4
Acknowledgments
First of all, I am grateful to Aushra Augustinavičiūtė, whom I consider not only my teacher in the field of socionics but also one of my teachers in the spiritual sphere — her instructions (“instructions for Semyon”) on how to listen to space, or to free oneself from subconscious complexes, proved to be important study material for me. Of course, I am grateful to everyone who gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with their work and to try to understand their line of thought, their concepts, their way of relating to information and processing it. To my regret, I discovered that many — though not all! — authors apparently ignored my work, since they contain no references to my articles and papers, even though in some of them I found not only reminiscences of my ideas and formulations but also direct borrowings made without appropriate citation.
I was an active presence at most of the socionics gatherings in Kyiv, never missed a single conference, discussed a great deal directly with Aushra and persistently questioned her, trying to penetrate the laboratory of her thought — and in the end this culminated in her performing a magical act of transmitting her teaching to me. At one point, in Vilnius, she said to me: “Semyon, stop pestering me with your questions about trifles. Let’s do this instead: I will now transmit my knowledge to you in a considerably greater volume than you can imagine.” She immediately raised her hands toward me, made a vigorous wave-like pass in my direction, and then said: “Now you know everything that I know.” I politely said nothing, not knowing what to answer or even what to think about it. However, after some time I suddenly discovered that whenever I concentrated on a clearly formulated socionic problem, an answer would appear so clear that there was no room to doubt its validity. In my first book I formulated the fundamental problems of socionics, proposed a number of hypotheses, and outlined possible solutions — without insisting on their finality, and leaving open to anyone possessing methodological vision the possibility of entering into a scientific dialogue that would help socionists arrive at a consensus. I will give just two examples.
Once, a remark by one of my socionist acquaintances made an inexplicably deep impression on me. I cannot reproduce it because of its elusive ordinariness, but its sense was that my acquaintance had supposedly suddenly grasped the very essence of socionics, and therefore took in everything relating to the subject without effort. By that time I had already been working in socionics for eight years, and it is even puzzling [5] why his words made such a wholly disproportionate — I would even say magical — impression on me. But after that, the thought gradually crystallized in me that in socionics everything not only should but can be rigorously proved. And when I subsequently formed the inner question, expressed in the words “WHAT, AFTER ALL, IS THE SEMANTICS OF THE FUNCTIONS OF MODEL ‘A’?”, the answer came almost instantly. It was not in words. On my inner screen I saw a vivid picture: Don Quixote’s Model “A.” The aspects standing in the function positions were fluorescing, shimmering in mother-of-pearl colors. I understood that this was the answer, but did not immediately grasp what it meant. And after a while it took verbal shape as well: THE SEMANTICS OF THE FUNCTIONS OF MODEL “A” COINCIDES WITH THE SEMANTICS OF THE INFORMATION ASPECTS STANDING IN THE FUNCTION POSITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE’S MODEL. The difficult point here was COINCIDES WITH THE SEMANTICS. How does it coincide? Aspects have their own semantics, and functions have theirs. I surmised that some modification was needed here. Say, not COINCIDES, but IS DIRECTLY LINKED TO, IS ISOMORPHIC or HOMEOMORPHIC, or EQUIVALENT, or IS A DERIVATIVE OF… And here I began to think. “In the position of Don Quixote’s first function stands EXTRAVERTED INTUITION. What does it do in the psyche? It provides understanding, forms an internal model of the external environment (IMEE), and has as the result of its work an insight into the potential possibilities of everything that becomes an object of attention…” Aha, now it’s clear! The positional semantics of the first function in the model of any type is expressed in the fact that the bearer of the TIM forms an IMEE in the modalities of the information aspect standing in that function’s position, builds behavioral programs, and determines the potential possibilities of the personality! And if that is so, then it is natural to call this function the program-potential function — PPF. After that all that remained was to apply the resulting algorithm to all the remaining functions — which is what I did.
And one more example. Once, in the second half of August, I thought that I ought to prepare some paper for the conference at the end of September. An idea was vaguely wandering through my head, connected with the understanding that socionics constitutes a periodic system of TIMs (PSTIM). This followed from the correct arrangement of TIMs within the quadras, found by means of the “Churyumov square.” Only one correction to Lyashkyavičius’s table was required; everything else Aushra had guessed brilliantly. Without that refinement the periodicity was not discernible. The “Churyumov square” convincingly put everything in its place. The quadras now looked isomorphic — intuitives at the edges, sensors in the middle. But this was not enough — somehow too banal. And suddenly I saw a picture in which each TIM was represented not by four poles of Jung’s dichotomies, but by the entire set of ARP filling the form of the “Churyumov square.” Generally speaking, this was no longer difficult to do, because by that time I had already found the correct ARP table. All that had to be realized was that for each TIM the pattern of filling the “Churyumov square” with ARP would be unique, and therefore… I immediately sat down at the computer and in a graphics editor drew the entire socion in the configuration I call the “square of the socion,” although it was I who justified it — for some reason no one before me had attempted this. I placed the cell of each TIM inside the form of the “Churyumov square,” which [6] I then filled with the ARP for that particular TIM. Looking closely at the resulting picture, it was no longer difficult to discern the fundamental regularities that made the ordering of TIMs within the socion strictly unambiguous. The problem was solved — all that remained was to present it.
I did not merely attend conferences — I listened attentively to all the papers, managing, thanks to my command of shorthand, not only to record them almost in full but also to record the remarks and the reactions of the audience. And there was not a single conference at which I did not deliver papers. Sometimes there were as many as seven such papers.
I have conducted a large number of seminars and groups in which I taught socionics to participants.
And now I read the books of socionist authors, and suddenly discover — without any particular emotion, merely noting the fact — that there are almost no references to me there, not even mentions. Well, if that is how it is, then I will not thank those authors either.
I am grateful to my sons Dmitry and Alexey for technical support in mastering computer programs, and also for discussion of many methodologically subtle questions. My grandsons Yevgeny, Alexey, and Dmitry also took an active part in such discussions — I am very grateful to them for that as well, and not only for that.
Churyumov S.I.
7
[Epigraph block — the page layout is jumbled in the scan; see note at the end.]
It is shown that in order to overcome methodological errors in science associated with the predominance of analytical thinking, it is necessary to increase attention to the techniques of the alternative to it — systemic-integrative thinking. For this purpose it proved useful to employ Sharapov’s theory of natural systems, in which natural systems are regarded as the mutually conditioned unity of their composition, structure, and functions, with energetics playing the leading role in them. The systemic strategy had to be combined with an empirical tactics, as being closest to nature.
“…the psychic is a variety not of physiological but of informational processes. The qualitative difference between them is determined by the principle of the invariance of information with respect to the physical properties of its carrier…”
“I understood that clear criteria cannot be extracted from the chaos of contemporary psychology, that they must rather still be created — and not out of thin air, but on the basis of the priceless preceding works of those whose names the history of psychology will not pass over in silence.”
Dubrovsky D.I. Criteria of Existence and Problem Situations in Science. // Cybernetics of the Living: Biology and Information. — Moscow: Nauka, 1984. — pp. 103–110
C. G. Jung
“Contemporary psychology at almost every step presents the most lamentable spectacle of how the newest and most important discoveries, which constitute the pride and the last word of science, become positively bogged down in the prescientific notions in which they are enveloped by semi-metaphysical theories and systems created ad hoc.”
8
THE SPLENDOR AND POVERTY OF SOCIONIC METAPHYSICS
(syntactic and systemic errors, blunders, artifacts, delusions, and intuitive overreaches)
Humanum errare est
(to err is human)
An exposition of socionics that is deficient in the scientific-methodological sense compromises it as a science and lowers its scientific-cognitive potential…
(from the notebooks of Pfafik the dog)
I worked for several years at the publishing house “Sofia.” At first I was a translator — I translated from English, German, French, and Serbo-Croatian. Later I combined translation with editing, and also did pure editing and book production, which proved to be useful practice for me, as a result of which I learned to work with texts from the very first to the very last sentence. Later I had occasion to edit socionic works, and this turned out to be a significantly more difficult matter than working with esoteric and literary texts at “Sofia.” It turned out that in socionic texts, besides stylistic errors, one must track the semantic and theoretical coherence of the text and of the concepts entering into it. Then I undertook an attempt at systematic analysis of socionic works from the standpoint of methodology, with which I had occasion to occupy myself a great deal in life. In this work I position myself as an editor and commentator.
In placing the words of the Latin proverb in the epigraph, I am aware that they apply to me as well. Understanding this, I as editor and commentator do not insist that I possess privileged access to truth, but I do insist that I have the right to examine socionic texts from the standpoint of their correspondence to the conceptions of scientific research methodology available in science and philosophy. Moreover, I have the right to expect an academic response to my commentaries, which could serve as the beginning of the academic [9] dialogue so necessary for the scientific formalization of socionics.
Working for many years with the verbal output of socionists, I acquired a certain experience in tracking how the human intellect is capable of finding different and often incompatible explanations for the same facts, the same empirical material. People who are simply intelligent, and people intelligent in every respect — say, such as A. Bukalov (Don Quixote), V. Gulenko (Robespierre), I. Kalinauskas (Don Quixote), E. Litrovnik (Balzac), V. Ermak (Dreiser), or G. Reinin (Balzac) — understand and explain the basic socionic material so differently that on many questions they cannot arrive at a consensus. This manifests itself especially vividly in cases of determining the TIMs of well-known people. Thus the odious politician Yu., about whom all the information necessary for determining his type could be found in the open press, was assigned by the most authoritative experts in socionics to the Dostoevskys, Stierlitzes, Jacks, Hamlets, and Maxims! And Putin, all aspects of whose behavior it has been possible to observe on television for several years now, was assigned by leading socionists to the Stierlitzes, Hamlets, Maxims, Dostoevskys, Robespierres, Dreisers, and even Jacks! Alas, in open discussion the leading socionists were unable to come to terms, each remaining with his own opinion. This speaks only of the absence in socionics of an effective diagnostic procedure, and in no way casts a shadow on the experts in socionics or on socionics itself — Humanum errare est!
Very well: socionic diagnostics still requires substantial refinement, and contemporary methods of determining TIM are far from perfect — but the differences in the understanding of Model “A” and the semantics of its functions seem simply irremediable, and this, after all, is basic material. There has even appeared an apologetics for these differences — “scholars of different TIMs inevitably give different explanations and build different models,” and then also “multi-window vision,” “pluralism,” and so on, and therefore it is quite natural that there are “many socionicses”… This book is devoted precisely to an attempt to understand the theoretical situation in socionics — socionics is worth it! A person who has only touched upon it is often delighted by it; a person who has discovered its hidden and manifest contradictions turns away from it in horror; but a person who has penetrated into its depths discovers there the shining crystal of Truth. In addition, I would like to give readers the opportunity to compare authors’ positions with an alternative point of view reflecting the level of contemporary methodology.
Freedom of speech, given a deficit of authorial demandingness toward oneself and the absence of feedback from society, can lead to the appearance of any sort of semantic monsters. These monstrosities, under suitable conditions, will do damage to inexperienced people, and therefore it is desirable that within the framework of freedom of speech there exist an institution of obligatory peer review of such texts. Such a body would play the role of a democratic censorship, since in the consciousness of the authors such a body is absent. In this case freedom of speech would not be violated, but at the same time there would be [10] realized a freedom of speech for the necessary social control. And such control is unquestionably necessary precisely as a democratic mechanism for limiting the profanation of scientificity. No, it should not forbid anything, but it should provide such assessment as it can of the scientific and pseudo-scientific activity of the free artists of science — and, of course, of socionists too, among whose works there occur signs of graphomania as well.
In conclusion I will cite the intelligent critic of homegrown socionics, Vik OREKHOVSKI: “…if it were possible with the help of hypotheses to judge the truth and reality of things, then it is unclear to me how any certainty could be attained in any science; for one can invent a multitude of hypotheses explaining any new difficulties. A good example is the numerous embellishments in socionics connected with subtypes, strengthened blocks, and other toys. They allow the maîtres to explain any behavior of any person with exceptional effect, extending the sphere of socionics’ applicability without limit. All eight aspects in all positions end up being brought into the explanation. But predicting a person’s behavior in a concrete situation becomes utterly impossible — the variability and multiplicity of ‘rules’ is too great.”
I agree with this reasoning 98 percent, but I suspect that its author is only at the beginning of the path of learning scientific methodology, which operates with significantly more complex epistemological images. As for the “maîtres” (it seems this little label was coined by Ermak, who of course also belongs to their number), their works contain many promising findings, many of which, alas, were never brought to the level of full-fledged constructs. Perhaps the most productive here proved to be Gulenko, who managed to make sense of 6 or 7 of the correct Reinin tetrads — and this will enter the treasury of psychology; but unfortunately he foisted upon insufficiently critical socionists several constructs so defective (recall his homegrown, slightly vulgar-sounding names for socionic functions, such as “sensing of sensations”) that they can only be called an act of sabotage against socionics and against the Russian language.
PREFACE
Beware of counterfeits
(contemporary advertising)
Socionics as a new direction in psychology is the astonishing discovery of Aushra Augustinavičiūtė. However, just as Aushra managed, relying on the discoveries of Jung and Freud, to develop a completely new, original view of the human psyche — in fact continuing their line and the line of other researchers in ego-psychology — so too, with slight nuances, the [11] development of socionics is continued by her followers. Thanks to socionics, we are able to see certain errors in Freud and Jung. However, apart from errors in these authors, one can speak of initial concepts which, without being erroneous, remained at the initial stages of conceptual formation. Aushra advanced these concepts forward. But she too has ideas that require further development, refinement, transformation, and substantiation. Incidentally, she said more than once that there was something she still did not understand, something she had doubts about, something that still needed work. She related to many of her own results significantly more critically than many of her students did, and worked constantly on improving them. Alas, the same cannot be said of many socionists who, having written books, admitted into them numerous distortions of deep and sometimes far from simple socionic concepts, yet are deeply convinced of their own rightness, and when one attempts to point out their errors to them, they adopt an overt or covert hostile position. Some of them say that since they are bearers of a particular TIM, they accordingly understand socionics in a corresponding way, and therefore there are as many socionicses as there are socionists. It is clear that this is not a logical argument but no more than a sophistical evasion.
The symbols for designating aspects, invented by Aushra and having played an important role in her work with socionic concepts and in the popularization of her teaching — since they appealed directly to archetypes — turned out to be inconvenient in printing, and, most importantly, differing by color into black and white, introduced their own semantics, distorting the sense of the archetypes. When the professional socionic jargon began to form, instead of Jung’s terms extraverted and introverted the words “black” and “white” came into use, so that, for example, extraverted intuition now sounded like “black intuition,” which is capable of generating inadequate semantic overtones.
It is also now clear that Aushra unsuccessfully replaced Jung’s concepts of thinking and feeling [emotionating] with the terms logic and ethics, and this was uncritically accepted by socionic neophytes. She explained this substitution by saying that, in her opinion, thinking and feeling are present in all people, whereas logic and ethics are typologically differentiated. We now understand that it is precisely thinking and feeling that are typologically differentiated, whereas logic and ethics in their normative variants tend toward the imperative, since their violation is fairly definitely policed by society.
Aushra’s followers made what contribution they could to the popularization of socionics, but at the same time introduced their own authorial distortions into the conceptual and terminological structure of an emerging scientific direction. Frequently these were very intelligent people, and they of course, in accordance with their typological and professional limitations, did what they could. They took the next step. A significant part of the socionic work after Aushra Augustinavičiūtė fully meets the requirements of science and constitutes a positive contribution to the development of socionics. Some of this work has meaning as plausible hypotheses awaiting their verification. Some works are interesting as errors, the analysis of which could give both experienced and beginning socionists a certain orientation, aimed above all [12] at not “stepping on the same rake” that someone stepped on before them. And finally, there are works in which what was done before is merely recopied and to some degree distorted, sometimes with the same and sometimes with new misconceptions. But there are works that can only be called a scientific provocation: in them the concepts of socionics are perverted, stripped of meaning, and turned into abracadabra. And I, as an editor, analyst, and methodologist, am to some degree grateful to these authors as well, since in diachronic dialogue with them I can offer my own understanding of their works, by no means laying claim to any final truth. However, I offer a reasoned assessment of their works and would like to hear in reply not howls and insults, as has already happened, but reasoned answers either from the authors themselves or from their followers. I am certain that this will serve the further development of both socionics and psychology.
Socionics as a science is very young: forty years is no age for a science. To historians and theorists of science, socionics presents a unique opportunity to observe the formation of a new scientific direction in real time — from its birth in the 1960s, through the gradual involvement in its development of a significant number of scholars from among the people and its penetration into broad strata of the population of the Soviet republics, and then its spread across the post-Soviet space and beyond it. For the methodologist and historian of science, the material contained in books on socionics may prove unique, since no science in its formation has ever yielded such paradigmatic diversity and such a quantity of methodological errors, including simply logical ones. Of course, when scholars — and often talented people — violate logical axioms, rules of definition or of argumentation, to say nothing of the appearance of subtle conceptual defects in their work, this is worth a look for anyone who understands.
The attempt by the discoverer of socionics, Aushra Augustinavičiūtė, to offer her pioneering work to official psychology received no support from those heads of psychology departments on whom the academic adaptation of the new scientific direction might have depended. Practically all psychologists occupying high posts in the Soviet scientific bureaucracy took a hostile position toward socionics and in effect took part in a conspiracy of silence, malicious ill-will, and distortion of the new science. Apparently they simply proved incapable of appreciating the potential of the new scientific direction. And so Aushra, at her own risk, in the literal sense of the words, went out to the people and began to propagate her discovery. And people, for the most part not professional psychologists, accepted her ideas and began using socionic concepts to assess their own human potential and to manage their relationships. A curious situation arose, in which people received from socionics what they could in no way receive from official psychology. Socionics proved as consonant with the interests of users at all social levels and as popular as astrology, but at the same time even more scientifically grounded than psychology. At this point academic psychologists may be indignant, but this is only because they forget that psychology represents an aggregate of empirically found recipes [13] and to this day has no unifying theory. And therefore, in the strict sense of the word, it does not satisfy the definition of a mature science — that is, despite colossal successes, it still remains at the preliminary stage of accumulating empirical material. Incidentally, it is precisely socionics that could be used as a unifying framework for psychology, but apparently psychologists are not yet ready for this. In any case, they could at least explain their position — or better still, enter into professional discussion with socionists. That would at least be honest. And, most importantly, they would help to expose the real nonsense filling socionics and to identify its valuable core — if, of course, they discover it. However, one gets the impression that among academic psychologists there is no one capable of sorting out the “socionic situation” without prejudice.
Among those who took up Aushra Augustinavičiūtė’s ideas and began to develop them there proved to be a certain number of scholars. These were engineers, teachers, linguists, physicists, mathematicians, poets, translators, and representatives of other spheres of science and culture — but professional psychologists were almost entirely absent. True, there were sympathetic psychologists, but they limited themselves merely to the practical use of socionics in their trainings and consultations (for example, S. Bakhtiyarova) and did not attempt to develop it.
The scholars who took up the development of socionics with enthusiasm for the most part had very approximate notions of scientific methodology. Strictly speaking, their methodological status should be assigned to the spontaneous level, in which a person semi-consciously uses those uncritically absorbed instrumental concepts that came his way in the course of schooling and university study, in reading specialized literature, and in practical activity as a professional. These often talented people, relying on their own unreflected methodological complex, understood what Aushra Augustinavičiūtė said very differently, and this fairly quickly led to the appearance of significant paradigmatic differences in their socionic work — so different that they ceased to understand one another. Each of them went his own way, and it soon turned out that, while preserving the basic concepts and maintaining successful socionic practice, they were incapable of agreeing on the meaning of the fundamental concepts. And it is precisely socionics’ basic conception of typological differences that became one of the justifications for this state of affairs — people of different psychological types perceive reality differently and describe it differently, and these descriptions cannot in principle be reduced to a single theory understood unambiguously by all. And consequently everything is fine, and everyone may create his own variant of socionics. Of course, this is a relativist sophism — one must strive for objective truth, not justify homegrown improvisation by the conveniences of practical use. But what is truth in the humanities? To this I have devoted two chapters — one at the end of each of the book’s two volumes.
By 2007 there had already appeared some two and a half dozen understandings of socionics, some of which had reached the level of paradigmatic differences. Besides the classical socionics of Aushra Augustinavičiūtė, presented in her [14] works, we have:
- The classical socionics of Aushra Augustinavičiūtė;
- The humanitarian socionics of Gulenko;
- The integral socionics of Bukalov;
- The systemic socionics of Ermak, which in the latest edition of his book he positions as classical, which of course misleads people unfamiliar with socionics;
- The deductive socionics of Churyumov;
- The professional socionics of Prokofieva;
- The dialectical socionics of Litvinenko;
- The constructive socionics of Kalinauskas;
- The matrix socionics of Alekseyev;
- The symbolic socionics of Savchenko;
- The socionics of the natural cycle of Shteinikov;
- “Aesthetic” socionics, or the socionics of the “periodic system of the socion,” associated with the name of Shulman;
- The psychological socionics of Filimonov–Maslyaev;
- The “ZK-style” socionics of Litrovnik;
- The physiological socionics of Talanov;
- The eclectic varieties of socionics of Meged–Ovcharov and Reinin;
- The kvartsionics of Pereslegin;
- Functionics, by various authors;
- Aspectonics, by various authors;
- The schizosocionics of Tushnir;
- Jungian typology in America;
- The “neo-socionics” of Nebykova;
- The medical socionics of Serebrennikova;
- Several varieties of socionic plagiarism and semi-plagiarism (Maslyaev and Shirochin);
- The associative socionics of Tangeman;
- The typology of Afanasyev, which he apparently, not without pretension, called “Psycho-Yoga,” which is distinguished by particular colorfulness and which belongs to free improvisations on typological themes in the spirit of socionics.
How can such a motley array of divergent readings of what would seem, in general, a simple scheme lying at the foundation of socionics be explained? Above all, by the fact that socionics is complex. It only seems simple, and by this it wins over even very intelligent “simpletons” — which in this case means non-professionals in the field of psychology and methodology.
What, then, is complexity? At the dawn of cybernetics this question was posed by scholars, and mathematicians offered their own variant of an explanation of this concept. This explanation rests on people’s capacity to hold a certain number of elements in the field of attention. According to the empirical observations of psychologists, this number [15] equals 7±2 (Miller’s number), which, in connection with socionics’ theoretical conceptions, may (but need not!) be replaced by 8±1 (Churyumov’s number). It was proposed to consider simple those systems in which the number of elements is easily held by attention. The next level of complexity consists of systems in which we can give a classification of the elements and hold it in the field of attention. The maximum level of complexity belongs to systems in which the number of elements is so great that we are unable to classify them in any way at all.
One can approach the concept of complexity differently as well — through the number of variables. Most people cope quite well with situations in which there is only one variable — one partner, one child, one animal, one goal. Two variables require the acquisition of special skills. When the number of variables exceeds eight, human consciousness switches over to mythological modeling of the environment. Such modeling is characterized by reliance on aesthetic assessment of the plausibility of judgments and conclusions, since logical assessment here is extremely difficult. It is precisely such a situation that we have in socionics. Its aesthetic qualities create the impression that its concepts are easily accessible, but in practice it turns out that this impression is illusory. The marker of this is the appearance of a significant number of paradigmatic and semi-paradigmatic deviations from the model set by the creator of socionics, Aushra Augustinavičiūtė. We take this model as the point of reference and consider it the classic.
The distinctive character of socionist scholars’ methodological complexes often makes their theoretical constructions resemble certain metaphysical systems of philosophy. And this is no accident, since again and again analogous figures of thought are reproduced — figures long since criticized and exposed in philosophy by some philosophers, but never fully understood or assimilated by others. All this, of course, has its psychoanalytic foundations in the subconscious of scholars as concrete people embedded in one or another set of real human relations, including class relations. The metaphysical component in question, practically unrecognizable by the scholar, may subsequently be discovered in the products of his scientific search in the form of intuitive “overreaches” — that is, ideas that are often beautiful but do not withstand logical criticism.
It must be said that in philosophy one can encounter at least three attitudes toward metaphysics. First of all, as a historical fact — the designation by this word of what Aristotle placed after his “physical” reflections. Second, as productive attempts to systematize accumulated knowledge in some way. In this text I use that side of the concept of metaphysics which points to the unjustified, subjective imposition of a priori categories upon the object under investigation, which, although it makes it possible to construct arguments and theoretical schemes, at the same time proves to be a source of systematic error arising from the mismatch between the a priori apparatus and the constructs immanent to the object. The task of the present study is the analysis of the paradigmatic features of some of the directions represented in socionics [16] and the search for ways to overcome the “differential crisis” with the aim of forming a unified scientific discipline, which socionics fundamentally is.
Semi-officially, at the level of corridor and behind-the-scenes conversations, accusations of pseudoscience have been thrown in socionics’ direction — unfortunately unargued, whereas one would have liked, and it would simply be interesting, to hear judgments on this matter formulated by professional psychologists, sociologists, physicians, or philosophers. I am not speaking of scientific dogmatists and bureaucrats — but are there really no talented scholars in psychology? Still, it seems that in official psychology there no longer remain scholars of the rank who would prove capable of investigating the problems of socionics without prejudice. True, there was one precedent, when someone “set” the famous cardiac surgeon Amosov on socionics, apparently having misinformed him, and he came out in print with a “semi-demolition article”; but since the time of totalitarianism was already drawing to a close, this act had no administrative consequences, and the malicious instigators and enviers failed to halt the development of the new science.
Analyzing and evaluating the works of my colleagues, I saw much that was similar to processes that took place in the history of philosophy: the appearance of ideas and theoretical constructions not corresponding to the methodological ideal — which is what I call socionic metaphysics. In most cases these are mental constructs appearing in scholars’ heads as a result of intuitive illuminations (insights), which often turn out to be intuitive “overreaches.” However, the unshakeable confidence of the author of such an “overreach” in the truth of the mental product he has obtained turns that product into a personal authorial dogma, into an absolute article of faith, “beyond which thou shalt not pass.” With such authors it is difficult, and at times impossible, to discuss the hypothetical shortcomings of their brainchild. And this despite the fact that such people are familiar with socionics and could understand the peculiarities of intertype communication.
Returning to the concept of metaphysics, let us clarify some of its features. At present the term “metaphysics” is used in at least four senses.
- Metaphysics as the name of those texts of Aristotle located in his archives after the texts on nature (“physis”);
- Metaphysics as the a priori orientation of philosophizing in Europe in the 17th–19th centuries;
- Metaphysics as a negative evaluation of philosophical apriorism;
- Metaphysics as the set of positive philosophical developments connected with the concrete sciences and resting, as far as possible, on contemporary methodology. Such an understanding of metaphysics has the following basis: the concrete sciences here serve as the foundation maximally close to “physis,” that is, to actual reality, while philosophy acts as a “meta-physis” attempting to correct the philosophical-methodological inconsistency of scholars — which by no means always proves impeccable. One of the reasons for this is that philosophers have still not arrived at a unified point of view and have not offered [17] humanity a universal methodology, and therefore any scholar may claim the right to see the world in his own way. Alas, such a possibility does not remove the necessity of strictly adhering to logical axioms and rules of definition, as well as to the ethical aspects of scientific communication.
In the present work I use the third variant of the understanding of metaphysics, though here too one cannot do without qualifications. The point is that among scholars metaphysical constructions with respect to the object of their research occur no less frequently than among philosophers. True, so long as such constructions remain in the zone of search and of theory-formation, they may be evaluated positively. But when an author fixes them as truth in the last instance, they acquire the status of pseudoscience. Since such constructions remained within the bounds of their own subject area, they were not evaluated by philosophers, although they bore the same features as philosophical metaphysics. In the end, the character of mental activity in philosophy and in science is almost the same. The only difference is that in philosophy the philosophizing is done by professionals of philosophy, whereas in science the philosophizing is done by professionals of science, but not necessarily professionals in philosophy. Therefore one can speak of metaphysics as a loss of connection with reality in natural science, in psychology, in pedagogy, and so on. We shall speak of metaphysics in socionics. The subtlety and difficulty here lies in the fact that many problems of socionics belong to such a high level of generalization that it can be difficult to detect the boundary beyond which socionic problematics grows over into philosophical problematics.
In this text I use that side of the concept of metaphysics which points to the unjustified, subjective imposition of a priori categories upon the object under investigation, which, although it makes it possible to construct arguments and theoretical schemes, at the same time proves to be a source of systematic error arising from the mismatch between the a priori apparatus and the constructs immanent to the object. Of course, the point is not at all to hang a metaphysical label on a scholar’s work, but to designate with sufficient precision the boundaries separating productive scientific creativity from weakly controlled intuitive overreaches.
Also of interest is the situation connected with the fact that the leading socionists engage in teaching work, instructing neophytes in socionics, and conduct a consulting practice aimed at solving industrial and everyday problems. Both of these spheres of activity must be acknowledged as successful, since the neophytes are satisfied and willing to pay for the instruction, and the sums allocated by enterprises for consulting quite adequately provide the practitioners with a comfortable living. This means that socionic methods of optimizing personnel-related problems really are effective, and that the neophytes are capable of applying the knowledge they receive. The contradiction observable here between the effective application of socionics and the obvious defects of the numerous attempts to improve socionics’ classical core with theoretical innovations is fully explicable. The effectiveness of socionic practice is ensured by the adequacy of socionics’ classical core to the subject area of its [18] use, and the semantic stability of this core is so great that even significant distortions in various attempts at its theoretical interpretation have almost no effect on the final result, which rests to a significant degree not on the scholar’s theoretical tangles but on his everyday experience.
In methodological respects the problem outlined here is exceptionally interesting and awaits its solution. It is closely connected with the relativity of descriptions of reality in general and with the possibility of using diverse theoretical constructs to describe one and the same object, which may be reflected in the understanding of what is observed but not affect practical effectiveness. This again returns us to the problem of the existence of objective Truth. However, independently of the solution to this problem, the presence of methodological errors in the theoretical justification of a practice compromises such justifications and is a criterion for their negative evaluation.
In the end, there exists an academic style of discussing problems, designed for calm, sober, logically argued discussion, in which extra-logical means of influencing an opponent are inadmissible; and I invite all scholars — socionists and non-socionists alike — who are capable of maintaining such a mode to take part in the proposed discussion for the good of the new science’s development.
In normal science certain rules of scientific communication have been worked out, but three of them are especially important: 1) If logical defects are discovered in a scholar’s work, then he must, by definition, eliminate them — up to and including eliminating the disputed construct — rather than continue disseminating erroneous information about it among non-professionals; 2) Argumentation connected with the substantiation of any construct must be of a through-going character, that is, must ultimately rest on axioms or experimental data lying at the foundation of the concrete subject area; 3) A scholar must, by definition, know his opponents’ works well and cite them correctly.
If a person who considers himself a scholar does not adhere to these rules, then scientific communication with him is impossible, and the results he obtains should be classed as dubious. Unfortunately, the mass of socionic information contains within itself too great a quantity of logical errors, which undeservedly compromise the socionic core, casting upon it the shadow of pseudoscience.
Underlining in the texts is everywhere mine. I have everywhere replaced graphic symbols with letter designations, which is simpler in printing and in typing, and which in addition eliminates semantic interference arising from the intrinsic symbolism of color and graphics, such as “black ethics,” “black logic.” Wherever it was appropriate, I replaced the distorted homegrown names of the IA (information aspects) with the scientific ones used by Jung.
Churyumov S.I.