Section 7: Psychology and Physiology
(A Review of V.A. Stukas’s book Foundations of Socionics)
S. I. Churyumov, D. S. Churyumov
The author, V.A. Stukas, is unquestionably an intelligent, educated, and erudite man. Having retrained from engineer to psychology lecturer, he is successfully asserting himself in this field. He has an excellent command of psychological material and knows how to convey it to others. His book is written confidently, with a conviction of his own correctness, which is apparently sustained not only by his knowledge of socionic material but also by his reliance on the recently created Model “T” (Talanov’s model), which the author considers not merely the last word in socionics but is categorically convinced of its superiority over socionics’ key model, Model “A”. His book can be viewed as an attempt to propagandize and promote Model “T”. This certainly has its positive side, but of course it should not come at the cost of discriminating against Model “A”. Yet this appears to be exactly what the author is trying to do, despite having described Model “A” more or less thoroughly, albeit with a large number of inaccuracies and errors. The book contains many correct and precise thoughts and observations, but its defects largely neutralize the author’s findings. Many of my remarks could be classified as minor quibbles with no direct bearing on the main content of the text. However, some of these quibbles shed light on particular parameters of the author’s thinking — in particular, on a more or less noticeable carelessness in thinking the subject through and in its verbal presentation. I could have left such trifles unremarked, but the editor’s habit proved stronger. In any case, the author may find it interesting.
In the text that follows, geometric symbols have everywhere been replaced with letter symbols.
Stukas: The main aim of the lecture course offered to your attention is to popularize within socionics the physiological model of V.L. Talanov — Model T. Upon serious study of Model T, its advantages over the classical socionic model, Model A, become clear.
Commentary: The author’s aim is clear — he has come to believe in Model “T” and wants to share this knowledge with everyone. The author promises to prove to us the superiority of Model “T” over Model “A”. Let us see how he manages to do this. However, if we invert the author’s last sentence, we could say that upon “serious study of Model ‘A’, its advantages over the physiological Model ‘T’ become clear.” From the text of the book it is evident that the author did not study Model “A” seriously enough.
Stukas: The chief merit of Model T is that it rests on the natural-scientific base of the physiology of higher nervous activity, on its fundamental concepts, such as the processes of nervous excitation and inhibition, excitatory and inhibitory thresholds, strength-weakness and balance-imbalance of the nervous system with respect to the processes of excitation-inhibition.
Commentary: The merit of a model cannot consist in its being physiological — that is its specificity, and it may well rest on physiological concepts, but this in no way compromises the psychological Model “A”, whose merits lie in resting on fundamental concepts and real achievements in psychology.
Stukas: Drawing on the powerful psychophysiological school of Teplov-Nebylitsyn, which was the first to divide nervous-system thresholds into general and partial ones, Talanov, in my view very aptly, extrapolated the partial thresholds of individual analyzers onto the Jungian psychic functions. This is what allowed him to create his Model T, which possesses significant advantages over the abstract Model A. Model T more convincingly explains certain features of the behavior of representatives of the TIMs and features of intertype relations, and allows them to be predicted more precisely.
Commentary: The Teplov-Nebylitsyn psychophysiological school was considered the leader in its sphere in Soviet times and possibly still enjoys authority among certain professionals, but it is also known that it never investigated the generalized Jungian functions. And what fundamental results did this school actually achieve? It divided nervous-system thresholds into general and partial ones? Over 30 years it slightly refined the pioneering findings of I. Pavlov? As for extrapolating the partial thresholds of individual analyzers onto the Jungian psychic functions — that could have been done on the basis of an experiment in which such thresholds were actually discovered in the Jungian functions, but as far as I know no such experiments were ever performed, and the extrapolation was carried out speculatively.
Stukas: Model T, in particular, makes it possible to separate the concepts “extraversion-introversion” and “extratimity-introtimity”, which Model A never clearly delineated, thereby creating confusion.
Commentary: Socionics refined the concepts of extraversion and introversion to the utmost, revealing their real meaning, which was not unambiguously explicated by Jung himself. As a result, many psychologists, while adopting these Jungian terms, gave them very different meanings. Whether Talanov has indeed managed to give a physiological justification of these concepts we shall see when analyzing his arguments. Model “A” had no problem distinguishing the concepts the author mentions, because it always dealt only with the first pair. The second pair arose from the formal peculiarities of Model “T” and corresponds to no reality, merely creating confusion.
Stukas: Model T debunks certain myths that still dominate socionics, the chief of which is the conceptual myth of black and white functions differing in aspect content.
Commentary: Model T debunks nothing; on the contrary, it creates a new, physiological myth and the misunderstandings founded on it. Of course, the slang designation of black and white functions, tied to their graphic depiction, may serve as grounds for myths, but by calling them by Jungian terms tied to extraversion-introversion, we eliminate that basis.
Stukas: In reality Model T returns us to the original four Jungian functions and, correspondingly, to four — no more and no fewer — categorial informational aspects of reality, which constitute the content of information metabolism. All the remaining socionic information that was artificially encoded by the color of the functions is now — in Model T — naturally represented by the threshold parameters of the psychic functions.
Commentary: In reality Model T returns us not to the original four Jungian functions but to how the author of Model “T” interpreted them. Narrowing the set of information aspects (IAs) considerably impoverishes the explanatory and predictive capacities of the socionic model, which is replaced by the simplified Model “T”, conditionally motivated by concepts borrowed from physiology.
Stukas: Having carried out enormous experimental and analytical work drawing on wide knowledge of neuropsychology and psychophysiology (V.L. Talanov is first and foremost a psychophysiologist), Talanov succeeded, in my view, in giving a deep physiological grounding to the Jungian dichotomies and a convincing explanation of four Reinin traits. It is precisely thanks to his work that these four Reinin traits can rightfully be classified as second-order socionic traits (as for the remaining Reinin traits, socionics has not yet found a sufficiently clear and unambiguous interpretation of them).
Commentary: By all appearances, the author exaggerates the volume of experimental work directly devoted to the physiological underpinning of the Jungian functions. As for a physiological grounding of the Jungian dichotomies, it is simply absent; the author of Model “T” merely interprets in his own way Jung’s constructs, which are not physiological but psychological in character — his fundamental work on the subject was called Psychological Types. The explanation of the four Augustinavichiute-Reinin traits (ARTs) in terms of Model “T” may seem convincing to those who consider it adequate to the socionic context, but that is precisely what would need to be established first. Nevertheless, Talanov’s explanations cannot be denied logical coherence, although this is a case of valid (but not true!) conclusions from false premises. As for the ARTs themselves, both in substance and terminologically they still remain within the bounds of very approximate suppositions, so it is even strange how Talanov manages to “justify,” for example, the STRATEGISTS-TACTICIANS trait, when its name does not match the trait’s content and the content itself has not been fully clarified. The same goes for all the other traits, for which “socionics has not yet found a sufficiently clear and unambiguous interpretation.” This looks very much like fitting a solution to a ready-made answer.
Stukas: Model T, built within the socionic paradigm, has in my opinion allowed socionics, which aspires to scientific status, to take a significant step forward: from speculative constructions to experiment, from abstraction to a natural-scientific foundation.
Commentary: Model T uses certain concepts of classical socionics but replaces psychological causality with physiological causality, effectively constituting an attempt to reduce psychological phenomenology to physiological justifications. As for accusations of speculativeness, these should rather be leveled at Model “T” itself, since its author mechanistically transfers the results of experiments pertaining to concrete bodily organs onto the highly abstract theoretical results obtained in socionics. Let us note, all the same, that no scientist can fully avoid speculation — it can merely manifest to a greater or lesser degree; every time a scientist ponders the results of an experiment he passes into the realm of speculation, that is, he turns to intuition and reflection.
Stukas: This lecture course is intended both for those who are only superficially acquainted with socionics and would like to deepen their knowledge, and for those who, becoming seriously acquainted with classical socionics, found in it, alongside a multitude of answers, not a few unresolved questions.
Commentary: Unfortunately, this course cannot be recommended to those with insufficient knowledge of socionics — they will be misled both by the one-sidedness of the author’s presentation of the socionic paradigm and by the far-from-perfect Model “T”.
Stukas: These lectures make no claim to originality; they are an attempt to generalize those achievements of socionics and those results in modern differential psychology that have been confirmed by experience and experimental research.
Commentary: These lectures illuminate the theoretical developments in socionics in an extremely one-sided way, and the references to confirmation by experience and experimental research are merely formal.
Stukas: The lectures contain only fundamental propositions. The author refrained from ambiguous and dubious interpretations, in particular from lengthy portrait descriptions of the socionic types. The author considers the composition of such — for the most part subjectively verbose — descriptions in typology a methodological error. The basic principle the author followed in composing the lectures is non multum, sed multa (Latin: not much, but many things).
Commentary: Unfortunately, much of what the book presents is approximate in character, though one can agree with the author that the subjective and verbose descriptions of many socionists contain methodological errors — but this is too general a remark. In any case, V. Stukas has not managed to avoid errors either.
Stukas: The conception of socionics was formulated by the Lithuanian researcher Aushra Augustinavichiute in the 1970s. And only in 1995 did the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences recognize A. Augustinavichiute’s foundational work, “The Theory of Information Metabolism,” as a fundamental discovery at the boundary of the natural sciences and the humanities — cybernetics and psychology, informatics and sociology. Socionics is based on modern scientific methodology — the systems-information approach and the method of modeling.
Commentary: The very fact of the recognition of Aushra Augustinavichiute’s discovery by the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences removes the possible suspicions of speculativeness of her theory on which the author insists so much throughout his book. The author has also correctly named the essential elements of scientific methodology in socionics, so he ought not to have forgotten this in his subsequent exposition.
Stukas: Every influence of the environment — natural and social — demands an adequate and timely response, which is preceded by a certain inner image or anticipatory reflection.
Commentary: “Anticipatory reflection” is a positivist name for intuition, whose essence remains inaccessible to scientific investigation. This term was introduced in Soviet times by P.K. Anokhin, who relied on the Soviet methodological paradigm of science, in which any hint of “idealism” was suppressed — and Soviet ideologues would easily have detected “idealism” and imputed it to the use of the concept of intuition. Possibly the author does not understand this and gives no corresponding explanation. Naturally, the choice of methodological paradigm is a scientist’s personal affair.
Stukas: We may define the psyche as a system for regulating our behavior on the basis of anticipatory reflection. Socionics postulates that the interaction of the human psyche with the surrounding world and with other people takes place at the informational level. Thus the psyche is a natural information system.
Commentary: Any psychologist may define the psyche however he sees fit. The author’s definition of the psyche violates the rules of definition. In a definition, the unknown — in this case the psyche — must be defined through the known, but for that one must first define anticipatory reflection. If this means foreseeing the future, it would be good to indicate the mechanisms of such foresight. Might it not turn out that we are talking about a mystical ability to see across time and space? Humanity’s integral experience testifies to the existence of such an ability, but it is rejected by orthodox science for lack of cause-and-effect explanations. But even if we grant that we know what anticipatory reflection is, it is still hard to accept that the regulation of behavior reduces to it alone, as though the past and present had no relation to this regulation. Moreover, the author’s proposed definition of the psyche builds in from the start a conflation of the psychic and the physiological, since both sides are involved in the regulation of behavior. Such conflation has long been classed in science as an error. The reference to the informational paradigm of socionics ought to show that the author agrees with this, but he immediately gives a definition of the psyche not fully consistent with the previous one, calling the psyche a natural information system — with which one can agree only in part, if an information system is defined as information ordered according to some criterion. Clearly this diverges from the general scientific notion of the psyche. One might call the psyche a natural system capable of processing information, but that is quite another matter. Although even in that case one would still have to prove that no other such systems exist, otherwise the definition would be too broad in scope.
Stukas: A. Augustinavichiute succeeded in constructing a model of the natural basis of the human psyche which explained rather convincingly those features of the thinking, perception, and behavior of a specific person that unite him with certain other people and distinguish him from all others.
Commentary: What does this expression mean — “a model of the natural basis of the human psyche”? Is that some psychic substrate? Aushra Augustinavichiute always spoke of a model of the psyche, not of its natural basis. It seems that here the author is projecting his own psychophysiological orientation toward understanding the psychological onto the inventor of socionics.
Stukas: In a word, what is at issue is the type of natural informational structure of the psyche. This type of psyche, as a certain mode of information exchange, is given to a person potentially from the moment of birth and manifests itself in the course of life experience. Just as, for example, the capacity to master speech is given to a person potentially from birth, physiologically present in the cerebral cortex in the form of speech zones. But the capacity to master speech, like the type of psyche, can manifest only if the individual lives and develops in a social environment natural to humans, i.e., among people. The type of psyche is the natural basis, the foundation, over which the entire structure of the personality, conditioned by its life experience, is built.
Commentary: The replacement of the previously mentioned “natural basis of the psyche” with “the type of natural informational structure of the psyche” looks unjustified — especially with the phrase “in a word,” which apparently is meant to imply that all this is not only fine and universally known but elementary besides. Of course these are different concepts, and anyone can verify this by impartially analyzing both expressions. The “natural basis of the psyche” is the material substrate on which psychic phenomenology unfolds, whereas “the type of natural informational structure of the psyche” is a variety of the functional structure of the psyche of a concrete individual.
Stukas: The prerequisites for the creation of socionics were, first of all, the propositions of the Swiss psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung concerning strong and weak psychic functions, as well as his brilliant discovery of the four dichotomous primary or basis properties of the personality, which formed the foundation of the personality typology developed by the great psychologist.
Commentary: Yes, Jung did speak of strong and weak functions as more developed and less developed, but what matters for socionics is that he ultimately came to conceive this quite physiological opposition in the psychological categories of the leading, subordinate, and auxiliary functions, and this is essential for understanding the structural positioning of the psychic functions.
Stukas: If one pole of a dichotomy is strongly expressed in a person, the other is not absent entirely but simply has a much weaker expression. This allows us to speak of a strong and a weak psychic function, of a dominant and a subdominant attitude of the personality, and of a leading and a subordinate mode of perceiving reality.
Commentary: Here the author substitutes his own concepts for Jung’s, replacing the positional concepts of leading and subordinate functions with the concepts of dominant and subdominant attitudes. Note also that dominance and subdominance are not attitudes but states.
Stukas: Subsequently Jung came to the conclusion that a person possesses not one but two strong functions: one basic, representing the inertial part of the personality, and another flexible, determining the changeable part of the personality. Therefore, within a single type he distinguished two subtypes.
Commentary: Jung did not speak of subtypes, and it would be incorrect to ascribe to him terminology he did not use. Yes, the Jungian doctrine of psychological types did not appear overnight and, moreover, we now understand that it remained unfinished. This is clearly visible when comparing Jungian psychology in America with socionics. The Myers-Briggs typological semi-finished product, quite characteristic of American pragmatism, can be assessed only as an intermediate stage in the cognition of the human personality, since it is too approximate — which makes understandable the numerous errors in determining, on its basis, the types of famous people, above all Americans, and compromises the corresponding recommendations of typologists. Therefore it is of no great importance whether Jung would have stopped at eight types or expanded his typology to sixteen or even thirty-two. What matters to us is that he laid the foundations of a fundamentally new typology such as had not existed before him.
Stukas: The second methodological prerequisite of socionics was the idea of the Polish psychiatrist and philosopher A. Kempinski that the interaction of the psyche with the environment, and the construction of the psyche itself, has an informational character. Kempinski noticed that a person’s emotional state, his mood, depends on the deficit or surplus of a certain kind of information acting upon him. If an external source of information is found that directly gives the individual relevant information (i.e., the information he needs, which is necessary and desired but which for internal reasons he cannot obtain on his own), then his emotional state and mood immediately improve, and even his general tonus rises. If, on the other hand, the individual receives irrelevant information, which he does not need and which is superfluous for him, such information either depresses or irritates him. This idea received the name of the principle of information metabolism in the psyche and was successfully used by A. Augustinavichiute in creating a new science of the structure and mechanism of functioning of the human psyche — the theory of information metabolism in the psyche — and the principle itself was laid at the foundation of the construction of models of the types of information metabolism in the psyche.
Commentary: Here almost everything is correct, except the claim that the idea and term “information metabolism,” invented by Kempinski, were somewhere formalized as “the principle of information metabolism in the psyche.” It must be said that Kempinski understood information metabolism extremely concretely — at the level of the direct utilization of information in the human organism, above all a sick one, since he himself was a practicing psychiatrist — and did not elevate IM into a principle. A typical example of the level at which Kempinski used this concept is the following quotation: “The autonomous decision concerning the need for food or the absence of such depends on interoceptive signals informing about the level of glucose in the blood, the tonus of the muscles of the stomach, intestines, etc., while the automated decision depends on the established mealtime, on exteroceptive signals such as the smell, taste, and appearance of delicacies, etc.” So there is no question of a “principle” here. It is a solid working category, and that is remarkable in itself.
An author writing about Kempinski summarizes the Polish psychiatrist’s hypothesis thus: “For a living organism to carry out energy exchange with its surroundings, it must orient itself in them. Therefore, already at the early stages of phylogenesis, alongside energy exchange there appears information exchange or, as the author metaphorically (emphasis mine — S.Ch.) designates this process, information metabolism. In humans, the development of the nervous system creates an exceptional and specific situation. In this situation information metabolism plays an extremely important role and is closely tied to energy metabolism.” And one more quotation, from which it is easy to grasp Kempinski’s narrowly professional understanding of information metabolism: “The author interprets schizophrenia as a disturbance of information metabolism. In the premorbid period of the lives of schizophrenia patients one often observes the dominance of the so-called position ‘away from’ the surroundings. Not infrequently from childhood, and usually from puberty, future patients feel bad in their surroundings, flee into a fantasy world, feel themselves different from their peers, do not take part in shared games with them, which have great significance for normal human development. The autistic attitude, as Professor Kempinski believes, rests essentially on a weakening of the connection of information metabolism with the surrounding world.” It appears that here Kempinski uses the concept of information metabolism as a narrowly specialized function of the psyche, alongside which there are others.
Obviously Aushra Augustinavichiute went further. It was she who turned Kempinski’s felicitous working find into a principle, that is, into a maximally generalized and at the same time fundamental notion. It was precisely in this generalized form that positivist-minded psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, physicians, and so on refused to accept the on the whole quite plausible hypothesis of the universality and fundamentality of the phenomenon of information metabolism as the reception of information signals from the habitat, fundamentally important for the functioning of a living being; the processing of these signals for the needs of adaptation to the environment; and the fixing of the consequences of such adaptation in the anatomical and physiological structures of the individual and his behavioral programs. Such an understanding of IM has not been accepted by official science to this day.
Stukas: In order to outline more sharply and represent more vividly the subject of study of socionics, let us resort to a rather crude but highly illustrative computer analogy. The human psyche is nothing other than the mechanism of the individual’s informational interaction with the environment. In it, as in a computer, several functional parts can be distinguished. In a computer this is, first of all, the material basis — boards, microchips, wires, and so on. Let us suppose that in humans these correspond to the nervous system — receptors, nerves, the brain, etc., which constitutes the subject of study of neurophysiology. Over time a computer accumulates its own unique set of files: games, music, pictures, films, programs, calculations. It is difficult to make the informational content of two computers identical. The same is true of a person’s informational baggage. Each of us has his own.
Commentary: The computer metaphor for the human being was first proposed by the American psychologist J. Lilly back in the mid-1960s, and it has deep grounds precisely because of the fundamentality of informational processes in the world. In the computer metaphor the essential thing is precisely the functioning of information, and the author has this in mind when he contrasts the material basis of computer and human with informational content. However, the author later somehow loses sight of this and shifts the accent onto physiology — which after all corresponds to the computer hardware. All this is almost imperceptible, almost inessential, but it can be counted among the signs that for the author the physiological has priority over the psychic.
Stukas: Information metabolism in the psyche means the peculiarities of the perception, processing, and transmission of information, conditioned by the natural informational structure of the human psyche.
Commentary: Of course, IM is not the “peculiarities” but precisely the perception, processing, and transmission of information in the psyche itself. This small inaccuracy could be passed over without particular damage to the understanding of the book’s text, but it makes one wonder how carefully the author formulates his thoughts in general and how reliable all his other statements are.
Stukas: Thus, there exist 16 normal types of psyche. In socionics they are called types of information metabolism (abbreviated TIMs) or sociotypes.
Commentary: A very characteristic example of the author’s mixing of the correct and the incorrect, as a sign of superficial knowledge of the subject. “TIMs” is correct, but “sociotypes” is incorrect. A sociotype is not a socionic but a social type, since the element “socio-”, as editors say, is reserved for concepts relating to social problematics. Probably the correct term here would have been “sociontype,” but that sounds unusual and has not caught on in socionics. And the fact that someone has picked up and uses this internally deformed term is his own business, but it must not be allowed to turn into a scientific fact.
Stukas: So, in brief, we can define socionics as the science of the 16 types and the 16 objective modes of informational interaction of people with the world and with one another.
Commentary: Of course, if “in brief,” one can put it that way. However, from a scientific point of view this statement is not a definition, simply because those very 16 types must first be defined. Otherwise one would have to suppose that there really exists a science of 16 types — types in general, so long as there are 16 of them. But even if we give a preliminary definition of the socionic types (incidentally, one would like to see what that might look like), the statement under consideration would still remain defective, because socionics is about something else.
Stukas: A. Augustinavichiute somewhat changed the names of K.G. Jung’s psychic functions in accordance with the socionic paradigm of the informational aspects of reality perceived by man. Thus she renamed “thinking” as “logic,” “feeling” as “ethics,” “sensation” as “sensorics.” The term “intuition” remained unchanged.
Commentary: It is true that Aushra Augustinavichiute changed some of the Jungian names, but she did so not “in accordance with the socionic paradigm of informational aspects,” as the author thinks, but because she thought the new terms better reflected the essence of the matter. She decided that thinking and emoting perform identical functions in all people, whereas logic and ethics distinguish people. But alas, this was a mistake. Logic constitutes only a part of thinking and is only one of its operators. It is precisely thinking, as a maximally generalized function, that participates fully in IM and is therefore essential for understanding the socionic type. In socionics the term “logic” has taken root at the level of jargon and is in effect identified with thinking, but the term “thinking” is nonetheless more correct. Analogous remarks can be made about the term “ethics.”
Now let us look at how the author “presents” socionics. There is no doubt that he knows it — but, of course, only to the extent that it can be known from the few books the author has read.
Stukas: Logicians form that group of people in whom the logical function is strongly expressed and the ethical function weakly expressed.
Commentary: This definition strongly resembles the humorous definition of mathematics: “Mathematics is what mathematicians do.” Such definitions are called tautologies — they contain an overt or disguised definition of a concept through itself. Even simpler would be the definition “Logicians are logicians,” where the tautology is obvious.
Stukas: Logicians live in the inanimate world of objective laws.
Commentary: All of us, logicians and ethicists alike, live in one and the same world, and the same laws act on us all. Everyone has both thinking (logic) and emotions, and we differ from one another only in accents, which are determined by the peculiarities of the structure of our psyche.
Stukas: Their feelings are subordinated to reason. They are as if separated from the inner world of other people by an invisible barrier. They are not given the ability to plunge deeply into the inner world of another person. Their emotionality is superficial; feelings do not pierce them deeply unless fed from outside.
Commentary: That logicians’ feelings are subordinate to reason is, rather, a metaphor. This is because logicians come in different kinds — rational and irrational. Irrational logicians are less able to control their emotions. A Don Quixote, Balzac, Zhukov, or Gabin driven out of his wits comes to resemble an enraged bull, ready in an instant to sweep away an opponent or an obstacle. Their emotions become a powerful instrument of resistance to pressure from the environment. To say of them that their feelings are subordinate to reason is to distort reality severely. Their feelings are subordinate to the IA of the program-potential function (PPF) — intuition or sensorics respectively. Rational logicians behave somewhat differently, but their behavior too varies depending on the vertness of the type. Extraverted rational logicians switch on emotional pressure in situations of environmental pressure and develop powerful but regulated resistance. Introverted rational logicians manipulate relationships — in particular, they change distance. I give this analysis to show how inaccurate straightforward, one-dimensional phrases are in defining a TIM. And this is no accident, since behind the TIMs stand archetypes, which cannot be unambiguously verbalized with small series of words.
Stukas: Correctness, criticality, sober analysis predominate in logicians over the harmonizing principle: they have difficulty establishing relationships and adapting to a partner, even one they greatly like.
Commentary: What is dubious in this phrase is the concept of a “harmonizing principle.” The reader may form a false impression of it as something logicians cope with poorly. This is not so, for logicians create their own harmony and work on it very consciously. They make, for example, remarkable architects, designers, tailors. An American specialist in Jungian typology even proposed calling the intuitive-logical introvert type the “architect,” which was reflected in his books. Knowing socionics, we can say precisely that such type names distort the true nature of the TIM, but there is no doubt that among logicians there are many talented architects. So one may suppose that when the author spoke of a “harmonizing principle” he had some particular case of it in mind — but which one, he did not say.
Equally a half-truth is the assertion that logicians “have difficulty establishing relationships and adapting to a partner.” At the very least, this cannot be said of all logicians. Shtirlitses and Londons establish relationships splendidly — though they tend to adapt partners to themselves. Robespierres and Balzacs, on the contrary, adapt well to a partner, though not to just any partner. And here we see that a sweeping assertion clarifies nothing. Among logicians there are performers, artists, and “even” ballerinas. So they are quite all right with harmony.
Stukas: The laws of nature and expediency — that is what moves them. For the logician, the object stands above the subject.
Commentary: As for expediency, representatives of all types can act that way — only each type has its own expediency. Do Napoleons, being ethicists, not act expediently? The same can be said of all the other ethicists. Something doesn’t add up. And of course the laws of nature move everyone, not just logicians. Only a certain ambiguity of this expression allows such things to be said about logicians. Yes, perhaps logicians study the laws of nature more intently and try to rely on them to a greater degree, but this is only a matter of more or less, not of absolutes.
As for the relation of object and subject for logicians, it is exactly the opposite. Aushra said that logicians manipulate objects easily but are extremely scrupulous when they must intrude into the sphere of subjectivity.
Stukas: Ethicists are wholly immersed in the animate world of human relationships.
Commentary: One could say this so categorically about ethicists were there not talented scientists among them (Vavilov, Goethe — Hamlets).
Stukas: Kindness, sympathy, striving for harmony in relationships — all these are, as a rule, inalienable traits of ethicists.
Commentary: Precisely — “as a rule.” That is, one can speak of a certain predominance of these qualities in ethicists, but among them one finds any number of repugnant villains and simply malicious, unceremonious, and egoistic people. Surely no one’s tongue would turn to say of Napoleon Bonaparte that he was distinguished by kindness and boundless sympathy for people. He did not sympathize with them at all.
Stukas: Feelings pierce ethicists as if from within; a small spark is enough to provoke a stormy and prolonged emotional reaction. For them the subject always stands above the object.
Commentary: Of course everyone’s feelings pierce them from within — where else from? And a “small spark” is capable of provoking a stormy and prolonged emotional reaction in anyone whatsoever.
Stukas: Ethicists are anthropocentric… that is, in their behavior they are guided by the state of mind of a person or group of people.
Commentary: The general scientific concept of anthropocentrism differs somewhat from the author’s interpretation. It is a worldview orientation toward evaluating everything in the world in relation to man, from man’s point of view and in man’s concepts — for example, asserting that the world exists for man’s sake, which logicians can do as well.
I think the examples given above suffice for understanding the limitations of linguistic means for describing typological differences. This is connected both with the concept of the archetype, which yields to verbalization only with difficulty, and with the semantic blurriness of words. Therefore descriptions like those given above can only pose the problem, not solve it. They only create indeterminacy without removing it. From this one may conclude that for describing types and typological differences a special theoretical language must be developed — which, properly speaking, is what science exists for.
Of course, the author has many precise and even remarkable passages, but surrounded by inaccurate, approximate, and blurry assertions, they become hard for a non-professional to distinguish and, above all, create an impression of the reliability of all the rest of the text — a quality which it lacks.
Stukas: Neurophysiological research has shown that thanks to the anterior sections of the neocortex, behavior orients itself toward signals of high-probability events. Thus, with extensive damage to the frontal lobes there arises mild distractibility, a sliding into side associations (one of the characteristic signs of the intuition pole). Orientation toward signals of high-probability events makes behavior adequate and situationally effective, i.e., effective “here and now.” However, in special conditions — in situations with a significant degree of uncertainty and a clear deficit of pragmatic information — the possibility of low-probability events must also be taken into account. For reactions to signals with a low probability of reinforcement, the integrity of the hippocampus is important — a subcortical brain structure that in a certain sense complements the activity of the frontal sections of the cortex. Thus the intuitive evidently has a more developed mechanism for predicting low-probability events. He can more clearly distinguish low-probability but real events from events whose probability is negligible. In particular, intuitives are the best diagnosticians, especially in situations of deficient initial sensory data. Apparently, when a diagnosis must be made under conditions of insufficient information, it is precisely the mechanism of predicting low-probability events that comes into play.
Commentary: Here we see the introduction to the attempts at a physiological grounding of socionics. The references to neurophysiological data are reliable and interesting in themselves. And the hypothesis about the role of the hippocampus in selecting low-probability events has value of its own. However, here we approach the boundary beyond which psychic and psychological reality can be confused with its physiological support. Anyone who understands the difference between “computer hardware” and, say, the content of the texts that can be read on its monitor can easily transfer this comparison to the difference between physiology and psychology. If the hippocampus hypothesis is true, it is not hard to see that it is an organ — or, if you like, an instrument, “hardware” or gland — with whose help the individual detects low-probability events. And it is quite plausible that in intuitives this organ has certain peculiarities compared with sensorics. However, no proof of this at the level of laboratory experiment on typological material exists. As for the author’s speculative reasoning about the role of the hippocampus in the mechanisms of intuition, it may be regarded as a hypothesis — but one must remember the illegitimacy of reducing psychological phenomenology to the physiological.
Stukas: A number of neurophysiological studies indirectly point to a predominant connection of intuition with the functions of the left hemisphere of the brain, and of sensorics with the right hemisphere. Dominance of the left hemisphere is characterized by orientational-investigative behavior, predominance of recoding functions in memory (which finds expression in a high level of so-called associative thinking), predominance of verbal functions in the structure of the intellect, predominance of the voluntary conscious sphere in decision-making — that is, those features more typical of intuitives. Dominance of the right hemisphere is characterized by predominance of biological or social motivations and unconditioned “trigger” stimuli, dominance of the imprinting function in memory, predominance of nonverbal functions (in particular visual ones) in the structure of the intellect, predominance of the involuntary, automated sphere in decision-making — in a word, everything more characteristic of sensorics.
Commentary: Of course, the indirect indications the author speaks of can be used to advance a hypothesis, which in the end must be verified. However, other indirect considerations are also possible, linking intuition with the right hemisphere — after all, it is considered, unlike the left, to be more oriented toward analog processes. Purely speculatively, it is rather sensorics that has a discrete character, while intuition, with its indeterminacy, enigma, and approximateness, is more easily assigned to analog processes. And of course we are speaking only of a predominant connection; nor should one forget that the hippocampus is a paired organ, represented in both hemispheres. Undoubtedly physiological reasoning is very interesting for psychologists and can shed light on certain psychological peculiarities of the individual, but it cannot substitute for psychological causality. Psychology has been through this already.
Stukas: One of the typical misconceptions of beginning socionists is the notion that intuitives manage their time better.
Commentary: Beginning socionists draw their knowledge from socionics books, which apparently become the source of both their knowledge and their misconceptions.
Stukas: The physical sense of time, the ability to orient oneself in it and to manage the expenditure of one’s own time (linked, according to the results of many studies, with the right frontal cortex) turns out not to be the prerogative of the intuitive pole at all; on the contrary, a certain correlation with sensorics is found here. Time acquires special significance for intuitives only in the sense that their current present, compared with that of sensorics, is expanded — thanks to frequent thoughts about the past and future — from several seconds, minutes, and hours in sensorics to the scale of years and centuries in intuitives. Past, present, and future form a single continuum for the intuitive. The intuitive’s better capacity for forecasts stems not from a feel for physical time but only from his habit of considering the future part of an actual and interesting present and therefore constantly analyzing that future in all its potential possibilities.
Commentary: An intelligently and beautifully written fragment of text, giving a division of the temporal capacities of sensorics and intuitives, but it too needs further elaboration and refinement.
Stukas: Sensorics possess good coordination of movement; their motor skills are well developed. They easily cope with concrete, everyday work requiring concentration on the object of labor.
Commentary: From this assertion a beginning socionist might draw the false conclusion that intuitives fare poorly with coordination of movements, or at any rate worse. Of course this is not so. If one looks at the plasticity of dancers who are Hamlets, Huxleys, or Yesenins, all doubts dissipate. The same can be said of intuitives’ ability to cope with concrete, everyday work requiring concentration on the object of labor. Balzacs and Robespierres, at the least, not only do this but hold the parameters of a technological process with high precision.
Stukas: In intellectual terms the sensoric is a person of concrete thinking. The sensoric’s research style consists in accumulating a large quantity of data with subsequent statistical processing and generalization. In other words, we may characterize this style as inductive and time-consuming.
Commentary: But this is exactly how the intuitive Charles Darwin worked, gathering very concrete information about concrete animal species. He spent 40 years (!) before finally resolving to publish the results of his work. And no scientist — sensoric or intuitive — can do without induction. Science without induction is simply impossible. So once again we see in the author’s descriptions an approximateness that can be interpreted with precision “to the contrary.”
Stukas: True theorists, capable of constructing conceptions of previously unknown phenomena, are always intuitives.
Commentary: Of course, if we define a “true theorist” in precisely that way, there is simply no way out. But were such outstanding sensorics as Tupolev (Zhukov), Korolev (Zhukov), Sikorsky (Shtirlits) not theorists, and genuine ones at that? Again we run into the blurriness of concepts and the difficulty of verbalizing the archetype.
Stukas: In society, sensory types live for the present day or the nearest guaranteed prospect, since they foresee the future poorly. They themselves will not seriously take up something fundamentally new and untested.
Commentary: The sensoric Lenin (Zhukov) in no way fits this definition. Of course one may say he foresaw the future poorly — but show us the intuitives who did it well. The intuitive Hitler obviously foresaw the future poorly.
Stukas: Intuitive types resemble stayers [long-distance runners]. They are effective when facts are lacking and the problem is highly tangled and nonstandard.
Commentary: This description more or less suits the characterization of Don Quixote but distorts the understanding of the Dostoevsky type. And what stayers Shtirlitses and Zhukovs are!
Stukas: Intuitives are good forecasters; they orient themselves well in the “fog” of insufficient sensory information.
Commentary: An acquaintance of mine of the Don Quixote type twice invested her money in Ukrainian banks, and both times was left without her money. And there was “fog” of insufficient sensory information aplenty.
Stukas: As confidently as the sensoric feels himself in space, so well does the intuitive manage the course of time.
Commentary: An example of how a sensoric feels time. On the eve of the October coup Lenin uttered a phrase that became textbook: “Today is too early, tomorrow is too late. So — tonight.”
Stukas: The intuitive works out the program of social transformations, and the sensoric carries it out. An example from Russian history: the theorist of the October Revolution, Leon Trotsky, is an intuitive type. The practitioner who organized the implementation of the ideas of communism in Russia, Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin, is a sensory type.
Commentary: Of course, Lenin too was a theorist and also wrote programs, while Trotsky was the actual creator of the Red Army. So here too categorical assertions do not hold.
Stukas: So, the basic difference of intuitives from sensorics is the inclination of the former to view any events through the prism of generalization. The syndrome-complex of intuition also includes: inquisitiveness, a probing mind striving toward general conclusions and the comprehension of general regularities; generality and abstractness, a lack of concreteness in mental production; attraction to the new; originality of thinking, love of wordplay, puns, and paradoxes; weakening of the role of biological drives and social-status motives, a peculiar “idealistic altruism”; frequent thoughts about the distant past and future, expansion of the boundaries of the subjective current present with equal inclusion of past and future events; practically simultaneous parallel thoughts about a given object of thought (consideration of the object of thought in several planes at once); frequent turning of consciousness to images and associations of the subconscious — during which attention disconnects from the surroundings; slowed displacement from consciousness (forgetting) of “spent” mental images that have lost their relevance, of perceptual images, and of internal movement plans (which are the psychological basis of motor skills); reduced memory for recent events, exact names and titles; reduced sensory sensitivity in the olfactory and gustatory analyzers; reduced visual-spatial abilities; motor clumsiness; the easy occurrence of perceptual (mainly visual and auditory) deceptions and illusions under difficult conditions of perception.
Commentary: Everything listed exists in both intuitives and sensorics, but some statistical asymmetry is possible — which, unfortunately, no one has investigated. Here again we run into the difficulty of rigidly fixing fuzzy concepts in psychology.
Stukas: Here is what Jung wrote in the introduction to Psychological Types about the extraverted and introverted attitudes: “Despite the difference of formulations, a commonality is always noticed in the basic understanding, namely: a movement of interest in the direction of the object in one case, and a movement of interest away from the object toward the subject and his own psychic processes in the other case.” In other words, the extravert is to a greater degree oriented toward the objects of the external world; he perceives, first of all, their external manifestations, and himself as an object among other objects. The introvert is to a greater degree oriented toward subjective perception of reality, toward his interactions with objects, to which he is inclined to attribute the same perception as his own, the same psychic peculiarities as his own.
Commentary: The quotation from Jung shows that even the discoverer of extraversion and introversion could have approximate, preliminary, unfinished notions of these concepts. In any case, it is difficult to interpret unambiguously the Jungian clarification given in the quotation. What does this mean: “…a movement of interest in the direction of the object in one case, and a movement of interest away from the object toward the subject and his own psychic processes in the other case”? Only on a cursory reading does the phrase create an impression of relevant meaning. Apparently it is precisely because of the absence of an unambiguous definition of these concepts in Jung that several different notions of them appeared in psychology after him, some of them opposed to each other.
The author’s clarifications of the Jung quotation somewhat soften the approximateness of Jung’s explication with the words “to a greater degree,” but do not remove it entirely. At present there are no grounds in socionics for holding that introverts are not interested in the “object,” or that extraverts lack subjective perception of reality.
And the factual semantic error is connected with the claim that the introvert “is inclined to attribute to objects… the same perception as his own, the same psychic peculiarities as his own” — unless, of course, the author understands by objects only people.
Stukas: So, in one case a person perceives the world as a multitude of objects, the connections between which he establishes by observation (this is extraversion). In the other case his perception is based on a multitude of connections and relations with the world established by him in advance, on the revealing of motives, while objects are only nodes, support points in this net of relations (this is introversion). For the extravert, relations to an object arise at the moment the object appears in the field of attention. No object — no relations with it. For the introvert, only those objects exist with which he stands in previously established relations. No relations — no object.
Commentary: The above reasoning develops the author’s earlier thought. There are certain refinements here that increase the persuasiveness of the author’s point of view; however, until the possibility of perceiving the world either as a multitude of objects or as a multitude of relations is confirmed in a strictly controlled laboratory experiment, the author’s explications will remain hypotheses.
Stukas: So, the extravert is directed outward; he is a person of the open type, and therefore he strives toward action, toward psychic activity. Without feedback from those around him he loses orientation and cannot process information.
Commentary: It is not clear why the author uses the introductory word “so” here. From the fact that the world is perceived as a multitude of objects or a multitude of relations, its openness or closedness does not follow. And again, it has not been proven that introverts do without feedback from those around them.
Stukas: The results of experimental research point to a high probability of the identity of socionic extraversion (at the psychological level) with the dominance of the ergotropic sympathetic system of the brain (at the physiological level), while introversion quite obviously corresponds to the dominance of the trophotropic parasympathetic system.
Commentary: Here we see an attempt to ground the differences of extraversion and introversion in physiological argumentation. Of course this is a hypothesis, and not at all a bad one. However, there are grounds for doubting the correctness of the experimental studies mentioned — precisely because there is uncertainty in the understanding of the categories under consideration. Was the selection of extraverts and introverts for the studies impeccable, given that a unified understanding of these concepts still does not exist in psychology? Or did the researchers straightaway take differences in the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems as the sole factor determining the difference between extraversion and introversion? Nor is it known whether the statistical distribution of differences in the work of the nervous system corresponds to the statistical distribution between true — not “laboratory” — extraverts and introverts.
And of course one must note, as careless formulation of thought, the attempt to identify psychological extraversion and introversion with the physiological systems of ergotropy and trophotropy. One might speak of a connection between these phenomena, but clearly psychological qualities cannot be identical to physiological organs.
Stukas: In the intellectual respect the extravert differs from the introvert in the larger volumes of information processed; his intellectual speed is much higher — that is, in the same amount of time he passes through a much larger quantity of information. The introvert thinks more slowly; his speed of information exchange is lower. The introvert’s cognitive interests are usually narrower and more limited than the extravert’s. On the other hand, the introvert works through information in more detail — he “digs deep,” as they say, penetrating into the very essence of the subject; therefore his informational product is, as a rule, of better quality, in contrast to the superficial research result of the extravert.
Commentary: Who has reliably measured and compared the volumes of processed information, the intellectual speed, and the speed of information exchange in extraverts and introverts? Who has developed methods for determining the breadth of cognitive interests? This is a good topic for experimental development, but so far it has not been investigated by psychologists, and to draw categorical conclusions — for example, about the slowness of introverts’ thinking — would be wrong.
Stukas: If one compiled a list of great people whose discoveries quickly captured the world, the majority among them would be extraverts. And socionics is no exception in this sense: Aushra Augustinavichiute was an extravert.
Commentary: It is quite plausible that in such a list, by socionic notions, representatives of the “scientists” club would predominate. It is even possible that Don Quixotes would predominate in this list — but this too needs verification. In any case, the capacity for scientific discovery depends strongly on the combination of intuition with logic. And of course, having included Aushra Augustinavichiute in his argument, the author ought also to have remembered the discoverer of psychological typology — the introvert C.G. Jung.
Stukas: In his study devoted to the neurophysiological bases of the extraversion-introversion dichotomy, V.L. Talanov draws the following conclusion: “In our present work it is shown, in particular, that the most powerful psychological factor (the factor of extraversion-introversion) ‘maps’ quite precisely onto the most powerful physiological factor, namely onto the balance of the ergotropic and trophotropic regulation systems of the central nervous system. This result is very important, since it should put an end to psychologists’ empty disputes about ‘extraversion according to Jung,’ ‘extraversion according to Eysenck,’ and so on. Any extraversion gravitates in the final analysis toward this physiological balance, and in its psychological language merely reflects the dilemma between the energy-expending and energy-restoring strategies of the organism.”
Commentary: The conclusion Talanov draws looks plausible and inspiring, but for the reasons indicated above it too cannot be regarded as final. The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems as regulators of energy expenditure and restoration are present in all people. Normally they are balanced: expended energy must be restored, and accumulated energy must be expended. Apparently there can be no question of energy only accumulating — which would mean the predominance or dominance of the sympathetic system — or only being expended — which would mean the predominance or dominance of the parasympathetic. In a concrete person both subsystems are evidently in equilibrium. There is, it seems, no talk of any predominance of one of them. Therefore, if one seeks the underpinning of extraversion and introversion in the work of these subsystems, one will apparently have to link it not with the predominance of one of them but with their overall raised or lowered level. And that is quite another matter. It is almost the same as explaining these Jungian categories by a person’s greater or lesser corpulence. However, considering that physiologists since I.P. Pavlov have established experimentally the existence of three general parameters of the nervous system — strength-weakness, mobility-inertness, and balance-imbalance — would it not be more reasonable to explain extraversion-introversion by the strength-weakness parameter?
Stukas: And yet the Jungian interpretation of vertness as the directedness of the individual outward or inward has, in my view, every right to exist both in socionics and in psychology. And this interpretation does not contradict but fully corresponds to the general strategies of energy expenditure and energy conservation. Encountering some new, previously unknown object, the extravert, upon the triggering of the orientational-investigative reflex, in virtue of his innate energy-expending set, strives to interact actively with the object in order to establish as many new associative connections as possible in the corresponding zones of the cerebral cortex and thus to know the object better (here we are dealing with active cognition). Such active cognition requires, first, considerable energy expenditure and, second, creates the impression of the cognizing subject’s directedness outward from himself.
Commentary: If Talanov’s hypothesis is confirmed, then the Jungian understanding of the concepts under consideration can be supported with physiological arguments. However, from the author’s further reasoning it ought to follow that in educational institutions there should be more top pupils among extraverts — yet statistically this is not confirmed. One may even suppose that the manifestations of extraverts and introverts on which the author insists are not absolute but relative in character — that is, they can be found in both, though in different proportions.
Note also the concepts of “strategies of energy expenditure and energy conservation.” In this formulation they ought to mean that a given individual has a set toward spending as much energy as possible or, on the contrary, conserving energy as far as possible. Apparently such a variant is possible. But a priori it looks like a certain excess, an extremity. More natural would be the variant in which the set to spend or economize energy was derivative of its raised or lowered production. But obviously this cannot be determined by a sympathetic-parasympathetic imbalance. Which means other causes of raised or lowered energy production must be sought. Moreover, this difference would have to be polar in character rather than lying on a continuous scale — otherwise between extraversion and introversion there would exist an indeterminate multitude of transitional varieties.
Stukas: In psychophysiological terms, rationals are people who are always in tonus, constantly ready for work. To relax, they must make considerable efforts over themselves. Relaxation is the characteristic state of irrationals. They make efforts over themselves with the opposite aim — to tense up and carry out what is necessary.
Commentary: There is some elusive inaccuracy in this description. It seems to be due to the absence of definitions of tonus. Obviously, tonus and constant readiness for work are not the same thing. The point is that a person is always ready for typologically grounded work, regardless of tonus, whereas no person can always be in tonus — if only because of illness. And if we compare the tonus of the rational Shtirlits and the irrational Zhukov, the latter’s is higher. And this is determined typologically: by the position of introverted sensorics — in Zhukov it occupies a stronger position, but in Shtirlits it is better regulated.
Stukas: V.L. Talanov, having carried out a fairly scrupulous analysis of the property rationality-irrationality in the neurophysiological aspect, came to the following conclusion. Belonging to the rational pole is ensured by the heightened functional activation of the “rational” subcortical modulating center. The “rational” modulating center sets a tonic character of activation, above all, of the anterior sections of the cerebral cortex, i.e., those sections that constitute the neurophysiological basis of the deciding functions — ethics and logic.
Commentary: Of course Talanov’s hypothesis is of interest not only to physiologists but to psychologists as well, but its fundamental defect is that it reduces the psychological to the physiological. Moreover, from the author’s text it is unclear what subcortical modulating center is meant. From physiology it is known that the reticular formation is primarily responsible for tonic processes, but it has never been reported that it sets typologically significant differences. Incidentally, why not look for a connection of extraversion and introversion with the peculiarities of the work of the reticular formation?
Stukas: Irrationals are never fanatics; they easily renounce fixed ways of life and worldviews. They can allow themselves to change the rules of the game in the course of the game itself.
Commentary: Here is an example of a categorical conclusion supported by plausible arguments, so that it all sounds quite convincing. But such conclusions ought to be checked statistically — and in the end, this is not so difficult. And if it turns out that among Yesenins, Zhukovs, Napoleons, Dumases, and so on there are no fanatics — which is doubtful — then the cause-and-effect connection offered to us would come to be perceived as more reliable. But even this would not make it one hundred percent true, because a single counterexample suffices — in this case one fanatic among the irrationals — and the categoricalness of the conclusion is compromised. The author could have softened his assertion by saying that fanatics are met with more rarely among irrationals, but for such a conclusion additional grounds would be required, since an additional variable connected with proportion appears in the conclusion, and this proportion must also have a measure: “more rarely” — by how much? On the same grounds one might conclude that traitors are more frequent among irrationals, since these people change — betray — the rules of the game in the course of the game itself; but this hardly squares with the statistics.
This example forces one to seek stricter conditions for psychological conclusions.
Stukas: Can all forms of communication and interaction between people be reduced to processes of information exchange? On closer examination, this is indeed so.
Commentary: Of course it is not so. In the interaction of any objects, people included, three components are necessarily present: energy, matter, and information — but each situation is characterized by its own proportion of these components. Attempts to reduce human interaction to any one thing are a standard methodological error.
Stukas: So, four “building blocks” in all — time, space, energy, and matter; and taking into account relations (temporal, spatial, energetic, and material) — eight “building blocks,” eight components.
Commentary: This set of categories was found in Medvedev and partly used in Yermak’s argumentation, but it is not excluded that the author chose them himself, since they lie, as it were, on the surface — and by all appearances he accepts these categories as self-evident. Let us note only that he does so uncritically — simply on the basis that he agrees with them. However, a closer look makes it possible to see that between two pairs of these categories there is a deep dependence, discovered long ago by physicists. The woman mathematician [Emmy] Noether showed that in the formulas matter correlates with space, and energy with time. In socionic terms this can be understood to mean that space is the introverted image of matter, and time the introverted image of energy. This makes the categories within each pair mutually dependent. And this can be understood to mean that there exists a higher level of generality at which the basis categories are independent. That higher level is the set consisting of three categories: energy, matter, and information. [see 3]
From four categories the author passes to eight with the help of the mysterious word “relations.” But how should this look in reality? What are temporal relations? Do such concepts as “past,” “future,” “present,” “earlier,” “now,” “later,” etc. belong to them? But in that case, how does time differ from its relations? The same considerations apply to the remaining categories. These reflections show that the choice made by Medvedev, and by all who followed in his footsteps, is at the very least not indisputable. It is also important that fundamentally different approaches to deriving the set of IAs exist (see, for example, [3]).
Stukas: Let us call these 8 “building blocks” the “realia” of the world around us, since they are axiomatic and their existence is doubted by no one.
Commentary: Aushra Augustinavichiute called these “building blocks” informational aspects, and there is no sense in changing this to the word “realia,” since within the informational paradigm it is precisely the informational aspects that are the elementary objects of the third level. Changing the term in such a case is not at all a simple or harmless affair, as it may seem in “cavalry charge” mode. Socionists have many disagreements, but on the term “informational aspects” they are apparently more united — though there are disagreements enough about their essence. It is not very clear in what sense the author called these “realia” axiomatic, given that he derives them from such fundamental essences as space, time, matter, and energy. All this makes the author’s reasoning, and his views as well, eclectic. One gets the impression that he is retelling someone without going very deeply into the matter. In the categories of philosophy, the IAs belong to the ontological plane, the psychic functions to the subjective plane.
Stukas: Let us call all the information perceived by a person from the external world and from within the person himself (information about the person’s psychophysical state) the “unified information flow.” This flow is perceived by all five sense organs, which leads to a change in the subject’s psychophysical state.
Commentary: In this excerpt it is clearly visible that the author, again and again placing the accent on psychophysics, apparently does not understand that socionics deals with a generalization of a high level, where the perception of the environment represented by the 8 IAs occurs not through the concretized sense organs but by means of sensorics and intuition, which are generalized psychic functions. It is not excluded that for a positivist-minded scientist this is incomprehensible or even — possibly for that very reason — looks like absurdity. Yet socionics has found a language in which not a concrete but an almost maximally generalized psychological situation can be discussed. This result would simply have been impossible under a totalitarian regime, when ideological censorship constantly blocked the scientist’s creativity and cruel repressions followed “violations of ideological taboos.” However, totalitarian survivals in the consciousness of scientists block the understanding of the world within the informational paradigm. In the highlighted excerpt, though, the author commits another error — he attempts to present man’s interaction with the world as purely informational. But information is only one of three generalized essences underlying all the world’s diversity: energy, matter, and information. It is with these, in the most general sense, that man — or rather humanity — interacts. Therefore one should speak not of an information flow but of a triple flow of matter, energy, and information (the MEI-flow). Correspondingly, both in the world and in man — who is of course part of the world — transformations of this flow are continuously carried out, which it is quite natural to designate as MEI-metabolism.
Stukas: The aforementioned 8 components of the unified flow of information about the external world and about oneself, perceived by a person simultaneously, are necessary and sufficient for man’s cognition of the world and his existence in this world. These components are perceived (or reflected) by man in the form of aspects filled with diverse content.
Commentary: Here the author rises to the level of philosophical generalization, though the words about necessity and sufficiency do not seem convincing here. And here too the author demonstrates confusion of concepts, which reinforces the remarks made above. The point is that it is precisely “these components” that are the informational aspects. Now it is clear that the author, constructing his own paradigm, had to introduce “realia,” while he called “aspects” man’s perception of these “realia.” But matters stand otherwise: the informational aspects — the elementary essences forming all the world’s diversity — are reflected in the human psyche by the 8 psychic functions and their content.
Stukas: The aspect of the perception of time (I/i).
Commentary: Here we see the author’s distortion of the classical paradigm of socionics, in which two informational aspects — the semantic content of the object (I) and time (i) — are perceived by man with the help of extraverted and introverted intuition (I/i). What can mislead here is the similarity of the designations of different essences behind which stand identical archetypes.
Stukas: Man relates to time in two ways: as a discrete phenomenon and as an analog phenomenon. When we draw the symbol I, we have in mind the discrete hypostasis of time. It means “the given moment of time,” and also that man, as it were, ties every action to quite definite segments of time.
Commentary: Here the author again plunges into philosophical reasoning about time (in socionics this cannot be avoided) and as a result generates additional confusion — though, it must be said, not badly argued. He has to invent a “discrete hypostasis of time” because he needs something to tie the existing symbol to.
Stukas: From time immemorial, looking at any object, man tried consciously or unconsciously to determine its age. He needed this in order to know the object better, to determine its overt and hidden possibilities. Here I see a tree before me. It is a material object, but I need to know whether it is old or young. If it is young, then obviously it has flexible branches that can be used to make an archery bow; if old, then possessing a strong trunk it is fit for building a house; if too old, it is usable only as firewood.
Commentary: Here we have an example of a metaphysical development of the theme of time. As a result the author fits the concept of potential possibilities under the discrete hypostasis of time. But there is no need for this, since potential possibilities are a fully self-sufficient category. The concept of potential possibilities in socionics includes the concept of meaning, and the category of meaning has first-order significance for the world and for man.
Stukas: The content of this aspect is connected with the ability to see what the real possibilities of an object are at the given moment of time; with awareness of the timeliness or untimeliness of actions and deeds; with a feel for the “spirit of the time,” the “currents of the time,” the “demands of the time”; with the ability to mobilize one’s hidden possibilities at the needed moment.
Commentary: Of course meaning can be tied to time — but everything can be tied to time. In this connection, time can be taken outside the brackets and considered as an independent category. Nevertheless, analyzing the system of socionic concepts, one can come to the conclusion that meaning and time are two most important components of our world. At this point I do not wish to go off into deep philosophy and will stop at the assertion made. Meaning and time are grasped intuitively, but two different intuitions — or rather, two of its forms — are used for this. We are compelled to recognize that meaning is an extraverted essence, although it is perceived as something hidden and non-obvious. All the same, it is an essence of active everyday consumption. In the end, hidden and non-obvious does not mean introverted. Time, on the other hand, man perceives, according to the concepts of socionics, with the help of introverted intuition.
Stukas: When we say “temporal relations” and draw the symbol i, we have in mind the analog, relative hypostasis of time.
Commentary: Note that here the author uses the concepts “analog” and “relative” as synonyms, which is of course unacceptable. Certainly the author has the right to use concepts as he sees fit, and his elaborations of the concept of time have value, but for the socionic level of generalization these details are superfluous.
Stukas: Besides the concepts “young” and “old,” we operate with the concepts “younger” and “older.” Moreover, a person setting about any action, having determined how many units of time it will take, must determine the temporal relations of the individual operations of the process. With the content of this aspect are connected: the ability to estimate forthcoming expenditures of time and the difficulties connected with performing actions in time; the ability to plan one’s work in time, that is, to compose temporal programs of action; the sensation of the flow of time as such; understanding of the rationality or irrationality of time expenditures in performing actions and the ability to spend one’s time rationally; the ability to predict changes in the possibilities of an object (subject) or its energetic (emotional) state.
Commentary: When the content of an IA is described in socionics, a list of generalized concepts directly connected with the aspect is offered. In the excerpt above, categories of the time aspect of different levels of generality go pell-mell. “Young,” “old,” “younger,” “older” — this is the concrete level, with which socionics does not work. Whereas the concepts of a time interval, estimation of duration, vision of temporal perspective, planning of actions in time, awareness of timeliness or untimeliness, etc. — this is the generalized level of the individual’s interaction with time, and these categories are included in the specification of the aspect.
Stukas: Time in man’s representation is, on the one hand, perceived as something existing in itself, independent of what happens in the surrounding world. On the other hand, it exists only insofar as around man and within him everything moves, everything changes — insofar as there exists a dynamics of matter, space, and energy.
Commentary: This is very plausible reasoning, but the next step must be taken, when time is understood as the measure of processes, the measure of movement, the measure of changes. From here it is not far to the conclusion that time is the introverted image — or better, the generalized code — of movement, which allows man to sense, experience, and take account of the dynamic side of the world.
Stukas: But if the properties of material objects, the energetic (emotional) state of the surroundings, form and space at the given moment of time are sensed by man directly with the help of the sense organs, then in temporal processes — in how objects (subjects), their energetics (emotional states and feelings), form and spatial distribution will change — man has to orient himself with the help of his prognostic abilities.
Commentary: Prognostic abilities are a particular case of the manifestation of intuition, which is always present in perception. And although perception can be represented as an independent process — in that case it generates only the sensory codes of the object — the awareness and understanding of these codes is carried out by intuition.
Stukas: Space, like time, appears before man in two hypostases. In one case it is discrete space — all the space of the Universe, all the space occupied by some object (or subject) and determined by its form, which belongs to the category of space. Let us designate it with the symbol S. On the other hand, any space, any form can be divided, broken up into individual components and details, which are themselves forms and spaces. In one case we speak of an integral form, an integral space; in the other, of relations of spaces or forms (farther-nearer, larger-smaller…). Spatial relations we designate with the symbol s.
Commentary: Of course, it is unclear why all the space of the Universe should be called discrete. But the point is something else entirely. Space coincides completely with the body of the Universe — there is no other space, as some empty receptacle: the Universe cannot be extracted from itself in such a way that an empty place remains afterward. At the same time its subjective reflection by the subject constitutes the content of what is called thinking — of what Aushra Augustinavichiute not very felicitously called logic. Logic, in this sense, is the analysis of spatial relations, and this analysis, understandably, is introverted. It is precisely this situation that is understood in socionics as introverted logic l. The world investigated by logic, meanwhile, is an extraverted essence. Introverted logic is the instrument with whose help algorithms for transforming the world are created. The extraverted equivalent of the algorithm is technology. It is technology that is extraverted logic, or extraverted thinking L. Or rather, it is one of the projections of the archetype of extraverted logic.
However, as we see, the author tries to tie space to the concept of extraverted sensorics, while defining spatial relations as introverted sensorics. Let us look at his argumentation.
Stukas: Let us consider the spatial component of the information flow in more detail. This aspect is closely connected with objects, since it is “computed” on the basis of information about objects.
Commentary: Here the confusion persists between the external environment, as an extraverted essence, and space, as the maximally generalized introverted image of the environment.
Stukas: From the point of view of this aspect (S), objects are matter bounded by form.
Commentary: Here too we are dealing with a subtle shift of concepts. An object, in the general scientific sense, is that which is subjected to influence by a subject. And of course objects of research can be not only physical bodies but, for example, the human psyche.
Stukas: Every limitation is violence. Hence what is between objects and within objects themselves — inner space — is the result of a certain violence over matter. What is the space of a room? It is what is bounded by walls, floor, and ceiling. And what do we need a room for? To protect us from bad weather and other unpleasantnesses. The same is the purpose of the space of a suit or coat. What does it mean “to strike,” “to kill”? It means by forceful action — a bullet, a knife, or another object — to penetrate into the space occupied by a body. What is a bulletproof vest? A means of defense against such an attack. It turns out that the essential properties of space for us are certain force characteristics. …In socionics this aspect is customarily called “volitional sensorics”…
Commentary: An excellent example of a confident substitution of concepts. Who would object that “every limitation is violence”? But note: into the word “violence” the author, apparently without even realizing it, puts a negative meaning from the very start — “violence is bad.” He does not say this, and one does not even immediately grasp where this seme of negativity is hidden, but it is there. The author needs to throw a semantic bridge from limitation, via violence and aggression, to volitional mobilization, which he — citing the supposedly generally accepted (?) usage in socionics — calls “volitional sensorics.” Let us not dwell here on the jargon character of such terms, but merely expose the mechanism of substitution. Does the fact of aggressive behavior toward someone’s space speak of the properties of the space — or of the peculiarities of the aggressor? This “volitional sensorics” is a property of the aggressor, not of space. But the desire to justify a choice made in advance proved stronger than logic.
Stukas: Psychologists established long ago that every living thing has its own space of safety. It is a certain zone whose boundary defines a threatening situation if someone or something crosses it.
Commentary: Here the author continues arguing that space is directly connected with “volitional sensorics.” But he apparently discards the possibility that “space” and “space of safety” are different concepts. In exactly the same way one could propose a “space of comfort” and tie introverted sensorics to it. Or take “structured space” — there’s your logical aspect. And if space provokes some emotions — shall we then derive from it the socionic “ethics of emotions,” as some socionists call it?
Stukas: If the semantics of space is connected with force characteristics, then spatial relations are connected for us with the concepts “convenience-inconvenience,” “comfort-discomfort.” What is comfortable footwear? It is footwear whose space corresponds exactly to the foot. Why is soft furniture associated with the concept “comfort”? Because it takes the form — that is, the space — of our body, and its deforming forces on the body are minimal. …Generalizing the psychological meaning of spatial relations, one can define the semantics of the corresponding informational aspect by the concept “comfort” and the alternative concept “discomfort,” as well as by a whole series of other words and expressions used in the same sense. In socionics this aspect is termed “sensorics of sensations.”
Commentary: As was shown above, the semantics of space can be connected with any characteristics whatsoever — structural, systemic, energetic, material, ecological, and so on — and not only with force characteristics, as the author tries to argue. Still, it remains unclear how the “space of safety” differs from the “space of comfort-discomfort.” Do “spatial relations” not apply to both cases? Why in one case does the author consider the “space of a suit” from the standpoint of defense and aggression, and in the other — the “space of footwear or soft furniture” — from the standpoint of comfort and “spatial relations,” thereby ultimately justifying the name of the corresponding aspect as “sensorics of sensations” — incidentally, also a jargon combination? Let us also note that the concept “discomfort” in relation to “comfort” is not alternative but opposite.
Stukas: It is important here not to confuse the socionic meaning of the term “volitional sensorics” with other meanings of the word “will” — in particular, with the psychological meaning of will as a value-motivational characteristic of the personality. In that sense, will is the conscious overcoming of an actual competing, more accessible motive by another motive assessed as less accessible but recognized as more significant for the given concrete personality.
Commentary: We see how much depends on definitions. If we define will as the capacity to manage one’s own energies, no confusion will arise.
Stukas: The energetic-emotional aspect (E, e).
Commentary: From this heading it is evident that the author brings the concepts of energy and emotion close together, which stands in some contradiction with his understanding of informational aspects. After all, he replaced the socionic IAs with his “realia,” and called IAs the subject’s perception of these realia. In this same heading an objective essence — energy — is juxtaposed with a subjective essence — emoting.
Stukas: The world around us is filled with energy.
Commentary: The world around us is filled with everything: matter, information, and energy too.
Stukas: …our perception of energy has a twofold character. On the one hand, the living organism needs energy and therefore perceives energy directly: to live and work, we replenish our store of energy through nourishment. On the other hand, for the psyche as the governing organ in the “psyche-organism” system, what is important is information about the energetic states of the objects (subjects) and spaces around us. Looking at a person — his facial expressions, gestures, the gleam of his eyes — perceiving the intonation of his voice, we often unconsciously notice barely perceptible signals and register a certain state: “he is excited,” “his tonus is raised,” “he is in love” (love here meant as a state). The same applies to the surrounding space. We say: “a heated atmosphere,” “passions are boiling,” “emotions are seething,” and use other expressions containing information about energetic states. Emotional states are extraordinarily informative and are used effectively in communications. It seems nature endowed man with developed facial expressiveness not by chance. Facial expression — and in particular the smile — is a fairly reliable identifying sign of a person’s emotional states; one need only know how to use it.
Commentary: According to what the author writes, the duality in the perception of energy consists in this: (1) the organism perceives energy directly, and (2) the psyche perceives information about the energetic states of objects. In the first case it is unclear whether the author distinguishes the perception of energy from its consumption. Obviously these are two different processes. Naturally, in the process of consuming energy the psyche could give itself an account of this at the level of consciousness, and that is not the same as registering it at the level of the subconscious. Of course, both variants must be assessed not speculatively but at the level of experiment. Until that is done, the author’s reasoning will remain at the level of hypothesis.
Stukas: The semantics of the informational component concerning energy and energetic (or emotional) states can be generalized by the term “emotions,” since what interests us is the energetic states of subjects.
Commentary: Clearly the author’s reasoning is directed at bringing the concepts of energy and emoting closer together — but energy, according to the author, is one of the “realia,” that is, it belongs to the ontological plane, whereas emotions of course belong to the subjective-psychic plane and ought to be considered the subjective reflection of the world’s energetic component in the psyche. But the author — possibly without noticing it himself — has transferred the concept of energy into the content of a psychic function, uniting the terms “energy” and “emotionality” in the name of what he has incorrectly understood as that which Aushra Augustinavichiute called an IA. Recall that the author considers IAs the psychic reflection of “realia,” whereas Aushra Augustinavichiute spoke of them as components of the information flow perceived by the psyche. In socionics, however, one speaks of the aspect content of a function, which can be understood as the reflection by a concrete function of the corresponding IA — quite a different situation.
Stukas: The name of this aspect accepted in socionics is “ethics of emotions”…
Commentary: The author uncritically accepts the jargon term “ethics of emotions” (as well as other analogous terms) and apparently does not know that this term is not generally accepted in socionics. If it has gained currency among some socionists, that is worthy of regret.
Stukas: With this aspect (E) is connected the human capacity to assess accurately the emotional states of other people on the scale “extreme excitement — complete calm”; the ability to demonstrate one’s emotional states — from excitement to calm — to others for imitation, with the aim of changing or improving their state; that is, to act on others with one’s emotions or, as it is customary to say, “infect them with one’s emotions.”
Commentary: Here again we have a subtle substitution of concepts. A non-professional can easily believe that the emotional states of other people are assessed by emotions. This is wrong. A person can answer emotions with emotions, can act on other people with emotions — but he assesses emotions intuitively.
Stukas: Of a somewhat different kind, however, is the capacity to correlate emotional states. If you say “He is a bad person,” you are thereby stating approximately the following: in dealings with him my emotional state (i.e., mood) declines; hence there is a certain neutral state relative to which mood can be bad or, on the contrary, good. Besides, you involuntarily compare: there are people whose company raises your mood; of such people you will say that they are good…
Commentary: When the author uses the expression “the capacity to correlate emotional states,” it comes across as a term not previously encountered in psychology, but within ordinary usage it can be understood as the comparison of emotional states — one’s own or others’. Though in the context the author has created, it apparently must be understood as relating to the concept of “energetic relations” he introduced earlier. The result is a subtle semantic interference based on the inconsistency of the concepts “energy,” “emotions,” and “informational aspect.” Moreover, the author apparently keeps losing sight of the fact that the Jungian function of emoting is a rapid evaluative reaction to a presented stimulus. As a result the author invites the reader to understand the phrase “He is a bad person” not as the result of logical reasoning but as the result of a direct emotional reaction.
Stukas: A more habitual word by which we designate an emotional relation is the word “feeling.” Often we designate by one and the same word both a quite definite emotional state and a concrete feeling. Thus there is love-as-state and love-as-relation.
Commentary: Here it is evident that the author understands the difficulties connected with the use of words.
Stukas: So, the semantics of the aspect containing information about the relations of energetic (emotional) states can be defined by the term “relation.” In socionics this aspect is termed “ethics of relations” or “introtimic ethics,” symbolized by the sign (E). This aspect presupposes a person’s ability to determine successfully which object (subject) is excited in what way with respect to another — who relates to whom and how — to assess others on the scales “good-bad,” “moral-immoral,” “ethical-unethical,” “honest-dishonest,” “kind-wicked,” etc., as well as the ability to form appropriate emotional relations in others. For example, the concept “to build relations,” from the standpoint of this aspect, means to form in someone a positive relation to oneself.
Commentary: As we see, the author identifies energetic and emotional states. This is the result of the assumption made earlier. However, from the informational point of view, emotional states are evaluative reactions, physiologically supported by the energy necessary for the corresponding behavior — but energy supply pertains to all functions, not only to emoting. The energetic configuration of an object is assessed above all emotionally, because everything is assessed emotionally. Yet it is precisely energy — the energetic level of a situation — that can point to a direct source of danger or comfort.
Stukas: The material-object aspect (L, l).
Commentary: Here we again see how the author must skirt the difficulties tied to his distorted understanding of the IAs. According to the concepts he introduced earlier, the heading ought to speak of a “realium,” not of an aspect.
Stukas: …the property of objects of first importance for us is their use in working, technological processes (in the broad sense of the word). Therefore the semantics of the informational component concerning objects can be generalized by the concept “work” and detailed by a set of words and expressions used in the same sense. In socionics it is customary to call this aspect “working logic” or “extratimic logic” and designate it with the sign L. Working logic is connected with awareness of the working properties of objects — those properties that allow them to be used as objects of labor or instruments of labor; with the assessment of objects on the scales “effective-ineffective,” “functional-nonfunctional,” “constructive-nonconstructive”; with the ability to labor over objects, using one’s capacities for the satisfaction of diverse material needs.
Commentary: Human activity consists of two fundamental components: the algorithm and the technology. The algorithm is the introverted form of technology, and technology is the extraverted form of the algorithm. The algorithm is the basic product of thinking. Technology is the materialization of the algorithm for obtaining a final product of consumption. Introverted thinking, as the means of constructing algorithms, is in socionics not very felicitously called logic. From this point of view, technology, as the totality of actions directed at obtaining a product, is naturally called extraverted logic or extraverted thinking — that is, thinking brought outside and become manipulation of objects in the material plane — although to a non-philosophical consciousness such reasoning may seem strange, to say the least.
The physiological model of information metabolism in the human psyche: Model T
Stukas: The physiological model of information metabolism in the human psyche: Model T.
Commentary: Already in this heading a contradiction can be seen: the model is physiological, but it is built to ground information metabolism, which is the essence of psychic processes. The essence of physiological processes, however, is energy metabolism.
Stukas: Model T arose as a natural-scientific alternative to the abstract Model A, claiming greater explanatory and predictive power. Model A itself was created by A. Augustinavichiute as a more or less satisfactory theoretical answer to the empirical observations of intertype relations.
Commentary: If Model T was conceived as a natural-scientific alternative to Model A, this can be regarded as a misunderstanding. The author calls Model “A” abstract, and this is true, but only in part. First of all, any theoretical model is abstract, so Model “T” cannot escape that characterization either. The only question can be the degree and character of abstraction in developing models in a given subject area. Model “A” is a model in the psychological domain, whereas Model “T” is physiological. Model “A” adequately reflects precisely the psychological side of personal phenomenology and possesses the necessary predictive capacities for its level of generalization. Its level of abstraction is determined by the high level of psychological generalization at which socionics works.
Model “A” and socionics, after the proof that the IAs are elementary informational essences with ontological status, automatically pass into the category of natural sciences — while retaining, incidentally, their humanities status as well. A unique case in science, perhaps.
As for the assertion that “Model A was created by Augustinavichiute as a more or less satisfactory theoretical answer to the empirical observations of intertype relations” — at best it looks like a failure to understand what Aushra did, and at worst like slightly disguised slander of Aushra and her great discovery. Not only is “a more or less satisfactory answer” already an insult; there is also a direct distortion in the claim that it was “an answer to the empirical observations of intertype relations.” Perhaps the author does not know that the intertype relations (IRs) appeared later than the model and became one of its most important theoretical corollaries, while the model together with the IRs became an effective instrument not only for personal recommendations and prognostics but also revealed a methodological potential to which other sciences have begun to turn.
Stukas: The phenomenon of duality, clearly “grasped” by the researcher’s probing mind, served as the point of departure for the creation first of Model Yu, and then of Model A. The creation of the model itself, explaining the natural basis of the human psyche as an information system, was an enormous step forward compared with the typology of Jung and his American follower.
Commentary: What does the phenomenon of duality have to do with it? Model “Yu” — or more precisely, Model “A-Yu” — is the first brilliant sketch of Aushra Augustinavichiute’s great project. This model came out of Jung’s positional scheme as the result of a simple and brilliant intellectual move by Aushra: she straightened Jung’s scheme, designated the resulting four positions with consecutive numbers — which means she abstracted from the aspect content of the functions and discovered their positional semantics. And only after that did she pass to the eight-function scheme, having, incidentally, tried out several variants of its arrangement. And of this one can indeed say, in the author’s words, that it “was an enormous step forward compared with the typology of Jung and his American follower.”
Stukas: …being a purely qualitative rather than parametric construction, Model A coped rather weakly with explaining and predicting intertype relations, at times resorting to contrived and artificial interpretations.
Commentary: The author introduces two parameters for evaluating a model: according to him, models can be qualitative or parametric. According to methodological rules, newly introduced concepts must be defined, but the author does not do this, evidently considering these concepts self-evident. Let us try to do this work for the author. A qualitative model describes the principles of functioning of the object under study, while a parametric — that is, quantitative — model sets measurable characteristics of the object allowing its states to be assessed as the values of these characteristics change. Let us accept this as a first approximation and try to figure out to what extent these definitions apply to Model “A” and Model “T”. But let us not forget that parameters can be not only quantitative but also qualitative.
Model “A” sets generalized qualitative parameters of the behavior of a type’s bearer. Such parameters include, for example, the peculiarities of the work of each of the 8 generalized psychic functions, or the totality of 15 differentiating traits whose interpretation varies depending on their concrete set. Even this is already a very strong result, and importantly, it is well grounded. All the same applies to Model “T” as well; and the fact that it indicates high and low thresholds — a certain analog of quantity — is merely a designation of possible mechanisms of the functions’ activity and does not make Model “T” quantitative.
Stukas: Model A, in essence, took into account only one parameter, in the form of the different “color” of the functions — that is, the timity of the functions — and even that without clearly explaining its content.
Commentary: What does the author want explained to him? Extraversion and introversion were discovered empirically as psychological parameters. Their existence is recognized in psychology, and on that basis alone they have the right to be introduced into the model. That physiologists seek the grounds of these qualities in the structure of the human organism can only be welcomed; but whatever their physiological support may be, it cannot affect their psychological realization. Moreover, there exist convincing theoretical proofs of the necessity of these parameters’ existence in the psyche. And the main argument here is the coexistence of two worlds — the objective and the subjective.
Stukas: As will be shown below, the Jungian functions have not one but, in all evidence, two independent parameters. The absence of the second parameter in Model A was compensated by the artificial introduction of a second ring of functions. With the appearance of Model T it becomes obvious that the splitting of the psychic functions, which in Jung were always unitary, is a purely artificial device leading Model A away from the description of reality.
Commentary: It is not yet clear what parameters the author is speaking of, but in Model “A” each function has at least 7 parameters characterizing it in opposition to all the others. And to appeal to Jung in this case is incorrect, since Jung had no model and, despite his erudition, did not know many things. Besides, here we encounter the author’s insufficient familiarity with Model “A”.
Stukas: …Model A is not continuous with the many years of fruitful research in the physiology of higher nervous activity (HNA) and neuropsychology; it does not correspond with the experimental-theoretical results of the well-known and authoritative scientific schools of I.P. Pavlov, B.M. Teplov and V.D. Nebylitsyn, P.V. Simonov, H. Eysenck, and others.
Commentary: Model “A” sums up a long series of searches and findings in ego psychology and personology. It is a psychological model with its own psychological roots and precursors. As for the authors listed — apart from the last two — whatever their contribution to physiology, they did practically nothing in personality typology. Moreover, by their categorical pronouncements against speculation, “against idealistic approaches in psychology,” they held back the development of psychology in Russia. Pavlov, the great experimenter famous throughout the world, gave a very imperfect physiological explanation of the temperaments, while Teplov and Nebylitsyn spent many years trying to refine Pavlov’s sketch but — apart from some decorative details like partial thresholds — hardly advanced in solving this task. These were talented scientists, but under ideological pressure they simply could not spread their wings.
Stukas: This substantial methodological shortcoming is remedied by the physiological Model T, which, born within the socionic paradigm, relies on the results of research, chiefly of the Teplov-Nebylitsyn school. Model T explains a number of regularities that Model A merely stated but in no way explained. For example, if Model A set the order of the functions in the ring as a certain primary given, the new model explains this order from the standpoint of physiological laws.
Commentary: The author speaks of the shortcomings of Model “A”, but that is merely his opinion. The assertion that “Model A set the order of the functions in the ring as a certain primary given” has no basis. Jung empirically made the first move in this respect: he arranged the functions from leading to subordinate, placing the auxiliaries between them, and no one can reproach the great psychologist with arbitrariness in the arrangement of the functions in the psyche. Aushra correctly refined the relative placement of the auxiliary functions and found the content of their work in functional rather than positional terms, as in Jung. There is also a modern continuation of this theme [3]. As for Model “T”, it appears to have lost part of the positional concepts present in Model “A”. The references to the authority of the Teplov-Nebylitsyn school, which apparently should raise the persuasiveness of the author’s arguments, have at best reference value for a scientific discussion.
Stukas: Model T offers a most convincing way of resolving a long-standing problem in socionics — the delineation of the concepts “extraversion/introversion” and “extratimity/introtimity.” The physiological model separates these concepts, giving its own interpretation of each.
Commentary: This problem is contrived and connected with the structural peculiarities of Model “T”, not with real properties of the personality; in socionics it not only was never acute but had no significance at all.
Stukas: Finally, Model T possesses a higher predictive capacity. In particular, it interprets intertype relations far more clearly and unambiguously, without additional assumptions and stretches, and consequently allows better prediction of the development of concrete relationships between people.
Commentary: The stretches exist in the very structure of Model “T”. So everything the author writes above is a misunderstanding. No one has investigated the Jungian functions in laboratory experiment — simply because they are highly abstract mental constructs having no unambiguous physiological representation in the form of concrete organs. This could be done only in a thought experiment, that is, speculatively — which is what Talanov did. No one has experimentally measured — or even identified — input and output thresholds of excitation and inhibition, which have no relation to the generalized functions; these constructs were merely transferred from theoretical material developed in physiology onto the generalized functions — which cannot be done just like that; deep justifications are required. The Teplov-Nebylitsyn school never dealt with Jung’s generalized functions, always stood on dialectical-positivist positions, and references to it can have an “authoritarian” rather than probative character.
Model “A” is continuous with many years of fruitful research in ego psychology, whereas Model “T” merely speculatively generalizes physiological experience without sufficient grounds for doing so. Of course, physiological concepts could be interesting to psychologists, but one must not forget the irreducibility of the higher — in this case the psychic — to the lower, that is, to physiology. The physiological is the material substrate of the psychic but in no way determines its content.
Model “T” possesses no special predictive capacities compared with Model “A” and has no special psychological advantages, since it is physiological — though perhaps it could be used as a transitional construct for the laboratory verification of Model “A”.
Stukas: Before proceeding to consider Model T, let us unpack the psychophysiological concept of “analyzer thresholds.”
Commentary: Let us look attentively at the author’s further reasoning, since, as shown above, he is easily carried away and takes on faith the physiologist’s plausible speculative constructions.
Stukas: Every analyzer — visual, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, etc. — has its lower and upper threshold of excitation. The lower threshold of an analyzer is the minimal intensity of a certain stimulus S of the corresponding modality that evokes a response R — that is, the intensity at which detection of the signal occurs. The upper threshold is the maximal intensity of the stimulus at which the probability and intensity of the response drop sharply — simply put, the signal ceases to be detected.
Commentary: Here everything is correct, but it pertains to physiological reality, connected above all with energetics. As for not the perception of sensory signals but the reception of information — which is what socionics is about — this question has not been adequately investigated under laboratory conditions. In Model “T” we are dealing with a careless and unjustified substitution of the energetic for the informational. Furthermore, the excitation and inhibition thresholds of an analyzer are not its input and output but merely parameters of the analyzer as an input device. Talanov, however, turns the thresholds of excitation and inhibition into the inhibitory and excitatory inputs of the Jungian functions, simply transforming them and transferring them from physiology into psychology. As far as I understand, no experiment adequate to this situation yet exists.
Stukas: Let us conduct a simple experiment: place an image in a completely dark room with a test subject and gradually increase the illumination of the room. At a certain minimal illumination, corresponding to the reactive constriction of the pupil Rmin, the subject begins to distinguish the image. This intensity of the light stimulus Smin will be the lower partial (particular) threshold of excitation of the visual analyzer. Let us continue gradually increasing the room’s illumination. The subject will distinguish the image ever more clearly. However, at sufficiently high illumination the subject’s eyes begin to be dazzled and the clarity of perception diminishes. If reflexive closing of the eyes is prevented, at some strong illumination of the room the subject ceases to distinguish the image, perceiving it merely as a spot against the background of the room. This maximal illumination Smax will be the upper partial threshold of excitation of the visual analyzer. We can modify the experiment somewhat — for example, vary the distance of the image from the subject as the intensity of the stimulus. Then the maximal distance at which the subject begins to distinguish the image will be the lower threshold, and the minimal distance, when the gaze can no longer be focused and the image blurs, the upper threshold. But these will be different partial thresholds of the visual analyzer.
Commentary: Note that the author speaks of upper and lower thresholds of excitation. Of inhibition there is no talk here at all. Yet later, without any justification — merely by transfer and suggestion — he will pass to the excitatory and inhibitory inputs of the Jungian functions. Of course, these constructs are in themselves possible and plausible, but their existence must be confirmed in experiment.
Stukas: …between the various partial thresholds of one and the same analyzer there exists a rather high degree of correlation.
Commentary: This assertion does not seem convincing. What does “a rather high degree of correlation” mean? Does it mean that, for example, the eye’s reaction to light — and correspondingly the lower and upper thresholds of perceiving illumination — have the same nature as, are measured in the same units as, or are somehow proportional to the visual perception of an object as a function of distance? One can, it is true, construct a dependence between the degree of an object’s illumination and the distance at which it is perceived — but can such a dependence be regarded as pointing to the existence of a combined threshold? One can — but one can also see it otherwise. The author does not take into account that object plus distance is a different object, and it will be perceived differently at different illuminations. That is, the case “illumination-distance” can be reduced to the case “illumination-different object.” In exactly the same way, object plus illumination is a different object, perceived differently depending on distance. However, the reasoning under consideration can also be viewed as an attempt to argue for the existence of generalized thresholds, in order to justify the hypothesis of inhibitory and excitatory thresholds in the generalized functions.
Stukas: Having carried out a correlation analysis, we can establish conditional — lower and upper — thresholds of the visual analyzer.
Commentary: “Conditional” here means thresholds reflecting the complex perception of a signal. For vision, for example, these are the conditions of illumination, distance, presence of interference, adaptation, as well as all manner of states of the perceiving subject — fatigue, illness, cognitive imbalance, and so on. Already here we encounter the transition from the real parameters of an organ to a certain speculative construct which possibly reflects the organ’s work even more fully, taking into account any combinations of initial conditions, but which at the same time is a fiction that neither the scientist can use nor is of any use to the subject. This is because the subject uses his organs directly, without checking the values of their parameters, while for the scientist complex parameters even in the laboratory will remain conditional quantities — to say nothing of real conditions, where partial values will be measured.
Stukas: …there is a lower threshold of signal detection and an upper threshold. Between them lies the zone of optimal response — that passband of stimuli of a certain intensity which evoke the process of excitation in certain sections of that zone of the cerebral cortex which corresponds to the given analyzer. This passband we shall henceforth call the tuning of the excitatory filter. Obviously, different subjects will have different lower and upper thresholds and correspondingly different ranges of signal intensity. Thus the excitatory input of each analyzer has a filter tuned to a certain range of signal intensities.
Commentary: The physiological assertion about thresholds of perception and a zone of optimal response is a scientific fact. However, the quite science-sounding term “tuning of the excitatory filter” with respect to the Jungian and socionic functions is alarming. If we are speaking of technical devices, tuning of a device’s parameters is necessary — otherwise it will not work, and such tuning is always provided for in technology. With respect to a living being one can say only that an organ is ready or not ready to perform its function; to apply the technical term “tuning” here would be a metaphor, a manifestation of technocentrism, and a fact of methodological reduction of the living to the technical — although, for example, the eye does have means of automatic adjustment of focal distance (through transformation of the lens) or of light-flow intensity (through change of pupil diameter). And the concluding inference that “the excitatory input of each analyzer has a filter tuned to a certain range of signal intensities” sounds altogether like a semantic distortion. Clearly the author wants to lead the reader to the thought that the Jungian functions, like the organs of perception, have excitatory and inhibitory inputs with their own tunings — but he does it rather clumsily. A concrete sensory organ has a readiness for perception, and the process of perception itself can be designated as an input. And the organ, as the author writes, has a threshold of excitation at which a signal becomes accessible to perception, and a threshold beyond which the signal ceases to be perceived. But can one speak of inhibition here? The organ keeps working and perhaps, with even greater excitation, intensively searches for the signal — yet does not perceive it. Here we run into confusion and substitution of concepts. Why does the author, while using the concept of an excitatory input in his exposition, forget or discard the inhibitory side of the process — of an inhibitory input he says nothing. Nor does he speak of outputs. Generally, physiology assumes that excitation corresponds to the working state of an organ, while inhibition is connected with fatigue and the subsequent restoration of the working state. It seems the author, using the concept of the excitation threshold, primes the reader to think that these two sides are disjoined in the Jungian functions. Another variant is also possible: the author simply confuses the properties of a single organ with the properties of the entire nervous system, in which the processes of excitation and inhibition proceed continuously, thereby sustaining the organism’s vital activity. Moreover, it is not excluded that these general processes coincide only in name with what the author said with regard to individual organs of perception, and are in essence homonyms.
Stukas: Inhibition is a nervous process opposite to the process of excitation. Besides excitatory thresholds, we can also detect inhibitory thresholds. Let us conduct a second experiment. Take a bicycle wheel and begin to rotate it around its axis, fixing our gaze on the spokes. The speed of rotation at which we cease to distinguish the individual spokes will correspond to the lower threshold of inhibition: at this intensity of rotation the process of excitation (clear distinguishing of individual spokes) passes into inhibition. At a still higher speed of rotation, corresponding to the upper threshold of inhibition, all the spokes cease to be registered by us and merge into a blurred spot, and our gaze switches to another object. So, besides possessing an excitatory filter, the analyzer has its inhibitory filter, with its own passband and with an independent tuning not dependent on the excitatory input.
Commentary: The example with the bicycle wheel has no relation whatever to thresholds of inhibition. No inhibition occurs in the visual analyzer system when the spokes cease to be distinguished — it continues to function fully; what comes into play is quite another of its peculiarities — inertia: the image of several spokes at once is retained in the eye, which produces the merging effect. However, the speculative-incorrect use of concepts misleads the reader.
Stukas: The Jungian psychic properties possess the same essential properties as individual analyzers, namely: the property of perceiving, processing (subjecting to analysis and synthesis), preserving (storing in memory), and transmitting information.
Commentary: At this point the author commits a substitution and a serious methodological error. The transfer of the properties of individual analyzers onto a generalized psychic function is a speculative operation to which no experimental equivalent can yet be assigned in which it could actually be measured. And the point here is not that speculative operations may not be used — the scientist simply could not think without them — but that one must not reproach socionists for speculativeness as something vicious, when what is needed is to point out concrete substantive errors — if there are any, of course.
Stukas: …individual analyzers — at any rate their projection zones in the cerebral cortex — we are entitled to consider components of the sensory psychic function. Therefore we can extrapolate such key physiological parameters of higher nervous activity as thresholds (or filter tunings) of the excitatory and inhibitory input onto the psychic functions. We obtain that each of the four functional spheres is characterized by a combination of two input filters — excitatory and inhibitory.
Commentary: In this fragment we have an attempt to justify the transition from concrete organs to their generalizations. However, the author does not notice that as a result he passes not to a generalized function but to an aggregate organ, which is not the same thing. An aggregate organ is a set of concrete organs considered as one whole. To remain consistently on physiological positions, one cannot simply postulate an aggregate sensory organ — its properties must be discovered in experiment; otherwise we remain on the ground of speculation. But the Jungian functions are not aggregate organs; they are generalized functions. So what the author speaks of is merely a hypothesis, which must be proven in a special experiment — and that experiment must pertain not to individual organs connected with the generalized functional system, but precisely to the entire system.
Stukas: Its own specific passband is inherent only in the given functional sphere. In the other three psychic functions the filter tunings (to high or low signal intensity) may be different.
Commentary: Let us note here the concept of the “passband.” In itself it is a normal radio-engineering and physiological term, and it presupposes precisely a band, or range, with two boundaries between which the perceived signal must lie. Yet in Talanov’s hypothesis it turns out that the lower and upper thresholds each exist by itself — the upper passes only a strong signal, the lower only a weak one. Here they look not like bands but like small apertures: excitation or inhibition will occur not because the signal lies within the passband but because it falls into the slit intended for it — which, however, does not differ from a passband. Incidentally, speculatively such a problem is not hard to solve — it suffices to look at it as a “key-lock” situation. But that is already an informational situation, not an energetic one. A signal of a certain quality, not magnitude, arrives, and the system reacts to it. But then what have bands and thresholds to do with it? In socionics it is precisely the quality of the signal, not its magnitude, that is at issue.
Stukas: The range of a function’s outgoing signals corresponds to the tuning of its excitatory input filter, since it is assumed that the function, first, answers with signals of approximately the same intensity it perceives at its input, and second, that the signals generated by the function must, by virtue of the feedback principle, also be heard by it, and therefore by their magnitude must likewise correspond to the tunings of the input filter.
Commentary: Here we are dealing with one of the essential hypotheses on which Model “T” is built, and its speculativeness and hypothetical nature become obvious — everything is only “assumed.” Of course, this in itself does not compromise Model “T”: a hypothesis is a normal stage in a scientist’s work. Many propositions of socionics are also still at the status of hypotheses. But of course the hypothesis of the correspondence of “each function’s outgoing signals to the tuning of its excitatory input filter,” since it is physiological, must be verified in laboratory experiment. Incidentally, the main content of this hypothesis can be doubted, considering that a signal may be transformed many times and only afterward, if necessary, returned to its original form and brought to a form convenient for perception. Note also that the term “correspondence” in the context of this hypothesis means “of approximately the same intensity.” But this is not at all obligatory. A variant is possible in which the signal is perceived not by its intensity but by its informational importance — which is precisely where socionics places the accent, in contrast to physiology.
Stukas: It is assumed that a function is plastic, flexible, well regulated and controllable if the passbands of its excitatory and inhibitory filters are identical (this corresponds to the concept of “balance” of the nervous system).
Commentary: Here too the author uses “it is assumed,” but with a different semantic shade. There it was the introduction of a hypothesis; here it is rather a statement, an acceptance of plausible reasoning about the conditions of a function’s balance. Only the problem lies elsewhere: one may suppose inputs and outputs in the generalized psychic functions, but one need not suppose that they are organized on the physiological principle of excitation-inhibition. In any case such a supposition must be proven. Here the physiological literalism, though it makes an impression, looks suspicious.
Note also that in Talanov’s hypothesis both filters work both on input and on output. As input devices they can be understood: one excites the system only at strong signals, the other only at weak ones. Note again that here strength and weakness are understood purely physiologically, as depending on energetic content. Now look at these filters as output devices. Here it is unclear why a filter that lets a strong signal in should likewise emit strong signals. Incidentally, in the case of physiological organs nothing of the sort is even at issue. Moreover, in living organisms some organs are responsible for “input” and others for “output.” The eye perceives but does not emit signals adequate to what is perceived.
Stukas: …a function’s own outgoing signals can be for it both excitatory and inhibitory — that is, capable of carrying out its self-regulation. If, however, the excitatory and inhibitory threshold filters are mismatched in threshold height, then the function in the worst case becomes inert, rigid, inflexible, and unruly, at times to the point of obsessiveness. In the best case its work detaches from conscious control and becomes, as it were, a constant automated background of the psyche. Why does this happen? Because in the case of mismatched threshold filters the signal issuing from the function corresponds in intensity to the excitatory input but does not pass through the filter of the inhibitory input, and therefore cannot bring about effective inhibition of the function.
Commentary: Having done the preparatory work, the author proceeds to describe the mechanisms of the model’s operation. For Talanov’s hypothesis it is essential that the Jungian function has an excitatory and an inhibitory filter realized both as input and as output — but this was not discovered in experiment; it was rather confusedly transferred from physiology.
Stukas: In the case of equality of the excitatory and inhibitory thresholds, we speak of a balanced function; in the case of inequality, of an unbalanced function.
Commentary: Once the concepts have been introduced, derivative judgments can be constructed.
Stukas: Let us now draw a simplified Model T for the ILE type: (formula 1). Here I is intuition, L logic, S sensorics, E ethics. The indices at the functions show the tuning of the partial filters. The upper left — for the function’s excitation channel. The lower right — for its inhibition channel. The index “h” [Russian «в»] means selective tuning predominantly to high-intensity signals, the index “l” [Russian «н»] to low-intensity signals.
Commentary: Here we are dealing with the rules of construction and interpretation of Model “T”. Let us note all the same that when the excitation or inhibition channel of a function is spoken of, it is apparently assumed that they work in both directions: on input and on output.
Stukas: The order of the functions corresponds to the first ring of Model A. Let us retain henceforth the names of the function positions traditionally accepted for the first ring of Model A. The first function we shall call “program,” the second “creative,” the third “contact,” the fourth “mobilization.”
Commentary: Earlier the author reproached Model “A” for the ungroundedness of the arrangement of the functions, and now he not only retains the same order but by default accepts their semantics as reflected in the names. The use of the term “traditionally” here looks out of place, incidentally. This is not tradition — Aushra found this order, and it is her achievement. On the other hand, if Model “T” is correct and confirms the function order of Model “A”, this could be regarded precisely as a physiological verification of Model “A”, and one would have to grant at least that Aushra brilliantly guessed the order of the functions — though of course Aushra relied on Jung, and she did not guess but found the grounds for that order.
Stukas: And what about the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth functions located in the second ring of Model A? We shall never need them again. Do we not lose, with their loss, information about the TIM as well? No, we do not: all the information is now concentrated in the thresholds of the functions of the first ring. So the second ring was unnecessary? In essence, precisely so.
Commentary: Here a recoding of the model has been performed, in which, as it were, thresholds of excitation and inhibition are put in place of the mental and vital parts; these preserve the duality of the functions, but on a different, physiological basis. And here we see a complete substitution for, and renunciation of, Model “A” — while retaining a significant part of its terminology.
Stukas: In principle, the lower block — the block of individual life-activity — is a purely artificial invention and cannot be a specific structure of the human psyche. From neurophysiology and the physiology of higher nervous activity it is known that all tasks of individual life-activity — the existence of each of us as a separate organism — are solved at the level of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes, i.e., thanks to the same mechanisms that make us kin to animals. There can be no talk here of psychic functions as specific formations of the human psyche.
Commentary: Here the phrase “in principle” acts as a filler word, since obviously no real principle is at issue. The name “block of individual life-activity” belongs to Yermak’s paradigm and is by no means generally accepted. Aushra called this block vital, on the supposition that there are concentrated the functions reflecting the flow of informational processes in the mode of reaction to the programs formed by the functions of the mental block — in the mode of realizing those programs. Thus the imperative-temporal function (ITF) answers with the allocation of time and tonic tension for the activity of the program-potential function (PPF). Matters stand analogously with the other functions. Nevertheless, it remains unclear why one must assert so categorically that “the block of individual life-activity is a purely artificial invention and cannot be a specific structure of the human psyche.” Well then, what is individual life-activity? Is the psychological principle utterly absent from this concept? Whereas to assert that “all tasks of individual life-activity — the existence of each of us as a separate organism — are solved at the level of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes” is precisely a manifestation of unjustified reduction, in which the psychological is reduced to the physiological. Of course, if the author understands individual life-activity as a purely physiological process, that is another matter. But, as we see, much here depends on definitions.
Stukas: At the level of reflexes, all information about the external world has an exclusively sensory-immediate — or, if you like, primary-sensory — character, and this information at this level is not subject to recoding into logical, intuitive, or properly ethical information (where feelings are in one way or another separated from sensations). Primary sensory information likewise cannot be sensory analytical information of a higher level — not at the level of reflexes but at the level of reflection, of awareness. Of course, if we are engaged in sensory-analytical activity (for example, purposefully comparing what is tastier, warmer, more comfortable, stronger, etc.) or other conscious activity, or if our organism encounters a situation problematic for it — it is precisely in these cases that the psychic functions are activated.
Commentary: The just assertion that “at the level of reflexes all information about the external world has an exclusively sensory-immediate character” does not entail the conclusion that individual life-activity is not accompanied, sustained, and controlled by psychological flows of information — which is what distinguishes the psychic and psychological level of life-activity from the physiological one.
As for primary sensory information: since it differs from the energetic flows of the physiological level, it likewise cannot be separated from IM, and it is by no means proven that it cannot become the basis for analytical processes — though here again solid definitions are needed. And it is illegitimate to oppose conscious activity informationally to subconscious activity. Neither conscious nor subconscious activity can be reduced to physiology.
Stukas: So, there are four Jungian functions, and the individual has exactly four of them. Jung’s functions regain their integrity.
Commentary: Here one gets the impression that the author has “buried” Model “A” forever. In that case it is not even clear why he needed to describe it in the opening sections of the book.
Stukas: …the former black colour of the functions will always, in all cases, correspond to the inhibitory (i.e., lower right) index “l,” and the white colour to the inhibitory index “h.” The former black functions of Model A are those with low thresholds of inhibition; they are effectively inhibited by any incoming signals of low intensity. Henceforth we shall call such functions extratimic. White functions are selectively inhibited predominantly by signals of high intensity, are “thrown off,” switched, and controlled by the action of such signals. We shall call them introtimic.
Commentary: The correspondence introduced by the author must mean, first, that the author does not distinguish positional and aspect semantics, and second, that, for example, the first functions of all types are physiologically unbalanced while the second are balanced. Does this give anything for understanding informational processes? Rather, it obscures their informational essence. A certain equivalent of an energetically strong signal for the PPF of a Don Quixote will be a message important to the concrete person — that is what switches on his informational activity. Conversely, loss of interest in a topic, at any state of a Don Quixote’s energetics, automatically halts its development. The second function of Don Quixote, the communicative-probing function (CPF), likewise switches on in the informational process not because an energetically high signal arrives, but because the PPF passes it information intended for it. And any function passes from active to passive mode not because a high or low signal arrives, but simply because the task at hand turns out to be solved.
The recoding of the “color” of the functions of Model “A” into the inhibitory indices of Model “T” looks like a substitution of concepts. The extraverted (“black”) functions of Model “A” are replaced by the low-signal inhibitory input of any function of Model “T”; the introverted (“white”) ones by the high-signal inhibitory input of any function of Model “T”. Such functions in Talanov receive the names extratimic and introtimic respectively. We see that these terms reflect not properties of the personality but peculiarities of the interpretation of Model “T”. In socionics a function is extraverted or introverted because it reflects the corresponding IA, which exists independently of the perceiving subject. In Model “T” a function is extratimic because it is inhibited by a weak signal, and introtimic the other way round. Neither psychological nor physiological motivation for such names is visible here.
Besides, “the color of the functions” is a conditional and secondary term of jargon character, and its use in proofs creates an atmosphere of superficiality of judgment.
Stukas: …the concepts extraversion-introversion and extratimity-introtimity have separated, become independent. The first is connected with the thresholds of the excitation channel, the second with the thresholds of the inhibition channel. The color of the functions turned out to be connected only with the inhibition channel.
Commentary: As can be understood, the introduction of this distinction owes itself not to the semantic side of Model “T” but to its syntactic, formal rules of functioning. This is exactly what pertains to speculativeness, formalism, and metaphysics.
Stukas: Model T clearly separates the concepts “extraversion/introversion” on the one hand and “extratimity/introtimity” on the other. High thresholds of excitation will manifest in the individual’s own strong-signal production corresponding to his energy-expending strategy of behavior. This, properly, is extraversion. The property of low inhibition thresholds, not connected with extraversion, can be called “extratimity.”
Commentary: The additional distinction “extraversion/introversion” versus “extratimity/introtimity” is a product of the new model and reflects nothing in reality. Therefore there is no need whatever for this separation — and moreover it is wrong. The attempt to identify high excitation thresholds with extraverted behavior leads to substituting the physiological for the psychological, which belongs among the standard methodological errors. The polarity “extratimity/introtimity” is introduced by Talanov to describe nuances of the interpretation of his model, but it reflects no psychological phenomena and is in no way connected with extraversion/introversion — as the author himself says. Jung noted that both forms of behavior — extraversion and introversion — are inherent in every person, and therefore no one is fully only the one or the other. In this respect people differ only in the greater activity of one pole or the other, which is what we designate as extravertedness or introvertedness.
Stukas: …the excitation thresholds are in no way connected with the color of the functions. But they are necessarily identical for the first two functions of the TIM model. For all extraverted TIMs the excitation thresholds of the first two functions equal “h,” which means a preference in the excitation channel for signals of high intensity. Conversely, in introverts the excitation channel of both the program and the creative function is tuned to low intensity of incoming signals. We shall call extraverted those functions whose excitation channel is tuned to high intensity, and introverted those whose excitation channel is tuned to low intensity.
Commentary: Note that the PPF of extraverted types in Talanov is excited by a high signal, and of introverted types by a low one. How is this to be understood? What, then, according to Talanov, is a strong or weak signal, a signal of high or low intensity? Surely there can be no question of a person being, say, struck by electric current or dealing with an earthquake, after which he begins to think. Or is intensity here understood in the sense of informational importance? In that case we have a substitution of concepts, because no equivalence of energetic intensity and informational importance of a signal was introduced. And on the informational understanding of signal intensity it turns out that the PPF of introverted types reacts only to unimportant signals — which in no way squares with normal notions of the informational functioning of the personality.
Stukas: …both functions closest to the beginning of the chain, that is, the program and the creative, turned out to be completely identical in the tuning of their excitation channels. Both of them will simultaneously be — depending on the height of their excitation threshold — either extraverted or introverted.
Commentary: One is tempted to quip: “What a remarkable achievement!!!” And indeed — does such an “improvement” give anything at all in substantive terms?
Stukas: The first and fourth functions for any TIM will always be unbalanced, that is, will have different indices of the excitatory and inhibitory thresholds. The creative and contact functions, on the contrary, are characterized by equality of excitatory and inhibitory thresholds (that is, identity of the tunings of the corresponding threshold filters) and are balanced.
Commentary: Such conclusions are drawn from Model “T”. Let us see whether anything analogous can be asserted proceeding from Model “A”. Model “A” is not energetic, and for it the concepts of excitation-inhibition and balance-imbalance are neither current nor relevant. Still, let us ask, for example, whether the PPF (program-potential function) is balanced or not. This function forms internal models of the habitat and on their basis works out programs of external behavior. For a person it can serve as the site of self-identification. But no grounds are visible here for assessing it in energetic terms. This function is activated in critical situations — but in the sense that it begins to seek an emergency way out of the situation. And it seems that at the physiological level energy consumption increases in that case, but this is merely a condition of the comfortable flow of the informational process and does not affect the content of the result.
In Model “A”, unlike Model “T”, a function is extraverted or introverted depending on which IA it reflects.
Stukas: The excitation threshold of the first two functions is identical and equals “H” (high-intensity signals) for extraverted TIMs, and for introverted TIMs always equals “l.” For the remaining two functions, the third and fourth, the values of the excitation thresholds will necessarily be opposite to those of the first two (that is, “l” for extraverts and “h” for introverts). As for the inhibition thresholds (the right indices at the functions), they necessarily alternate at the transition to each subsequent function, which ensures the balance of the two middle functions of the model and the imbalance of the first and last.
Commentary: So Talanov ascribes to generalized psychological functions the properties of concrete physiological organs. Such a transfer must at the very least be justified. But it has been done at the level of intuitive insight. Of course, the details of the model — apart from certain outright blunders — are not badly coordinated with one another, and this does credit to the author’s inventiveness. Besides, it is good that such a model appeared, thanks to which certain methodological subtleties can be clarified.
Stukas: …the program and creative functions turn out to be interconnected through the excitation channel; they fall through this channel into mutual positive resonance.
Commentary: Here a mysterious concept is used (since it is not defined) — “positive resonance.” But then a “negative resonance” ought to exist too. Note, however, that this is an energetic concept, not an informational one.
Stukas: As for the inhibition channel, its tuning is different in the first and second functions. The program function can with its outgoing signal (recall — equal in intensity to the tuning of its input filter) inhibit the second, creative function, while the creative function cannot inhibit the program one with its outgoing signal. What does this lead to? First, to the program function working and being occupied for more of the individual’s time than the creative function. Second, to the program function turning out to be the customer and controlling element with respect to the creative function, while the latter is merely an obedient and subordinate, easily controlled element.
Commentary: Here we see that Model “T” postulates the absence of feedback between the PPF and the CPF. If Model “T” corresponded to reality, such an assertion could be regarded as a discovery. Given the high level of generalization of socionic models, introducing such a parameter as the working time of functions does not seem justified. Moreover, the working time of functions may depend on entirely different causes — for example, on their own productivity or on the complexity of the tasks, which may differ for each function. As for introducing the concept of a “customer” into the relations between functions — why not speak here simply of hierarchy, since the concept of “customer” has other connotations in socionics?
Stukas: According to Model A it is customary to call the “black” socionic functions “extratimic,” and it is precisely they that are characterized by low inhibition thresholds.
Commentary: “Low inhibition thresholds” is an explanatory fiction within Model “T” and is not used in socionics. And perhaps someone does call the “black” socionic functions “extratimic,” but this is not generally accepted. The answer to this question was given above.
Stukas: Extratimity manifests itself not in energy expenditure, not in one’s own strong-signal production, but only in the striving to avoid a weak-signal, monotonous environment. The extravert does not care whether the television is on, whether music is playing, whether people around are working, whether “the world is turning.” What matters to him is that his own voice in this world be loud (that he be heard). The extratim, by contrast, does not care whether “his voice is loud”; what he needs is precisely that the television be on, the music playing, the co-workers working, “the world turning.”
Commentary: The concepts extravert and extratim are synonyms with small differences. Extravert points to the full-scale manifestation of the corresponding quality, extratim to its predominant presence. It was in this sense that Aushra introduced it — by analogy with Kretschmer’s cyclothyme or schizothyme — but it proved semantically unstable, and most socionists do not use it. The author, following Talanov, finds a new use for it, placing the accent on the avoidance of a weak-signal environment. Personally I see no need to introduce such a distinction: if the extravert is oriented, according to Talanov, toward “high-expenditure” behavior and avoids “low-expenditure” situations, then Talanov’s understanding of extratimity is included in the concept of extraversion and needs no contrast with it. If, on the other hand, it is supposed that extraversion and extratimity have nothing in common — are even polar — and moreover that extratimity can be inherent in extraverts and introverts alike, this cannot be postulated speculatively but must be discovered in a controlled experiment. The latter version is confirmed by the comparative example the author gives. By socionic notions, loud music (and the rest of the example) is listened to by extraverts and introverts alike, and this does not change their psychological quality; hence, it seems, the distinction introduced by Talanov to suit the construction of Model “T” only adds confusion.
Stukas: …besides the partial properties of the nervous system for each of the four functional spheres and separately for each of the input channels — excitation or inhibition — there also exist the so-called “general” properties of the nervous system, revealed in the works of the physiological school of Teplov-Nebylitsyn.
Commentary: The existence of “general” properties of the nervous system should follow from I.P. Pavlov’s work and that of the Teplov-Nebylitsyn school; however, no research exists on the distribution of these properties across the types of information metabolism, which makes their a priori distribution among TIMs, as done in Talanov, dubious.
Stukas: The general property of the nervous system with respect to strength-weakness of excitation extends identically to all four Jungian functions. It is, as it were, a top-level filter, a universal filter, indifferent to the choice of concrete functional sphere.
Commentary: These assertions are speculative in character. According to I.P. Pavlov, the nervous system is characterized by three general parameters, among them strength-weakness. At present there are no experimental data establishing the distribution of this parameter across TIMs. Moreover, it seems extremely improbable that an extravert should have a weak nervous system — except perhaps in the case of some pathology. If this supposition is correct, then the introduction of identical general filters for extraverts and introverts is probably an error.
Stukas: The full Model “T” for the ILE will look thus: (h/h)… — for the introtimic subtype of Don Quixote (a tendency toward high-signal general inhibition); (h/l)… — for the extratimic subtype of Don Quixote (a tendency toward low-signal general inhibition). The index in the numerator shows the tuning of the top-level general filter for the excitation channel of all functions; the index in the denominator, the tuning of the top-level general filter for the inhibition channels. To the “strength” pole in the general strength-weakness property of the nervous system corresponds the tuning of the top-level filter for the excitation channel to high-intensity signals (index “h”); to the “weakness” pole, its tuning to signals of low intensity (index “l”). Analogously for the inhibition channel.
Commentary: I.P. Pavlov and the Teplov-Nebylitsyn school experimentally proved the existence of three general parameters of the nervous system: strength-weakness, mobility-inertness, and balance-imbalance. A model giving a full description of the nervous system ought to contain all three parameters. In the full Model “T” shown above, strength-weakness is represented by the expression in parentheses. What seems suspicious here is only that this parameter is “attached” to all types without exception. This must mean that all types (precisely types, not their concrete bearers) can have both a strong and a weak nervous system. Since a single counterexample suffices to refute a universal affirmative statement, let us ask: “Is a Zhukov with a weak nervous system possible?” And though you might search the world over for something of the sort, there ought to be roughly half of them among all Zhukovs — since we are speaking not of individual people but of types.
Imbalance is “built into” the first and last functions by Talanov — they are always unbalanced — while balance turned out to be fixed to the second and third. But as a general property of the nervous system this parameter is not represented in the model. It follows that this parameter does not vary across types, whereas across people it does vary — that is, some people’s nervous system is balanced and some people’s unbalanced, overall.
As for mobility-inertness, this parameter is absent from Model “T” entirely.
Stukas: The interaction of functions within the TIM (on the example of the models of Don Quixote and Robespierre)… it is clearly visible that the first and second functions mutually stimulate each other through their excitation channel — their excitation-channel tunings are identical, and the outgoing signals generated by each function have predominantly the same intensity as the tuning of the excitation channel.
Commentary: According to the a priori introduced rules for understanding Model “T”, the first part of the assertion is comprehensible. As for the claim that “the outgoing signals generated by each function have predominantly the same intensity as the tuning of the excitation channel” — this arouses distrust, since this can no longer be asserted a priori: a priori it is more probable that the signals will (predominantly) have situational intensity and only by chance coincide with the tuning of the excitation channel.
Stukas: Therefore the program and creative functions turn out to be interconnected through the excitation channel, falling through this channel into mutual positive resonance. As for the inhibition channel, its tuning differs between the first and second functions. The program function can with its outgoing signal (recall — equal in intensity to the tuning of the input filter) inhibit the second, creative function, but the creative function cannot inhibit the program one with its outgoing signal.
Commentary: The implication with the operator “therefore” has a very weak basis here, since at the previous step it did not look convincing.
Stukas: What does this lead to? First, the program function works and is occupied more of the individual’s time than the creative function. Second, the program function turns out to be the customer and controlling element with respect to the creative function, and the latter turns out to be merely an obedient, subordinate, easily controlled element. The relations in the pair of the third (contact) and fourth (mobilization) functions are analogous.
Commentary: Of course, if we accept the assertion about the closeness of the intensity of each function’s outgoing signals to the excitation-channel tuning, the arguments stated above will have positive meaning. Nevertheless, even the assertion of the program function’s greater occupancy is doubtful if we set aside speculative considerations. Why — in reality, and not in the model — must the program function work longer than the creative one? Is it really harder to form a program than to bring it to life?
Stukas: The mobilization function is unbalanced and capable of controlling the contact function, while the latter can in no way exercise reciprocal control. On the other hand, both the contact and the mobilization functions are capable with their outgoing signals of inhibiting the program function. Therefore, when the pair of mobilization and contact functions begins to “speak,” the program function falls silent for a time.
Commentary: The logic of interaction in this pair is the same as in the first. However, in life rather than in the model, it is unclear why in this pair the mobilization rather than the contact function should be in control. After all, the contact function is directly connected with the environment, and it is the one that ought to stimulate the mobilization function — and the mobilization function would then supply energy for goal-directed activity.
Stukas: The creative function, meanwhile, is not inhibited and can continue its work. Analogously, during the work of the pair of program and creative functions the fourth and last in numeration, the mobilization function, is somewhat inhibited (the filter at its inhibitory input corresponds to the tuning of the filters at the excitatory inputs of the program and creative functions, so it passes through itself the outgoing signals generated by them, which in response evokes inhibition of the mobilization function).
Commentary: It is fine and pleasant that the creative function is not inhibited by the mobilization one — but why does it not react directly to the activity of the contact function? That is, whatever happens in the external environment, of which the contact function ought to inform, the creative pays no attention to it? But “by the rules” of the model the chain of “transmission” looks thus: the contact excites the mobilization (and it can do so) — the mobilization ought to excite the program (but it cannot do so directly) — and the program excites the creative. The author, however, has a different sequence: the program excites the creative, the creative inhibits the mobilization, and the latter excites the contact, which in its turn inhibits the program. The contact ought to excite the program or the creative, since the contact is directly connected with the environment and tracks its state — but the program of reaction to changes in the environment, and the creative realization of that program, are not its doing. So what sort of strange logic of function interaction is this?
Stukas: Which pair works more often? The first — the pair of program and creative functions. Its high-signal (in the case of the ILE) input thresholds correspond to the tuning of the individual’s general input filter, which is high-signal for extraverts.
Commentary: One may agree that the first pair works more often, though this, it seems, does not follow from the model. For along with the high-signal tuning of the general input filter on the excitation channel of the extraverted individual, the inhibitory part of the input filter and the inhibitory input of the mobilization function are also tuned to a high signal — with all the ensuing consequences.
Stukas: The low-signal passband of the input filters of the functions of the second pair (mobilization and contact) comes into contradiction with the high-signal tuning of the general input filter on the excitation channel of the extraverted individual, and this weakens the probability of a response by the corresponding functions; therefore, in response to external signals they switch on more rarely on average and work less.
Commentary: If the author has not muddled anything here, then, by the rules of the model, at a high general inhibitory signal — should it occur — the mobilization function must be directly inhibited, immediately inhibiting the contact function. The latter will at once inhibit the program, and through it the creative will also stop. All in all, one gets the impression that the model describes rather well the self-inhibition of the psyche — or rather of its physiological carrier — than its activation by input signals.
Stukas: So, in the first pair, the far more unbalanced function in its thresholds (excitatory and inhibitory) is the program function — and in the case of the ILE this is intuition. Its imbalance manifests in the fact that with its own signals (predominantly high-intensity) it cannot effectively inhibit itself, since its inhibitory input requires low-intensity signals. Therefore, for any program function, switching to another topic, displacing what is no longer relevant, etc., is a problem. It finds it hard to stop in its work — hence its “sticking,” its looping. Hence its role is to worry constantly, stubbornly insist on its own, return without occasion to what has been covered, and control the creative function most demandingly and capriciously.
Commentary: That the first function turns out to be unbalanced cannot determine its program semantics, since the mobilization function also possesses this same parameter; hence there must be at least one more parameter which, together with imbalance, would secure its program dominance. All the same, the imbalance of the program function does not seem some total advantage of hers. Incidentally, here we see that the general nervous-system property of balance-imbalance is distributed in the model among the functions rather than characterizing the whole psyche.
And when the author writes of the first function that “it finds it hard to stop in its work” — does this not speak of its stability, its steadiness? Is this not the beginning of persistence in achieving a goal? Yet it turns out that the stability of the function’s work is explained by its imbalance. Perhaps some dialectic can be seen in this — but what have abstract philosophical concepts to do with it? The reasoning about “capricious control” also sounds unconvincing: does the steadiness and endurance of the program function’s work really have anything to do with “caprices”?
Stukas: Why does the creative function turn out to be so obedient and flexible? Because both its inputs, excitatory and inhibitory, have the same filter tuning. In Don Quixote’s case — a tuning to high-intensity signals. Therefore, first, the creative function is well and easily controlled “within itself” — with its own signals it can restrain itself, easily change its direction, its topic of work. Second, both its inputs, excitatory and inhibitory, turn out to be easily accessible to high-intensity signals from the output of the ILE’s program function. For this reason the program function — in itself (by virtue of its imbalance) inert and rigid — gains access to the operational control of the creative function (its excitation, inhibition, direction, redirection, etc.).
Commentary: That the creative function must be flexible is understandable — but why speak of “obedience”? Obedience is rather a sign of conformism, and with it of dogmatism, incompatible with the function’s creative character. Discipline would fit here much better. The creative function’s capacity for self-regulation explains its flexibility, but flexibility alone likewise cannot ground the function’s creative semantics, since the contact function has the same parameter.
Stukas: The creative function with its signals is capable of acting only on the excitatory input of the program function, thereby constantly giving it additional stimulation and thus supporting its dominant role.
Commentary: If the creative function only activates the program one — is that not a manifestation of dominance, whereby it proves capable, through the program function, of controlling itself as well? Does it not turn out that, having without any justification ascribed program semantics to the first function, we then explain its dominance by that very fact?
Stukas: Exactly the same picture takes shape in the pair of mobilization and contact functions, where the unbalanced mobilization function likewise plays the role of “setting the pace.” However, the work of this second functional pair — because of its mismatch with the individual’s general excitation input threshold — begins in response to external stimulation much more rarely. Moreover, its engagement requires special adaptational tension and therefore quickly causes fatigue.
Commentary: In the second pair it is entirely unclear why the mobilization function should be dominant — except by the rules of the model’s construction. And it is wholly unclear how it follows from the model that the second pair of functions “requires special adaptational tension and therefore quickly causes fatigue.” And if it “causes fatigue,” is it thereby inhibited? After all, in this model the concepts of excitation and inhibition are all but fundamental.
Stukas: Let us also consider possible cases of competitive interaction between functions (that is, either in the pair intuition-sensorics or in the pair logic-ethics). Suppose that against the background of the working creative intuition of an LII there suddenly “flares up” (say, in response to an external signal) the activity of the mobilization sensorics. In the competition of two signals — from the creative and from the mobilization functions — the signal of the creative function invariably wins, since it passes freely through the filter of the mobilization function’s inhibition channel. In the reverse direction no suppression occurs, and therefore the accidental “flare” of the mobilization function is quickly inhibited by the intensively working creative function and comes to naught. Matters stand otherwise in the competition of signals from the program and contact functions. Here, despite the dominant position of the program function, the signal of the sporadically “flaring” contact function will win the struggle, since it is capable of inhibiting and temporarily switching off the program function (see their thresholds!).
Commentary: Alas, in the above highly logical reasoning the author for some reason loses sight of the fact that no special advantages were stipulated for functions of “one -ality” [rationality/irrationality], and functions interact regardless of their aspect content; hence the mobilization function, with its low excitation threshold, will excite the contact function adjacent to it, the latter will act on the program, from which the creative will switch on — which, by the rules of the model, must then most inopportunely inhibit the mobilization function. But once the mobilization function is inhibited, will anything in the psyche still be active?
Stukas: The general rule comes out thus: in the competition of two functions of one -ality, the signal of the more balanced function (that is, contact or creative) wins. Apparently this is a most important circumstance. Thanks to it there arises the possibility of the transfer of activation (from time to time) from the first pair of functions first to the third, contact function, and then, through it, to the mobilization function. Thus, in the case of the LII, the paired work of logic and intuition usually dominates, where intuition provides the solution of tasks formulated by logic. However, ethical considerations and events can activate the pair of ethics and sensorics, which may generate in the LII rather prolonged episodes of concentration on sensory resistance and counteraction, initially motivated ethically. Later the external source of this sensory resistance may lose its relevance, while the concentration on resistance remains in the form of an at times morbid set or a so-called complex.
Commentary: When the author says here that “the general rule comes out thus…”, the impression is created that this “rule” was not set a priori from the start but was as it were derived in the course of interpreting the model’s work. Alas, this rule was contained in one form or another in the author’s initial assumptions. From the author’s reasoning, however, two conclusions can be drawn. First, the author holds that the functions compete rather than cooperate. Second, the concept “wins” is easily interpreted as dominance, which contradicts the author’s earlier declaration of the dominance of the program and mobilization functions.
Stukas: The work of the pair of contact and mobilization functions cannot, however, continue long once begun: first, their work is quickly exhausted; second, any next “flare” of the creative function in its turn inhibits the work of the mobilization function, then reactivates the program function and returns the information metabolism “to its own circles,” that is, to the dominant paired activity of the program and creative functions.
Commentary: Of course, it is entirely unclear where the rapid fatigability comes from — these functions are excited by a low signal, presumably associated with lesser loads or even rest. Consequently the author has an undeclared idea of the initially greater weakness of these functions. But is there any physiological confirmation whatever of this idea? The contact function, since it is so named, ought to be strong in contacts and not “tire” in them. And the mobilization function is precisely the one that ought to supply energy to all the other functions, and it ought to be strong precisely in that. From the fact that Jung singled out a leading and a subordinate function on the supposition that the former is more and the latter less developed, it does not follow that one of them is strong and the other weak — this at the very least needs proof and verification — and from the model it in no way follows that the second pair must tire faster.
Stukas: So, the four functions according to Model “T” break down basically into two pairs. When the pair of program and creative functions works, the mobilization function is inhibited, while the contact function is able to operate but perceives mainly external, extraneous information. When the interconnected pair of mobilization and contact functions works, the program function is inhibited, while the creative retains the capacity to process “extraneous” signals (for example, in the case of the LII — to perceive the products of other people’s imagination). The contact function is the link by means of which the excitation of the program function can be inhibited and replaced for a time by the excitation of the mobilization function. Through the creative function this excitation is then able to return again to the program function, restoring its dominant role.
Commentary: ((the mechanism is well laid out, and mesmerizing…)) Obviously, Model T has no advantages whatever over Model “A” in respect of speculativeness. The reasoning given flows not from experiments directly relevant to the material under consideration but from general theoretical positions developed in physiology with regard to other objects, and from the speculative rules of the model’s construction.
Stukas: V. Gulenko identified and described two subtypes — the terminal and the initial — which by all evidence coincide with Talanov’s theoretically computed extratimic and introtimic subtypes. In extraverts the terminal subtype coincides with the extratimic and the initial with the introtimic. In introverts it is the other way round. To give an idea of how substantially the behavior of subtypes within one and the same type can differ, let us cite the brief characterizations Gulenko gave of the 32 subtypes.
Don Quixote terminal (extratimic per V. Talanov): Distinguished by an excellent nose for the new; an unsurpassed generator of ideas, he not infrequently becomes the author of numerous inventions and discoveries. Very bold in his suppositions, at times paradoxical. However, he easily abandons a task that has bored him and switches to a new, more engaging one. There is a strong set toward change of impressions, which may show itself in a penchant for travel, frequent change of sexual partners, and so forth. He is characterized by dynamism, rapid speech, a large quantity of gestures. He is marked by an at times morbid sensitivity to the nuances of human relations. He often has a stocky build, a masculine appearance. He attaches great importance to external appearance.
Don Quixote initial (introtimic): A self-absorbed and pensive person, thinking dialectically, not falling into extremes in his judgments. He is often attracted by abstract ideas having no direct connection with concrete reality. The type of the armchair scholar. He reacts weakly to strong emotional stimuli — hence emotional coldness, detachment. He is characterized by an asthenic figure, can be angular in his movements, pays no attention to external appearance, cares little for his health.
Commentary: Here descriptions of Don Quixote per Gulenko are given, and it is entirely unclear how they follow from Model “T”. For that matter, these descriptions do not fully follow from Model “A” either.
Stukas: For extraverts, the extratimic subtype (i.e., the terminal) has a nervous system (NS) unbalanced in the processes of excitation/inhibition with predominance of excitation processes, i.e., the tuning of the top-level filter for him will have the form h/l.
Commentary: According to I.P. Pavlov, cholerics and melancholics have an unbalanced nervous system. This means that in unbalanced Don Quixotes excitation predominates and they can only be cholerics — which comes into contradiction with the definition of such a type as terminal (per Gulenko), since the capacity to finish tasks, to carry them through to completion, requires balance. An analogous contradiction obtains for the initial subtypes.
Stukas: According to Model T, tacticians in the sensory sphere have high balance (correspondingly, well-developed inhibition and conscious control). In the sphere of intuition they are unbalanced, distinguished by a clear disbalance of excitation and inhibition. Strategists, on the contrary, are balanced in the intuitive sphere and unbalanced in the sensory. As in the case of constructivists-emotivists, in the case of tacticians-strategists a direct analogy is found with the partial properties of nervous-system balance studied in detail in the physiological school of Pavlov-Teplov-Nebylitsyn.
Commentary: To discuss such a topic, definitions are needed, and since there are none, the subject loses its grounds.
Let us give such definitions. The strategist determines final goals and outlines in general terms the ways to reach them. The tactician is concentrated on solving local tasks corresponding to the nearest stages of achieving the goal.
Talanov blindly copied the lists of tacticians and strategists from Aushra Augustinavichiute, apparently thinking this question settled finally and irrevocably. However, in the course of work with the ARTs it became clear that the problem of the ARTs has only been posed and is far from completion. The semantics of the ARTs is sketched very approximately, and their names are no more than conditional designations so that the traits can be somehow distinguished at all.
A simple review of the list of types casts doubt on its correspondence to reality. Knowing the real properties of the TIMs and proceeding from the general scientific understanding of the terms, it is hard to believe that, for example, Don Quixote is not a strategist but a tactician. It is hard to believe that Dumas surpasses Shtirlits in the art of strategy, or Dostoevsky surpasses Balzac. Obviously behind these two octaves stands some other trait, with, correspondingly, another name — for example, “patrons-usurers,” which Aushra mentioned, though she still preferred “tacticians-strategists.” This remark practically nullifies Talanov’s derivation of this trait from his model.
To say of Don Quixotes that “in the sensory sphere they have high balance, well-developed inhibition, and conscious control” is to disregard reality and impose on it a conclusion from the model, since Don Quixotes impulsively switch on their extraverted sensorics in situations of external pressure.
Stukas: Let us consider the clusters of the poles “tacticians” and “strategists” revealed on the array of questionnaire statements reliably correlated with the trait.
Commentary: Judging by the descriptions that follow, there can be no question of any “reliable correlation” here.
Stukas: The first subcluster reflects in tacticians good control and inhibition of drives and desires — sexual, alimentary, thirst, etc. — as well as the absence in general of any clearly prominent, obsessive, and overpowering needs.
Commentary: Does this really apply to Robespierre to a greater degree than, say, to Huxley? And so on.
Stukas: In strategists, on the contrary, vital needs are at times strong to the point of obsessiveness and impatience, demanding obligatory and speediest satisfaction.
Commentary: Does Robespierre or Dostoevsky really fall under such a trait?
Stukas: Strategists tend to subordinate everything to their dominant and strong needs and drives. In strategists one also more often encounters some nonstandard, non-normative needs — for example, sexual perversions.
Commentary: These are altogether unsubstantiated assertions. Incidentally, where are the corresponding sexual statistics?
Stukas: The strategist concentrates all attention only on one goal, coinciding with his main need. He is impatient in satisfying the need, strives to receive reinforcement already at the beginning of the work, prefers to go toward satisfying the need not by a roundabout but by a short path — hence he more often begins work with simple tasks that can be carried out surely and quickly, already at the start of the activity. It is also hard for the strategist to measure his financial capacities against his desires and needs, so he yields to the tactician in competent planning of the personal budget.
Commentary: The author apparently does not notice that the first assertion applies even more to tacticians than to strategists, since the designs of the latter can extend over any stretches of time — but predominantly over large ones. And if one must choose who, theoretically, is more impatient “in satisfying the need, strives to receive reinforcement already at the beginning of the work, prefers to go toward satisfying the need not by a roundabout but by a short path” — preference must be given to tacticians.
Stukas: The second subcluster in strategists is connected with difficulty in changing work tempo, difficulty in consciously switching visual and auditory attention during work. Tacticians have no problems with this.
Commentary: Let us grant that these judgments are true of some concrete people known to the author — but whence this information with respect to TIMs? It ought, after all, to be derived from the model — yet it is ascribed to the type on the basis of the author’s opinion.
Stukas: The third subcluster in tacticians is connected with the controllability and subordination of sensory attention. The tactician’s gaze does not jump about; it is attentive and controlled, concentrated, at times intent. The strategist’s gaze for a significant part of the time wanders randomly, leaps or floats, is in free automatic search, “scanning” space in an uncontrolled automatic mode.
Commentary: What is described here is rather the opposition of sensorics and intuitives, but for some reason it has been projected onto “tactics-strategy.”
For this reason tacticians better remember people’s faces, while strategists feel better crossing a road with heavy automobile traffic — their “roving” gaze in automatic mode instantly registers the placement and speed of the cars on the road, while controlled and concentrated intuition helps predict the local situation on the roadway in the next few seconds. In the case of immobile objects, tacticians easily and steadily focus attention on one thing, while in strategists visual attention begins to dissipate rather quickly.
Stukas: The fourth subcluster is connected with the fact that strategists often automatically pay attention to some surrounding trifle that is and should be no business of theirs (for example, they automatically note someone’s wart or characteristic peculiarities of another’s speech, such as characteristic coughs, an accent, etc., and even when observing something intently, with peripheral vision they note everything happening around). Tacticians simply have no concern for sensory trifles that do not directly concern them.
Commentary: In this paragraph we are dealing with some sort of nonsense whose connection with strategy and tactics is unclear at either end.
Stukas: The fifth subcluster is connected with peculiarities of the manifestation of “black” sensorics. Tacticians like to feel their power over the life, fate, and health of people (this subcluster is expressed above all in rational sensorics — HUGO, MAXIM, DREISER, SHTIRLITS), while strategists more often and more easily break into direct aggression and physical assault, which is most inherent in the irrational extraverted sensorics — ZHUKOV and NAPOLEON.
Commentary: From what does it follow that, for example, Robespierres or Dostoevskys “more often and more easily break into direct aggression and physical assault”?
Stukas: The sixth subcluster is connected with tacticians being more inclined and able than strategists to observe the generally accepted protocol in the sensory sphere. Thus, with respect to clothing they possess a more unerring taste or at least are more concerned than strategists with its harmonious selection, at times resorting for this to the advice of those around them; to receptions they wear a suit appropriate to the occasion and not provocative; at the stadium they shout, and at the cemetery they are modestly silent (this trait is likewise more strongly expressed in rational sensorics).
Commentary: Do Don Quixotes really “possess a more unerring taste with respect to clothing”?
Stukas: The seventh subcluster is connected with preference of professions. Strategists prefer professions in which their sensorics can be “released into free flight,” given free rein and not especially supervised, in the expectation that in automatic mode it knows itself what to do and will redundantly scan and filter through itself a heap of trifles, some of which may by chance turn out to be important: harmful or useful.
Commentary: Is it Shtirlitses who “release their sensorics into free flight and do not especially supervise it”? And so on.
Analogous remarks can be made regarding the “grounding” of the other ARTs.
Apparently what has been said above suffices to refute the majority of Stukas’s and Talanov’s arguments in support of Model “T”.
Stukas: Activation. For DON QUIXOTE these arise with the ESE, HUGO. The program functions of the activators significantly inhibit the partner’s mobilization function. The mobilization function in its reciprocal influence somewhat restrains the program function; however, owing to its weakness and low activity, it cannot exercise effective inhibition. The partners’ creative functions interact little with the contact functions owing to the divergence of thresholds (both in the excitation channel and in the inhibition channel), the leading role in this insignificant interaction belonging to the creative functions. As a result, against the background of an insignificant weakening of the partners… The overall picture looks like a resonant strengthening of the program functions, an unchanged state of the creative ones, a syntonic merging of the partners’ contact functions with a weakening of their dependence on their own mobilization functions, while the mobilization functions are moderately suppressed by the partners’ creative functions. The picture as a whole partly resembles an induced terminal accentuation.
Commentary: It is impossible to recognize in this description the socionic notion of activation. Rather, what is at issue here is some sort of inhibition: “The program functions of the activators significantly inhibit the partner’s mobilization function.” If in the relation the mobilization function is inhibited, what activation can there be? The partners do not mobilize but demobilize each other. Further: “The mobilization function in its reciprocal influence somewhat restrains the program function; however, owing to its weakness and low activity, it cannot exercise effective inhibition.” Even if in this case the inhibition is not very effective — it is still not activation! Yet from the model it is evident that here the mobilization function does not interact with the program function at all — within the model, of course. “The partners’ creative functions interact little with the contact functions owing to the divergence of thresholds…, the leading role in this insignificant interaction belonging to the creative functions” — but the model shows that these functions do not interact at all, not even “insignificantly.” Obviously we are dealing with a stretch. And finally: “As a result, against the background of an insignificant weakening of the partners.” In the socionic description what is at issue is significant strengthening! Of course, one might say here: “So much the worse for socionics!” But empirical observations long ago convinced socionists that the relation of activation corresponds well to its name. And so one can say: “So much the worse for Model ‘T’!”
As for the overall assessment of the relation — “the overall picture looks like a resonant strengthening of the program functions, an unchanged state of the creative ones, a syntonic merging of the partners’ contact functions with a weakening of their dependence on their own mobilization functions, the mobilization functions being moderately suppressed by the partners’ creative functions” — as we see, this follows from nothing, and the “weakening of the contact functions’ dependence on their own mobilization functions” further compromises the meaning of activation, though it introduces shades that must now somehow be tied to activation.
Stukas: Relations of complete opposition. For the ILE, DON QUIXOTE, these arise with the ILI, BALZAC. The order of the functions in the partners’ TIM models coincides, but the functions fundamentally do not coincide in thresholds. A certain very moderate mutually stimulating interaction is possible between the partners’ creative and contact functions despite the mismatch of their thresholds: since the creative and contact functions can interact within a TIM, the same-named balanced functions can interact intertypally as well. The partners’ program functions energetically suppress each other (the outputs of these functions do not correspond to the excitation threshold filters of the same-named functions of the partner, but do correspond to the inhibition threshold filters of these functions). The same happens with the mobilization functions. Communication gravitates toward the use of the creative and contact functions and therefore tends to shift to the language of their club (in the example given, the language of the MANAGERS club). However, owing to the mismatch of their thresholds, the partners may develop irritation from not hearing and understanding each other very well. As a result of communication there may also arise an unpleasant sensation of a “vacuum of life goals” — from the active mutual suppression of the program functions.
Commentary: Model “T” in this case “explains” well the unfortunate socionic name of this relation — “complete opposition,” or even “extinguishment”: from the structure of the models it follows that these types do not interact at all, though the author, clearly speculatively, speaks of the possibility of “a certain very moderate mutually stimulating interaction between the partners’ creative and contact functions despite the mismatch of their thresholds: since the creative and contact functions can interact within a TIM, the same-named balanced functions can interact intertypally as well.” The second part of the explanation, meanwhile, relies not on intertype motivation but on intra-model interaction of the functions, which, though it does not make the argument meaningless, weakens it greatly, since it looks dragged in “by the ears.”
Summary
Talanov chose a different functional system and built a different model, and although it uses physiological terminology, its adequacy to the socionic paradigm is only an appearance. The functional thresholds are merely transferred from physiology and have not been verified in the laboratory. The transition to physiological terminology only creates an illusion of greater scientificity, whereas this transfer is speculative in character.
Talanov transferred onto his model the majority of the categories of classical socionics, evidently recognizing their psychological relevance. But it turns out that in the process of interpreting his model he in effect destroys the psychological order of socionics, imposing on it physiological concepts transferred by him from one subject area — not at all on the basis of controlled experiments with the Jungian functions, but from intuitive considerations, that is, speculatively. Talanov partly borrowed the functional semantics from socionics, which looks especially unmotivated. Properly speaking, it is unclear how it follows from Model “T” that the four Jungian functions have the semantics selected by Talanov: program, creative, contact, mobilization. Yes, Talanov speculatively explains the peculiarities of the “physiological mechanisms” of the functions he selected, but these explanations are, first, in no way better than what has been done in socionics, and second, contain far too many stretches. The first function in Model “T” is unbalanced. Such a characterization, according to Talanov, should secure its “programness.” Why? In extraverts it is “excited” by a strong signal, in introverts by a weak one. Here at least two things are unclear. First, what does a “strong” signal mean? Since the model is physiological, strength here should apparently be understood physiologically. In physiology three generalized parameters of the nervous system are known: strength-weakness, balance-imbalance, mobility-inertness. Obviously these parameters pertain to the nervous system and not to the energetic magnitude of a signal, but the fuzziness of the definitions creates a false impression of the identity of the concept “strength” in the combinations “strength of the nervous system” and “strength of a signal,” whereas they are homonyms. Second, it is unclear why the program function must be unbalanced. That is precisely what would need to be discovered in experiment — but so far it is not even clear with what bodily organs the functions could be identified, or whether this can be done at all. Nor is it clear why the program function of the introvert is excited by a weak signal. One gets the impression that we are dealing with a “fitting” of strength to extraversion and of weakness to introversion. Talanov, it is true, uses the terms “high” and “low” signal — but on a literal understanding of these terms the confusion grows even greater, for in engineering frequency is associated with these concepts, and amplitude with strength. In psychology it would be appropriate to speak of the importance, value, or significance of a signal for the subject. But Talanov operates with physiological terms.
Analogous misunderstandings and stretches pertain to the explanation of the socionic relations. First, Talanov accepts the socionic names of the relations and their semantics as something self-evident, and here too his descriptions resemble fitting an explanation to an answer known in advance. Second, his explanations of the intertype relations significantly distort the theoretical and empirical observations of relations in socionics.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that Talanov’s explanatory argumentation is put together not at all badly, and an unprepared reader will find it far from easy to see the contradictions in it. One of the notable inconsistencies is that Talanov holds to two lines of explanation of the model’s semantics and the semantics of the relations: mutual threshold regulation among any functions for the model, and interaction only of same-aspect functions for the relations. In the latter case, incidentally, the interpretive base for the relations narrows sharply — whereas there exists an effective way of including all eight functions of Model “A” in the explanatory base of the relations’ semantics.
Obviously, Model “T” has no advantages whatever over Model “A” in respect of speculativeness. The reasoning presented flows not from experiments directly relevant to the material under consideration but from general theoretical positions developed in physiology.
Talanov’s attempt to derive at least some of the ARTs from his model turned out to be simply a misunderstanding. And perhaps the greatest achievement of the Teplov-Nebylitsyn school — the general parameters of the nervous system — is represented in the model with obvious distortion or is absent. After acquaintance with Model “T” one is left with the impression that the author has constructed the scheme of some physiological automaton in which the functions are excited and inhibited under each other’s influence, but this influence has an unpredictable character, which at first approximation resembles the behavior of a drunk: he tries to keep his balance, but does not manage it.
The large number of assertions with imprecise, dubious, or contradictory meaning significantly lowers the reliability and effectiveness of V. Stukas’s book, which does not allow it to be recommended for reading to beginning socionists.
References
- Stukas V., Foundations of Socionics [Osnovy sotsioniki], Odessa, 2007.
- Kempinski A., The Psychology of Schizophrenia [Psikhologiya shizofrenii], St. Petersburg, 1998.
- Churyumov S., The Cheshire Cat’s Smile [Ulybka Cheshirskogo Kota], Drohobych, 2007.
Translator’s notes: The Russian threshold indices «в» (высокий, high) and «н» (низкий, low) are rendered as “h” and “l”. Type nicknames (Don Quixote, Zhukov, Shtirlits, Robespierre, Balzac, etc.) and standard socionics abbreviations (TIM = type of information metabolism; IA = information aspect; ART/АРП = Augustinavichiute-Reinin traits; IR/ИО = intertype relations; PPF/ППФ = program-potential function; CPF/КЗФ = communicative-probing function; ITF/ИВФ = imperative-temporal function; HNA/ВНД = higher nervous activity) follow the conventions of the source. The typeset threshold formulas for ILE/LII models are garbled in the source PDF and are indicated rather than reproduced.