Chapter 15

Chapter 15. Socionics and Psychology

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY: THE PHENOMENON OF THE SELF-ORGANIZATION OF DYNAMIC STRUCTURES OF INTERPERSONAL INTERACTION IN HUMAN SOCIETY. THE ESSENCE OF THE DISCOVERY: A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN PHENOMENON HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED — THE SELF-ORGANIZATION OF DYNAMIC STRUCTURES OF INTERPERSONAL INTERACTION IN HUMAN SOCIETY — CONSISTING IN THE FACT THAT WITHIN A GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS A DEFINITE DYNAMIC STRUCTURE OF INTERACTION BECOMES ESTABLISHED (THE SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE PARTNERS, THE INTENSITY OF TEMPO AND OTHER PARAMETERS OF VERBAL EXCHANGE, THE CORRESPONDING PRODUCTIVITY OF JOINT ACTIVITY, SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES, AND SO FORTH), CONDITIONED BY THE DIFFERENTIATION OF HUMAN SOCIETY INTO COOPERATING PERSONALITY TYPES. (from the diploma of discovery awarded to A. Augustinavičiūtė and co-authors)

The world revolves not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values; inaudibly it revolves. — F. Nietzsche

Freedom is to science what air is to a living creature. — H. Poincaré

A scientist must travel untrodden paths, in spite of obstacles. — N. Lobachevsky

Science is a drama of ideas. Science is not, and never will be, a finished book. — A. Einstein

Heed the truth from anyone. — The Talmud

Honour is rarely found where glory is, and still more rarely is glory found where honour is. — I. Zeimeno

Socionics as a science — or, perhaps more accurately, as the embryo of a science — is gradually turning from an “ugly duckling” into a beautiful swan, and it has now existed for about four decades, its Kyiv school for about two. Yet socionics is still not officially recognized as a science; in Ukraine, for example, it has not been included in the lists of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC), although it has long and successfully been taught in schools, colleges and universities. Its results and methods are used in other sciences and in practical applications — literary studies, the formation of work teams, the adaptation of populations affected by man-made and natural catastrophes. Thanks to the work of G. K. Bukalov it has found what would seem to be unexpected applications in engineering, and so on. Yet the range of its possible applications is considerably wider. Let us recall how broadly Moreno’s sociograms — on the whole not very informative — came to be applied, while socionic regularities, rich in content, still find neither support nor application among officially practising psychologists.

High-ranking psychologists, those who officially represent psychology as a science and on whom recognition of socionics might depend, do not acknowledge it; they wage open and covert war against it and try to compromise it. Thus one head of a department of psychology, a doctor and professor (we shall not name him here), declared that socionics would enter his department “only over his dead body.” Evidently the physicists were right when they said in their day that new ideas take hold not because the adherents of the old are won over, but simply because the adherents of the old gradually die out.

But on what grounds, then, do high-ranking psychologists reject socionics? If they are orienting themselves by articles and books of a mass-market character — well, there is plenty of mass-market production in psychology too. And yet there exist the pioneering works of Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, in which a professional psychologist is capable of discerning all the marks of a scientific discovery, to say nothing of the official diploma in which her discovery is clearly formulated and recorded.

One can understand the reasons for the subconscious behaviour of such people if one supposes that they see in socionics a possible competitor to psychology, that they fear for their position, or that they simply do not wish to master new methods. All the same, at the level of consciousness some sort of psychological defence would have to be formed, for within the framework of science one cannot simply wave the matter away by saying that everything socionics offers is meaningless, of no interest to science, nothing new, and so on.

And at the department of psychology just mentioned such a defence was indeed formulated: the claim was advanced that “socionics is no more than one more typology — far from the best, and, if one looks closely, a rather mediocre one at that.” Of course socionics is a typology, but it is not just one more typology: it is the primary typology, to which most, if not all, of the typologies existing in psychology can be reduced, and from which they can be derived.

Let us consider the question of the relationship between socionics and psychology. Are they two scientific disciplines of equal standing? Or perhaps two competing directions locked in a fight to the death? Or does socionics represent a subordinate part of psychology? Or is socionics, possibly, the “illegitimate daughter” of psychology? Or might it be pleasant for high-ranking psychologists to regard socionics as an artefact (and that in the best case), a misunderstanding, a symbolic toy of amateurs, a deftly cobbled-together construct with whose help one can fool the simple-minded — for profit, say — or even the delirium of a mad inventor?

Or — and this may come as a complete surprise to psychologists — is the truth exactly the reverse: that socionics is a metapsychology? The metapsychology prophesied by Freud, a science representing a higher level of abstraction than psychology, a science that for the first time discovers the theoretical contours of psychology, which until now has been no more than an aggregate of empirical observations and experimentally discovered recommendations? If that is so, then the resistance to the new knowledge on the part of psychologists belonging to a certain psychological type is understandable: they would have to assimilate new knowledge, cede part of their authority, go “cap in hand” to the representatives of another scientific school, and make corrections to their own knowledge bases.

Glover [9], one of the subtle theoreticians of Freudianism, wrote: “As has already been indicated, the description of the processes of mental activity requires a threefold approach to the subject. Although it is unimportant to the psychologist where exactly mental activity takes place (I would say that at present this can no longer be unimportant — S.Ch.), for convenience of exposition he finds it necessary to postulate the existence of some organized system which it is convenient to call the structure of mental (I would speak of psychic — S.Ch.) activity. Having done so, he is obliged to describe what kinds of energy set this structure, or apparatus, in motion. Having taken this up, nothing remains for him but to describe the mechanisms by which the apparatus of mental activity regulates this energy. Such a threefold approach is what Freud called the metapsychological approach to the experimental or introspectively obtained descriptive data which are the raw material of psychological science.”

This quotation presents, very concisely, the quintessence of Freud’s methodological attitudes.

First, it is clear that Freud took a critical view of the state of psychology in his time. Unfortunately, psychology has since been unable to change its theoretical status — it continues to remain a collection of empirical findings, in most cases, admittedly, very useful ones. A few weak structuralist attempts have changed little in this situation.

Second, Freud presupposes the existence of a structure of the psyche. This is almost banal, in the sense of “surely it does not take so much intelligence to make such a simple and natural assumption.” Moreover, everything done before Freud by Wundt and the associationists may be regarded as an unconscious or half-conscious attempt to identify the structure of the psyche and of thinking. However, all of that concerned the external, predominantly phenomenological side of these entities — that is, what should rather be called a scheme, or even simply a list of observable phenomena. But when Freud formulated the idea of the subconscious, and then of the superconscious (even if in the form of the superego), and thereby designated the peculiar storeys of the psyche, it became possible to speak of large structural blocks of the psyche — blocks whose existence was not something self-evident, and it took Freud’s genius to make such a discovery. But did Freud discover the structure of the psyche? No; he discovered only part of that structure and thus indicated the existence of such a structure. In its full extent the structure of the psyche, in the form of maximally generalized structural blocks, is presented in socionics.

Third, Freud was the first within the framework of science to raise the question of the energetic side of the psyche’s operation. The work of psychologists before this may be compared to driving courses where students are told everything about automobiles except one thing — where they get the energy to drive. Unfortunately, the question of the energetic provisioning of the psyche remains in contemporary psychology at approximately the level of Freud’s conjectures.

And, finally, the last point. It is necessary to discover and describe the mechanisms by which the psyche manages this energy. Here the least of all has been done in psychology. Enormous efforts by psychologists have been expended on discovering and enumerating the results of the psyche’s work, the stages in the unfolding of psychic phenomenology, but alas, no answer to the question posed by Freud has been obtained in psychology.

We may therefore state that, regrettably, psychology has still not attained the ideal indicated by Freud and Glover; and sometimes one gets the impression that psychologists, however hard they try to achieve maximum objectivity in their scientific work, are nevertheless engaged, in more or less disguised form, in investigating projections of their own problems. Thus, despite the enormous contribution that Freud’s psychoanalytic theory made to psychology, it is impossible to deny that it was to a considerable degree a solution to the financial problems, first of Freud himself and then of a whole army of his followers, both in Germany and in the USA. And if a psychological method provides a decent — a very decent — income, what psychologist who exploits that method will criticize it?

Psychology has passed through several methodological crises in the course of its history. A serious crisis was the appearance of psychoanalysis, when, in the words of the remarkable researcher of Freudianism E. Glover, “it became possible to discard the old, incorrect classifications of psychic phenomena based chiefly on descriptive criteria, and to replace these metapsychological classifications with a system that will one day rival the Linnaean in scope and complexity” [9]. And further: “psychoanalytic theory penetrated various humanitarian spheres, ‘metastasized’ into them in various ways, and was taken into service by a number of disciplines as a useful instrument of research.” This introduction of psychoanalysis into other subject areas had a revolutionary character and provoked rejection on the part of the — as always reactionary-dogmatic — psychological establishment of the time, and active support from the innovatively minded stratum of scholars.

A. N. Leontiev, an authoritative psychologist in the Soviet period, wrote that “although the former subjective-empirical psychology willingly called itself the science of consciousness, in reality it never was such. Consciousness invariably appeared in psychology as something external, merely as a condition for the flow of psychological processes… The idea of the externality of consciousness lies in the well-known comparison of consciousness to a stage on which the events of the life of the soul are played out. For these events to occur a stage is needed, but the stage itself does not participate in them.” Of course, Soviet psychology cannot be called subjective-empirical. It was probably even worse — totalitarian-repressive. It considered itself a science “by the rules of the mob.” Its highest totalitarian-repressive achievement was Academician Vishnevsky’s conception of sluggish schizophrenia, on the basis of which any dissenter could be given this diagnosis with subsequent compulsory treatment in the “psikhushkas.” Still, despite the ideological burden on scientific methodology, Soviet psychology did have several talented scholars: L. Vygotsky, A. Leontiev, A. Luria… However, these bitter conclusions became obvious only after the lifting of the “iron curtain” and broad acquaintance with the achievements of Western colleagues. It turned out that one could make quite a good living from their subjective-empirical technologies — which is exactly what perestroika-era and post-perestroika post-Soviet psychologists promptly set about doing.

For post-Soviet psychology, the revolutionary event was the partial change of psychological paradigm connected with the penetration into the post-Soviet space of many developments and directions in psychology to which, in “pre-perestroika” times, access was closed or strictly rationed by the Soviet scientific establishment — itself likewise highly conservative and dogmatic.

In connection with the processes of renewal in psychology in the post-Soviet space, one may say that “the development of this process took place against the background of declining interest in academic psychology, which was still bound hand and foot to experimental and statistical methods and positivist models and which with ‘agonizing pedantry’ [12] carefully avoided psychoanalytic” — and now, one may add, socionic — “discourse.”

Socionics possesses instrumental means that make it possible to define very precisely the difference between the two entities that psychology and socionics are. For this it is enough to compare their integral TIMs. The integral image of psychology is intuitive-ethical extraversion (Ie — the synthetic literary image: Don Juan), while the integral image of socionics is intuitive-logical extraversion (Il — the synthetic literary image: Don Quixote).¹ In socionic terms these two entities are kindred; they have much in common, they have a common subject matter. Both are concerned with the human personality, but they go about it differently.

The intuitive-ethical (or intuitive-feeling) extraverted essence of psychology is capable of penetrating effectively into the nature of personality and of framing its insights so that they make a strong impression on society as a whole and on each individual person. It knows how to “get inside your soul” and to be liked. In this entity, the ability to establish relations favourable to itself occupies a strong position. Its products are distinguished by attractiveness and work well as instruments intended for solving practical tasks. Logic occupies a weak position in it, but this position does not permit reproaches along the aspect that fills it — and in this case that aspect is precisely logic. This means that psychology is satisfied with the level of logical coherence of its constructions, and does not accept logical criticism of its constructs.

The intuitive-logical (or thinking) essence of socionics seeks the ultimate logical expression of the human personality and does not stop at mere plausibility and effectiveness. Logic occupies a strong position in it. Ethics occupies a weak position. This points to its impartiality and its capacity to give its recommendations “without respect of persons.”

Comparing psychology and socionics, one may say that psychology discovers phenomenological types as relatively stable aggregates of more or less accidental traits. Socionics, for the first time, discovers essential types as necessary couplings of objective properties.

Psychologists have created a multitude of typological schemes, and many of them are in their own way remarkable and productive, but not one of them can be laid at the foundation of psychological knowledge as a science.

Scientific psychology arose as experimental research with a rigid reliance on the methodology of positivism, and on such terms it could very easily consider itself a science, proceeding subconsciously and by default from a completely different definition of science than the one that gradually came to be worked out in scholars’ minds in the process of overcoming positivist programmes. In the remarkable book Psychology: An Integrated Approach [25], edited by M. Eysenck, son of the famous H. Eysenck, a full review is given of the substantial and valuable results psychology achieved in the course of the twentieth century; but from that same review it follows that psychology still remains at the stage of empirical accumulation of data and only to an insignificant degree ventures upon theoretical generalizations.

We have already partly examined the question of typologies using the examples of the theoretical paradoxes of the MMPI, Leonhard’s accentuations, and the typology of the Lichko laboratory. Here, in a different methodological context, let us mention several typological constructions that have gained fame in narrow or broad circles of specialists and, most importantly, possess psychological accreditation and therefore, by definition, scientific status.

Take, for example, H. Eysenck. Presumably he was a logical-sensory extravert. He is one of the greatest practitioners and theoreticians of psychology. He possessed a subtle, refined and rigorous mind. This was not a man who could thoughtlessly accept someone else’s doctrine. Striving to get to the essence, he passed everything through himself. For many years he lectured on psychology at the University of London and was simultaneously director of the Institute of Psychiatry. And at the same time (!) he was a consulting professor at various universities in the USA. His authority was enormous, although supporters of psychoanalysis regarded him, to put it mildly, with tension — for he took a critical view both of Freud’s theoretical propositions and of the practical effectiveness of psychoanalysis. As early as 1952 he stated openly that there were neither empirical nor theoretical grounds for considering psychoanalysis and related approaches to the treatment of mental disorders effective. And this despite the fact that psychoanalysis was in demand! But then, in the end, astrology and psychics are also in demand, yet for rigorous science that is no proof of their legitimacy. Eysenck’s theoretical convictions were based not merely on a large but on an enormous body of empirical material. His model was the experimental approach of the remarkable Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov and his followers in other countries. He founded the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy. To his pen belong 45 published books and 600 articles! Among his books are such splendid titles as The Measurement of Personality, The Scientific Study of Personality, The Structure of Human Personality, and many others.

At first glance his typology looks attractive and even impeccable. It has a structuralist subtext, it uses concepts that presuppose scientific soundness, and it has undergone empirical testing in practical work with people. It would seem, “what more could one want?” And nevertheless, the methodological potential of socionics makes it possible to look at Eysenck’s typology critically. Let us begin with the fact that Eysenck, in mastering the concepts of extraversion–introversion, subtly and almost imperceptibly distorted them, despite all the care with which he approached the refinement of these concepts. The point is that Jung appealed to the archetypes standing behind these concepts and never gave a precise explication of them — above all because that is difficult. Eysenck, however, tried to give a precise presentation of these categories through a series of more concrete concepts subordinated to them hierarchically and representing their semantic spectrum. As a result he matched extraversion with the following series of more concrete concepts subordinate to it: sociability, liveliness, activity, persistence and striving for success. Hence in his questionnaire one may encounter such phrases as “Do you consider yourself a cheerful person?”, “Are you a talkative person?” or “Are you able to give free rein to your feelings and have a real good time in a noisy company?” In accordance with the above, an affirmative answer to these questions should mean that you are an extravert, and a negative one that you are an introvert. Socionics operates with a conceptual apparatus that makes it possible to give rigorously grounded descriptions of personality types. True, this does not mean that all the type descriptions found in books on socionics are accurate; but these are the growing pains of a new science, and here the help of psychologists with their colossal experience would not go amiss at all. Nevertheless, there exists an invariant of the descriptions, concentrated in the socionic models, and it gives grounds for disagreeing with Eysenck’s understanding of extraversion–introversion. Thus, for example, all the ethical introverts — Dumas, Yesenin, Dreiser, Dostoevsky — are talkative enough to answer the corresponding question in the affirmative. Moreover Dumas, by definition a sensory-ethical introvert, is certainly cheerful, whatever blurred sense may be put into that word. Dumas, “introvert though he is,” is sociable and lively. People of this type are able to “have a real good time in a noisy company.” And again one may say that all ethical introverts are sociable, although in some extreme sense not all of them can be characterized as cheerful. But to the same degree one cannot characterize as especially cheerful a portion of the extraverts either — for example the logical-sensory extravert Stierlitz (Ls), Zhukov (Sl) or Don Quixote (Il). Here, incidentally, the logical blurredness of the concept of cheerfulness becomes visible. So there is no getting by without a careful explication of psychological concepts. And as for denying socionic introverts a striving for success — one’s tongue simply will not turn to say it, though of course success should not be understood, for instance, merely as a career in business. But it is highly probable that it is precisely this sense that the logical-sensory extravert Eysenck predominantly puts into the concept of success. Did such sensory-ethical introverts as the greatest novelist of all times and peoples Alexandre Dumas père, the brilliant impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, or the unique comic actor Oleg Tabakov not attain the highest peaks of success? Of course, individual examples, however striking, cannot be regarded as proof in such matters, but they do require a precise theoretical answer. Evaluating Eysenck’s understanding of extraversion–introversion, one may say that, having made them more comprehensible, having brought them, so to speak, “closer to the people,” he at the same time as it were lowered their factorial dimension, since originally these categories are factors of a higher order than the sum of the blurred categories he proposed. Blurredness in this context is not a term of abuse but an official logical term.

The second axis of Eysenck’s typology, “neuroticism–stability,” which comes from psychiatry and is applied to healthy people, looks conceptually alien in relation to extraversion–introversion, although it is a perfectly sound psychological construct. Moreover, of this pair one may say that for characterizing a healthy personality it is, generally speaking, arbitrary — one could have taken some other polar pair instead, with the same result. It is, however, well received when lecturing to students of psychology, medicine and even law, and that too is of no small importance. And of course, in the hands of a master everything works.

A vivid example of empirical improvisation is the typology of Roberto Assagioli, presumably Don Quixote (Il). He is unquestionably a talented and productive Italian psychologist who managed to oppose to Freudian psychoanalysis his own psychosynthesis, which gained sufficient currency in psychological and psychiatric circles. Here analysis — dismemberment, decomposition — is opposed by synthesis: joining, assembly. For an orientation toward recovery this is a very good aid. But in this case what interests us is his typology.

Assagioli does not conceal a certain connection of his construct with Jung’s typology — he constantly draws the corresponding parallels, emphasizing the similarity, as he understands it, of some type of his own typology with some type of Jung’s. However, unlike Jung’s typology, even on a cursory acquaintance with Assagioli’s typology one fairly quickly perceives its approximateness and incompleteness. Besides this, one may speak here of an uncontrolled overlapping of the semantic fields of certain types.

For solving the tasks of psychosynthesis, Assagioli proposes to use the following seven types: the volitional, the loving, the actively-practical, the artistically-creative, the scientific, the idealistic, and finally the organizational (see Table 15.01).

What criterion, presumably, is used in this typology? Most plausibly, Assagioli intuitively chose these seven categories, relying simply on his personal experience of contact with vivid personalities whose image had made a sufficient impression on him. It is hard to propose a single criterion here — and there simply is none. In the case of the volitional type we are dealing with a psychological characteristic. In the case of the loving type one may speak of a prolonged but nevertheless transient emotional state — unless, of course, Assagioli invested this name with a meaning of his own, blurring an already blurred concept. In the case of the actively-practical type we are most likely dealing with a generalized social role, since presumably one should here abstract from the volitional component of behaviour, given that it is reserved for the volitional type. Besides, the choice of such a double term ought to imply that the reference is not to any activity — scientific, creative or familial, say — but precisely to practical activity. This concept stands closest to the image of the businessman. The double term “artistically-creative” most probably indicates the image of an artist or performer, perhaps a craftsman, and thus emphasizes above all professional affiliation. The scientific type is likewise a generalized professional affiliation. The idealistic type, however, is already connected with the sphere of worldview programmes. And finally the organizational type, which is hard to oppose to the volitional and the actively-practical — but the choice of term obliges.

Table 15.01. Approximate correspondence between Assagioli’s types and the socionic IAs

Assagioli’s types	Socionic IAs
Volitional	sn+lg
Loving	et
Actively-practical	ex+lg+ra
Artistically-creative	sn+et
Scientific	it+lg
Idealistic	it
Organizational	sn+lg+ex

From the socionic point of view, Assagioli’s types represent deformed basic types, but they can nevertheless — given the peculiarities of the functioning of human intelligence — be used in consultative work with people for the correction and normalization of behaviour. The theoretical defects of this typology will then be compensated for by imagination and personal attitudes. The approximate correspondence between the socionic types and Assagioli’s types is presented in Table 15.01.

Nevertheless, relying on his typology, Assagioli somehow coped with the tasks that arose for him in the course of psychosynthesis. That is because in the hands of a master everything works.

Very advanced-looking is the work carried out by L. Sobchik on modernizing the MMPI and turning it into the Standardized Multifactor Method of Personality Study (SMIL). The clinically oriented terminology was replaced by psychologically oriented terminology, and this brought the test considerably closer to the humanistic ideal of an orientation toward health rather than illness. Nevertheless, all the basic methodological shortcomings of the MMPI remained unchanged. First and foremost, this is the weak justification of the choice of basic concepts. Whereas the controlling test-theoretical scales L, F and K are chosen quite correctly in accordance with theoretical developments in the field of testing, the choice of the content scales — which are precisely the ones that must ensure the test’s validity — reflects the history of the test’s creation on the basis of empirical findings in the clinical sphere. Sobchik, properly speaking, carried out a translation of the clinical scales into psychological language. Of course, the correctness of this translation requires special justification. And although, when comparing the MMPI and SMIL, one retains an impression of their equivalence, this is merely an impression. All the more so when one learns that the MMPI was created “as the occasion arose,” for the documentarily grounded selection of pilots for the American air force; then serious doubt arises about the universality of both tests. One may suppose that the MMPI will also be valid for selecting sailors for the American navy, and possibly for selecting American special forces. But will it be adequate for testing Russian workers on oil wells in the polar regions? To this question there is as yet no reliable answer, notwithstanding that the test is considered to have been adapted on the territory of the USSR in the 1940s and 1950s. But the methodological requirements then were quite different: the Party said “it must be done” — the scientists saluted. And although the practical side of the use of the MMPI looks sound, and American pilots are distinguished by high professionalism, it is nevertheless hard to escape the impression that this test is reliable not by reason of theoretical soundness but rather rests on the American variety of practicality and sense of reality — and that differs little from what a good fortune-teller with rich practical experience does. Of course, one can wave away cavils of this kind and say: “Well, it works, after all!” So — all the same, one would like to know why. Psychology, after all, ought to be a science.

The ideology underlying the MMPI and, correspondingly, SMIL seems attractive. Of course it is splendid to create a test that would make it possible, on a single basis, to form a large number of derivative subtests allowing additional evaluations of the human personality along concrete personal and social parameters. But all the same one would like there to stand behind this not merely a statistical sorting through of variants — which is not at all bad at the first stages of work on creating such a test — but for the test to rest on a methodologically sustained, full-fledged scientific theory rather than on an improved version of trial and error. Nevertheless, this is a very good psychological product.

A few words about the multifactor method of personality research according to Cattell, which in its computerized version is called “the Cattell test,” somewhat lowering the pathos of this fundamental product. Cattell’s work may be counted among perhaps the most conscientious and thorough investigations, and the result he obtained is impressive. The very design — to extract psychologically relevant information from well-documented linguistic sources, such as an explanatory dictionary of the English language undoubtedly is — evokes admiration. For in such a case the problem of empirical reliability as it were falls away of itself, by default. And the further use of a highly productive mathematical apparatus and the theoretical formalization of the results quite confidently place his work on the pedestal of genuine science. Cattell’s work has enduring scientific significance in its own right, but let us nonetheless try to look at it through the prism of socionics.

Consider, for example, his factor A (affectothymia–sizothymia). Although the factor has its own proper meaning and its own substantive interpretation, from the point of view of socionics it comes fairly close to the opposition of ethicals and logicals. However, socionics makes it possible to refine the character of the factor’s manifestation. Since the factor has the character of an impartial statement of fact rather than being a moralizing evaluation, its descriptions ought not to contain elements that create images of the desirability or undesirability of the manifestations described. Incidentally, the matter here is not only the evaluative accentuation of the factor descriptions but a real distortion of the factor’s picture. Therefore, instead of saying that “high values of the factor are characterized by richness and vividness of emotional manifestations, naturalness and ease of behaviour, readiness to cooperate, sensitive and attentive attitude toward people, kindness and softheartedness,” it would be more accurate to say that at the affectothymia pole people are inclined to value and to display vivid emotions more; their emotional manifestations look and are natural and unconstrained; they readily enter into cooperation and show attention to people, which can often be expressed as kindness and softheartedness. However, when circumstances are negative, the vividness and unconstrainedness of the emotions will also be present, but now these emotions will express indignation, contempt, hatred, estrangement. Such people can easily make a scene, stage a stormy showdown, or openly demonstrate their rejection of another person’s behaviour.

Exactly as approximate and accentuated is the description of the sizothymia pole as “flatness of affect, absence of lively, quivering emotions,” with the addition that such “people are cold, rigid, formal in contacts,” and so on. Such a description looks almost like pathology, whereas people at the sizothymia pole, in complete psychic health, are likewise capable of strong, acute and at times heavy emotional experiences bordering on depression, up to and including suicide. However, such emotional engagement occurs only in special circumstances and may look like a psychic breakdown; depending on temperament, the person may behave explosively or sink into sentimental tearfulness. Under ordinary conditions such people naturally maintain the psychological distance appropriate to the occasion, they do not “climb into another’s soul” with their experiences, they do not impose themselves, they show the necessary tact and remain within the bounds of accepted propriety. Here the talk should rather be not of coldness and rigidity but of calm and restraint — although even so, this is not necessarily control over one’s emotions. Such people often do not consider it permissible to display openly their joy, indignation or tenderness, although all these shades of feeling are inherent in them. They do this not because they adhere to a definite rule but because they have a high threshold of emotional manifestation. Undoubtedly, the behaviour of people at the sizothymia pole differs from the behaviour of those at the affectothymia pole, and this, from the socionic point of view, depends on the functional position of the emotional function in the structure of their psyche.

Factor B, intended for evaluating intelligence, has an utterly impersonal character. This is intelligence in general. From the point of view of socionics there are sixteen varieties of intelligence, independent of their concrete filling, which substantially distinguish one personality from another. Evaluating the filling of intelligence is a supplementary procedure that may be carried out after the TIM has been determined.

From the socionic point of view, the capacity for logical synthesis, although inherent in all people without exception, initially — that is, by the functional position in the structure of the psyche — has potential limits ranging from extreme concreteness and rigidity in its minimal manifestations to the ability to operate with abstractions of a high level and to create complex theoretical constructs in a creative regime. The lower values are characteristic of the position of logic in the conservative-critical function (CCF) or in the position of the motivational-mobilizational function (MMF). The first is the case with Napoleons and Huxleys, the second with Dumas and Yesenins. And although in the bearers of these types logical synthesis tends toward extreme concreteness, it seems that precisely because of this they are capable of highly artistic and poetic synthesis, which reflects the strong side of their type and does not permit their intelligence to be evaluated as defective.

Although logicals find it easier to raise their scores on this factor, ethicals too can undoubtedly achieve high scores here, though it will be harder for them. Besides, in the sphere of the highest intellectual achievements connected with theoretical abstractions, logicals confidently hold first place. Nevertheless, there are remarkable examples of ethical scientists (Goethe, Vavilov). There is one more circumstance against the background of which scores on this factor may turn out to be understated. This is the case when a person has to deal with something in which he is not competent. In particular, in psychological testing of personality a person may be offered tests based on concepts remote from him. For example, a potential musician or artist was tested in mathematics or chemistry. An analogous case may occur in everyday life when, by force of circumstances, a person is occupied with what does not interest him or does not correspond to his TIM.

This analysis could be continued, but it deserves a special study; within the framework of the present work the examples given are sufficient. And in evaluating this method of personality research one may say that, because Cattell lacks structural constructs reflecting the real makeup of personality, he creates an instrument that does not meet the methodological requirements of completeness, independence and consistency, but which does make possible a practically valid mosaic description of personality.

Marie Chalvin (a woman historian), on the basis of psychophysiological conceptions of the productivity of the left and right hemispheres, taking into account differences in the work of their cortex and subcortex, unfolds in her book an intriguing analysis of the individual and paired behaviour of a large number of historical personages [19]. This is a splendid example of the fundamental use of the achievements of psychology for solving applied tasks in historical science — a field with its own particular subject matter and methods, quite unlike psychological ones. And such an introduction of psychological knowledge strengthens the prestige of psychology, and psychologists may feel an understandable pride in their science on this account. From the practical point of view everything here is in order. Moreover, the use of psychological developments in other fields of knowledge is an additional empirical verification of psychologists’ work. However, from the theoretical point of view a whole series of questions arises here.

In her historical investigations M. Chalvin relies on the psychological adaptation of the psychophysiological results of T. Neman, who as early as 1970 proposed a method of “brain” diagrams and their interpretation.

As an example one may consider the brain diagram of Gorbachev. The diagram is a circle divided into four quadrants, each of which corresponds to the activity of one of four brain structures: the left subcortex (LS — upper left quadrant), the left cortex (LC — lower left quadrant), the right cortex (RC — lower right quadrant) and the right subcortex (RS — upper right quadrant). The magnitude of activity of each of the brain structures is determined with the help of a thematic questionnaire developed by Neman. This magnitude is plotted on the bisector of the corresponding quadrant. The figure constructed on the four points fixing the magnitude of activity of the brain structures graphically shows the ratio of the activities of all four zones. To each of the zones Neman assigned one of four sociotypes. These are the expert (LS), the organizer (LC), the communicator (RC) and the strategist (RS). Thus, looking at Gorbachev’s brain diagram, we can immediately assign him to the sociotype of organizer, which is entirely plausible and, in a certain sense, may be acknowledged as corresponding to reality. It is clear that in the case of heightened activity of several zones, the personality may be ascribed the properties of several sociotypes.

The empirical basis of Neman’s diagrams is the experimental work of P. D. MacLean. MacLean, in addition to the functional asymmetry of the brain established earlier by other physiologists, also introduces differences between the production of the cortex and of the subcortical zones within each hemisphere. In this case we have a more detailed distinction, in which the production of ideas and their verbal formulation is connected with the cortex, and the emotional filling and accompaniment of these ideas with the subcortex. True, in the Russian translation of M. Chalvin’s book the corresponding passage says that the subcortex is responsible for thoughts and ideas, and the “marginal regions” for actions and feelings. Possibly some terminological confusion occurred here, but in the absence of the French original it is difficult to check the correctness of the translation. In any case, if MacLean’s ideas correspond to reality, then Chalvin’s interpretations retain their meaning notwithstanding possible distortions in translation.

But do the empirical results obtained by psychophysiologists in 1949 and adapted to the psychological evaluation of the intellectual, emotional and volitional production of a concrete person really possess such detail that on their basis, without resorting to the entire remaining arsenal of psychological methods, one can make high-quality evaluations of the productive behaviour of historical personages?

Unfortunately, in later monographs on psychophysiology [20] and psychology [21] there is no mention of refinements concerning differences in intellectual, emotional and volitional production connected with the asymmetry of the subcortical regions, although differences in the work of the left and right cortex have become generally accepted. Therefore T. Neman’s method can be regarded only as a hypothesis, and the use of his diagrams in M. Chalvin’s work as a kind of literary device. Nevertheless, the psychological developments on historical material that M. Chalvin carried out may to a considerable degree be grounded in cortical asymmetry. All the same it would be a pity if the beautiful and promising hypothesis used by Chalvin should fail to receive reliable experimental confirmation.

The method of “brain” diagrams developed by T. Neman makes M. Chalvin’s exposition of her ideas graphic and convincing, and several dozen of these diagrams, splendidly supplementing the text, leave no doubt as to the author’s concentration on solving the task she has set herself, and as to her capacity for work. The author’s interpretations of the mutual relations of, for example, such political figures as Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, and even of medieval kings and ministers, relying on the brain diagrams, are highly realistic. However, are we not dealing here with the “interpretation effect,” when known events are retrospectively fitted into the model used by the author — which of course produces a “confirming” impression both on the author herself and on the reader? The woman historian M. Chalvin made maximum use of the instrument she found in psychology, but is that instrument itself impeccable?

The point is that the four sociotypes introduced by T. Neman have their own proper meaning, which is revealed by Neman’s questionnaire, and generally speaking these sociotypes need not be linked to the diagrams at all, tempting though that is. And if the sociotype assigned to a person corresponds to reality, then even without any appeal to brain diagrams that is quite sufficient in order, with one degree of reliability or another, not only to interpret a person’s known acts and his relations with other people, but also to predict individual and group behaviour. Possibly this is the secret of M. Chalvin’s very good and even beautiful work and of her book’s success.

As one of the brand-name bestseller variants of psychological identification of personality one may name the excellent work of two American psychologists, J. M. Oldham and D. B. Morris [23].

American psychology has offered the world, and above all its own people, more than one variant of psychological identification of personality. Many of them did not enjoy wide popularity, although they were necessary steps on the path to knowledge of the human essence. However, with respect to the multitude of other approaches to understanding the human being — effective in solving personal problems and enabling their adepts to be successful psychologists and psychotherapists — there long remained indeterminacy in their terminological and conceptual coordination with one another. In this connection, over a certain period American scientists undertook attempts to find a solution acceptable to all interested parties and above all to practising physicians and research scientists.

This work was completed with the creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV), in which the basic mental disorders identified by American scientists were described and designated. Work on this “bible of American psychiatry” continued for many years and was completed only in 1994. And a year later one of its creators, J. M. Oldham, in co-authorship with D. B. Morris, published the book that became a bestseller, The New Personality Self-Portrait, translated and published in Russia in 1997 under the title Know Yourself: A Self-Portrait of Your Personality. Unfortunately, the Russian translation contains a large number of semantic errors concerning not only key terms but also the correspondence of the test tables to the numbers of the diagnostic statements, which turns the Russian translation into a semantic rebus with unstated initial conditions — but this, of course, does not diminish the value of the work done by the authors.

This book is remarkable in many respects, but above all it represents a unique attempt to help broad strata of the population understand the peculiarities of their own personality. The authors of the book draw attention to the fact that “up until 1980 practitioners and researchers spoke different languages of diagnostics; for example, a practising physician would diagnose a patient with depression, but a researcher might disagree with him, since the symptoms of the illness did not correspond to all the ‘research diagnostic criteria’ used to establish depression. Thus two research tasks with identical conditions led to conflicting or confused results because the disorder had been defined differently by each scientific team” [23]. As a result of this state of affairs, “a lone practising physician could effectively help a patient but could not share the information with other specialists. And although psychiatric diagnoses were based on extensive clinical experience and knowledge, agreement among professionals in this field was minimal” [ibid.]. Thanks to the creation of DSM-IV not only was the basis of such professional conflicts eliminated, but the possibility appeared of effectively popularizing psychological and psychiatric knowledge among the population. Hence the authors’ pathos is entirely understandable when they exclaim: “AT LAST A COMMON LANGUAGE HAS BEEN FOUND!”

Of course, one must not forget that from the middle of the twentieth century Americans widely used a variant of the Jungian typology represented by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and all the corresponding terminology was in circulation there. However, the book by J. M. Oldham and D. B. Morris gave psychological enlightenment a new impetus. At the basis of a number of typological studies (the MMPI, for example) lies an idea whose roots go back to the works of E. Kretschmer, in which he came to the conclusion that at the basis of mental disorders and of normal behaviour lie the very same entities, which he called psychic radicals. In the MMPI the base of these radicals was expanded to 10, and in DSM-IV there are already 12. Incidentally, there might have been more, but some of the possible disorders — for example Self-Defeating and Sadistic — were removed for various reasons. J. M. Oldham and D. B. Morris in their book operate with fourteen categories characterizing the peculiarities of the personality’s generalized reacting, and propose the Personality Self-Portrait test. The authors write: “The fourteen personality types we have identified are ordinary, absolutely humane, non-pathological versions of the severe, painful disorders recorded in DSM-III-R and DSM-IV (including the supplements). In other words, just as high blood pressure is a symptom indicating a deviation from the norm, personality disorders are merely an extreme manifestation of traits inherent in a definite personality type. Whereas DSM-III-R and DSM-IV define categories of disorders, we describe categories of normal human behaviour.” This is the key to understanding the authors’ approach to evaluating the human personality. Very briefly, the authors obtain a peak-shaped profile (fig. 15.04) determined by the number of questions whose answers correspond to the given quality. These quantities characterize the degree to which each of the fourteen psychic radicals is expressed in the personality under study, which makes it possible to interpret substantively the magnitude of each radical in terms of the concrete behaviour of a healthy or a sick person.

However, what lies hidden beneath the fourteen types identified by the authors? Does this aggregate constitute a typology? To this question one may answer in the affirmative, but only in the sense that this typology represents an empirical set of human characters. And that means that the number of them proposed is neither strictly obligatory — there could be more or fewer, depending on the author’s convictions — nor subject to any criterion apart from the fact of empirical registration. Here only one psychological trait, one psychological feature, is placed at the basis of each type. In this sense each such type may be called single-trait. It is clear that one may propose as many such types as there are psychological traits. And how many are there? Psychologists have not yet come to a common opinion on this. At the same time, since several groups of American scientists reached a consensus represented in DSM-IV, it may be considered an authoritative basis for further psychological constructions. Note, however, that in DSM-IV 12 categories are agreed upon, while the authors use 14 — though of course they could have used 15, or 16, or 20. In any case it would be interesting and instructive, and above all it could be effectively used in practical work with people.

Oldham and Morris’s list includes the following categories: Conscientious, Self-Confident, Dramatic, Vigilant, Active, Devoted, Solitary, Leisurely, Sensitive, Idiosyncratic, Adventurous, Altruistic, Aggressive, Serious.²

With the help of their questionnaire the authors determine, as they put it, the degree to which each type is expressed in a concrete person. Obviously such a use of words identifies type and psychological trait with elements of accentuation. However, let us not go into theoretical subtleties here, but simply examine the list the authors propose. It is not at all a bad one. It is even hard at first to add anything to it or remove anything from it. Except perhaps “idiosyncratic,” as too medical a term — but since the authors give detailed and well-structured explanations of all the “types” they use, no problems of understanding the corresponding terms should arise.

Considerably worse is the fact that the Russian translation of some of these terms apparently does not correspond to the sense the authors intended. Thus, for example, in our culture Devoted [Предан­ный], as I understand it, refers to a person who under any circumstances supports and stands by the object of his devotion. One can be devoted to a person, a group, an organization, a party, an ethnos, a homeland. In Oldham and Morris this evidently means something rather different. Here are the statements by which the authors identify what the Russian translation calls Devoted.

1. “Before making a decision, I prefer to hear good advice, even if it concerns everyday problems.” — Obviously this statement presupposes the semantics of the Non-independent or Dependent.
2. “When a relationship ends, I begin to panic and immediately start looking for another.” — Here too the reference is to dependence or non-independence, verging on parasitism.
3. “I usually leave serious decisions to other important people.” — That is how the Non-independent behaves.
4. “I feel much better in company, because I feel completely helpless alone.” — Of course, this is the Non-independent.
5. “I go out of my way doing everything for others so that they will like me. Sometimes in my zeal I may even cause trouble.” — Here the semantics of the Importunate appears.
6. “I like to agree with other people. If I disagree, I usually keep my opinion to myself.” — This is either the Non-independent or the Dependent.
7. “I am not very independent, I am more a follower than a leader, but I can be a devoted team player.” — Here the words “not very independent” are used directly in the text of the statement.
8. “I probably worry too much that I would not be able to take care of myself if I lost an important person in my life.” — Non-independent.

Obviously the semantics of all these statements gravitates above all toward identifying the Non-independent. It is therefore unclear why the translators chose Devoted instead of Non-independent. Probably a non-independent person may be devoted, but it is scarcely the case that this possibility is unambiguously bound up with non-independence. It is highly plausible that in this case we are dealing with an inaccurate translation from English into Russian. Among the two dozen English words that may be translated into Russian by the word “предан­ный” [devoted], only one contains the seme of dependence and non-independence — namely “attached,” whose principal meanings are: 1) fastened; 2) attached, devoted (to someone); 3) seconded, assigned; 4) distrained (of property). However, a direct translation of this word as “non-independent or dependent” is not given in the dictionary, and this, it seems, is what caused the inaccurate translation. Yet in the seventh statement this concept is present in explicit form, which is a good argument in favour of understanding this Oldham type as the Non-independent. However, when the authors describe the dedication with which people of this type care for their children, the image of the Caring type with a high level of altruism arises. Thus an intersection is discovered between the semantic fields of Oldham’s Devoted and Altruistic, which must be attributed to the fuzziness of the concepts the authors use.

Something analogous may be said of almost all the other terms in the translation as well. Thus, judging by the multitude of testing statements, Vigilant would be better translated as Distrustful; Adventurous is closer to Spontaneous; Active is closer to Hyperthymic, since after all not all the other types are inactive, and what is meant here is heightened activity; Self-Confident is closer to Ambitious; Sensitive is closer to Timid; Conscientious is closer to Anxious; Serious is closer to Pessimist, since the other types cannot in any categorical way be considered unserious. It is highly plausible that in the English original there are no terminological discrepancies, or that they are considerably smaller; nevertheless, conceptual blurredness in psychology still remains a problem. However, let us not concentrate on this now, if only because the book gives sufficiently full explications of the terms used, and therefore a certain terminological mis-sorting is in this case not too serious an obstacle. It is also important that Oldham and Morris’s terminology relies on a psychiatric manual literally suffered through by American medicine.

In this case it is more important to consider this typology from the methodological side. In Oldham’s typology what is essential is the reliance on pathological nosology, fully presented in DSM-IV. Such an authorial move ensures a certain semblance of completeness of the list of basic types, since this is a complete collection of what American medicine has managed to identify over several hundred years. This fact increases the plausibility of the claim that no other personality disorders exist and, to a certain extent, guarantees the possibility of diagnosing the presence in the structure of the personality of dominant and subdominant psychic radicals. And this secures for Oldham’s typology a stronger position than, for example, that of the MMPI. But this same fact makes Oldham’s typology extremely empirical, with a complete absence of any signs whatever of theoretical processing of the raw material. There is here neither statistics nor correlational, cluster, factor or structural analysis. It seems that the author does not even notice the overlapping of the semantic fields of the concepts he uses. This, of course, does not mean that Oldham’s typology cannot be used in practical work with people (in the hands of a master everything works), but it sharply reduces confidence in the possible results of such work.

Closest to socionics in world psychology stands the Myers-Briggs typology, which relies directly on Jung’s typology. This typology gained especially wide currency in America and received a popular brand-name presentation in the works of several talented authors. Of these, the ones best known to the Russian-speaking reader are D. Keirsey, O. Kroeger and J. M. Thuesen [24], and P. Tieger and B. Barron-Tieger [25].

The Myers-Briggs typology in its European and especially its American variant is a vivid example of how an impeccable theoretical premise, formed by Jung, may — in the absence of a consistent scientific methodology — lead into a prestigious dead end. One may say that this typology is at present widely used in America and enjoys success, but this success is owed to the advertising and marketing abilities of Americans. In its essence this typology is a defective version of the developments of the great Austrian psychologist. It still retains the aura of Jung’s genius, but alas, those familiar with socionics easily discover in it theoretical imperfections and see real errors in its recommendations. Using semi-finished test products, it has never developed highly effective tests for identifying type. In this typology there is no scientifically grounded method for interpreting the type formula. However, an even more important point is the presence in the American typology of theoretical defects. One of them is the asymmetrical division of the whole set of types into NF, NT, SJ, SP — that is, into intuitive feeling, intuitive thinking, sensing judging and sensing perceiving. Here the logical rule is violated which states that the criterion of classification must be preserved with respect to all members of the classification. Yet we see that in the Myers-Briggs codes the intuitive pole is matched with thinking and feeling, while the sensing pole is matched with judiciousness and decisiveness. In practical work this theoretical defect may be disregarded — in the hands of a master everything works — but all the same it is strange that this defect has remained unnoticed throughout the several decades of this variant of human typology’s existence.

Nevertheless, the American typologists have made a mass of empirical refinements of Jung’s basic concepts, and this work of theirs deserves both further development and attentive use. Of great value too is the fact that the type descriptions they have obtained, though containing errors, do contain within themselves the psychological invariant of the type, and a comparison of the achievements of the American typology and of socionics is highly instructive.

Above we have examined several psychological developments proposing various typologies of people. A fuller list of personological ideas is given in the chapter “Freud, Jung, Augustinavičiūtė and Others.” Even a cursory glance at all this variety is enough to prompt such questions as “which of these typologies is the best?”, “why are there so many typologies?”, “is it not possible to bring all these typologies to some common denominator?”

Which of the existing typologies is the best? Probably every talented author may consider his own typology the best. Many authors have used their typologies in practice and obtained results that entirely satisfied them. We remember that in the hands of a master everything works. And under conditions of pluralism and multi-window vision, every person may use whatever he likes and hold any views whatever. Therefore, in order to sort out the merits and defects of the existing typologies, scientifically grounded criteria are needed. A set of such criteria exists and is given at the end of this chapter.

Why are there so many typologies? The simple answer comes down to the fact that psychologists have so far failed to reach a consensus and create a genuinely scientific typology that would satisfy all the criteria. One may also take a more dramatic point of view, consisting in the claim that all existing typologies represent incomplete, distorted or intermediate versions of a hypothetical basic typology.

Is it not possible to bring all these typologies to some common denominator? A survey of the whole set of typologies currently available shows that each of them uses some set of concepts basic to it. It would be possible to answer the question posed only by gathering the whole set of such concepts and, having analysed them, isolating from them the basic, further indecomposable semantic invariants.

A worthy candidate to be considered the basic typology is socionics.

Socionics began with Aušra Augustinavičiūtė taking up the study of the personality typology created by C. G. Jung. And since personality typologies belong by definition to the competence of psychology, it is natural to suppose that socionics claims to be a part of psychology. However, the author of socionics looked deeper and sensed the fundamental status of the new scientific direction.

Contemporary psychology forms its image of reality through only one channel of sensorics: real is only what is reproduced in an experiment. But “creeping empiricism” was long ago exposed by philosophers as methodologically untenable. Without a counter-movement of structural-theoretical work, all empirical results will remain no more than “astonishing” facts and effective — often also efficacious — recipe-like findings.

What goes on in psychology is entirely acceptable from the standpoint of the positivist approach to the methodology of science: there are objects, there are tasks, there are problems, experiments are conducted, measuring and computational procedures are used, the results of experiments are processed on computers using the most up-to-date statistical approaches, and results are obtained that are sometimes quite good and often simply remarkable from the practical point of view. And only one thing is lacking in contemporary psychology — it has no generalizing theory. It lacks fundamentality. Its principal object, the psyche, is insufficiently defined, not to say defined wretchedly. Its answers to the eternal questions connected with the soul and with spirituality are opportunistic and do not take into account the integral experience of humanity. An enormous part of that experience is simply ignored, and a large layer of human culture remains outside science.

If we note that the bulk of scientists, and not only psychologists, are subject — quite naturally — to methodological fashion, then it will not be hard to understand why the operational approach has become so widespread. The operational approach in psychology means that “any psychological construct describing a psychological property, process or state has meaning only in combination with a description of the procedure of research, diagnosis and measurement of the behavioural manifestations of that construct” [10]. This approach makes it possible to conduct scientific research while bypassing difficult gnoseological problems, such as the real existence of the psyche in the form of structured energy fields whose nature physicists are still in no way able to identify.

The operational approach is opposed to the substantial approach, that is, to an approach in which the object is accepted as really existing. There exist a large number of philosophical tricks with whose help the existence of any object may be cast into doubt. One such trick consists in the claim that a human being allegedly never deals with real objects but only with sensory codes of “something” standing on the far side of the perception of the world by means of the sense organs. However, the replacement of the sense organs by instruments and measuring procedures is not a matter of principle. Instruments are merely an extension of the sense organs, and all the reproaches levelled at the sense organs may be levelled at instruments too, while measuring procedures likewise have fundamental limitations. Therefore observing “something” with the help of instruments differs from observing it with the help of the sense organs only quantitatively, not qualitatively. In the end, the readings of instruments must in any case be taken using the sense organs, and the limitation of the subjective moment, as is easy to show, is of an illusory character. Thus all speculations on operationality as opposed to substantiality are of an opportunistic character, and each of these approaches has a right to exist and its own field of realization. So that, as dialectics teaches, only a reasonable combination of these approaches must be acknowledged as adequate to science.

The reference to the fact that measuring instruments describe not the object itself but only its parameters is easily neutralized by a reference to the imperfection of such instruments as single-parameter ones — that is, giving a linear projection of a single parameter — whereas an integral image of the object can be obtained only as a result of a synthesis of all the object’s parameters. Moreover, such an image may easily be presented as virtual. Of course, problems of comparing the real and virtual worlds may then arise, but they all lose their acuteness with the development of technologies making it possible to transform virtual objects into real ones. And in this humanity has fully succeeded.

Taking into account what has been said above, one may assert that the substantial approach acquires the right to be realized every time that, as a result of using the operational approach, a sufficient quantity of data accumulates — one may say, their critical mass. By the beginning of the twentieth century psychology had accumulated enough operational data, which may be synthesized in the socionic theory of personality, where the structure of personality is represented by a model behind which stands a substantial object in the form of a framework of energy meridians. And although these meridians themselves have already been recognized by science as practically existing, their substantial grounding still remains beyond the capacities of contemporary instruments.

In order to remove the breach in psychology in the form of a lack of fundamentality, it is necessary to rely on a highly reliable axiomatic basis, including elementary objects — not further decomposable within the chosen subject area — and a primary instrumental apparatus ensuring operations upon them. Unfortunately, psychic processes (perception, representation, imagination, memory, and so on) are not suited to the role of elementary objects in psychology. Although within the subject area of psychology they are objects of, so to speak, the lower level, they are, alas, not elementary.

And here socionics, for the first time in the history of science generally and of psychology in particular, discovers the informational primary elements (!!!) that lie at the basis of psychological processes as well — these are the information aspects. Possibly such an assertion may seem too strong, but the information presented in this book is intended to make such an assertion sufficiently plausible, and we hope that further developments and experiments will prove its legitimacy and effectiveness. Incidentally, the theme of information aspects is one of the themes for planning the corresponding experimental work.

As for the primary instrumental apparatus, it seems that its prototypes should be sought in the most advanced branch of contemporary science — physics. A good ground for this may be the fact that physics deals with elementary objects of a dual — corpuscular and wave — nature, where the wave nature of objects is connected with the existence of physical fields. And since the nature of the psyche, its nearest substrate, hypothetically has a field character, one may also assume such an analogy with physical fields as quantization, with all the consequences that follow from this. In any case, this is a good theme for further theoretical and experimental development.

If the whole variety of psychic phenomena could be reduced to transformations in psychic fields (quantization and other operations), this would be a move to a new qualitative level of representing psychological information, and psychology would approach the ideal of an exact science, and the old idea of the mathematicity (not the mathematization!) of science, of science as a calculus, would receive a new impetus. It is precisely this possibility that socionics presumably has.

The “mathematicity” of a science begins with the identification in its object of invariants and features of symmetry, and not with the use of arithmetical operations. And here socionics, for the first time in the history of psychology, has discovered the internal symmetry of the psyche. Generally speaking, symmetrical structures have appeared from time to time in psychology. As an example one may refer to T. Leary’s “Method of Diagnosing Interpersonal Relations,” where the orthogonal axes “Dominance–Submission” and “Aggressiveness–Friendliness” are used as parametric constructs, and their poles stand in a relation of antisymmetry. As a result of a linear combination of the semantics of the poles defining the octants, T. Leary, H. Leforge and R. Suchek obtain eight variants of markers for styles of interpersonal relations: Authoritarian, Egoistic, Aggressive, Suspicious, Submissive, Dependent, Friendly, Altruistic. A three-level gradation of these styles yields twenty-four varieties of communication style, which ensure completeness of description of the object within the limits of the level of discreteness adopted by the authors.

Another good example that uses and reveals elements of the internal symmetry of the psyche is V. V. Petukhov’s work on the parameterization of the personal space of the psyche on the basis of an interpretation of the semantic field of time. Let us give a fragment of this development in our own graphical presentation (see fig. 15.05 and table 15.03).

Table 15.03

№	Term	№	Term
1	Present time	25	Hope
2	Future time	26	Tender emotion
3	Past time	27	Being touched
4	Outside time	28	Inspiration
5	Love	29	Admiration
6	Submission	30	Rapture
7	Hatred	31	Vigilance
8	Power	32	Pride
9	Joy	33	Triumph
10	Sin	34	Resolve
11	Grief	35	Confidence
12	Anger	36	Indignation
13	Anticipation	37	Distrust
14	Surprise	38	Envy
15	Amazement	39	Malice
16	Regret	40	Resentment
17	Vexation	41	Sorrow
18	Offence	42	Disgust
19	Curiosity	43	Dejection
20	Interest	44	Humiliation
21	Excitement	45	Despair
22	Indifference	46	Bewilderment
23	Apathy	47	Perplexity
24	Apathy (listlessness)	48	Fright

Fig. 15.05. Fragment of the scheme of personal space according to V. V. Petukhov. For the legend see table 15.03 (reconstruction by S. I. Churyumov).

Of course, the polarity of psychic states is a perfectly obvious property of the psyche, and there exists a remarkable development of this idea in V. Levi and S. Bakhtiyarova [1, 2]; but all the same, ideas connected with the theme of symmetry have not received due development in psychology, which is connected above all with the underdevelopment of the corresponding sections of the methodology of the humanities. On the contrary, positivism and its most formalized variety — logical positivism — in its striving to oppose itself to the (on the whole outlived) metaphysical — in the sense of dogmatic, scholastic and divorced from practical experience and scientific experiment — approaches to the theoretical mastery of reality, tried to eliminate ideas that cannot be formed as a result of a measuring experiment or derived logically. Today one may say that this stage of philosophizing has been overcome within philosophy itself, but in science an enormous mass of scientists, by the inertia of mass, still gravitates toward what Hegel called “creeping empiricism.” We are here far from any kind of arrogance toward the empirical phase of data accumulation; we are simply against its absolutization, or against getting stuck in it. A splendid example of collaboration with a clear division of labour between experimenters and theoreticians is physics: there the experimenters obtain the necessary primary material, but what it means must be determined by the theoreticians, and that is very far from simple work. Besides, the empirical need not at all be represented as something narrowly visual. The empirical is above all that which may be experienced in experience; and how to make that experience visual belongs to the art of the experimenter.

In his time the great mathematician David Hilbert (in August 1900), among his famous 23 problems, designated as the sixth problem the axiomatization of physics, where it was supposed that it would be sufficient to formulate N (N<∞) initial axioms and from them to obtain by logical means all the consequences needed to describe the phenomena of the world around us. However, it remained unclear how such a set of initial axioms could be obtained, how the completeness and minimality of this set could be ensured, and, of course, there would still remain the problems of the consistency and independence of all the axioms within such a hypothetical set.

In connection with the development and establishment of socionics, some of these questions are beginning to clear up. Paraphrasing Hilbert’s idea as applied to psychology, one may advance the hypothesis of the possibility of formulating N (N<∞) initial axioms concerning the functioning of the psyche, and from them obtaining by logical means all the consequences needed to describe psychic phenomena, among which are the personal peculiarities of people.

It is considered that “contemporary quantum mechanics develops not at all in the way one might expect of a logically closed theory,” but then the expectation itself would have to be somehow described and axiomatized, and no one has done this owing to the absence of the corresponding scientific instrumental apparatus. Possibly the talk should have been not of a logically closed theory but of a theory permitting and providing for a deductive expansion of the axiomatic basis; but such an idea even now still does not go beyond the bounds of hypothesis.

Interesting is the admission of the theoretical physicist Ya. Smorodinsky in the preface to [1] that “many regularities and empirical rules accumulated by experimenters (not without the active help of theoreticians) do not fit into any single scheme.” The same may be said of contemporary psychology too.

In physics it was soon discovered that the very character of the expected regularity had been wrong, since “against the background of hundreds of attempts to build a satisfactory theory of the phenomena of the microworld there arose a new method, a new form of reasoning, at first glance devoid of clear foundations. This is the method of symmetry, which proved very effective in application precisely to those processes for which the old theory was powerless.”

The concept of symmetry is considerably more complex than it may appear from the experience of simple decorative patterns and even from the study of crystal lattices. In accordance with the semantics of the Greek word, symmetry means simply co-measurability. Symmetry is opposed only by asymmetry — absolute chaos, complete disorder, which in human practice is encountered only in a very weak approximation. Compared with the simple kinds of symmetry — mirror, central, spiral, compatible-equal or antisymmetry — the most general kind of symmetry is functional symmetry, under which falls any functional dependence, however complex it may be.

Ideas of symmetry established themselves in physics far from immediately, although in the subconscious of many scientists they were apparently always present in one form or another. Take at least the classic case of Kepler, who before Newton formulated the laws of the motion of the planets around the Sun, relying on an idea that was entirely irrational for his object — that the orbits of the planets must in some way correspond to a structure formed by regular polyhedra inscribed one within another. But the idea worked, and the regularities formulated by Kepler later served as material for Newton’s formulation of the laws of celestial mechanics and were confirmed by them. For fairness’s sake, let us note that Newton did not share Kepler’s formal — or, perhaps more accurately, formalistic — ideas.

A vivid episode of the introduction of ideas of symmetry into physics was connected with the appearance of the articles of Gell-Mann and Ne’eman on the unitary theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann’s work fitted so poorly into physicists’ established conceptions that they did not even want to accept it for publication. The quarks proposed by Gell-Mann were not, despite all efforts, discovered in nature, and within the framework of the proposed scheme they were not obliged to exist — and nevertheless they became one of the most important theoretical constructs in contemporary physics.

Paraphrasing F. Engels’s well-known dictum that a science becomes a science in the full sense when it begins to use mathematics (with which I do not agree), I would say that research acquires the character of a science from the moment when it discovers in the object of its investigation invariants and symmetrical structures — which, with a suitable choice of terms, may be regarded as one and the same thing. The identification of fundamental invariants in any subject area brings that area to the threshold of calculus. The next step in the fundamentalization of a science is the discovery of the elementary entities corresponding to it, to which all its content may be reduced.

It was utterly improbable that features of symmetry would be discovered in the human psyche, but Aušra Augustinavičiūtė’s brilliant discovery of the model of the psyche showed that the most general contour of psychic structures possesses a vividly expressed and at the same time not very complex symmetry — or more precisely antisymmetry, which is of course a particular case of symmetry.

In psychology, in various typologies, symmetrical forms have appeared, but symmetry in psychology never became a foundational methodological principle. Apparently, in connection with the discoveries in socionics, psychology will have to reconsider its attitude toward symmetry.

The recourse to such abstract constructs as symmetry is perceived by some representatives of the humanities as formalism or as something gravitating toward metaphysics. In Soviet psychology such things were categorically condemned as not corresponding to the methodology of dialectical materialism. As becomes clear to us now, this was no more than an ideological manipulation of scientists’ consciousness, and dialectical materialism has nothing to do with it — without ideological additives it is a perfectly workable methodology, though badly neglected and, moreover, compromised by its belonging to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

It has long since become a commonplace that the process of cognition takes place between two poles — the pole of empirical material and the pole of mental constructs — and no positivism can abolish this. With the help of intuition and logic, mental constructs are superimposed on the empirical material and are ordered. A theory represents an alloy of data obtained by experience and of subjective constructs which, of course, must be extracted from the empirical material, since by virtue of the postulate of the unity of the world they must be present in it. Therefore the subjectivity of mental constructs is likewise relative; but in order to reduce it to a minimum, one must find a system of representation adequate to the object of investigation. It is another matter that the theoretical inertia of established schools may impose on the scientist the use of constructs inadequate to the object or to the level of its investigation.

Aristotle’s constructs corresponded to the level of his time — the explanations that could be obtained with their help were satisfactory for that epoch, but today their use would look naive. And nevertheless, even the Aristotelian concept of natural place represents, though an extremely generalized one, still a realistic statement of observed facts — it is the primary metaphor of a physical law.

Let us, however, return to physics, in order to trace the gradual establishment in it of one of its most important methodological instruments — the principles of symmetry and invariance. This history could become instructive for psychology as well.

It was by no means out of any metaphysical considerations, with which positivists of every stripe frightened scientists, that these principles appeared in physics. They proved to be an adequate answer to the enormous experimental material accumulated in nuclear physics, and they proved their practical effectiveness.

The ideas of symmetry that appeared in physics after Gell-Mann’s work have an adequate expression in group theory, and very soon group methods took one of the leading places in theoretical physics. For the generations of physicists who grew up after the establishment in physics of the ideas connected with symmetry in the microworld, the language of group theory became the most important methodological instrument. True, notwithstanding that these new instruments entirely satisfied the new scientists, for physicists there remained, and still remains, the unanswered question of why group theory describes nature, and why mathematics in general is capable of describing the phenomena of nature, and also why the phenomena of nature are described by such abstract formulas. At a certain stage in the establishment of a theoretical construct scientists may not ponder such questions, resorting to suitable psychological defences such as positivist ideology; but this does not at all mean that the answers to these questions belong to the category of the self-evident or the meaningless. And therefore scientific truth once again turns out to depend on elusive intuitive considerations that appear in the scientist’s head in some incomprehensible way.

One way or another, every scientist who is not indifferent to truth sooner or later comes to these questions. Perhaps Kepler had the right not to ask himself about this, but the scientist of the twenty-first century is not going to stop being tormented by these questions, and they urgently demand an answer.

And here socionics proposes a simple — though by no means original — solution: in the history of the human mind it has been met with more than once, but this in no way compromises such a solution.

Here we shall only outline its contours, and we shall unfold it in more detail elsewhere. It rests on the postulate of the unity of the world. This postulate cannot be proved logically, but it is a plausible conclusion from the whole integral experience of the human mind’s communion with nature. That something cannot be proved logically does not at all mean that truth cannot stand behind it. But trust in something without empirical and logical argumentation may all too easily, in our far from perfect world, be profaned and “charlatanized” by insufficiently scrupulous individuals.

Let us turn to the reflections of the remarkable theoretical physicist E. Wigner (Il), before whose eyes the entire history of quantum mechanics unfolded. His articles apparently contain the fullest information about the evolution of views on the role of symmetry in physical theory. One should not, of course, expect these articles to contain an exhaustive answer to all questions. They should rather be treated as material for reflection and regarded as an invitation to the reader to a scientific dispute.

This is how E. Wigner begins his article SYMMETRY AND OTHER PHYSICAL PROBLEMS, INVARIANCE IN PHYSICAL THEORY: “The world is very complex, and the human mind is clearly not in a position to comprehend it fully. It is precisely for this reason that man invented an artificial device — to blame the complex nature of the world on what it is customary to call the accidental — and thus was able to isolate a domain that can be described with the help of simple regularities. The complexities received the name of initial conditions, and what is abstracted from the accidental — the laws of nature.” These considerations are entirely applicable to the object of psychology too — the human personality — although I do not agree with the way the author uses the word “clearly” in the passage cited. It seems that, by the principle of projection, this applies above all to the author himself.

And further: “However artificial such a partitioning of the structure of the world may seem, with the most impartial approach and even in spite of the fact that the possibility of carrying it out has its limits, the abstraction underlying such a partitioning belongs to the number of the most fruitful ideas advanced by the human mind. It is precisely this that made it possible to create the natural sciences.” It is not at all obligatory to consider abstraction an artificial device — for any level of abstraction may be matched with a corresponding level in the becoming of complexity. If we accept the hypothesis that the world develops, and that this development, at least at certain stages, proceeds from the simple to the complex, then it is natural to correlate the simplest (and hence the most comprehensible) stages of development with higher levels of abstraction. Thus, the embryo of an animal may be considered a kind of abstraction of the adult individual.

The principle of superposition, or the possibility of the independent overlaying of parameters, widely used in physics, may with a certain degree of correction be transferred to psychology as well. Indeed, we know how in a human being there may be combined, almost without influencing one another, such elements as good breeding and elegant manners together with unscrupulousness, baseness and cruelty. Apparently there are non-linear superpositions of parameters in psychology too, but this is precisely what must be clarified in the process of the theoretical elaboration of the corresponding themes. A simple or corrected principle of superposition could explain complex psychological and psychic phenomenology by the linear and non-linear superposition of simpler or even elementary psychic phenomena.

Apparently the ideas of symmetry, invariance and conservation laws, being originally inherent in the nature of intellect, undoubtedly played an important role in the thinking of such classics of physics as Galileo and Newton, and of their predecessors. However, in certain cases such ideas easily lend themselves to falsification, turning into instruments of banal metaphysical formalism. Is that not what happened with the dialectical laws in Soviet philosophy? But it is precisely ideas of this kind that constitute the explicit and independent formalization of scientific intuition.

Of course, all socionic ideas await their experimental development and verification, though of course they can in no way be regarded as an idle fantasy based on nothing. Socionics grew out of the clinical experience of C. G. Jung and his rich intuition.

Socionics comes to the conclusion that a fundamental structure of the psyche exists on the basis, first, of the sum of empirical data, and second, of the intuitive capacity of the human mind for inductive generalizations. But having accepted the hypothesis of the existence of a fundamental structure of the psyche, socionics by default accepts the postulate that this structure is the cause of generalized, frame-like behaviour. And if as a result of observation we discover the parameters of such behaviour, then we may attempt to reconstruct, intuitively and logically, the structure standing behind them.

Socionics makes it possible to formulate several hypotheses on this theme. First of all, this is the hypothesis of the innateness of the generalized functional apparatus consisting of eight unambiguously positioned secondary functions with a quite definite, though highly generalized, semantics. In second place I would put the hypothesis of the innate existence of sixteen functional blocks, which represent a kind of blank for sixteen psychic instruments allowing specialized reaction to sixteen generalized situations. In the infant these blocks are already present and are specific reservoirs for the accumulation of life experience. Perhaps these blocks are better compared to card indexes of standards of concrete situations whose semantics fits into the generalized semantics of the corresponding block. Among these sixteen blocks a special role, by virtue of their special structural position, is played by the blocks Ego, Superego, Superid and Id — but this is only a supposition.

Third among the first socionic hypotheses one may place the supposition of the innateness of the aspectual colouring of the socionic functions. Possibly this hypothesis is the least plausible, but it is precisely from it that the innateness of the TIM follows. The assertion of the innateness of the TIM must be counted among the strong psychological assertions, since it significantly broadens scientific conceptions of the preconditions for the formation of the human personality.

In the case of the innateness of the socionic type, one may even redefine such a type as a temperament. This could quite well be done, since temperament is defined as “the innate peculiarities of a person which condition the dynamic characteristics of intensity and speed of reacting, the degree of emotional excitability and equilibrium, and the peculiarities of adaptation to the surrounding environment” [11]. This, the fullest of the definitions of temperament encountered in the literature, makes it possible to raise the question of broadening the concept of temperament and, to the four classical temperaments — by no means abolishing them — of adding a further sixteen concretized temperaments, which are the socionic types.

Let us try to evaluate the TIM as a temperament. First, thanks to the aspectual definiteness of the type, the future personality has at its disposal from the very beginning a programme of generalized social specialization. This generalized social specialization may precisely be called socionic specialization. And already against the background of socionic specialization there occurs a more concrete social specialization with the appearance of a social type, or sociotype. Further specialization of the sociotype leads to the formation of a specialist. In particular, for this reason it would not be entirely correct to correlate — still less to link rigidly — concrete professions with this or that socionic type without taking the sociotype into account. For example, a clown or a variety humorist may apparently be a bearer of any TIM, but not of any sociotype. Candidates for this are the “Jester,” the “Buffoon” or the “Mocker,” but by no means the “Hero” or the “Sage.” On the other hand, some TIMs are probably better adapted for their bearers to become sociotypes of the “Jester” or the “Mocker.” In this case, it seems, the maximum falls on the TIMs of Yesenin and Huxley, for whom it is initially easier to “wind people up” with their jokes. However, the example of the remarkable Soviet clown Nikulin shows that representatives of the TIM Don Quixote (if, of course, there is no diagnostic error here and his type is really Dumas) can cope splendidly with the role of “Humorist.” It is another matter that the humour of Shifrin (Huxley) will differ from the humour of Petrosyan (Gabin) or the humour of Zhvanetsky (Dumas), and still more from the humour of Zadornov (Robespierre). All existing humorous styles are easier to evaluate if one uses the socionic paradigm.

To become a singer one must be born a “Singer.” That is, in order to establish oneself in the profession of singer one must first acquire the sociotype of “Singer,” and for this at least vocal endowments are needed. Pugacheva and Kirkorov not only have singing talent from birth but, being Napoleons, possessed an original and likewise innate socionic ability to charm the corresponding part of the theatrical public. Their realizational-technological function (RTF) is tuned to the production of emotions, and precisely tonicizing emotions, since they are coloured by the neighbouring introverted sensorics connected with their imperative-temporal function (ITF). However, socionics is also able to make its contribution to understanding why there nevertheless exist people who do not respond to these singers, each remarkable in his or her own way.

And here is a quite different, and likewise remarkable and utterly stunning, opera singer, Elena Obraztsova (Hugo), who is given the creation of deeply dramatized operatic images. Her Carmen is one of the highest achievements of operatic art: a living, convincing, real, genuine Spanish woman — although, judging by Mérimée’s descriptions, Carmen belongs to a different type from Obraztsova, namely Napoleon. It would be interesting to see what sort of Carmen would result from performances by bearers of other TIMs.

The sociotype of “Salesman,” “Merchant” or “Supplier” does not come equally easily to all TIMs. If you fall into the field of a Napoleon salesman, it is hard to get out from under his charm. Often it is simply “awkward” not to buy from him. The introverted-ethical charm emanating from such a salesman, organically fused with extraverted-sensory threat-pressure, hypnotically holds the buyer between the stick of pressure and the carrot of charm, allowing the salesman to manipulate the buyer “elegantly.” And if such a salesman is also intelligent — not only knows the goods and can present them, but is also an erudite conversationalist — then his productivity will be especially high. True, he may then change the profession of salesman for something else, for example becoming a television presenter. Splendid examples of Napoleon television presenters are Valdis Pelsh, Ilya Noyabrev and that representative of the Odessa gentlemen, Filimonov.

No less charming are Hugo salesmen, but their innate tact makes them not so “pushy” as happens in the case of Napoleons. The charm of Hugo is tonicizing, affectionate. On the bearers of some types it acts so strongly that one simply does not want to leave this field, and the inevitability of a purchase is reinforced not only by its necessity but also by the pleasure the buyer receives from communicating with a Hugo.

But Don Quixotes may also turn out to be salesmen. Many Don Quixotes, for example, are engaged in selling books. This is one of their best realizations in the capacity of “Salesmen.” And if they also sell books of an abstract-theoretical orientation, then their erudition will harmonize successfully with the needs of the theoretically oriented buyer. Incidentally, Don Quixotes, other things being equal, more readily concede on price. However, a Don Quixote selling vegetables looks rather like a misunderstanding. Don Quixotes do not know how to call in the public. Their introverted-ethical function, being in the place of least resistance, is not adapted to frank manipulation. They consider (both consciously and subconsciously) that the goods should speak for themselves. Sometimes one meets women of this type selling potatoes, greens or fruit. Not infrequently these are tall persons, embarrassed by their bodies because of an unfortunate psychological attitude. It happens that one wants to buy goods from them as if out of sympathy for them, to give them “at least a little joy in life.” And when they feel gratitude to the buyer for this, the emotional “quantum” emanating from them is so pleasant that it fully justifies such a form of communication.

A similar analysis may easily be extended to all other professions and sociotypes in combination with TIMs, but that is the business of another work.

If the psychic configuration is provided genetically and has physiological correlates, then it is entirely natural to define it as a temperament. Taking everything said into account, temperament may be redefined as the innate capacity of a human being or animal to react to the influence of the surrounding environment with a definite dynamic, including such parameters as intensity, speed, strength, stability, equilibrium, degree of emotional excitability, and generalized individual peculiarities of adaptation to the surrounding environment. The last of these, in accordance with the concepts of socionics, includes the generalized informational dominant fixed in the TIM.

In supplementing the category of temperaments with socionic types, socionics by no means replaces or rejects the classical temperaments, whose totality represents a perfectly independent fractal group of psychological parameters which are superimposed on the TIM. Psychologists know perfectly well that pure temperaments are encountered extremely rarely. In most cases one has to deal with a combination of temperaments in one person, and there even exist formulas and graphical diagrams for calculating and representing such a temperamental composition. Moreover, one may assert that pure classical (Hippocratic) temperaments do not exist at all, but that there are compositions in which one of the temperaments not merely dominates but dominates significantly. One may suppose that this temperamental fuzziness, the blurredness of the boundaries of temperamental fields, has as its cause the superposition of the “temperamental fractal” upon the fractal of the socionic type. Then, by virtue of synergy or antagonism, there occurs a strengthening or weakening of these or those personal properties, which is perceived as fuzziness of temperament.

The idea of correlating temperaments and socionic types is simple and easily occurs to beginning socionists, which is what happened somewhere around 1987. However, statistical checking quickly showed a considerable blurredness of such a correspondence, which is not surprising, since the Hippocratic temperaments themselves, by psychologists’ own admission, are rarely encountered in pure form, and therefore it is proposed to determine a personal formula of temperament into which all four components of the temperamental vector enter in one percentage ratio or another. Someone proposed matching the type Don Quixote with the choleric temperament, but psychological testing of bearers of this TIM showed considerable deviations from the presumed ideal. Yes, one sometimes meets choleric Don Quixotes, but sometimes phlegmatics turn up too. As we now understand, the attempt to fix rigidly a concrete classical temperament to a TIM is mistaken. Such an attempt is presented, for example, in [11], where one may find the assertion that IEI is a melancholic, SEE a choleric, and LIE most often a phlegmatic. It is precisely this “most often” that makes such correlations incorrect.

But a deeper working-through of this theme by V. V. Gulenko allowed him — as is becoming clear now — to approach an understanding of the deeper truth standing behind the concepts of the Hippocratic temperaments. One of the substructures of the socion identified by V. V. Gulenko turned out to a considerable degree to be analogous to the group of classical temperaments (CT) [2]. However, first, the socionic concepts are unambiguously linked with groups of TIMs and, perceived through the concreteness of the socionic types, acquire the character of far more precise working categories than their Hippocratic analogues. Second, the semantic fields of the Hippocratic temperaments, as corresponds to psychologists’ own assessments, are highly blurred, and therefore this undoubtedly attractive construct yields results whose practical value is not great. Gulenko’s group of socionic temperaments (GST) can be matched with the classical temperaments (CT) in such a way that to the invariant characteristic of each of the quadruples of TIMs forming the temperamental substructure of the socion according to Gulenko there corresponds one CT. Here the choleric temperament can quite satisfactorily be matched with the linear-assertive, the sanguine temperament with the flexible-manoeuvrable, the phlegmatic with the steady-stable, and the melancholic with the receptive-adaptive temperament of Gulenko. V. V. Gulenko, as is evident from his work [3], considered that CT and GST were identical. However, notwithstanding that the semantic fields of CT and GST coincide to a considerable degree, such a correlation cannot be acknowledged as one hundred per cent unambiguous — it merely indicates a synergy of the classical and the Gulenko socionic temperaments (GST). When a classical temperament coincides in one bearer with its socionic analogue, one may observe a vividly expressed CT. In the case of non-coincidence, however, we are dealing with a more or less blurred temperamental composition. In any case, V. V. Gulenko’s finding in the theory of temperament is an important step in the knowledge of this ancient construct and will enter forever into the treasury of science.

However, in the development of the theory of temperament one may go further. Recalling the typological temperaments of Dionysus (sensorics combined with impulsiveness), Epimetheus (sensorics combined with judiciousness), Apollo (intuition combined with emotionality) and Prometheus (intuition combined with intellect), distinguished by Jung and, following him, by Keirsey — and from which V. V. Gulenko apparently started out in his work — it is hard to escape the thought that this was a profound idea and a serious contribution to the theory of temperament. However, the insufficient elaboration of the Jungian typology and its American analogue led to a serious logical error, still not recognized either by typologists or by psychologists, in which the basis of classification changes in the course of the classification. In this case what would seem to be a homogeneous series, as the set of temperaments ought to be, turns out not to be such, since the first two Jung–Keirsey temperaments (JKT) are obtained as a combination of an irrational function with a classificatory characteristic of functions (impulsiveness and judiciousness), while the next two JKT are obtained as a combination of an irrational function with a rational one — and this is illogical on the grounds indicated above.

Nevertheless, the JKT fully satisfy the classical definition of temperament — it is the totality of the peculiarities of personality, or more precisely of individuality, “which condition the dynamic characteristics of intensity and speed of reacting, the degree of emotional excitability and equilibrium, the peculiarities of adaptation to the surrounding environment” [11]. Here, first, it should be noted that such a definition of CT turns out to be too broad, since other varieties of combinations of psychological qualities may also be brought under it. Second, one should acknowledge the existence of varieties of temperament other than the JKT. And finally, third, the definition of temperament given above allows us to assert that the socionic types represent temperaments. Moreover, on the same grounds one may suppose that all the “regular” quadruples³ of socionic types correspond to particular varieties of temperaments. Of course, such a hypothesis needs to be specially grounded, but in any case it is sufficiently plausible. On the basis of the proposed hypothesis one may say that human temperament is the adaptive-dynamic characteristic of a human being as an individual of the species Homo sapiens. By combining adaptive and dynamic characteristics in different ways, one may obtain an expanded set of temperaments.

So how many temperaments are there — that is, what will the combinatorics mentioned lead to? First, it must be acknowledged that there exist temperaments common, at the least, to all mammals — these are Hippocrates’s CT. And second, there exist human temperaments, which are precisely the types of information metabolism (TIM). If this is so, then we may speak of the existence of 16 human temperaments. But is a single ADT⁴ not, according to the definition given, a temperament? Such a temperament is partial, but it really does reflect the adaptive-energetic peculiarities of the behaviour of a large set of people. In that case, extraversion and introversion, rationality and irrationality, positivism and negativism, statics and dynamics, and likewise the other ADTs, may be spoken of as temperaments. Here the term “monotemperament” would be quite suitable — and there will be 15×2 = 30 of them. Then a combination of two monotemperaments will also be a temperament, a more complex “bitemperament.” The definition given also fits the regular Reinin quadruples. But in each such quadruple there are four groups of types whose totality corresponds to one bitemperament. It is clear that there will be 35×4 = 140 such temperaments.

Let us also recall Jung’s “Psychological Types,” which correspond to paired socionic types, where behind one Jungian type stand two socionic ones. For example, behind Jung’s extraverted irrational intuitive stand two socionic types — Il and Ie — that is, in this case logic and ethics are “glued together.” Such a type is defined not by four but only by three Jungian axes — in this case, extraversion, irrationality and intuition. It is clear that in this case too one may speak of a combined “tritemperament.” And how many of them should there be? As many as there are pairs of socionic types, which corresponds to the number of combinations of sixteen taken two at a time, that is 16×15/2! = 120.

Here the socionic sceptic may say that in “gluing together” two kindred types one might still speak of a more general temperament, but how can one speak of “gluing together” two conflictors, for example? The point is that it is not the types that are “glued together” but the ADTs, of which any two types have only 8 different, while 8 are shared! It is precisely these shared traits that may be regarded as the formants of the corresponding combined temperament. Thus, for Don Quixote and Dreiser the shared ones will be “carefreeness,” “democratism,” “compliance,” “rightness,” “constructivism,” “declatimness,” “tactics” and “statics.” It is clear that the trait “existence” is common to all types and may be left out of account in the description of a combined temperament. Probably difficulties may arise in giving an integral description of some of these temperaments, but that is already a matter of technique, and a serious field for the work of psychologists.

Of course, if one “glues together” all the ADTs, then one may speak of the human mode of reacting to the signals of the external environment, which may be understood as the maximally generalized human temperament, as distinct from that of animals.

It is almost obvious that each of the subsets of the set of temperaments is not linearly independent. The most incomprehensible thing here may be that even the monotemperaments turn out to be linearly dependent. However, this is easily explained by the fact that the vector basis of a sixteen-component set is always a set of only four elements — this is the necessary and sufficient condition. Therefore, from the set of ADTs one may choose as independent only four independent traits, and not even any four at that. Any trait beyond the four chosen as independent will always be linearly dependent on them, that is, will be expressed through them.

Monotemperaments reflect the psychological peculiarities of one single fundamental psychological feature, which the ADTs are. Bitemperaments, correspondingly, reflect the psychological peculiarities of a combination of two fundamental features; tritemperaments of three (though, because of linear dependence, not of any three!); and tetratemperaments of four. Tetratemperaments are, properly speaking, precisely the TIMs. Only they fully express the whole totality of human temperaments. Nevertheless, the integral characteristic of each TIM represents a unique and entirely recognizable variety of psychological adaptation to life in society.

Taking into account the proposed redefinition of the concept of temperament, it is necessary to represent character as a superposition (overlaying) of the fractal of tetratemperaments, the fractal of accentuations, the caste (in the broad sense) fractal, the manipulative-actualizing fractal (Shostrom) and, possibly, many other fractals. Such an understanding of the structure of personality corresponds to the complexity of human nature and outlines an approach to its unsimplified and adequate description.

For a long time the impression persisted that among academic psychologists there was not a single person capable of understanding socionics, or at least of accepting its scientific challenge within the framework of academic rather than administrative-command communication. In fact it is known that many progressive psychologists, in secret from their conservative superiors, mastered and applied socionics.

And now, at last, a book on socionics written by a psychologist, E. M. Krivosheev, has appeared. It is called Socionics Through the Eyes of a Psychologist [13]. The book is written in professional language, with correct references to primary sources and correct use of psychological concepts, which distinguishes it favourably from some works by socionists. And yet it resembles no more than an attempt at a popular exposition of socionics for psychologists. For socionists it is practically useless, since it represents in the main a selective retelling of what has long been known to them. However, reading this book is instructive enough in that it allows one to picture the methodological positions of a “normal” psychologist. Normal in the sense that this is a practising specialist with a certain experience of consulting, who conducts psychological trainings, who is abreast of the most important psychological theories — in short, simply an intelligent man — but who at the same time does not head any psychological school and consequently does not consider that he possesses the truth in the last instance, and is therefore open to new ideas.

It is pleasant that a psychologist has tried to get to grips with socionics and uses it. Unfortunately, without a shadow of doubt he uses such concepts as “business logic,” “structural logic,” “ethics of emotions” and others, apparently without sensing their jargon character. And the term “sociotype” is utterly inappropriate to socionics — it should of course belong to sociology. In short, he has uncritically accepted a part of the developments in socionics after Aušra Augustinavičiūtė. All the same, one ought not to forget that her work is the basic one, and that it is against it that everything that has accumulated in socionics after her, in a more or less wild fashion, ought to be checked.

Krivosheev also has elementary logical errors, though quite forgivable ones. Thus Krivosheev says, as if in passing, that since there are 16 types, there are, naturally (emphasis mine — S.Ch.), 16 relations too. The point is that this is not obvious. It has to be specially proved. First of all, it is considerably more obvious that there are 16×16 = 256 relations, since every type may enter into a relation with every other. But one may, for example, assert that all relations of identical types will be identical. This too is obviously incorrect, and moreover it is also incorrect in another sense. Incorrect not in the ethical but in the logical sense. It is untrue because the relation of two Ils will have a different character from, for instance, the relation of two sEs. The first will conduct endless theoretical conversations between themselves, while the second will share their impressions of the latest fashion show. And it is incorrect because no criterion has been introduced for evaluating the status of relations, and otherwise it is unclear how you can come to the conclusion that the relations of identicals are identical. Although one is pushed toward this conclusion by a pun: the relations of all identicals must be identical. But this is not a logical but a punning proof, which is likewise one of the aspects of incorrectness.

In order to arrive at the level of 16 relations one must introduce the concept of a level of generalization. If we descend to the level of concrete people — the zero level of generalization — then, a priori, one may assert that all relations in concrete pairs will be different, and hence their number will equal the number of pairs that can be formed among all people. However, such a position is, from the logical point of view, incorrect, since without knowing the properties of the elements one cannot draw a conclusion about their relations. But in reality we are able to come to such a conclusion not a priori but on the basis of everyday experience. And here two non-logicals, relying on what they know about people, can easily come to an agreement. But a logical understands that they draw such a conclusion using their intellectual capacity for induction, that is, for the intuitive generalization of the facts at their disposal. However, induction over a set of empirical facts can be complete only in the case where all the facts that might bear on the inductive generalization have been considered. In the case of people this means that one must consider relations in all possible pairs of people. But if, with sufficient imagination, one may try to picture how to organize the corresponding procedure over the array of all living people, it is quite unclear how you will get out of the situation when a punctilious logical demands the inclusion in this set of all people who have ever lived, and also of those who will appear in the future. Taking into account all the methodological difficulties, one will have to look for a compromise acceptable to all sides. And a compromise is already not a logical but an ethical operation.

Therefore let us return to the question of what the 16 socionic relations actually are. Aušra Augustinavičiūtė managed to interpret the intertype relations by examining not the relations of types but the relations of functions in the “AA” model. Therefore, strictly speaking, the relations she obtained cannot be called intertype ones, because they do not take into account the “aspectual” peculiarities of all the types and the aspects of the functions, but are built only on the interpretation of the semantics of the functions which, by supposition, are in contact when concrete bearers of types enter into a relation. Therefore the relations she constructed ought to be called interfunctional. And only when we build a model of the relation at the same level of generality as the model of the TIM can we obtain 16 relations. However, Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, having built a simplified model of relations using two “AA” models, obtained not 16 but 14 (!) relations, as is written in black and white in her “Theory of Intertype Relations.” Subsequently socionists somehow sorted this question out, accepting that in the two asymmetrical relations — benefit and supervision — there are two relations each: benefit-giving (bg) combined with benefit-receiving (br), and supervision (sv) combined with being-supervised (bs). However, from the logical point of view this is not entirely correct. For it turns out that in asymmetrical relations we take both sides into account, and in symmetrical ones only one. This is an error connected with accepting some assertion by default or as self-evident. By default, a scientist ought to avoid errors. And then, having counted all the sides in the 14 models of relations built by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, we shall get the number 28. And indeed, in the dual relation, for example, each of the partners personally experiences the dual adjustment upon himself, but there are no sufficient grounds for asserting that his experiences are identical to the experiences of his partner; yet we call the relation as a whole dual. Moreover, one may assert that in all symmetrical relations each of the partners, although interacting with the very same functions as his vis-à-vis, receives from his partner not what he gives him, since the fillings of identical functions in the partners are different. Therefore, since in asymmetrical relations each of the partners likewise gives the other not what he himself receives, there are no grounds for approaching asymmetrical relations with a different measure than symmetrical ones. As a result of such reasoning we ought to call asymmetrical relations, just like symmetrical ones, by a single name. Or else, on the contrary, to call both the one and the other by a double name, for example duality-duality, which although justified is not very sensible and is in any case redundant. But however you count, by halves or as wholes, we get the figure 14. And so it turns out that Aušra Augustinavičiūtė’s intuition did not let her down in this question either.

And yet one can arrive at the conclusion that there are after all 16 socionic relations. This is not hard to do on the basis of the principle of the duality of types and relations. This principle is by no means an arbitrary assumption. Behind it stand well-grounded geometrical configurations adequate to the level of socionic generalization. This question is analysed in more detail in the chapter devoted to intertype relations (IR).

When Krivosheev uses the expression “in socionics it is considered” instead of “some socionists consider,” one may suppose that he thinks of socionics as a unified and finished science. But alas, no such thing yet exists. Aušra Augustinavičiūtė opened up a new and promising scientific direction. She set its basic parameters, but what is happening now in socionics represents a very motley picture of positions and opinions, corresponding to the wild development of a new scientific direction — the “period of primitive accumulation,” so to speak. Only a small number of scientist-socionists consciously use scientific methodology. The majority of “free” enthusiasts, on the whole far from stupid people, rely on their intuition and, as it turns out, often do not suspect that there exists a methodology of science in general and methods of concrete scientific research in particular. And some even invent their own methodology, which is interesting and in many cases instructive, but not adequate to the contemporary level of development of science in general and of methodology in particular.

Krivosheev grounds his intention to write a book about socionics in a critical assessment of the situation that has taken shape in socionics. This is praiseworthy — of course socionics needs the professional help of psychologists. The author states that the situation in socionics “is not simple: there exist a multitude of schools and directions whose adherents call themselves socionists, although not infrequently the ideas on which they rely have a fairly large spread both in the theoretical plane and in the plane of the results obtained” [13]. Alas, even in such a simple and obvious statement one senses methodological approximateness: can scientists who develop socionic subject matter really not call themselves socionists, notwithstanding a spread in theoretical and practical results? As a result of the author’s careless formulation of his thoughts, a subconscious distrust of all the subsequent text begins to form. Yet a psychologist ought to take into account the peculiarities of the psychological perception of a text. He might at least use some of the means from NLP.

Consider, for example, one of Krivosheev’s statements about Aušra Augustinavičiūtė. He writes: “A. Augustinavičiūtė, having become acquainted with the book of the greatest Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, the founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung — Psychological Types — managed to notice that thanks to these developments one can see definite regularities not only in the peculiarities of the characters of different people, which was splendidly done by Jung himself, but also in the peculiarities of the mutual relations between people belonging to different psychological types.” When one reads such a phrase, a strange impression arises of some hidden inaccuracy and ambiguity. There is something in this “managed to notice” and “was splendidly done by Jung himself” that from the very start sets an inaccurate tone with respect to the brilliant founder of socionics. “Managed to notice” is something superficial, accidental, non-obligatory. Yet Aušra Augustinavičiūtė penetrated into the very essence of Jung’s constructions, managed to restore the key to understanding his typology that had been lost by other psychologists, and not merely restored the truth but managed, to put it metaphorically, to take up Jung’s scientific banner and give his theory a new impetus. And therefore “was splendidly done by Jung himself” is a subtle substitution of reality. Well, of course, Jung is such a magnitude that how could one doubt the greatness of what he did? But we are scientists, and what interests us here is truth, not trivial banalities. Jung did what he did. It was a powerful theoretical premise, but now, thanks to socionics, we know that Jung did not understand everything, and not to the end, in what he had begun to build. And on the example of the American variant of his typology we see what a dead end a potentially high-quality theory may enter if it is treated dogmatically.

Look attentively, listen closely, feel the following phrase from Krivosheev’s book: “A. Augustinavičiūtė reasonably supposed that the basis of these peculiarities is the difference in the ways of perceiving, processing and issuing information; this difference she deemed strongly reminiscent of biochemical metabolism, i.e. the exchange of substances in the organism. Taking into account that in this case the reference is not to biochemical but to informational processes, following the Polish psychiatrist A. Kępiński, Aušra gave such an exchange the name of information metabolism.” Those who remember how it actually was cannot fail to feel the defect concealed in this phrase. Aušra Augustinavičiūtė directly used Kępiński’s theoretical find — without any special suppositions; and the fragment of this phrase “deemed strongly reminiscent of biochemical metabolism” may be considered a “masterpiece” of psychological penetration into the intellectual world of the brilliant researcher.

Interesting too are a professional psychologist’s reflections about information, which give an idea of what psychologists (at least some of them) actually think on this subject. Where does this conviction come from that the concept of information is “not entirely unambiguous”? Naturally, this question is addressed not to the author of a book about socionics (he may have any concepts he likes on any subject he likes) but to those sciences that have dealt thoroughly with the problem of information and have done everything they could. So — have they really not achieved at least some unambiguity in the understanding of information? No, here the author agrees that in a number of “natural sciences that study information and the processes of its transmission and processing, this concept is defined clearly enough.” It turns out that the author doubts the legitimacy of using “the definitions accepted in these sciences for a field of knowledge that studies processes in the human psyche.” In that case the subject of conversation simply disappears. One must either accept some working definition or refuse to consider the theme at all. Krivosheev goes on to write of himself that “it seems to the author of the present work that this term, used by A. Augustinavičiūtė, ought in the socionic aspect to be understood not in the strictly scientific but in the everyday sense.” One immediately wants to ask — how is that, irresponsibly, or what? For after this, all the author’s further reasoning should likewise be understood not in the strictly scientific but only in the everyday sense. And that is a very weak methodological position, and then, it seems, the author is scarcely capable of communicating anything intelligible to socionists.

All the same, thanks to Krivosheev for the fact that, although he denies the rigour of the definition of socionics given by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, he does acknowledge that “socionics REALLY WORKS, and thanks to socionic knowledge one can solve a multitude of tasks of both a personal and a social character.” This is the testimony of a professional who has effectively used socionics in his practice, and it might prompt psychologists to take a more attentive look at socionics and at last to start solving the fundamental problems of psychology in a contemporary way.

Useful for socionists is the author’s discussion of the term “psychological type.” He conveys the opinion, apparently, of some concrete psychologists that the use of this term is “fraught with the danger that socionics will study not concrete living people in all their uniqueness and inimitability, but certain templates, which provokes the ignoring of human individuality.” Here we are apparently dealing either with a psychological defence that ascribes to socionics something not corresponding to it and thereby compromises it, or with a real failure to understand that there exist different levels of studying human individuality, and that socionics sets itself a perfectly concrete task rather than “spreading its thought⁵ over the tree.” Socionics considers the level of eight maximally generalized psychological functions, which by no means excludes the accumulation of information about a concrete person at all other levels, but rather organizes and orders this process.

Krivosheev somewhat carelessly makes a remark about “the so-called type descriptions,” apparently not understanding the significance of this socionic product. The matter here is not that in “such descriptions a certain ‘averaged’ bearer of the TIM is considered as if a concrete living person were being described” [13]. It is by this scheme that the description of a type is carried out in empirical typologies. In socionics, however, what is interpreted is the model of the TIM, and therefore what is presupposed is not an “averaged” but a generalized description of the type, which of course is far from the same thing. It is another matter that the majority of socionists apparently do not understand this either and substitute typological descriptions for the interpretation of the model, relying on the psychological images of real people known to them from life. This defect in socionists’ work was repeatedly pointed out in his talks by the remarkable Kyiv socionist V. D. Ermak. Let us note, incidentally, that despite the considerable spread in type descriptions by different socionists and the numerous typological improvisations, the generalized image of the socionic types as an invariant of all the descriptions available in the socionic literature can already be sensed. What is surprising here is that the American typologies too (Kroeger, Thuesen, Keirsey, Tieger) have in their type descriptions come very close to describing what may be called the generalized core of the type, and this is very close to what socionics has obtained. This theme is worked through in more detail in the chapter devoted to the problem of describing the type.

Therefore, objecting to Krivosheev, one wants to say that there can be no question of a “template to which each bearer” [13] of this or that TIM must allegedly correspond behaviourally, and into which “he would have to squeeze himself as into a Procrustean bed” [13]. The talk can only be of the presence in the bearer of a TIM of behavioural factors of a high order — possibly not even of the second but of the third and fourth. But how else could it be — this is precisely what belonging to a type consists in, for those who understand. Therefore possible claims by psychologists against socionists on the subject of “templates” have the character of a misunderstanding. And here help from psychologists would be needed rather than their not entirely appropriate irony.

From the text of the book one senses Krivosheev’s limited acquaintance with the socionic literature. Therefore, when the author says of something that “in socionics it is accepted,” he has in mind this or that author he has selected, whom he possibly considers the principal one. Yet this by no means expresses some general opinion of socionists, if only because there is none. Thus, when Krivosheev speaks of “the so-called masks,” he leads readers into error. First, the mask is a general psychological concept, not an invention of socionists. For example, in the article “Persona” [14] we read: “…the Persona relates to the mask, or that guise which a person assumes when he finds himself in the external world.” And second, this by no means signifies that the concept of the mask in the general psychological and in the socionic sense coincide. The failure to distinguish different concepts with a similar sense and identical terminological formalization is a frequently encountered phenomenon even among experienced scientists. Therefore, when Krivosheev uses the expression “the phenomenon which in socionics it is accepted to call masks,” he commits two errors: it is not at all “accepted” in socionics, though individual socionists do use this term; and the subtle distinction that exists between the general psychological understanding of this term and its possible understanding in socionics is lost from view. Krivosheev himself in the text gives a definition of the mask as “a habitual stereotype of behaviour and reaction, worked out under concrete, usually highly unfavourable conditions, not corresponding to natural inclinations that have for one reason or another been ‘suppressed,’ and, correspondingly, a distorted perception of one’s self-image.” As the saying goes, one does not argue about definitions — one accepts or does not accept them. The definition of the mask given is a full-fledged and comprehensible general psychological conception of the corresponding phenomenon, although it differs somewhat from the one cited above from [14], to say nothing of the fact that a mask by no means necessarily conceals “natural inclinations suppressed for one reason or another.” Even this small difference is enough to speak of different, though very similar, concepts. Krivosheev’s definition is more detailed, more specialized and more precise, but it speaks of an acquired general psychological stereotype of behaviour and reaction, whereas the definition from [14] says nothing about the origin of the mask and implies a spontaneous capacity of the personality to mask certain of its peculiarities.

In socionics this phenomenon of the superimposition of some distorting element upon the type was noticed long before the works of Prokofieva and Krivosheev and was assessed and interpreted in different ways by different authors. As far as I remember, the very first mention in print of this phenomenon belongs to V. Gulenko and A. Didenko. They interpreted it as the existence of subtypes and began intensively to develop this theme. Notwithstanding the logical error contained in the use of the term “subtype” in socionics, their conjecture about the existence of stable factors defining the variety within a type was in essence correct. They encountered in practice stable differences within one and the same type and tried not only to describe but also to explain it. They considered that this level of deviation of the type could be explained by the relative specific weight of the two functions constituting the Ego block. Correspondingly they obtained sensory and intuitive subtypes as opposed to logical and ethical subtypes. This is a very plausible and even sympathetic explanation. All the more so since their theory of subtypes corresponds fairly well to empirical observations.

It seems that the next publication in time [15] on the theme of variety within a TIM belongs to me. I drew attention to a different peculiarity in the phenomenology of the TIM. In communicating with people and conducting socionic testing, I noticed that the basic type is often “coloured” by another type — the dual, the activator, the mirror, the conflictor, and so on.

Earlier than the others and more often than the others, the “phantom” of the dual was noted. The very first to speak of this was A. Augustinavičiūtė in her lectures on socionics. She connected this phenomenon with the process of self-dualization. Self-dualization is a state in which the personality develops in itself to such a degree the abilities presumed in the dual that it copes fully with the tasks of self-realization without turning to others for help and without counting on it. Self-dualization sets in under certain favourable conditions in the absence of a dual, when the functions of the vital ring are activated by the necessity of performing work that is usually shifted onto the dual. What is important here is that Aušra not only draws attention to this phenomenon but also gives it a possible theoretical explanation.

This seemed interesting to me, since it did not take one beyond the framework of socionics. Pondering this phenomenon, I supposed the existence of several mechanisms for the appearance of such an effect, one of which might consist in the fact that the bearer of one type may spend a long time under the direct influence of the bearer of another type. For example, a son, an intuitive-logical extravert (Il), is under the strong influence of his father, a logical-sensory extravert (Ls). As a result of this, characteristic features of Stierlitz may — and really do — appear in the guise of a Don Quixote. This is a stricter attitude toward his appearance; more often than many other Don Quixotes he goes about in a well-made jacket and tie. He has polished shoes, a cleanly shaven face, a striving to adhere more rigidly to regulations, and so on. So that in verbal testing it is easy to make a mistake and take this Don Quixote for a Stierlitz. I called this kind of superimposition of a competing image upon the type a socionic accentuation — a certain emphasis of the phantom type against the background of the basic one. However, the theoretical problem here consists in where and how such accentuations are fixed. A plausible but by no means trivial supposition is that they are somehow “recorded” on the corresponding energy meridians, and this of course represents a great problem for experimenters.

Somewhat later, and differently, the deviations of the TIM were explained by V. D. Ermak, who designated them as communicative models. If I understand him correctly, he considers that a communicative model appears as a result of the bearer of a TIM finding himself in conditions where he has for a long time to perform work uncharacteristic of his TIM. Trying somehow to reproduce the necessary stereotype, the person acquires the features of another TIM, which may likewise mislead an observer. The theoretical problem here consists in the fact that, since the talk is not simply of a model but of a model in socionics, the communicative model must apparently be a socionic model. That means that it must have eight functions and the corresponding blocks. But then it is unclear how two socionic models — the basic and the communicative — can get along in the psyche of one person.

Be that as it may, in recounting the idea of masks being developed by Prokofieva as one of the problems of socionics, Krivosheev ought to have given a fuller survey of this theme. Incidentally, in the case of masks too one cannot avoid a theoretical answer to the question of on what substrate these masks are realized. Besides, one should not exaggerate the role of elements that to one degree or another distort the TIM — in any case they play a secondary role and can always be eliminated, as is indeed observed in socionic practice.

Krivosheev expresses his intention connected with the writing of the book in the following words: “…I shall try to formulate my own particular point of view on the prospects of socionics in the ranks of the sciences of man. For this I shall attempt to identify the stages of its history, beginning with Jung’s typological views, examining separately the present position of socionics.” Let us see what comes of this.

Yes, “the Jungian typology fits quite organically into his (Jung’s) psychological paradigm,” and this of course is not surprising — the projections of a personality in all its manifestations ought, in principle, to preserve informational invariants. But something else is important here too: even such an outstanding thinker as Jung, as became clear after the discovery of socionics, did not fully get to the bottom of his own constructions, and his ideas were not brought to the perfection of truth. Therefore one may speak of errors, delusions, inaccuracies and stereotypes in the works of this great researcher. Besides, criticism of his works (both from the left and from the right) is well known. And, without at all belittling his services to psychology, one should acknowledge the understandable limitedness of the work of a man who was even ahead of his age. Therefore let us not absolutize any moments of his work, but let us work soberly with the results he obtained.

Krivosheev, following Jung and his successors, considers one of the most important questions in typology to be “the question of which manifestations of the psyche should be regarded as following from the peculiarities of the psychological type present in a concrete person, and which are determined by the uniqueness of his personal history.” Within the framework of socionics this question not only receives a simple and obvious solution but, properly speaking, simply loses its presumed acuteness. The socionic model makes the answer to this question obvious: from the peculiarities of the type follows everything that can be obtained as a result of a correct interpretation of the model. Everything else is determined by personal history. This Jung and his immediate successors did not know.

Within the framework of socionics, Krivosheev’s conclusion seems hasty and unfounded, namely that the identification of “the traits and inclinations most characteristic of a definite group of people does not evoke a striving to ascribe to these most typical traits of character an inevitability and/or obligatoriness.” If I correctly understand the formulation Krivosheev gives, the talk here is, among other things, of the possibility of changing one’s type. In socionics enough grounds have by now accumulated for considering the type innate and not subject to replacement. Final proof of such a hypothesis must be given by the empirical verification of this proposition.

Of course, thanks to Krivosheev for rating socionics highly when he says that it has managed “to study fairly deeply the peculiarities of the psyche of bearers of different TIMs, to develop and give detail to Jung’s typological ideas, to work out a theoretical base making it possible in many respects to foresee the peculiarities of the mutual relations of people with different TIMs, to obtain highly effective instruments for solving the most varied tasks connected with career guidance, personnel selection, the creation of teams with definite psychological characteristics, and so on.” Nevertheless, there is in his text a certain intonation which may, perhaps not very precisely, be characterized as benevolent condescension — something of the position of an “elder brother” who with a feeling of his own superiority good-naturedly pats his still awkward but on the whole promising junior partner on the shoulder.

One may agree with Krivosheev when he speaks of “the insufficient psychological training of the overwhelming majority of the people who have conducted socionic research,” since socionics has become a truly popular science, and for many people it has turned out, alongside astrology, to be almost the only source of psychological knowledge about the peculiarities of personality — it revealed to people some simple and clear truth, which psychology had by no means managed to do. However, it is hard to agree with Krivosheev when he says that this played “a cruel joke on socionics.” So far nothing dreadful, terrible or irreversible has happened to socionics. It is quietly developing like a perfectly normal science. In disputes, contradictions, revelations, errors and their overcoming it is making its way. Possibly, unfortunately, this process has a protracted and spontaneous character; but alas, well psychologically trained professionals are still rare in it, and even they, being professionals in psychology, often understand socionics very superficially, seeing in it only its typological side and committing all the same errors as the non-professionals. And this is not surprising — to work effectively in socionics one must grasp its specificity rather than impose on it the stereotypes of one’s own professional sphere.

Let us try to sort out the following statement of Krivosheev’s. “Many of these socionists have developed an inclination to ascribe immutability no longer to the peculiarities of the perception and processing of information but to the behavioural acts of people with a definite TIM. As a result many socionist specialists in working with clients rely first and foremost on the so-called type descriptions, because this approach naturally generates the notion that people with identical TIMs in similar situations allegedly behave in an inevitably identical manner.” Let us leave aside the semantic incoherence in the second phrase of this quotation after the conjunction “because” (this is an editorial oversight) — that is not the essence of the matter — and let us concentrate on Krivosheev’s opposition of “the peculiarities of the perception and processing of information” and “the behavioural acts of people with a definite TIM.”

From the socionic point of view, both of the conceptual units singled out enter into the scope of the concept of information metabolism — they are different sides of it. Only, the perception and processing of information is one of the forms of the introverted side of information metabolism, while behavioural acts relate to the extraverted side of information metabolism. The failure to understand this fact is not accidental — it really is hard to grasp. But failing to understand it leads also to a failure to understand what socionics is concerned with.

In order to answer the question “do people with identical TIMs behave identically in identical situations,” it is necessary to make a number of refinements. First of all, one must determine the precision with which we evaluate the similarity and difference of situations and of people’s behaviour in them. Apparently there is no sense in adducing proofs that absolutely identical situations do not occur. There will always be parameters distinguishing one situation from another — at the very least their spatio-temporal coordinates. In doing so let us not forget that, besides purely quantitative time and space, there exist qualitative time and qualitative space, which are far from indifferent to their filling. In a quality-free form these entities can appear only under special, artificial conditions, to which science sometimes lays claim. Therefore one may speak only of similar, but by no means identical, situations — that is, situations in which some of the parameters are close or lie within certain limits. In just the same way it is hard to allow that the behaviour even of one and the same person could be absolutely identical in similar situations. That is, that he would unambiguously reproduce all his movements, his trajectory of displacement, his plasticity, his mimicry, the shades of his mood and everything else. Possibly in a laboratory experiment conditions may be created in which the identity of situations (as with Pavlov’s dogs or Skinner’s rats) may be brought to its practical limit, but in life such a thing perhaps occurs only on the Ford conveyor belt — and even then… Even a pianist or violinist virtuosically performing a musical piece, a talented dancer performing many times in concert, a juggler or tightrope walker who have worked their movements to the point of automatism, are not guaranteed against changes of mood. Theatre actors who play one and the same piece evening after evening know that there are no completely identical performances. But it is not hard to see that in the situations enumerated the performers’ behaviour attains the maximum identity possible under practical conditions.

From this point of view let us try to evaluate the possible identity of the behaviour of different people in similar situations. Two pianists, two dancers, two jugglers, two pilots, two fitters, two street-sweepers, two salesmen… It does not take much imagination to picture how differently two identical piano pieces may be performed, how differently two different dancers may dance one and the same dance, how differently two jugglers may perform with one and the same act, how differently two pilots may feel during take-off or landing, how differently two fitters may turn one and the same part, how differently two street-sweepers may sweep one and the same pavement, how differently two salesmen may sell one and the same goods, how differently two actors may play one and the same role.

So what may two bearers of one and the same TIM have in common when they react to a similar situation or carry out a similar activity? Socionics can guarantee only a generalized characteristic of behaviour, with the preservation of a multitude of inimitable individual peculiarities. Huxleys and Yesenins are splendid dancers. Both types possess an innate plasticity that cannot be faked even by long training and practice, but on the basis of which one may attain the highest limits of mastery in dance. But on looking closely, and not even very closely, one may notice that the plasticity of these two types is different. The plasticity of Huxley is, if one may put it so, thicker, more resilient, has a greater amplitude, is broader — but not more sweeping, as with Zhukov, and not more sultry, as with Napoleon — and is full of a confident, mature grace. It is a promising plasticity. The plasticity of Yesenin is finer, sharper, more piercing, more teasing, provoking and beckoning. Of course it is hard to convey in words the subtle archetypal differences of these two entities, but the fact that they are distinguishably different is beyond doubt.

In any case, when Krivosheev says that “upon an identical mode of handling information are superimposed the individual peculiarities of the psyche formed in a person over the course of his life, sometimes favouring the development of those qualities to which his TIM presupposes an inclination, and sometimes hindering their development and compelling him to work out entirely different modes of behaviour,” one can of course agree with him, since the level of generalization is not stipulated here. However, the imprecision of the terminology used makes this statement hard to interpret. What does the combination of words “an identical mode of handling information” mean? It seems that here we are dealing with some interpretation or transformation of the concept of information metabolism. But if that is so, then it is clear that this concept in Krivosheev differs from the one presupposed in socionics. A “mode of handling information” is some particular and concrete case of processing a given informational block, either by hand (such as copying out, taking notes, or underlining words in a text) or on a computer using special programs. Whereas information metabolism is a fundamental concept generalizing any processes of the functioning of information in connection with the work of the psyche. Incidentally, at present it is already clear that this concept generalizes to the functioning of information in any systems whatever. Of course, an abundance of opinions is possible here.

Taking what has been said into account, it becomes clear why Krivosheev opposes “the peculiarities of perception and processing of information” to “behavioural acts” — the one he sees within the framework of information metabolism, and the other not.

And an utterly unfounded slander upon socionists is Krivosheev’s statement that “the delusion about the supposed identity of the behavioural characteristics of people with an identical TIM led many socionists to yet another fundamental error: it is not infrequently supposed that the TIM can be reliably determined by means of questionnaire tests.” This statement contains at least three inaccuracies.

First, socionist researchers realized long ago (as early as the beginning of the 1990s) the limitedness of verbal tests, although they tried and are trying to improve them. And whereas in America the so-called Myers-Briggs test is considered full-fledged and normative — that is, at the least, a valid test — leading socionists know that it is no more than a tuning table for the operator; but in that capacity it undoubtedly has its value. It was one of the sources out of which socionics grew.

Second, the “many socionists” of Krivosheev’s statement are still not all socionists, and “it is not infrequently supposed” does not mean that it is supposed always and by everyone. Such qualifications would classify the statement quite differently — as raw or insufficiently thought through. In any case, such leading socionists as A. V. Bukalov, V. V. Gulenko or V. D. Ermak know perfectly well the worth of verbal tests, as is testified by their talks, articles and testing practice. And the fact that verbal tests are nonetheless offered in books on socionics by no means signifies that their authors are unaware of their limitations; rather they are trying to find a replacement for the Myers-Briggs questionnaire and possibly hope sooner or later to create an effective verbal test. And it must be said that with Filatova, for example, whose socionic books may be counted among the best popular publications on this theme, the questionnaires are both better thought out and better organized. But after all, she too, like many others, started out from the Myers-Briggs questionnaire. Let us therefore treat this “workhorse” with respect and not “kick it with our boots.”

Third, it is still too early to write off entirely and cross out verbal tests, despite their limited reliability (60–65%). Krivosheev himself says that the low reliability of the existing socionic tests “compels psychologists to select for a concrete task a so-called battery of several tests” and that “the conclusions from the results of testing have a probabilistic character and are not taken as absolute truth.” But these tests, at least some of them, are also verbal, and yet, for better or worse, they do help in socionic diagnostics. It is precisely this that supports the hope and belief that the reliability of verbal tests can be raised. Incidentally, socionists differ in no way from psychologists in their attitude to verbal tests — they use them as an aid and do not take them for absolute truth. Highly encouraging results in this direction have appeared in the work carried out by A. M. Elyashevich on the fine-tuning of certain forms of verbal testing. And of course the work on creating verbal tests by A. V. Filimonov and the Lytovs, conducted on a solid methodological basis, inspires the hope that socionic diagnostics will sooner or later be brought to a level of high reliability.

So Krivosheev’s notions of socionists’ attitude to verbal tests do not correspond to reality. As for the concepts of representativeness, validity, reliability and precision of tests, here socionists really do have something to borrow from psychologists. This theme is discussed in detail in the chapter on socionic diagnostics.

All the same, notwithstanding the doubts evoked by Krivosheev’s statistical assertions that in socionics “the establishment of the psychological type with the help of such tests is a highly widespread method of diagnostics,” he is right when he says that as a result of dubious testing “the person tested usually receives, in explicit or implicit form, recommendations as to how exactly it is expedient for him to build his further life (regarding the preservation or dissolution of a marriage, changing the style of relations with children, the choice of a profession, and so on),” and that one must always remember “the very high price that the person diagnosed sometimes has to pay” for a socionic consultant’s error. Of course, here too one ought to define professionally the measure of this “very high price” rather than using a generalized emotional evaluation. Incidentally, all of this relates in equal measure to the errors of a psychologist-consultant.

One may also agree with Krivosheev’s criticism of the unreliability of socionic diagnostics by appearance — but not at all because it is impossible in principle, only because it is almost entirely undeveloped. As for Krivosheev’s reference to the selection of photographs of famous people in Appendix 1 to his book, then, at least in my view, this selection does not stand up to any criticism. In this connection a strange impression is created by the confidence with which Krivosheev speaks of the high reliability of the diagnostics he carried out in co-authorship with R. A. Stepanov: “As a result of lengthy investigations conducted by R. A. Stepanov together with the author of the book and a number of other people, it proved possible to create a gallery of photographic images of celebrities in which it is easy to discover both a noticeable resemblance between people with identical TIMs in some features of their faces and differences in others. The selection of photographs was carried out not on the basis of a study of the candidates’ appearance but by the method that will be described below in this chapter. For the gallery there were selected exclusively those celebrities in whom no masks were discovered, and where the reliability of the determination of the TIM by the combination of traits identified in typing was maximally high.” One is tempted to conclude that not only did the method fail to work, but that the promised description of it in the corresponding chapter turned out to be very indistinct.

Let us therefore emphasize once again that the least successful part of Krivosheev’s book is the portrait gallery. If it had been preceded by some sort of warning that the author does not answer for the reliability of the socionic types ascribed to the people depicted in the photographs, that this is an experimental series put forward for discussion, that this is a hypothesis — then everything would be understandable. On the contrary, the author says that it should be “especially emphasized that only those people are included here in whose TIMs we are confident to no less than 80–90%.” One can therefore only express regret that the author’s confidence proved to be subjective, and that the author, an authoritative psychologist, offers the reader a semi-finished product as a finished one. This works against him and, what is worse, against socionics. And here the author would do well to recall his own advice about how “one cannot fail to speak of the very high price that the person diagnosed sometimes has to pay for a socionic consultant’s error.”

When Krivosheev says that “not infrequently people with one TIM turn out not to be very similar to one another, either in build or in facial features or in peculiarities of movement, and conversely, people possessing completely different TIMs may have a fairly great external resemblance,” this only testifies to the undeveloped state of the “portrait-gallery” method. For possibly the matter is not simply one of external similarity or dissimilarity. There may, after all, be coincidence or non-coincidence of quite definite anthropometric characteristics. For example, the proportions of the skull, or the relative proportions of facial features, that is, calculated relative to height or to the size of the second phalanx of the thumb (the Chinese cun). A definite role in the resemblance of people may be played by the relative volume of muscle mass, tendencies toward leanness or stoutness. Nor should one forget the possible peculiarities of individual facial features: the shape of the nose, the shape of the lips, and so on. And even genetic dominance–recessiveness may make its contribution to the resemblance of people of different types. And of course it may happen that the types were determined incorrectly, which radically changes the assessment and the reasoning about the resemblance and dissimilarity of people.

It is known in psychology that constant psychological loads, impressions and states leave real traces on the human body. The same must in full measure be referred to information metabolism, since the psychological loads, impressions and states mentioned constitute part of information metabolism. Therefore a good task for experimenters would be the search for and identification of bodily features corresponding to concrete typological features of information metabolism — theory predicts that they must exist. And the fact that they may be superimposed upon individual bodily features reflecting the personal history of information metabolism must of course also be taken into account, and apparently this will be no more complicated than finding the basic features characterizing the TIM. Krivosheev confirms that “the psychological type, which supplies its possessor with definite peculiarities, really must influence a person’s appearance,” and this inspires the hope that experimenters will hear the theoreticians and do the necessary work.

It is undoubtedly valuable that a professional psychologist shares his opinion about the various methods of testing in socionics, and this opinion is, on the whole, negative: neither verbal, nor physiognomic, nor projective tests give a reliable result. Krivosheev says that although these “approaches sometimes really do make it possible to determine the TIM, their reliability,” by his observations, “is likewise low.” Socionists came to such conclusions long ago, but thanks even for the belated confirmation.

I should especially like to dwell on Krivosheev’s understanding and evaluation, as a professional psychologist, of one of the key concepts of socionics — the concept of the information aspect. The concept of the IA has a fundamental character for socionics and is one of its basic constructs, reflecting its conceptual-methodological base, which is fundamentally new by comparison with psychology. Therefore this concept cannot be waved away in passing or arrogantly disdained, and for that reason many more lances will be broken over it.

Krivosheev says that he considers “this question not so simple as it appears to many socionists,” but at the same time, in his view, this concept, introduced by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, “has no sufficiently intelligible basis beneath it.” Since this is a personal opinion there is no sense in disputing it in any way. What is important here is only that Krivosheev frankly does not understand the real sense of this concept. All the more so since almost immediately after the fragment cited there follows an erroneous reproduction of one of Aušra’s ideas, when Krivosheev says that she “divided all the information about the environment perceived by a person into spatial and field.” The point is that Aušra speaks of body and field, analogues of objects and of the relations between them, whereas opposing space and field obviously makes no sense in this context. Possibly Krivosheev simply made a slip here, but behind it one still senses a not very deep penetration into this idea of Aušra’s.

When Aušra Augustinavičiūtė describes her intuitive impressions of the functioning of the psyche of a separate, non-dualized person and of a dualized person, using in doing so the image of a field, she by no means asserts but only supposes that behind this there may stand a physical phenomenon. She puts it thus: “Evidently, the field of the dyad is a physical phenomenon.” Obviously we are dealing here with a hypothesis requiring confirmation or refutation. Therefore, when Krivosheev says that this “hypothesis could be acceptable if the reference were to those physical fields that science has long since learned to record and measure,” he commits an elementary methodological error — a hypothesis is acceptable so long as it has not been refuted. But so far no one has proved that biological or psychological fields do not exist. On the contrary, hypotheses about these fields fill the contemporary intellectual atmosphere, and of course it is a pity that in science there is no definiteness on this question. Moreover, Krivosheev says that this does not mean that he personally is “inclined to deny the very fact of the presence of any biofield interactions, but so long as these interactions have not been established by the corresponding measurements, which independent experts can verify, and are based exclusively on the sensations of individual people, it is illegitimate to assign these data to the class of the scientific.” But no one is doing that — the talk is of a scientist’s intuition and of the hypotheses he advances. It is therefore a pity that Krivosheev, exploiting the existing indeterminacy, tries on this basis to formulate the idea of the unscientific character of socionics. He asks the question, “can socionics be acknowledged as a science with such argumentation?” But the talk is not of argumentation — the talk is of a supposition. And this supposition of an intuitive-logical extravert may and must serve as a ground for experimenters to be able to take up the investigation of the existence of the presumed fields, rather than demanding of a scientist that he suppose nothing that is as yet unknown to science. In the end, the sense of science is not to forbid the investigation of the unknown — although under conditions of the limited material resources allocated to science by the bureaucratic system and the desperate struggle for these resources, the repressive position of individual scientists “in the law” is entirely understandable. And the fact that Krivosheev has no “reliable facts confirming a ‘curvature of psychological space’” simply deprives him of the possibility of advancing the corresponding hypothesis, and it is advanced by another person who does have the corresponding intuitive impressions.

And here Krivosheev proposes his own variant for saving socionics. Apparently doing the hapless socionists a certain favour, he says: “And since socionics, as it seems to me, does after all have sufficient grounds to find its place in the sphere of scientific knowledge, I should like somewhat to correct certain of the concepts introduced by A. Augustinavičiūtė and her followers, to bring them to a form more acceptable to science.” Perhaps I am mistaken, but in these statements one senses the arrogance of a learned pedant who considers it his duty to take up the position of a raisonneur and to point out to the hapless discoverer of socionics how everything ought to be “in reality.” He considers that “among the concepts which,” as it seems to him, “require correction is also the concept of the aspect.” Here I agree with Krivosheev in the sense that the majority of the concepts of socionics require further theoretical elaboration and experimental verification. But it is scarcely possible to have any claims against Aušra here — she identified the IAs and introduced them very carefully with the help of special symbols which point to the corresponding archetypes and do not require obligatory and immediate interpretation at the verbal level. The history of socionics shows that such verbalization is difficult, ambiguous and provokes clashes of various points of view. But the search for the meaning of the IAs may turn out to be one of the causes of the refinement and development of socionic theory.

A substantial contribution to the refinement of the concept of the IA has been made by Medvedev, Ermak, Gulenko, Sedykh, Gut, Filimonov, Prokofieva and other authors, and although general agreement among socionists has not yet been reached here, their opinion on this question ought nevertheless to be taken into account — these are, after all, strong scholars.

Krivosheev proposes, in my view, a not bad variant of understanding the IAs as “projections of psychic functions onto the physical world surrounding the person.” Possibly such a view of the IAs will prove acceptable to psychologists. But it does not possess any absolute advantages apart from a terminology familiar and comprehensible to psychologists. The point is that the reverse understanding of the IAs as projections of the physical world onto the psyche is also possible. If one takes into account the unity of the world, such a point of view has every right to exist. Moreover, one may use the postulate according to which the psyche could reflect and project nothing outward if there were not present in it from the very beginning all the components necessary for this, corresponding to the structure of the physical world. This theme is examined in more detail in the chapter devoted to information aspects.

In any case, scientific methodology presupposes and permits the axiomatic introduction of basic concepts, all the more so if they are useful and plausible. From this point of view Krivosheev’s reference to Alfred Korzybski is interesting; Korzybski says that “when we divide verbally what cannot be divided existentially, we introduce errors into our thinking.” This sophism, which imposes a restriction on the verbal division of what in reality co-exists, is nothing but a bogeyman. To divide verbally is one of the elements of the methodological instrumentation of science. Yes, of course, a scientist should not forget that, having carried out analysis, he must subsequently return to synthesis; but it seems that Korzybski, in constructing his sophism, subconsciously (and perhaps consciously) did not include the synthetic phase of a scientist’s work in the statement cited above. Korzybski’s favourite example about “space” and “time,” which “in reality do not exist separately,” proves nothing except the sophistic attitude of its author. Assertions about the separateness or non-separateness of the existence of these entities are, as Kant convincingly showed in his “Antinomies,” equally subjective, and one may with equal degrees of persuasiveness prove either the one or the other. What is important is only that the scientist should take into account in his theoretical constructions the dialectical connection of the entities he investigates. Therefore, returning to the IAs in socionics, one may say that these entities co-exist in reality, entering into various and at times very complex relations with one another, up to and including inseparability; but at the same time the human mind is capable of distinguishing perfectly clearly their own contribution to the phenomenology of our world.

There is also such a working instrument of scientific methodology as abstraction, which makes it possible temporarily to “extract” a concept from the complex connections in which it exists in reality, in order, after the necessary analysis, to “put” it back in its place, but now with an understanding of its real nature. Therefore one can only assess with gratitude and admiration the work that Aušra Augustinavičiūtė carried out in abstracting the IAs — eight remarkable entities which, in their complex connections and in their inseparability, form everything we can observe in our world. And Krivosheev’s reproach directed at “writing” socionists, who “usually place” the concepts of space and time, “alongside certain other equally ambiguously defined concepts, at the basis of the aspectual division of the world,” may be regarded as “criticism from the right,” that is, in a more “reactionary” key than socionists themselves adopt. The work of extracting the IAs from the phenomenology of reality has been done, and their more unambiguous theoretical qualification still awaits its dramatic elaboration. Krivosheev justly writes that the verbal “division of ‘space’ and ‘time’ at the end of the nineteenth century turned into an enormous problem for physics, provoking a multitude of paradoxes and contradictions,” and that “it was solved by the genius of Einstein, who returned to the sources of these categories, understood that they were created by ourselves, and rebuilt physics anew on the basis of the simple existential fact that we never encounter ‘space’ and ‘time’ separately, but only the indivisible ‘space-time continuum.‘” This description of a dramatic situation in physics and its overcoming only confirms the methodological capacity of science to sort out its own concepts and inspires the hope that socionics too is on the right path and will manage to overcome all the contradictions that arise and may still arise in the course of its further establishment.

And one more remark concerning Krivosheev’s understanding of information. Since he writes “it is known that information does not exist without a subject perceiving it,” this may be counted as one of his convictions. However, it is not at all obligatory to accept this postulate as “known” and still less as self-evident. And above all because not everything is so clear and comprehensible with the “perceiving subject.” It would scarcely be uniquely correct to identify the “perceiving subject” solely — as materialists and their dialectical variety do — with man, with humanity or with human activity, with whatever letter we may write these words. Subject and subjectivity may be understood considerably more broadly as any sources of local or global initiative or of a perturbing impulse, as any singularities, synergies or integral conglomerates distinguished by spontaneous activity. To this category may belong the universe as a whole, whatever sense we put into that concept, and symbioses of living beings, and more or less accidentally arising ensembles of elementary particles under whose influence the structure of the environment surrounding them begins to change, while they themselves together with their environment begin to undergo an evolution leading to the complication or degeneration of their structure or of the structure of their ensembles. Proceeding from such an understanding of the subject, it is not hard to understand that in the world there are always enough subjects and subjectivity for there to be someone to turn “an amorphous mass of diverse influences” [13] into informational flows.

Therefore when Krivosheev says that, in accordance with his hypothesis, “the world in itself has no division into aspects,” then, as a hypothesis, this is of course acceptable, but it requires a large number of refinements and definitions, as a result of which nothing may remain of the hypothesis. Nevertheless, his proposal to consider the IAs projections of psychological functions is quite original and deserves theoretical analysis. And apparently the IAs, alongside all sorts of other presentations, may also be regarded “as models representing the psyche’s perception of information from the external world in the form of eight different modes of it.” And this may quite well be “highly useful for practical purposes” [13].

Proceeding from what has been said earlier, let us try to evaluate the scientific quality of psychology.

By now psychology has become a respectable science with a multitude of directions, a rich literature and a broad spectrum of applications, as well as quite good earnings for its adepts; but it has still not found the theoretical framework into which its rich and valuable experimental material might fit.

As early as 1985 V. M. Melnikov and L. T. Yampolsky, in their book Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Personality [2] (a very informative and valuable book), wrote: “It is also indubitable that by comparison with the physico-chemical sciences the psychology of personality is very young and has not yet emerged from the period of childhood. However, having made all these reservations, one ought to ask: is there not some defect inherent in psychological methods of research that holds back the practical development of the psychology of personality?” And further they write that “the systematization of psychological knowledge about personality may be conventionally divided into two historical phases: the clinical-psychological and the experimental.”

This testimony indicates that twenty years ago psychology, having already plunged deeply into experimental research, still had no theoretical foundation — but it has none now either. And only with the development of socionics has hope appeared for the construction of a universal theoretical scheme for the psychological and other humanitarian sciences. Therefore the two historical phases mentioned by the authors of [2] — the clinical-psychological and the experimental — ought at the present stage to be supplemented by a theoretical one.

This is how the above-mentioned authors evaluate the first phase of psychology’s formation: “The clinical-psychological phase is a phase of organized observations and verbal theories. It arose as a striving to treat and correct deviant forms of behaviour. This phase left us as its legacy many famous names (such as Adler, Bekhterev, Bleuler, Janet, Korsakov, Kraepelin, Kretschmer, Lazursky, Freud, Jung and others) and a multitude of original theories. Being scientific in their aims, these theories attained popularity without possessing validity. They lack the experimental basis found in other sciences. Experiment is used in the clinical-psychological phase of research only implicitly. Measurement here is replaced by observation, the collection of data by the selection of illustrative cases, statistical processing by substantive interpretation.” Socionists would say — by intuitive interpretation. And let us add that “substantive interpretation” in psychology and other humanitarian sciences still bears a subjective and largely accidental character in view of — strange as it may seem — the philosophical and methodological underdevelopment of the instruments of such interpretation. Philosophy of the European type — one might even say, though with a great stretch, scientific philosophy — has travelled a long path and gathered an enormous gnoseological baggage, but its recommendations are still contradictory and its instruments deprived of the definiteness necessary for natural-scientific research. Of course, each separate philosophical school and each concrete philosopher may insist with any degree of confidence on his own rightness, but alas, no unified philosophical position has yet been worked out that would ensure methodological definiteness in scientific research.

Socionics is at present even younger than psychology in the time of Freud and Jung, but it stands on the shoulders of the real achievements made by these outstanding figures and takes into account the contemporary — one may say, quite advanced — state of psychology. Of course, broad experimental research is needed that will confirm the theoretical findings of socionics, but the theoretical constructs necessary for such research are already available. The most progressive part of psychologists has sensed the depth of socionic ideas and has begun their experimental elaboration, but a substantial shortcoming of such works is an ambiguous and blurred understanding of the key concepts of socionics, in which experimenters subjectively deform socionic concepts and search for — and consequently find — distorted entities corresponding to their own private notions.

If, as the authors of [2] write, “the poverty of the experimental procedure allows one to manipulate a large number of explanatory variables,” then the converse is also true — if the explanatory variables have been found correctly (and this is precisely what socionics claims), then the experimental procedures will be maximally economical and precisely targeted.

And further: “It is important that the supporters of the clinical method try to bring together into a single system all the variables necessary for the formation of concepts about personality, without which it is impossible to arrive at the establishment of real regularities.” That is, psychologists have always dreamed and still dream of establishing real regularities — and now socionics has, one may say, “felt out” the character of these possible regularities, and it remains for psychologists to grasp their character and try to apply them to the rich empirical and semi-theoretical material accumulated in it.

“The experimental phase arose as a reaction to the verbal character of the clinical-psychological method of research. This phase of quantitative and experimental research into personality from the very beginning divided clearly into two currents: the two-dimensional and the multidimensional. Both approaches make it possible to study interconnections between variables, but by different means.” The theoretical phase ought to arise as a reaction to the depressing empiricism of the experimental phase.

The authors of [2], in Chapter 1, “Methods and Results of Multidimensional Investigations of the Individual-Psychological Peculiarities of Personality,” write: “Most sciences have achieved progress in their research thanks to the development of specialized methods of measurement and analysis of experimental results. By these standards of the normal development of a science, the psychology of personality at first took a false start, but there were psychologists who managed to find a path to measurements adequate to the object of research.”

This quotation, twenty years old, retains its relevance now too — in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Moreover, contemporary highly intellectualized laboratory equipment is simply waiting for a load adequate to the object of research. It seems that the theoretical developments in socionics are ready to provide experimenters with promising themes for laboratory searches — which of course should be understood in a broad sense.

And further: “However, measurement in itself is not enough. It is necessary not merely to measure some vivid manifestations of personality, but to carry out such measurements as make it possible to lay bare the important functional and structural components of personality. Obviously, for this it is necessary that psychologists join their efforts in developing certain basic conceptions. Only the reproducibility of results by different researchers and in different laboratories will make it possible to separate the chaff from the grain.” One of the basic conceptions in contemporary psychology could be the socionic model “A” and its productive variations. A laboratory experiment precisely organized according to model “A” would make it possible to materialize and to render visible and convincing the intuitive insights of the brilliant Lithuanian researcher and her followers.

And one more long and important quotation from [10]. “However, with the beginning of measurement in the psychology of personality there arose a stormy and disorderly activity. Probably in a number of cases it was connected with the striving of some psychologists for originality, for measuring something that no one had measured. However, in our opinion, the greater part of this chaotic activity is explained by the absence among Western psychologists of generalizing guiding conceptions about the nature of personality variables. This led to many investigations turning out to be new to such a degree that they had no connection with the previous development of psychological science.

Instead of ‘standing on the shoulders’ of previous researchers, as is accepted in physics and as ensures the architectonic growth of scientific knowledge, specialists in the psychology of personality erected a ‘tent city’ of individual structures unconnected with one another.” The passage cited serves as an indication that psychology had no unified theoretical foundation as of 1985; but it still has none twenty years later, though this by no means diminishes the value of many results obtained by psychologists.

Let us settle on the point that socionics has as its subject the level of secondary functions connected with the place they occupy in the structure of the human psyche. It is precisely here that one may draw, if there is any need for it, the boundary between socionics and psychology, whose subject until recently has been the primary psychic functions, while the structural positioning of the functions still remains at the level of Freud’s insights.

Numerous psychoanalytic theories may relatively easily be generalized using the concepts of neurolinguistic, social and biological programming. If we proceed from the hypothesis that the organism of a living being, being a material system, can act purposefully only thanks to informational programmes, and that in its psychophysiological structures it has devices (including virtual ones) capable of perceiving, storing and processing information whose arrays may be databases, knowledge bases and programmes — though there may be no rigid boundaries between these categories. Databases are raw empirical material, the result of a relatively accidental sensory contact of a living being with the environment. Knowledge bases are models of the environment, which may be regarded as the cores of behavioural programmes. Behavioural programmes may be conventionally divided into two types — target programmes and generalized ones (metaprogrammes). Among the programmes, as clinical experience shows, besides the useful ones there may be parasitic, harmful and simply destructive ones. One of the tasks of psychology at the present stage is the identification of all the varieties of programmes and the use of this knowledge in clinical and everyday practice.

In psychology criteria have been worked out which a full-fledged theory of personality must satisfy [16]. Such a theory must answer questions connected with the structure of personality, the sources of motivation, the development of personality and genetic factors, psychopathology and psychic health.

Besides this, the following methodological requirements are made of a theory of personality [16]. It must be verifiable, possess heuristic value, be distinguished by internal consistency, be economical, have sufficient breadth of coverage, and be functionally significant.

At present no psychological theory other than socionics answers to this whole totality of criteria and requirements.

All existing psychological theories reflect to one degree or another various sides of human nature and of the theoretical comprehension of that nature. The basic parameters of such comprehension may be represented by the following polar categories, proposed by L. Hjelle and D. Ziegler as theoretical coordinates of any personological research [16]:

1. Freedom – Determinism In his investigations of personality the psychologist arrives at one conclusion or another about the degree to which a person’s behaviour is determined by external circumstances or determined by his will.

2. Rationality – Irrationality The psychologist answers explicitly or implicitly the question of whether a person forms his behaviour consciously, or whether it is independent of consciousness, which merely states and justifies the existing state of affairs (status quo).

3. Holism – Elementalism In the results of a psychologist’s work one may discover an attitude to the problem of the integrity of human behaviour. The pole of holism: human behaviour represents an integral act. The pole of elementalism: human behaviour is a linear superposition of isolated actions which, in the end, may be reduced to specific reactions acquired through learning, and these reactions may be described in terms of biochemical processes.

4. Constitutionalism – Environmentalism Is the behaviour of an animal, including a human being, determined by the makeup of its organism, or is it unambiguously formed by the surrounding environment?

5. Changeability – Unchangeability Are there set and existing forms of behaviour characteristic of every animal, or do they change continuously in accordance with the necessity of adapting, taking up the challenge of the environment?

6. Subjectivity – Objectivity Is it necessary to take into account the personality’s subjective attitude toward its individual situation in order to explain its behaviour, or can the behaviour of a human being, and still more of an animal, be “calculated” from a knowledge of the essential parameters?

7. Proactivity – Reactivity Is the behaviour of a human being and an animal a pure reaction to external stimuli, or does its purposive character have an informational-psychic prototype which is then realized in the form of behaviour?

8. Homeostasis – Heterostasis Is the behaviour of a human being and an animal a means of the situational restoration of internal equilibrium, or does it have a teleological character, that is, is it directed toward the attainment of a goal?

9. Knowability – Unknowability Possibly the singling out of this polarity is owed to philosophy, in which there are directions denying the knowability of the world — scepticism, agnosticism, nihilism; but be that as it may, within the framework of scientific methodology this pair of categories has meaning. As applied to the psychology of personality the corresponding problem might be formulated thus: is human behaviour knowable or unknowable?

From general methodological considerations one may say that each of these poles has its own working zone, and their rigid opposition leads to losses in the knowledge of the human personality.

Even the fact that all these polarities have to one degree or another been designated by various theories of personality may serve as indirect proof that all their poles have a place in the real existence of every concrete personality. All the more so since in defence of each of the poles some quantity of arguments has been advanced. Therefore a generalizing theory might proceed from the assumption that each pole occupies in the description of personality the place adequate to it.

Let us examine the polar constructs indicated somewhat more concretely.

1. Freedom – Determinism

This opposition presupposes an answer to the question of how far human behaviour is determined and how far a person possesses freedom of will. Different theories, relying on different volumes of empirical observation and different methodological attitudes, solve this problem differently. Some theories unambiguously deny any freedom of the personality whatever and adduce a mass of arguments in favour of its rigid determination. There are also theories that argue for the fundamental freedom of the human being. Taking into account the rich argumentation in favour of each of these alternatives, one may come to the conclusion that each of the poles presented has its own working zone, so that within certain limits the personality is free, and within certain others determined.

For example, Skinner considered that the behaviour of the personality depends entirely on past experience. Within the framework of learning theory he formulated this thus: the behaviour of any animal, including man, is the product of preceding reinforcements, and individual differences in behaviour are unambiguously determined by differences in past reinforcement. This conviction of Skinner’s is not hard to understand as a projection of the experimental situation, in which freedom simply was not presupposed, since freedom, according to Skinner, cannot be studied scientifically and the ideal of science is determinism. Moreover, Skinner formulated this certainty of his as a postulate: “If we wish to use the methods of science in the sphere of the study of man, we are obliged to suppose that behaviour is lawful and determined.” Whereas Perls, oriented toward personal growth and practising the corresponding methods, considered the personality fundamentally free. A different methodological attitude yielded a different theoretical projection. Nonetheless Skinner did allow a peculiar variant of freedom as the infinite number of possibilities which, for example, in his opinion a child has. But this is only in potential, since the parents, in creating the situation of learning, very rigidly set and thereby determine the parameters and results of the child’s development. This situation may be pictured as still more rigid if one considers that the parents are one of the links in the causal chain determining the sequence of events in a person’s life. An adult, however, is already completely unfree, since the matrix of his behaviour has been formed and can change only with a change in the peculiarities of reinforcement. Thus Skinner makes the categorical conclusion that “no one has the freedom to choose his own behaviour — on the contrary, behaviour is formed exclusively by external reinforcements” [cited from 16].

Data from contemporary psychophysiology give grounds for considering that man as a physiological system is apparently so rigidly determined that he may be considered a hormonal automaton. That is, his behaviour is rigidly determined by the quantity and quality of the hormones released into the bloodstream. And at the same time we know that the human spirit is capable of demonstrating high examples of overcoming physiological dependence in the form of asceticism or heroic self-sacrifice, which of course may be regarded as conditioning by a different series of causes. However, if with freedom we connect the moment of choice as the overcoming of a rigid dependence standing in the way of increasing the complexity of the inner world, then we may acknowledge the usefulness of introducing the polarity under consideration.

Apparently this problem is solved by the theoretical and empirical identification of a hierarchy of behavioural programmes, in which programmes of different levels receive different priorities under the corresponding conditions. In this case it is clear that programmes formed, for example, as a result of auto-suggestion may cancel, change or correct a programme of physiological reaction. In this case the idea of information metabolism becomes especially attractive.

One may say that the physiological norm and the type of the organism’s reaction are determined. Freedom, however, exists above all as the possibility of choice among essential alternatives, but the choice itself is to a high degree predetermined by numerous circumstances of life. Therefore freedom of will exists as a potential which may be realized only under additional conditions. In any case, here as in many other cases, precise definitions and detailed explications are necessary.

In connection with the subject matter of this section it is interesting to recall the development of this theme in the totalitarian period of Soviet psychology. The remarkable achievement of Soviet psychology in its opposition to behaviourism, expressed in the formulation of one of the leading Soviet psychologists, S. Rubinstein, as “External conditions act only through internal ones” (cited from [17]), is hard to understand outside the paradigmatic struggle of that time. Today this seems self-evident to many, but then it could end in the psychiatric wards, the camps and a ghastly death. And this is precisely the case where the heuristics of dialectical materialism helped to find an answer corresponding to reality. However, it turns out that this answer did not exhaust the truth. And another leading Soviet psychologist, A. Leontiev, does not agree (!) with this formulation and changes it to the directly opposite one: “The internal (the subject) acts through the external and thereby changes itself.” V. V. Petukhov specifies that “it is not the external conditions that act through the internal ones, but the reverse” [17]. Note on what nuances the discussion rests! For Russian psychological thought revolved around this theme for several decades. Yet that same dialectics suggests that the opposition and severance of the connection between polar categories leads to a distortion of the truth. So how, after all, might the presumed formulation have sounded, both then and in our time? The poles are designated — there is the external and there is the internal. The result of their interaction is designated — it is activity, according to Rubinstein. And Rubinstein, entirely in accordance with dialectics, regards activity as an interaction of external and internal conditions. So what is the sense of the polemic? In the accent! The early behaviourists were certain that the behaviour of an individual is entirely determined by external conditions. Today one might say: “What, are they completely without brains over there?” But there were very intelligent people there, Skinner for example — a logical-intuitive introvert. Did they really not understand this? What is important is that they had sufficient grounds for their certainty. And there were experimental confirmations. On rats and pigeons, true, but there were. And Rubinstein took a very bold step in saying that the external acts only through the internal. Only it is that “only” that is troubling. It would probably be more accurate to say that the external acts both in itself and through the internal. In itself — that is when a tsunami washes away cities and no one has time to grasp anything. That is, the internal in this case does not work. Well, perhaps it does work, but we know nothing about it. But why did Leontiev oppose Rubinstein so? Could he not have put it more softly? “Yes, the external acts through the internal, but the internal also acts through the external.” Dialectics. Yet he found it possible to put it far more categorically: “The internal (the subject) acts through the external and thereby changes itself.”

Socionics puts an end to such confrontations. It shows exactly how external informational influences are transformed in the internal structures of the psyche. It points to these structures and reveals their semantics. Thus, concluding the “discussion” between Leontiev and Rubinstein, a socionist may say that the input blocks of the psyche perceive the informational-energetic influence of the environment (the external), the internal blocks transform the signal received into an internal model of the external environment and work out programmes of adaptation. After this the output block of the psyche carries out behaviour, taking into account the peculiarities of the environment.

2. Rationality – Irrationality

In psychology this polarity is understood as the motivational-instrumental aspect of behaviour, in the sense of whether human behaviour is formed rationally or irrationally. From the point of view of socionics these concepts have been insufficiently and imprecisely explicated not only in psychology but also in philosophy and, correspondingly, in other humanitarian fields.

Following Jung, socionics discovers the scientific truth of these concepts, refining their more or less blurred philosophical content. Socionics does not pose the question of whether people are in essence rational beings whose behaviour is directed by reasoning, or whether they are governed by irrational forces. In the socionic model rational and irrational psychic functions are equally represented; they switch on in the situations adequate to them and process information correspondingly, forming behaviour. Besides, half of the socionic types are inclined toward irrationally, and half toward rationally coloured reacting, in the socionic understanding of these terms. In this case the rational gravitates toward reliance on personal programmes, and the irrational toward a predominance of situational moments — but these are only tendencies, which only in rare cases attain extreme values.

From this point of view Skinner’s position, in which he formulated his understanding of this problem, is interesting. He considered that the refined empirical approach he adhered to could regard a human being only as a “black box.” What goes on inside the box is in principle unknown to the experimenter. All the experimenter can do is present the “black box” with stimuli and record the reactions of the “box.” It is not excluded that inside there proceed some rational or irrational processes; this may prove a very interesting theme for a philosopher, but the experimenter cannot use such hypotheses to explain the behaviour of the “black box,” since this is not relevant to the method of the experiment. Only the influences on the “black box” controlled by the experimenter, and only the reactions of the “black box” recorded strictly in accordance with a methodologically justified protocol prepared in advance, “are the sole relevant variables necessary in the analysis of behaviour, and not what may or may not be happening inside.” Of course, a living person, thanks to his subjective introspection, may disagree that someone considers him a “black box,” but that is no concern of the experimenter. On the other hand, the regularities of behaviour he discovers are not limited to man alone but relate to all animals, although Skinner most often experimented with pigeons and rats. Of course, a captious philosopher might reproach Skinner with the fact that the results of his investigations relate only to pigeons and rats, but Skinner successfully applied the results he obtained to people as well. And, as the authors of [16] say: “Since both extremes of the continuum rationality–irrationality relate to hypothetical internal processes that underlie behaviour, this proposition does not play an important role in Skinner’s reflections. It is simply inapplicable to his position.”

3. Holism – Elementalism

For socionics this opposition is artificial, since it acknowledges that personality represents an integrity consisting of interacting parts. These parts are not isolated from one another but, on the contrary, are in constant interaction and substantially supplement one another. But at the same time, within the integral system of the psyche there are elements composing it which are quite unambiguously separated out in the process of analysis and whose contribution to the phenomenology of the integrity has an entirely definite character. Both these poles are fully represented in model “A.”

Skinner represents perhaps the most extreme and at the same time the most consistent and theoretically motivated position in the study of the behaviour of living beings, and therefore it is convenient to use his example to evaluate the methodological orientations under consideration. Skinner adhered to an “elementalist” position, which fully corresponds to behaviourist methodology, simply because the behaviourist’s database is a table of stimuli and reactions, and all behavioural compositions, however complex, may in Skinner’s opinion be reduced to these two structural elements. Stimuli may always be made elementary, and the reaction to an elementary stimulus may also always be presented as elementary. Of course there are methodological problems here, such as whether the reaction to a sum of elementary stimuli will be the sum of the corresponding elementary reactions — for the answer to this question is not obvious — but one can always act in such a way that such questions do not arise.

For Skinner, personality is the sum of the forms of behaviour characteristic of a given person. This is a strong methodological position, because it excludes metaphysical reasoning about the essence of man, including, for example, about his soul, as not relevant to the method of the experiment. From this it is easy to understand that for Skinner, notwithstanding his position on the question of the knowability of man, knowability itself is limited only to what can be observed in an experiment, that is, only to sensory perception. Here one recognizes the subconscious position of a rational logical, and everything else is simply not relevant for him. Let us recall that Skinner was, it seems, a logical-intuitive introvert (lI).

Thus, personality according to Skinner represents a set of reactions that may be quite complex but are nevertheless unconnected with one another, since they were worked out practically independently of one another. Skinner was a brilliant scientist and a brilliant experimenter, and he found a brilliant way of avoiding many problems which for him had no pragmatic sense — that is, his financial well-being could in no way depend on their solution.

Skinner gave clear definitions of the concepts relevant to him. For example, “to understand behaviour” meant for him the possibility of reproducing “the experience of past learning,” which means that a hypothetical mental operation inside the “black box” is replaced by the sensory contemplation of protocols in which a series of a person’s past acts is recorded. In order to get rid of ambiguity in terminology and of blurred concepts, Skinner presents behaviour as the sum of “operant reactions.” In any case, thanks to Skinner for having collected an enormous quantity of empirical facts, which it might have been difficult to do within the framework of a different methodology. Skinner’s extremely elementalist position is expressed in the postulate that “behaviour can be understood only through a detailed analysis of the parts composing it.” But is that not exactly how an investigator proceeds when collecting and analysing material evidence and witness testimony? Only one should not forget that at a certain moment of his work the investigator suddenly begins to perceive all the materials he has collected as a single whole, and then his conclusions acquire the character of proof. Perhaps it would be too simplistic to think that Skinner reduced all differences between people to obvious differences in behaviour. Possibly in everyday life he did not adhere to such an extreme, but in scientific argumentation he consistently pursued the idea that personality is built up in time as an aggregate of “operant reactions.” This is a vivid example of an extreme elementalist position, clearly distinct from holistic views in which personality is understood as a complex and indivisible whole which may quite well be described by a single term, and which certainly cannot be reduced to a multitude of observable acts.

Socionics pays tribute to both poles of this opposition. It describes the personality type in two ways. On the one hand, this description is extensive, or analytic — as an aggregate of traits of various levels of generality. On the other hand, this description is intensive, or synthetic — as an integrity expressed by a single archetype which may be designated by a symbol or, with some degree of adequacy, verbalized. This, in particular, makes it possible to call the TIM by a concrete name.

4. Constitutionalism – Environmentalism

Socionics gives a full-fledged answer to the questions arising in connection with this opposition. The socionic model does not belong to the category of explanatory fictions. It is a structure of the psychic substrate accessible to verification. To each position of model “A” there may be matched a definite element of the psychic substrate, whose material-energetic component is innate, while its informational component is partly innate and partly dependent on the influence of the natural and social environment.

On Skinner’s example one may also see an almost extreme and sincere position of environmentalism. He acknowledged that the peculiarities of the structure of the body limit the behaviour of an animal and of a human being, but he considered this inessential in describing behaviour. Such a position is not hard to understand if one regards the peculiarities of bodily structure as a constant factor for the given animal, which must be taken into account in the comparative study of the behaviour of different animals; but Skinner set himself an entirely different task: to find the most general laws by which the behaviour of any living beings is built. And it must be said that he succeeded in this. Probably he did not discover all the laws of this kind, but what he did do is a substantial contribution to the science of behaviour. He was interested above all in the question of how behaviour changes under the influence of external conditions, and he fully satisfied his interest. There are in his work also sufficiently strong conclusions, for example that the human personality depends so much on changes in the surrounding environment that the very content of personality is thereby exhausted. From the point of view of socionics, such an understanding of the filling of personality is limited. Possessing an innate type, people react differently to similar stimuli and achieve very different results and realize their initial abilities in completely different ways; and if a logical-sensory extravert, Soros for example, will seek or take upon himself the duty of managing large financial flows, then an intuitive-ethical introvert (iE), Baskov for example, given the requisite abilities, will prefer to become a singer and to attain the highest degrees of public recognition in that direction. Here is a brief formulation of Skinner’s categorical opinion: “The variables of which human behaviour is a function lie in the environment” [cited from 16]. In Skinner’s view, two people show different results only because they found themselves in different circumstances, and innate abilities have nothing to do with it. And if one were to take two concrete people, say the daughter of Zhirinovsky and the daughter of Nikita Mikhalkov, and swap them at birth, then, relying on Skinner’s opinion, one would have to acknowledge that by the results they achieved no one would notice the substitution. Of course such an experiment is practically impossible to carry out, and the results of an experiment on this theme with rats could scarcely be applied to people.

5. Changeability – Unchangeability

This opposition goes beyond the bounds of purely psychic and psychological phenomenology. But as regards psychic changeability, socionics resolves this problem quite definitely. The structure of the TIM is innate, like the human skeleton, and talk of changing it can go on only in some artificial sense, at the level of a special experiment or a pathological incident. Nevertheless the variety within a TIM is very great, and the boundaries of this spread are so far hard to establish. For this, further research is necessary. This question is examined in more detail in the chapter devoted to the existence, uniqueness and variety within the TIM. With a high degree of probability the TIM is innate and apparently ought to be assigned to the category of temperament.

For Skinner the problem of the changeability of behaviour was resolved unambiguously — yes, in the course of life a person’s behaviour may change, since the environment changes. Note that he makes the change of behaviour depend on changes in the environment and not on changes of constitution, for instance in connection with age. What argumentation, then, must he have had against the obvious age-related changes of behaviour? He said: “Psychological growth is not a freely flowing process” [cited from 16]. A profound phrase, but how is one to interpret it, for example in connection with the concept of the stages of the development of the libido (Freud) or of age stages (Erik Erikson)? One has to acknowledge that Skinner defined quite differently the parameters of the situation that influence the personality. Yes, a person grows, but along with this the circumstances change to which he must correspond. A schoolchild behaves like a schoolchild not because he has reached school age but because he is in a school environment, and his behaviour now depends on the corresponding reinforcement. In any case it is evident that a scientist’s views depend strongly on the accent he has chosen in his research. Skinner placed the accent on the change of behaviour as a variety of learning, and in his investigations he singled out and grounded this component in the behaviour of living beings; but a different phenomenology escaped his attention — the dependence of behaviour on constitutional peculiarities and their changes. In his experiments that was not relevant.

From the point of view of socionics, the whole of behavioural phenomenology may be divided into the very stable, invariant with respect to changes of the environment, and the situational, relating to adaptation or to immediate reaction to the changing influence of the environment. The first component is determined by type, and the second by the capacity of a living being to tune itself to the parameters of the environment, by the relative plasticity of the psyche, which is precisely what ensures the variety within a type.

6. Subjectivity – Objectivity

For socionics there is no problem here. It proceeds from the fact that, first, the structure of the TIM was formed in the process of the adaptation of the psyche — for the existence of its individual bearer, of the species Homo sapiens for example — to the environment of habitation. And of course this environment is not reducible to physical parameters alone. Socionics discovers in the environment of habitation eight generalized independent aspects, whose reflection is precisely the functional structure of the psyche. However, the psyche, being an organ for modelling the environment of habitation and an instrument for adapting to it, is at the same time the bearer of subjectivity. This subjectivity is by no means some simple entity, and it does not lend itself to essential definition by the means of contemporary science. But let us hope that science will in the end get to this too. All the same, one would wish that science should not destroy the ecology of subjectivity. Socionics accepts the complex co-existence of both factors in the formation of the behaviour of a living being. Even a rat or a pigeon, Skinner’s favourite objects of research, having individual experience, thereby have a basis for building a — very limited, to be sure — but subjective model of the surrounding environment, and hence their behaviour will not be entirely determined by the parameters of the influence, which is very beautifully and convincingly described in Seton Thompson’s stories about animals.

On the basis of the preceding information about Skinner’s methodological preferences it is not hard to understand which pole he will adhere to in this case. Since he regards a living being as a “black box,” the possible subjectivity of the behaviour of such a box will be irrelevant for him. Since we can explain the behaviour of the “black box” without looking inside it — and to explain behaviour, according to Skinner, means to restore the history of the previous characteristics of reacting to the stimuli of the environment — then to speak of subjectivity is simply meaningless. It is not hard to understand Skinner when he discards the subjective component as redundant. For one can always imagine the position of a person who is not interested in the motivation that guided a person in committing some act. He evaluates and judges, rewards or punishes a person on the basis of the final result. Therefore it is not at all surprising that the behaviour of a concrete person may be evaluated only by the stimuli and reactions objectively recorded in protocols. There are situations where this is fully justified, in sport for example. You ran or swam faster than everyone, jumped higher than everyone, scored more goals than everyone, gained more points than everyone — you take first place; and what you were feeling there or what guided you is a secondary detail for the press. And here it is interesting that Skinner evaluated even cognitive, mental processes — processes hidden from direct observation, directly intertwined with human subjectivity — as a variety of behaviour: “Cognitive processes are behavioural processes; this is what people do” [cited from 16]. This principled behaviourist consistency is, it seems, carried by Skinner to the possible limit, beyond which absurdity begins. Skinner quite seriously considered that the theoretical constructs created by other scientists — all these “egos,” “superegos,” “types,” “archetypes,” “identity crises” and so on — that all these contrived concepts and terms represent no more than a “mental construction,” a subjective invention capable only of leading into error. He considered the very concept of a “conception of personality” to be such an invention too, and therefore his learning theory contains no references whatever to “personality.” Skinner’s example is a vivid illustration of the influence of philosophical doctrines on a scientist’s methodology — here the pragmatic direction in philosophy, created in America by James and there receiving the widest currency, and philosophical instrumentalism as one of the extreme forms of positivism, going back to Dewey, intensively promoted in the field of psychology by Watson, merged in Skinner’s subjective perception of the world — a remarkable scientist, on the whole. Perhaps the most astonishing thing in this story is that Skinner, to the very end of his life, never understood that his scientific behaviour had been formed with the help of a “mental construction” and not at all by a necessity connected with a “situationally grounded possibility of reinforcement.”

7. Proactivity – Reactivity

Achievements in the field of physiology and psychophysiology allow the conclusion that people are hormonal automata and, in this sense, reactive. However, unlike most animals, people possess a certain degree of informational freedom and can form a prototype of possible behaviour in the shape of new programmes, goals and ideals, presumably directed toward a more effective adaptation to the environment and its transformation. This becomes a possible source of creative activity. However, a scientist must not be led into error by examples in which people apparently strive toward one goal or another — such a striving may have a reactive character, as an unconscious copying of the behaviour of other people or an uncritical assimilation of programmes circulating in society.

Therefore that same Skinner has sufficient grounds for describing human behaviour as reactive. “Reactivity is most clearly visible in classical conditioning, where reactions are automatically triggered by stimuli immediately preceding them in time. Pavlov’s dogs react (salivate) to the sound of a bell; people react in almost the same way to the sight and smell of the Christmas turkey” [16].

It is not hard for socionics to adapt both these concepts, indicating their working zones and the corresponding functional provisioning. The structural units Ego, Superego, Id and Superid represented in model “A” provide in different ways for proactive and reactive forms of behaviour. The presence in the structure of the psyche of such different agencies makes it possible to raise the question of finer distinctions in the forms of behaviour. On the Ego are formed subjective models of reality, and it is distinguished by maximum activity, which allows the behaviour it forms to be called actively-proactive. It seems that the Superid, with its suggestibility and direct expectation of a mobilizing impulse, is the conductor of actively-reactive behavioural programmes, while the Id, with its imperativeness, is the agency of passively-reactive programmes. On the other hand, the Superego, since it has social pre-programming, combines suffering passivity with the existence of ready attitudes of socially conditioned forms of behaviour. This makes it possible to speak of passively-proactive behaviour.

8. Homeostasis – Heterostasis

The semantic field of this polar pair coincides to a considerable degree with the semantic fields of the pairs Proactivity–Reactivity and Freedom–Determinism, but it has a more instrumental character, relating to the “hardware” side of individuality. These two poles are aptly reflected in the concept of dynamic equilibrium inherent in human individuality; one may therefore speak of dynamic homeostasis, in which there may exist significant deviations from a once-and-for-all given stability both in the physiological and in the psychic sphere. However, these poles, considered as sources of motivation, may be assessed as being of different scale and in no way mutually exclusive. There exist forms of behaviour oriented toward the elimination of an immediate internal, small-scale disharmony; but after the elimination of this discomfort, the possibility opens up of proceeding to the elimination of an external, remote disharmony which may be experienced as an existential vacuum requiring to be filled. From the socionic point of view, local, small-scale disharmony is experienced by means of the Superid, while the existential vacuum corresponds to the absence of self-realization of the personality along the Ego.

After all that has been said, it is not hard to understand that Skinner, from the positions of behaviourist methodology, does not acknowledge internal motivational states — they are simply not relevant for his experimental methods; and therefore it is interesting to see how he explained purposive behaviour. Whereas a “mentalist” theoretician will explain the behaviour of a hungry man falling upon food by saying that he wants to eat, and that in his brain there arises the idea of satisfying his hunger, which becomes the motive of his behaviour, Skinner considers that people invented the term “hunger” merely as a “means of establishing a connection between a group of external stimuli and observable reactions.” That is, when you see a person falling upon food and beginning energetically to devour it, you may call this situation “hunger,” just as an artist may call his picture “Sunrise,” which says nothing about the internal states of the Sun. It is not hunger as an internal state that induces a person to eat, but only the presence of food and the possibility of placing it in the stomach. The repeated recurrence of this situation in a person’s life teaches him to display such behaviour under suitable external conditions. However, people, by virtue of some erroneous ideas, accept that hunger is an internal state and that they eat because they want to eat. But that is precisely what science exists for — to open people’s eyes to the true state of affairs in this world. Skinner did not acknowledge that a scientist may accept anything by default or as self-evident. Only by establishing, with the help of an experiment, objective connections between observable phenomena can one draw conclusions corresponding to the truth. Incidentally, truth too is an invention of the “mentalists”; it is no more than a conventional-verbal description of the result of the behaviour of people who call themselves scientists, when as a result of a very rapid mechanical sorting-through they select the concepts that seem to them the most convenient for describing the object of research.

9. Knowability – Unknowability

A simple formulation of the sense of this polarity comes down to the question of whether human behaviour can be known or not. However, a mass of philosophical semantic overtones makes answering this question far from a simple matter. Precise definitions are of course needed, and behind them there always lies hidden the philosophical position of the scientist. If, for example, one defines knowability as the possibility of establishing the truth, then problems will arise with the definition of truth. And it is not at all obvious that knowability is some single-level intellectual parameter. Surely, on attaining some degree of understanding of an object, one cannot be certain that gnoseological contact with the object is thereby exhausted? Therefore here, as in the analysis of all the other polarities, one may speak of the working zones of a concept. The very fact that we work with human behaviour, trying to know it, represents the beginning of the process of cognition, and however slightly, we do advance in this cognition. Therefore, without any special strain, one may say that to a certain degree human behaviour is knowable; but with no less soundness one may suppose that in the cognition of human behaviour there may always remain an incomprehensible residue which will serve as a stimulus for further cognition.

And here Skinner’s position, as a representative of extreme rationalism, appears extremely interesting. The point is that since Skinner accepted determinism in its extreme mechanistic expression, and reduced objectivity to the recording in a protocol of what is directly observed in an experiment, it is not hard to understand his position on questions of knowability. Once we have described the behaviour of an object in terms of stimuli and reactions, this means that we have known it, and known it objectively. A very convenient position, and almost impeccable. Since “behaviour is determined by external, objective factors” and “these factors can be identified with the help of a suitably arranged experiment,” it follows that “all human behaviour is, in the final analysis, knowable by scientific methods.” And although Skinner acknowledged that studying behaviour is difficult, he was certain that “science can nevertheless do this; only researchers must get rid of the mythological notion that people are free and that there exist internal factors responsible for their actions.” The sole obstacle on the path to the study of man is the intellectual attitudes of individual scientists, who believe in what they took in uncritically in childhood or youth, and at a later age can already do nothing about it. Scientific methodology, according to Skinner, must be based on the fact that “it is necessary to regard people as objectively determined.” With this Skinner connected his hopes for the future as well, since “a true science of behaviour will appear only if other psychologists accept his specific basic propositions about the nature of man” [16]. Let us add that in many cases one may presume fundamental knowability alongside situational inaccessibility. Thus, if one were to examine all people without exception, one could gather unique material for the cognition of man. But how is this to be done? However, at present, with computers available, one can record and describe a very large number of variables, which was practically — though not fundamentally — inaccessible in pre-computer times.

Socionics takes the next step in the cognition of the human personality and proposes a fundamentally new approach to the grounding of psychological theories.

Conclusions to the fifteenth chapter

1. Socionics, for the first time in the history of science in general and of psychology in particular, discovers the informational elements which are really present in our world, are presumably substantial entities, and do not depend on the mode of description.

2. Socionics, for the first time in the history of psychology, discovers the internal symmetry of the human psyche and the structural elements by means of which this symmetry is realized.

3. Socionics proposes a principle by means of which the variety of human manifestations may be explained on a single basis — this is the principle of fractality (A. V. Bukalov). According to this principle, psychic and socio-psychological structures represent superpositions of functional-informational groups.

4. Even very experienced psychologists do not manage to avoid methodological errors.

5. The polar evaluations of personological theories point to the presence of working zones for each of the poles.

6. Socionics is capable of taking most fully into account the working zones of the polar constructs that determine the quality of a theory of human behaviour.

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Notes

Footnotes

1. This idea is taken from a talk by the remarkable Ukrainian socionist G. Chikirisova. ↩

2. Translator’s note: the list is rendered here from Churyumov’s Russian, since the whole of the following discussion concerns the accuracy of that Russian rendering. In Oldham and Morris’s English original the corresponding labels are: Conscientious, Self-Confident, Dramatic, Vigilant, Leisurely, Devoted, Solitary, Idiosyncratic, Sensitive, Adventurous, Mercurial, Self-Sacrificing, Aggressive, Serious. ↩

3. A regular quadruple, as was defined in the chapter on differentiating traits, is singled out by two ADTs. As Reinin showed, and as follows from the corresponding combinatorial formulas, there are 35 such quadruples in all. ↩

4. Translator’s note: ADT renders Churyumov’s abbreviation АРП — the aspect-dividing (Reinin) traits, of which there are 15. ↩

5. In “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign” the narrator’s thought and word are compared to a squirrel (mys’) “which runs along the tree,” to a “grey wolf, which runs along the ground,” and to a “blue-grey falcon, which flies beneath the clouds.” ↩