminary character and stand in need of refinements — and, of course, of experimental verification.

Visual typing

A most important constituent part of socionic diagnostics is visual typing. Here much has been done, and the ideas of visual typing constantly hover in the air of socionic gatherings; but in this question there is still no sufficient definiteness. Moreover, assertions have repeatedly been expressed that visual typing can be only an auxiliary means. I think that the cause of this is the unelaboratedness of visual methodologies as applied to socionics.

In the socionic milieu, situations not rarely arise when, in the viewing of photographs or films, or in the fleeting evaluation of a chance passer-by, one expert says, for example, that this is a Zhukov, while his partner at once names some other type. It is clear that someone — and perhaps both — is wrong. But without doubt each of them had some grounds for the visual evaluation. The very first recommendations on visual testing, in her lectures and conversations, were given by Aušra herself. These were very brief statements giving generalized orientations concerning the basic — that is, the Jungian — dichotomies. Extraverts, on average, are larger and mightier. Rational types differ from irrational ones by a greater precision and angularity of movements. Intuitives differ from sensorics by a greater detachment, which with a little practice becomes quite noticeable. Logicians in comparison with ethicists are drier and more official. But of exceptions here there may be any number. There are large representatives of the type Balzac; there are exceptionally active Dumas; there are short representatives of the type Zhukov, and the like. There are very relaxed logicians — many such, for example, among the representatives of the type London. There are very guarded, closed ethicists. Much here also depends on moods, states, and situations. And again we stand before the fact that the attempt to describe visual differences between the types turns out to be of little effect, because of the blurredness of many psychological concepts.

And all the same it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that to all without exception of the representatives of one type there are inherent certain visually perceived marker-releasers, just as definite as the features by which we distinguish, for example, breeds of dogs, cats, or horses. In fig. 10.04 we see a very realistic depiction of a literary hero created by the imagination. Here there is no schematism or simplification whatsoever. Such people, or people resembling them, are encountered in life in sufficient quantity. Perhaps a classical psychologist, because of the detachment noticeable in the gaze of such a person, will consider him an introvert; but socionists see, in the difficult-to-determine parameters of the head and face of such a person, that he is an extravert. This is not some one parameter, but an entirely definite combination of parameters — though one difficult to express in words.

(Fig. 10.04. A sculptural depiction of Don Quixote, Spain.)

In fig. 10.05 we see an artistic embodiment of the image of Don Quixote. The two images of the famous personage presented here are quite recognizable, though not identical. The artistic embodiment produces to a greater degree the impression of a character capable of acts that, from the point of view of common sense, may seem strange. In the sculptural depiction (fig. 10.04) grotesque is completely absent.

(Fig. 10.05. A stylized depiction of Don Quixote by the actor performing the role in the film. Figs. 10.06–10.09. Representatives of the type Don Quixote — in a military uniform, in the vestments of a priest, and others.)

In figs. 10.06–10.09 we see several more representatives of the type Don Quixote. These are different people, representatives of different professions, but all of them have common typological releasers. We see only the stylized outlines of their faces, but in them is expressed a combination of deep concentration and detachment from everyday bustle. However, I do not know how to formalize an intuitive impression. It easily comes to mind that there might be certain correspondences, for example, between the form of the skull and face on the one hand and the type on the other; however, to prove this, serious investigations are needed, and not superficial and hasty identifications. If we recall such famous representatives of this type as D. Mendeleev, C. Darwin, K. Marx, I. Pavlov, B. Shaw, K. Tsiolkovsky, we shall see the same fundamental concentration and detachment. In the representatives of this type there is often an extensive, “free” beard; but, in the end, they are not born with a beard. In addition, the same free beard is encountered in men of the type Dostoevsky. Therefore, although the beard without doubt may be a diagnosing feature, it is of course not the only one.

For contrast, in fig. 10.10 is presented a type far from mental problems, but fully immersed in the enjoyment of life. A classical psychologist may easily take him for an extravert. See how open and sociable he is — but it would not be at all simple for him to be, for example, a leader. Alongside, in fig. 10.11, is presented a type mirror to the preceding one, an ethico-sensory extravert — this one easily takes on the role of a leader, as its real bearer was in life: the political leader of the Bulgarian communists, G. Dimitrov.

In figs. 10.12–10.35 examples of all the types are shown, as the author understands them, without insisting that they have been determined correctly. All the depictions are slightly stylized, in order to remove small details and preserve the generalized perception of the type. Incidentally, so one proceeds in the training of computer programs for pattern recognition — for example, of railway bridges on aerospace photographs. Onto the photographs of several bridges a motley mask is superimposed, called a “wandering dervish.” Such a mask overlaps parts of the image, and the program must find the invariant by which it will recognize bridges not previously presented to it. In addition, it will recognize bridges on unclear photographs.

I do not insist that all the images presented in the photographs have been diagnosed correctly, and I am ready to accept any remarks expressed within the framework of an academic style of communication. This is my vision at the given stage, and my task is not to impose on the reader the images of the types, but to offer him material for preliminary analysis and generalization.

In fig. 10.12 several women are presented, presumably belonging to the type Don Quixote, as far as I understand this. These are rather different faces, which in our everyday practice we do not confuse. Here there are serious and smiling faces, sad and neutral ones. Moreover, these are women’s faces, not at all resembling the faces of the Don Quixote men shown earlier, and they have no beards. What, then, unites them and gives the possibility of assigning them to the type Don Quixote? The very same fundamental concentration and detachment. By what means does the intuition of the researcher pass from directly observed zero-order factors — that is, concrete physiognomic and plastic characteristics — to factors of the second, third, and other, higher orders? I do not know this. Possibly a subconscious generalization by the principle of the “wandering dervish” takes place here. This generalization is formed as a result of practice, and people, as they acquire experience, learn to distinguish honest and mendacious people, venal and incorruptible, serious and frivolous, compliant and stubborn, generous and tight-fisted. However, the majority of people are hardly capable of reflecting on by what features they do this. And all the same it is difficult to get rid of the thought that such features exist. Some of my colleagues consider that portrait 10.12.5 belongs not to Il but to Ie — that is, to Huxley. They do not ground this. Possibly the smile pushes them toward this conclusion. But, in the first place, Don Quixotes also smile; and in the second, look at what kind of smile this is. This is the closed smile of a person for whom it is characteristic constantly to control himself. A completely different type of smile we see in portraits 1 and 2 in fig. 10.13. These are light and open smiles, characteristic of the type Hugo. However, if you compare the smile in the portrait of the Hugo woman 10.13.1 and in the portrait of the Napoleon woman 10.14.1, you will be able to feel the difference between softness and hardness. Of course, these are intuitive evaluations, but this is a good task for experimental investigations.

(Figs. 10.12–10.31 present the stylized per-type galleries: women of the type Don Quixote; women and men of the types Hugo, Napoleon, Dreiser, Dostoevsky, Stirlitz, London, Hamlet, Gorky, Robespierre, and the remaining types.)

In the popular and populist literature on physiognomy, the attempt has long been made to enumerate the characteristics of facial features — that is, of zero-order factors — that point to the psychological peculiarities connected with them. Unfortunately, very often these are weakly structured empirical observations, on acquaintance with which one has to be astonished not only at their lack of proof, but also at the self-assurance of the authors who copy them from one book into another, without giving thought to the grounding of what they write. I do not set before myself the task of criticizing concrete authors. What they write is a matter of their human and scientific conscience. Therefore I shall adduce several quotations from such books, without literary references.

“Wide brows are considered more favorable than narrow ones, since they are a sign of directness, honesty, courage, faithfulness, and also of the sexuality of their possessor. Such people strive for leadership in everything.” As for sexuality, here one can see a physiological causality: wide brows — a high energetic level in the region of the sexual centers in the brain. However, as for directness, honesty, courage, and faithfulness, it is easy to recall a large quantity of monsters of the human race who had wide brows but who were distinguished by mendacity, perfidy, readiness to commit any betrayal, and often by cowardice as well. Recall the wide brows of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and their like. The main thing that remains unclear is the psychophysiological mechanism connecting wide brows and, for example, honesty. If I had met investigations proving an unambiguous connection of wide brows with extraversion, then this would be an interesting and even plausible result, since wide brows are connected with high energetics and activity; but for such assertions deep psychophysiological investigations are necessary, and not the copying from one book into another of prescriptive incantations. But here, for example, A. P. Chekhov had beautiful wide brows, yet many socionists assign him to the introverts. And he really was an honest person, but he did not strive for leadership. In logic it is known that one counterexample is sufficient for the refutation of any universal affirmative judgment. In addition, to declare that “wide brows are considered more preferable” without references to statistical data is simply unserious. At the least, many women prefer narrow brows and even specially pluck them.

Nevertheless, the many-centuries-long human experience in the field of physiognomy and plasticity has enduring value. But, of course, it must be subjected to careful scientific processing with an aim at typology. If we acknowledge that all processes in the organism have a material-energetic-informational character, then external signs too must have the same basis under them.

Let us turn, for example, to the hypothesis of the connection of the structure of the body with the peculiarities of the psyche. At the beginning of the twentieth century this idea was in the air. Kretschmer singled out three varieties of body build: pyknic, asthenic, and athletic. To these varieties of build he set in correspondence three temperaments: cyclothymic, schizothymic, and ixothymic. True, he also spoke of a dysplastic build, but this was for him something more or less accidental, which one may leave out of account. As for the temperaments, their quantity in him varied from four to nine, and this was reflected in the development of psychology in several countries. In America, Sheldon, a professional geneticist, on the notion of three types of build created his own typology, captivating by its convincingness and scientific solidity. He supposed that the differences in the structure of the body of the cerebral, visceral, and muscular types are connected with the different activity of the three primary tissue layers of the embryo. In the visceral type the leading one turns out to be the inner layer (endoderm), in the muscular the middle (mesoderm), and in the cerebral the outer (ectoderm). His classification, in the form of concrete methodologies of physical training, found application in high-performance sport. For that matter, other scientists gave completely different explanations of the differences in the structure of the body. In the Soviet Union, Academician Bogomolets explained these differences by the quality of the connective tissue, and Bryan in the USA by the peculiarities of the predominant food — meat or plant. However, other classifications were also proposed, in which four, and not three, body types were singled out. Thus, for example, in France Sigaud distinguished respiratory, digestive, muscular, and cerebral kinds of build, each of which was characterized by its own psychic traits.

One may put at the basis of a primary classification of bodily forms — and there was such an attempt too — for example, two physical parameters: height (tall–short) and fullness (full–lean); then we obtain four varieties of body (see table 10.07), which are observed directly and stand in no need of special diagnostics. To them are empirically set in correspondence the four Kretschmerian temperaments. Everything would be splendid if the chosen physical parameters had hard polar values; however, height and fullness are continual magnitudes, and therefore a physical boundary between the singled-out types cannot be drawn — although within certain limits of the physical parameters the types are observed, and the temperaments to some measure correspond to them.

Table 10.07. (A 2×2 arrangement of height against fullness, yielding the four Kretschmerian temperaments.)

All these attempts permit the conclusion that a connection between the structure of the body and psychic peculiarities exists, but this connection was described by empirical observers phenomenologically — that is, as something observed, and not essential. As a result of attempts to penetrate into the essence of psychophysiological connections, a whole scientific branch was created — psychophysiology. It has collected large and valuable empirical material, but, unfortunately, has up to now not come out onto fundamental law-governednesses that would unambiguously determine the connection between physiological peculiarities and bodily features on the one hand, and psychic characteristics on the other. Possibly someone will object that no unambiguous connection here can exist at all, and that if there is some connection, it is only probabilistic. This is a very superficial objection, since it is based on the absence or insufficiency of information.

But there exists, for example, large medical-clinical experience permitting the diagnosis of an incipient illness by bodily signs. Thus, in the book of the practicing physician Kurt Tepperwein The Face — Mirror of Health, among a multitude of maximally concrete feature correspondences there is also this: a well-formed vertical fold of skin between the nose and the upper lip is an indicator of vital force, of vital tonus, of the capacity of the organism for the quick restoration of strength. This is a very clear assertion, and it admits of an equally clear experimental verification.

If assertions of this kind presuppose the existence of cause-and-effect connections between bodily signs and the state of the organism, then this is a not-bad hint that one can find bodily signs having a typological sense. However, it is not excluded that such signs may bear a generalized character. For example, comparing the faces of men and women of the type Don Quixote with the faces of men and women of the type Dreiser (see figs. 10.12 and 10.15, 10.16), besides the difference in the general expression, one can see the difference between the denser and larger features of the Don Quixotes and the relatively smaller, more refined features of the bearers of the type Dreiser. True, Theodore Dreiser himself (portrait 10.16.1) does not, it would seem, correspond to such a conclusion. It is not excluded that this is because of the quality of the photograph.

In the comparison of Dreisers with Dostoevskys, whose features are close by the parameter of fineness, one can notice that in the former the faces are harder, and in the latter softer. To the faces of Zhukovs (10.19) massiveness is inherent, but they quite definitely differ from the faces of Stirlitzes (fig. 10.20) by a greater simplicity. Comparing the faces of types in pairs — not one by one, but for whole groups — one could reveal such type-distinguishing peculiarities. It is difficult, for example, to imagine that a Zhukov, a Stirlitz, or a Napoleon would have a snub nose; but among Yesenins such noses are encountered rather often. One could suppose that the difference between extraverts and introverts is determined by the dominance or recessiveness of genes; but then there ought to be more extraverts, as the dominant ones — and this, it would seem, is not observed. In general, solid experimental investigations are necessary; but for this sufficient capital investments are needed, and rich sponsors are so far not to be seen.

Perhaps the fullest investigation and proposal on socionic diagnostics was made by P. Tsypin [19]. He undertook the attempt to generalize the results obtained in socionics before him, and also proposed a large quantity of diagnosing indicators discovered by himself. Unconditionally, this is very good and necessary work, and, unconditionally, not indisputable. The chief shortcoming of the concepts used by Tsypin is the same as in the majority of socionic tests — namely, their semantic blurredness.

P. Tsypin, in my view, evaluates written (verbal) testing too categorically. He considers that “one should not stake on formal written tests in typing.” He draws this conclusion having checked in practice the LOT test and that of the Lytovs; and since in his hands they did not show one-hundred-percent results, he comes to the sad conclusion of the insufficiency of tests of this kind — though evaluating positively the work of the enthusiasts who work out such tests. However, despite the fact that at the present time it is difficult to counterpose to P. Tsypin’s sad conclusion the finished results of the developers of highly reliable verbal tests, it is precisely the works of the author of LOT, of the Lytovs, and of the St. Petersburg group — into which entered V. A. Dyuk, A. M. Elyashevich, A. A. Kovalenko, E. Yu. Petrova, G. R. Reinin, A. V. Filimonov — that leave no doubt that such tests are possible, and that the question of their appearance is only a matter of time.

P. Tsypin, arguing his conclusions, correctly names one of the causes of the inferiority of “formal typing” — that it “is not free from the dynamic effect, that is, from the influence of the situation accompanying the answers to the questions.” Explaining his thought, he says: “for example, a person is asked: ‘Do you easily establish contacts with the people around you?’ and three variants of answer are presupposed: a) easily; b) it varies; c) with difficulty.” And further he writes entirely justly: “The question implies that predominantly extraverted ethicists will answer positively, and introverted logicians sharply negatively, while the rest will prefer the neutral answer. But in fact the answers may be distributed in a completely opposite way. Very many people, by the observations of the author and of many other socionists, answer the questions of a test proceeding from the peculiarities of their SUPEREGO. Besides this, for example, an extravert-ethicist at the given moment in a situation of a crisis of relations, of a quarrel with those close to him, of non-understanding with colleagues, will not be able to say of himself that he ‘easily gets on with people.’ More probably he will choose the answer ‘differently’ or ‘it varies.’ On the contrary, many introverted logicians — especially lS and lI — are convinced that they build relations with people easily and confidently, and answer either neutrally or positively, confusing all the socionists’ cards.” These observations of the author are confirmed also by the observations of other thinking socionists who have collided in their practice with the paradoxes of intuitive suppositions concerning how a given type ought to answer prepared standard questions. In an attempt to sort out paradoxes of this kind, certain moments were formulated earlier in this chapter, without taking which into account no testing can be full-fledged.

P. Tsypin in his technology of typing staked significantly on graphical testing with the help of a small — and, in this sense, economical — test proposed as early as 1987 by G. A. Shulman, which separated statics and dynamics well. However, in comparing this test with the methodology of Kochubeeva, one must acknowledge that the NZh test (“nonexistent animal”) is more representative by a multitude of dichotomizing features, including by the feature statics/dynamics, in comparison, for example, with the horse in G. A. Shulman’s test. All the more so since a horse is significantly more difficult to draw than an NZh.

True, comparing Tsypin’s work with Kochubeeva’s, one must turn attention to the fact that Tsypin singled out such a feature as the size of the depictions and the character of the filling of the format of the sheet by the depictions, having connected this with vertedness — while in Kochubeeva’s work, if I am not mistaken, such a feature was not singled out, and another feature was taken into account, one acknowledged by the psychoanalytic direction in psychology. Namely, the positioning of the depiction, which in the classical variant of the NZh test correlates with the presence or absence in the respondent of one or another neurotic peculiarity. I, however, suppose that a more general feature dividing extraversion and introversion is the general energy of the text or the depiction. General energy, in particular, manifests itself both in the size of the depiction and in the peculiarities of its positioning on the test format — but not only in this. However, such concepts must be investigated in a strictly controlled experiment and brought up to the level of practical methodologies, and not remain merely conjectures.

An effective diagnosing procedure is the testing game. Here is its brief annotation. Participants: a leader, a subject, an observer. The leader poses questions from a previously composed program-scenario, creates situations, changes the course of the game. The subject, as far as possible, develops the thematics proposed by the leader. The observer fixes the course of the game manually or with the help of technical means. He also comes forward in the role of a witness clarifying complex or conflict situations.

The leader, in illustrative-narrative form, proposes to the subject an entry menu. For example: 1) “As an encouragement you receive a vacation — a week, two weeks, a month…”; 2) A business situation; 3) A combat operation; 4) An extreme regime — the mass evacuation of the population; and the like. The subject makes a choice, and the leader, by a previously prepared branching scenario, begins to unfold the situation. In the further analysis of the game both the verbal and the non-verbal behavior of the subject are taken into account, and their mismatch becomes the basis for all manner of refinements, which in the theory of testing are connected with correction scales. It is understandable that the supposed game, filmed on video, can give rich material about the external manifestations of the subject — his plasticity, mimicry, physiognomy, manner of dressing. Of course, this is an energy-intensive process; however, with good pay it justifies itself — but for this a creditworthy client is needed. It goes without saying that this procedure can be performed in the form of a computer game.

In an analogous regime, tests of proverbs and sayings, winged expressions, poetic phrases, aphorisms, and the like can be used.

One could also work out a picture test with the use of concrete and abstract depictions, the choice between which would give the possibility of establishing the TIM of a person in dichotomous, functional, block, or type regime — but this would require large material expenditures. Such a test would be good in that it excludes the necessity of understanding complex speech turns, and can be adapted to any group of the population, independently of sex, age, nationality, and other socially significant factors. There are many ideas, but let us wait until better times, when sponsors appear capable of ensuring financial support in socionic investigations.

Interesting thoughts arise in the reading of the unconditionally remarkable book of Susan Zannos [22] on the typology of the human being. This work is performed in the channel of the ideas of Gurdjieff, and in it is reflected the view of a person who thought, for his time, non-standardly and progressively. In his teaching about the human being, something was emphasized that in official psychology could not be assigned to the category of the scientific. But after all, a very intelligent and authoritative person spoke of this — so can it really have been simply a play of the imagination? What is at issue is a certain essence of the human being. Its explicit definition I did not find in the work of S. Zannos, but of contextual explications she has any number. Essence here is opposed to personality, as the social projection in the human being. Essence is that which strives for self-realization. S. Zannos writes that in many people — probably in the majority — the essence is so strangled and clamped by the development of the personality that it is extraordinarily fragile; that in many cases it has halted in its development at a very early age, so that when it begins to reveal itself it may be as vulnerable and sensitive as that of a three- or four-year-old child, and as wild and uneducated; that such an essence has already suffered enough from attempts to control it, change it, punish it, ridicule it, or otherwise compel it not to be what it is; and that if you continue to allow your personality to keep your essence (sometimes called “the child within”) in check, then you will achieve nothing and will not be able to determine your type. Judging by this description, such an essence corresponds to the socionic EGO, and personality to the SUPEREGO; but in socionics this opposition is set with all possible definiteness and does not represent a certain foggy, difficult-to-catch concept. Where in psychology such work has not been done, there will always be presupposed a certain elusive remainder, turning the work of the psychologist into something unfinished. Not having a scientific notion of all the elements of human individuality, one cannot effectively conduct testing, because indefiniteness will always remain. Therefore, when S. Zannos says: “Later, when the essence has gathered strength and will clearly express its type…” — from this one can conclude that in the majority of people the type is not clearly expressed. From the socionic point of view, a person always has a TIM, and it does not appear only after self-realization; and, consequently, methods must be worked out for its full-fledged determination. In this precisely consists the basic problem of socionic diagnostics.

With an exceptionally interesting and contemporary declaration, in 1999 a group of scientists from St. Petersburg came forward, into which entered V. A. Dyuk, A. M. Elyashevich, A. A. Kovalenko, E. Yu. Petrova, G. R. Reinin, A. V. Filimonov. They declared the beginning of work on the creation of a typological test with the application of the methods of pattern recognition using the methodology of the extraction of hidden knowledge (Knowledge Discovery), figuratively named “the working of the subsoil of data” (Data mining). “The initial stage of the elaboration consisted in the analysis of the answers of respondents whose type has been determined. In the capacity of the initial one, the set of questions of the Trait test, worked out under the leadership of one of the authors of the work — A. V. Filimonov — was taken. The material obtained earlier was supplemented and subjected to analysis with the help of various methods of data analysis: correlational, factor, cluster, discriminant, and of local geometry. This analysis showed the insufficient effectiveness of methods based on the independent determination of separate traits (the basic four or the set of 15 Reinin traits). At the same time, even on very limited material (of the order of 100 respondents with type determined by various specialists), combinations of answers to definite groups of questions were revealed which are characteristic of certain types. It was also discovered that the questions discriminating by the features sensing-intuition and rationality-irrationality turned out to be different in types differing by the feature extraversion-introversion — to which a psychological interpretation can be given. Thereby such an approach permitted not only an advance in the matter of the creation of a more effective test, but also the obtaining of additional information about the specificity of the manifestation of separate traits in people of various psychological types.

“A check on the reproducibility of answers upon repeat testing (including with the use of two different tests with partially coinciding questions) showed that on approximately 20% of the questions, respondents on two attempts gave opposite answers — and moreover, in the case where the conditions of testing and the psychological state of the respondent differed sharply, it was precisely the questions significant for the given type that fell into the number of those changed.

“On the whole, the analysis conducted showed that for the creation of an effective typological test it is necessary:

• to conduct the testing of a large number (of the order of several hundred) of respondents with a determined psychological type;
• to introduce into the test additional control questions which will permit the taking into account of characteristics of the respondent not directly connected with his psychological type, and of the state of the respondent at the moment of testing (situational anxiety).

“The stimulus to the conducting of such large work is the hope for the creation not simply of a test permitting the determination of the psychological type of a person with higher exactness, but of a test that will help a person to reveal his individuality.”

Statistical methodology permits the posing of the question of the creation of a socionic test that would not depend on the personal preferences of the one who is attempting to build such a test. One of such attempts was undertaken by A. M. Elyashevich. At first he used the existing socionic questionnaires and proposed to the contingent of people accessible to him, whose types were presumably known to him, that they indicate their preferences in the choice of answers. Having subjected the obtained massif of answers to statistical processing, he managed to evaluate the supposed validity of each concrete question. In particular, it turned out that some of the questions used by socionists are in general not differentiating, while part showed only a weak tendency in the deviation from neutral values.

One can present a still more general approach to the building not only of verbal but in general of any socionic tests. Let us call such an approach the total statistical approach to socionic testing. Below its scheme is adduced.

Scheme of the total statistical approach to socionic testing:

1. A set of presumably psychologically valid questions is chosen. Validity in the given case means that the question is aimed at some psychological trait presumably inherent in a type or a group of types. However, no obligatory degree of validity is presupposed in advance. Blanks with such questions are proposed to a large (desirably, a very large) contingent of respondents — which, of course, is difficult and requires material expenditures.

2. The answer cards of the subjects are subjected to statistical processing, giving the possibility of evaluating the differentiating power of each question, without relation to what it properly differentiates.

3. The strongly differentiating questions are singled out — that is, those giving a result close to dichotomousness. One can suppose that a confidence level of the differentiating capacity of a question exists.

4. Correlational groups of questions are revealed: a) those giving the same dichotomy; b) those which never fall into one dichotomy; c) those having a constant degree of correlation with a concrete group of questions.

5. A correspondence is established between the groups of correlations and the socionic types.

“Behavior is complex and is determined by a multitude of internal and external factors. For this reason, to try to form two groups of persons identical in all respects except one, and to place them in identical conditions, is impossible even in a laboratory experiment” [2]. The difficulty formulated here must stimulate the search for other approaches to the ideology of experiment, and one of such possibilities is, for example, the following. On a maximally possible (in the limit, infinite) personal sample, a very large massif of data is formed — the result of diverse testing. In this massif, as a result of various kinds of processing of the values obtained, invariants are determined as correlates of the stimulus material. This must ensure the possibility of the structuring of the personal massif, in the sense that the discovered invariants may become typologically significant indicators. Further, in accordance with theoretical notions about the functioning of Model “A,” one can discover groups of bearers of definite TIMs — and already on the revealed bearers one can calibrate the stimuli valid by the feature of the revealing of each of the TIMs. This is one of the thoughts that constantly hover in the air of socionic gatherings.

Concluding this chapter, I want again to pose two problematic questions.

Is the creation of a highly effective socionic test, giving the possibility of determining the TIM of a person with a hundred-percent guarantee, all the same realistic? And the second question — are such tests needed?

The answer to the first question, despite the necessity and possibility of bringing socionic tests up to limiting perfection, seems, all the same, negative. This is connected with the fact that, it seems, fully to formalize the determination of the TIM with the help of subjective choices and formalized features is impossible — because the answers themselves bear a probabilistic character, and the interpretation of the questions all the same turns out to be connected with the use of the intuition of the expert and the subject. Therefore, without denying the necessity of further work on the perfection of socionic tests, it is proposed to orient oneself toward the fact that such a test, though it will not be one-hundred-percent, can all the same be brought to a very high level of reliability and will be useful in the work of the psychologist and the socionist, constituting a formal basis for the communication of the specialist with the client — and that such tests will be used by experts or expert groups conscious of their professional responsibility, commanding the necessary professional skills, and adhering to a code of the professional.

The answer to the second question depends on the position a person occupies. If purely technical or prestige moments interest him, then the answer will be positive. Such a test can be used by anyone, and without special preliminary preparation. Such a test can be entered into a machine and the process of the determination of the TIM automated. This is unconditionally convenient. However, another position is also possible, connected with the taking into account of ethical moments. Automating a test, handing it over to a machine, a person removes from himself the responsibility for the consequences connected with the ascribing to a person of a concrete TIM, and turns the test into a soulless mechanical means. And here at once the question arises of into whose hands this means will fall. This is all the same problem of the responsibility of the scientist for the consequences of his actions. This is especially significant in our time, when, using all the attainments of democracy, a large quantity of “shady professionals” have come out onto the arena, unconscionably using these attainments against people and society.

And one more remark.

The features distinguishing one TIM from another are approximately as difficult of access for verbalization as, for example, colors. Can a sighted person describe in words how green looks, and how yellow differs from violet? At the same time, similarly to how we can more or less correctly describe the difference between objects of everyday life, socionics is capable of describing the differences between TIMs. And similarly to how we are capable at first glance, at various distances, of distinguishing, say, an oak from a birch — whatever their relative sizes may be — in exactly the same way a person is capable of distinguishing, for example, a Zhukov from a Yesenin. It is simply that before the discovery of socionics people had no such task and were not trained to draw distinctions between people at such a level. A professional socionist, glancing at fig. 10.32, will easily see the difference not only gender but socionic. The girl is a sensory-ethical extravert, and the young man a logico-intuitive extravert. Napoleon and Jack. For those who doubt, I adduce in fig. 10.33 the faces of this pair. Of course, this is a hypothesis; but this example is an image of what visual diagnostics could be. No tests whatsoever — only a single glance. There are socionists who assert that they spend on the diagnostics of the TIM of one person no more than three minutes. But the matter here is not in the time expended, but in the reliability of the result obtained. But all the same there are grounds to believe that a type can be determined instantaneously — just as we recognize an acquaintance.

(Figs. 10.32, 10.33. A dual pair from behind, and the same pair in profile.)

In this sense, socionics, besides its psychological role, may perform a special cultural role, helping to form previously unused capacities for the recognition of socionic markers. Then the necessity of using tests will fall away — we shall recognize the TIM just as we recognize the things habitual to us. From my personal experience of the mastering of socionics I know that, simply communicating with a person, posing to him no test questions whatsoever — and even not communicating, but simply episodically observing him — you suddenly at some moment recognize his type. Of course, this is attained by persistent work, but it is attained. One can also hope that with time methodologies of accelerated training in the recognition of the socionic type will be worked out. And perhaps someday parents will, from the earliest childhood, teach a child to see a person’s type just as readily as he distinguishes a spoon from a fork, or lilac from rowan.

And one more thing. Glance at fig. 10.34. In it are presented children of an age from a little more than a year to two and a half years. It is obvious that each of them already has a character. But besides character, each of them has a type — and, in the given case, these are children of different socionic types. I do not insist that my determination of their types is final, and of course any socionist — and, all the more, a non-socionist — may refute me, proposing his own version; but what is important here is only that this type exists.

(Fig. 10.34. Children of an age from one to three years.)

Boy (1), 1 year and 2 months. Presumably a sensory-logical extravert (Zhukov). Here one can indicate such indicators of the type: a form of the head more or less inscribable in a cube, a sturdily built little body, relatively wide shoulders for his age, straight bearing, a pose of calm domination, an open and confident position of the head, tightly compressed lips.

Girl (2), 2 years and 4 months. Readiness for immediate decisive actions (irrationality), puffy, rounded lips, a heightened level of energetic activity, a capricious-cranky expression of the face; the emotional function occupies the creative position, logic is in the place of the conservative-critical function. Hypothesis: sensory-ethical extraversion (Napoleon).

Girl (3), 2 years and 6 months. An extravert ready for cooperation (rationality), an open and kind smile, a high level of energetic activity, playfulness; the emotional function occupies the program position, logic is in the place of the expectational-resource function. Hypothesis: ethico-sensory extraversion (Hugo).

Girl (4), 2 years and 10 months. Presumably an ethico-intuitive introvert (Dostoevsky). Here one can indicate such indicators of the type: obedience (rationality), a “questioning” expression of the face, soft shyness, concentration on the inner. Examining photographs 2, 3, 4 in fig. 10.34 and photographs 2, 3, 4 in fig. 10.35, one can reveal such a factor as the tonality of behavior. This is the most general energo-plastic configuration in which the personality is immersed. Tonality can be filled with the most diverse contents, can be modulated by various moods and situational reactions; but it is distinguished by high stability, and, once formed, it remains for the course of many years the shell within the framework of which the phenomenology of the personality unfolds. The little ones presented in the photographs will become adults, their biocomputer subsystem will be loaded with numerous useful, neutral, or destructive programs — but all these programs will be realized within the limits of the once-formed tonality.

My almost forty years of experience of communication with small children permits me to advance the hypothesis that the socionic type of a person is innate, while character, in the case of normal development, is formed by two years. Further there will be only the working-up of the sociotype, the acquisition of habits — including cultural ones — the mastering of professional programs. However, all this stands in need of deep theoretical working-through and careful experimental verification.

Examining the photographs in fig. 10.35, where one and the same girl is presented at an age from three months to two years ten months, it is not difficult to suppose her socionic type. Sturdily and harmoniously built, with a high level of energetic activity, she can easily be assigned to the extraverts. That she is always ready for immediate decisive actions, the sense of which is to defend her position, can be understood as irrationality, which is well noticeable in photo 3. Openness (photo 4) and sociability (photo 2), alongside the ability quickly to establish contacts (photo 2), give grounds to suppose a strong position of emotionality. That the girl is a sensoric is well visible in photos 2 and 3. As a result we come out onto a sensory-ethical extravert (Napoleon). Here it is interesting to note that in photo 1, corresponding to three months, a smile is already noticeable, representing an instinctive-reflexive stretching of the lips. Unconditionally, this smile is innate, and it is not yet used in the capacity of a communicative means, as in photo 2 — but it is already present in the psychic programs.

(Fig. 10.35. One and the same girl at the age of 3 months, 1 year 8 months, 2 years 5 months, 2 years 10 months.)

The examples adduced are called upon to draw the attention of readers to the early manifestedness of the TIM. Almost forty years of experience of work with small children permits me to advance the hypothesis that in a normally developing child character is formed by two years, and that further only the sociotype is worked up and concrete professional skills and habits are acquired. As for the type, it is visible already immediately after birth. Of course, to prove the innate character of the TIM, deeper and more systematic investigations are needed. (Translator’s note: this hypothesis is stated twice in the source, in slightly differing wording; both statements are preserved as printed.)

The attainments of socionics permit the supposition that the structural units of the psyche are innate. Moreover, their primary functional semantics is identical for all without exception of the representatives of humanity. The TIMs, however, differ from one another by aspect filling, while people as bearers of TIMs differ from one another by the concrete program filling of these functions and the level of their energetic manifestedness.

In doing so, the TIMs differ only by the aspect filling of the functions; but the characters of people are determined, above all, by generalized programs of activity (psychotypes), and then also by concrete everyday and professional programs of behavior.

In this work I did not set as my goal the solution of all the problems of diagnostics — for one person this is not easy to do, and perhaps impossible; but I would like to draw additional attention to these problems. I would want the people who will be proposing new test elaborations to have a good notion of the problem field of this thematics, and not to think that with one or two beautiful tricks one can obtain a high-quality testing instrument. Unconditionally, it would be useful for socionists to turn to the rich experience of psychology, where many varieties of tests have been accumulated. Incidentally, a good survey of testing methodologies can be found in the book of the professional psychologist L. F. Burlachuk [23].

A remarkable example of a turn to the rich arsenal of tests in psychology is the work of T. Menshova [24], where she, using the Rosenzweig picture test, tries to reproduce the semantics of the Augustinavičiūtė–Reinin traits (ART). Unfortunately, the theoretical side of the ART is almost not worked out, and their superficial, approximate, and simplified understanding by practicing socionists in no way guarantees the reliability of the results obtained. For that matter, the work of T. Menshova is splendid material for the further analysis of such a not-simple construct as the ART.

Conclusions to Chapter Ten

1. Professional psychologists have joined in the working-out of socionic tests.

2. The analysis of works of imaginative literature, of painting, of music, and even of the results of the creative work of philosophers shows that in these fixed products of human activity there are present markers and indicators of various sides of the personality of their creators. It is highly plausible that in these products the socionic type of the creators too finds reflection.

3. The preceding conclusion makes plausible the possibility of the creation of textual, graphical, graphological, plastic, and any other tests, on the basis of which it will be possible with high reliability to determine the TIM.

4. On the path of the creation of socionic tests, encouraging results have been obtained.

References

1. Dyuk, V. A., Computer Psychodiagnostics, St. Petersburg, 1994.
2. Bodalev, A. A., et al., General Psychodiagnostics, Moscow, 1987.
3. Kline, P., A Handbook of Test Construction, Kyiv, 1994.
4. Skrebets, V. A., Psychological Diagnostics, Kyiv, 1999.
5. Melnikov, V. M., Yampolsky, L. T., Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Personality, Moscow, 1985.
6. Foundations of Psychodiagnostics, ed. A. G. Shmelev, Rostov-on-Don, 1996.
7. Leonhard, K., Accentuated Personalities, Kyiv, 1989.
8. Lomonosova, E. K., “The Technology of Socionic Typing,” XXI Socionic Conference, September 17–23, 2005, Kyiv.
9. Eglit, I. M., “The Practice of the Application of Protocols in the Verbal Remote Determination of the TIM,” XXI Socionic Conference, September 17–23, 2005, Kyiv.
10. Karpenko, O. B., “The Drawing and Socionics,” report, XXI Socionic Conference, September 17–23, 2005, Kyiv.
11. Filimonov, A. V., “On the Socionic Tests Entering into the SOCIOTEST 2.1 System,” SMiPL no. 3, 1997.
12. Lytova, M. F., Lytov, D. A., “The Multi-factor Self-consistent Socionic Test (MT): Preliminary Results,” part 1, SMiPL 4, 2004.
13. Shulman, G. A., “The Drawing Test,” report, seminars of 1987–89, Kyiv.
14. Vaisband, I. D., “The Dichotomous Test,” reference materials on socionics, manuscript, 1987.
15. Filatova, E. S., The Personality in the Mirror of Socionics, St. Petersburg, 2001.
16. Tikhonov, A. P., “A Test for the Determination of the Socionic Type,” SMiPL 1, 2001.
17. Krivoruk, V. K., “Character and Handwriting,” report, XXI Socionic Conference, September 17–23, 2005, Kyiv.
18. Romanova, E. S., Graphical Methods in Practical Psychology, St. Petersburg, 2001.
19. Tsypin, P. E., Technologies of Successful Typing, Moscow, 2005.
20. Kochubeeva, L. A., Stoyalova, M. L., “The Application of the Projective Drawing Methodology ‘Nonexistent Animal’ for the Determination of the TIM,” SMiPL 6, 2002.
21. Lilly, J., Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, Kyiv, 1994; the original published in 1967.
22. Zannos, S., Human Types, Moscow, 1998.
23. Burlachuk, L. F., Introduction to Projective Psychology, Kyiv, 1997.
24. Menshova, T. I., “The Reinin Traits in Pictures,” in the collection Secrets of Typing, Moscow, 2004.

Notes

1. This idea was repeatedly expressed in various forms by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, and also by G. Reinin, A. V. Filimonov, E. S. Filatova, A. V. Bukalov, V. V. Gulenko, S. Churyumov, and others.

2. Releasers — biologically or psychologically significant features perceived at the instinctive or subconscious level.

3. Bruner’s experiments showed violations of the constancy of perception, manifesting themselves in a person depending on the motivational factor. These are experimental facts of the type of the overestimation of the size of a dollar by small children (especially from poor families), of the height of a person having a high social status (by adults), or of differences in the recognition of one and the same drawing presented tachistoscopically for a short time interval, conditioned by culturological differences: North Americans “saw” baseball, whereas Latin Americans saw a corrida.

4. A dramatic experiment in medicine is what an experiment is called that the researcher performs directly on himself. John Lilly in his experiments used normalized doses of LSD, which permitted him not only to penetrate into a series of structures of the subconscious, but also to fix his observations in the protocols of the experiments [21].