The Splendour and Poverty of Socionic Metaphysics — Volume 2

S. I. Churyumov

“METAFIZIKA” — Kyiv, 2012

Translator’s abbreviation key (conventions as in prior chapters): TIM — type of information metabolism; IR (ИО) — intertype relations; IA (ИА) — information aspect; SF (СФ) — socionic function; IM (ИМ) — information metabolism; ART (АРП) — Augustinavichiute–Reinin traits; IMEE (ВМС) — internal model of the external environment. Model-A position names: PPF (ППФ) — program-potential function; CPF (КЗФ) — communicative-probing function; ALF (АНФ) — adaptive-load function; CCF (ККФ) — conservative-critical function; ITF (ИВФ) — imperative-temporal function. Aspect letter codes per Churyumov: I/i = extraverted/introverted intuition, S/s = sensorics, L/l = thinking, E/e = emotionating.

UDC 159.923.001.8(2) BBK 88.3 Ch-93

Churyumov S. I. The Splendour and Poverty of Socionic Metaphysics. Volume 2. Printed in the author’s own redaction. Cover and layout by the author.

In this two-volume work, the theoretical views of the most influential authors of books on socionics are analysed from the standpoint of the methodology of scientific research.

The book is intended for professional socionists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and for everyone interested in the problems of the development of science.

The second volume examines certain works of: V. V. Gulenko, V. D. Ermak, I. M. Eglit, T. N. Prokofieva, A. V. Bukalov, S. V. Filimonov, I. S. Malsky, L. A. Kochubeeva, V. V. Mironov, M. L. Stoyalova, E. S. Filatova, G. R. Reinin, Ya. A. Dubrov, E. E. Eskisay, S. I. Churyumov, Ya. A. Feldman, S. B. Pereslegin, S. E. Kashnitsky, and others.

Contents — p. 3
Preface to the Second Volume — p. 4
Section 1. Gulenko versus Ermak — Ermak versus Gulenko, while Seryozha Savchenko wanders in the dark — p. 64
Section 2. T. N. Prokofieva and her team: “Socionics for Professionals.” Meaning what, exactly? — p. 106
Section 3. A. V. Bukalov offers his own variant. “What’s wrong with integral socionics?” — p. 166
Section 4. The Ψ-socionics of S. Filimonov and I. Malsky — socionics with a psychological face? — p. 211
Section 5. Kochubeeva L. A., Mironov V. V. and Stoyalova M. L.: The semantics of the information aspects — what, exactly, do the authors have in mind? (an example of a complex and conscientiously argued error) — p. 284
Section 6. E. S. Filatova: “Variants within a single psychotype.” What is this about? — p. 341
Section 7. Mathematical socionics — Reinin, Dubrov, Eskisay, Churyumov… Hard to believe such a thing can exist — p. 373
Section 8. A lyrical digression on Ya. Feldman’s THEORY OF LEVELS and Pereslegin’s QUARTIONIC QUIRKS — p. 373
Section 9. THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH IN THE HUMANITIES — p. 428

Preface to the Second Volume

I published the first volume of The Splendour and Poverty… in time for the 27th international conference on socionics, and rank-and-file socionists took a lively interest in it. However, the majority of the leading socionists — the ones my book was chiefly addressed to — met it with silence, in exactly the same way, in fact, that psychologists once met Aushra’s socionics. An interesting parallel.

At present there already exist some three dozen variants of socionics, and evidently that is not the limit. Socionists work, assert themselves, earn something — sometimes not badly — and are quite satisfied with the level they have reached. Possibly they even believe that what they impart at their courses, seminars and consultations, or in their books, is the socionic Truth itself. And that cannot even be ruled out, though it has not been proven. At the same time, nothing that contains even a single logical error can be Truth, and in the material I analysed in the first volume such errors are rather numerous.

Some socionists are so pleased with their practice, their client testimonials and their earnings that the very thought of possible defects in their own paradigm never enters their heads. And yet practice, alas, is not a criterion of Truth. It is a criterion of success, but a criterion of Truth it is not. And without that criterion it is meaningless to speak of the status of a science with respect to socionics. Yes, dissertations are written on socionics and with the use of socionic concepts, and people are awarded titles from master’s and bachelor’s degrees up to doctorates of socionics. And that is probably a good thing — after all, people genuinely work hard, they undoubtedly know their subject, and their clients are satisfied. So what problems could there be? There is only one problem — the extent to which the content of works on socionics satisfies the criterion of truth. The majority of socionists never posed the question in those terms — simple plausibility satisfied everyone. This must, of course, be put down to the insufficient methodological competence of most socionists, and in that respect almost nothing has changed to this day. True, some socionists have begun to use the words “methodology” and “methodological” more often, but frequently only as a fashionable buzzword, and sometimes as a bogey for exerting psychological pressure on their colleagues.

It should also be noted that several hundred dissertations have already been written with direct use of socionics, with its use as a methodological basis and with references to it — which poses the question of its truth all the more acutely.

But what, after all, is the secret of the successful — and “successful” — use of socionics in work with the public? A large role is played here by the confidence and self-assurance of socionics practitioners in their own rightness: they not only earn decent money but have a stake in asserting themselves as professionals capable of effectively, and sometimes spectacularly, solving personal, domestic and workplace problems. But for that to be possible, socionics, as a working instrument, must be adequate to the problems being solved with its help. This can be understood to mean that socionics must contain some truth. And such truth is contained in the core of socionics created by Aushra Augustinavichiute. That core is the conception of TIMs and IR. And despite the fact that the reliability of TIM diagnosis still does not exceed 85% — which is, of course, not a little — and the descriptions of the TIMs are by no means brought to perfection, this is nonetheless a level one can work with in practice. People are attracted even by the very process of having their TIM determined; they find it interesting to have such information about themselves, and although cases where people become disillusioned with socionics are not rare — most often because the TIM was determined incorrectly — this does not lead to a total rejection of socionics. With IR matters stand somewhat differently. After all, if the TIMs are determined correctly, then the relation between them is determined automatically. But the specifications of the IR at present leave much to be desired, above all because most socionists do not know of the existence of the model of a relation and rely on approximate, intuitive descriptions of them. Nevertheless, even an approximate description of the IR is perceived by the consumer as valuable information from which useful conclusions can be drawn. Incidentally, the Jungian typology adapted for practical use in America by Myers and Briggs is, from the standpoint of theoretical justification, in a considerably worse state. This applies both to the testing and to the practical recommendations — when, for example, the theoretically best partner according to Myers and Briggs turns out to be the socionic conflicter.

As for the various authorial superstructures built on top of the socionic core, they come as a kind of seasoning to the core information and look like nothing more than a way of serving socionics up to people. Clients do not much care what the author of a particular adaptation of the socionic core calls his socionics — humanitarian, constructive, integral, systemic, associative or anything else — what interests them is the possible practical result. One may say that the material most socionists work with is not science but technology. Naturally, one can and should demand of a technology a scientific justification that would give the right to issue licences for the corresponding practice, and the laws of various countries stipulate that all practitioners must be certified specialists, but the mechanisms for monitoring such practices are not everywhere well developed. In particular, socionics easily mimics psychology, whose scientific status is considered established — at any rate, psychologists hold diplomas of a state-recognised standard. Many socionists have also obtained psychology diplomas and can therefore acquire the corresponding licences relatively easily.

So: is socionics a science? For the time being it is the embryo of a science. The principal aim of science is truth in a specific subject area. Truth in science, though it is tested by practice, must first be logically justified. Truth is not attained by voting, by collusion of part of the scientific community, or by a general consensus of scholars. References to authority will not do, nor will the use of administrative leverage that decrees truth by order. Truth must satisfy the requirement of end-to-end argumentation. In most socionic adaptations this requirement is not met. A scientist must answer every “why” all the way down to axiomatic statements — which must themselves, however, satisfy strict methodological requirements. Not one of the leading socionists has done this work.

Here, for example, V. D. Ermak, attempting to improve Medvedev’s argumentation, aggravated the subtle logical errors already present there, which to a considerable degree compromises all his further constructions and everything he presents as the justification of Model A.

In order to become a science, socionics must not only use scientifically grounded terminology — which so far it does not — but must also formulate its basic assumptions, from which all its principal concepts could be derived. I have done this work, and all that remains is either for the socionist-technologists to accept these results and use them in their practice, or to give an intelligible answer as to why they do not accept the work I have done. However, considerations of prestige apparently outweigh scientific ones.

It is interesting to acquaint ourselves with what some of socionics’ representatives think about its current state. Here is what S. Kashnitsky says in an interview — a talented journalist and enthusiast of socionics who has worked with socionics for many years and written two books on the subject.

Kashnitsky: Sadness and alarm — these two not very cheerful words can, in my subjective view, express the feelings connected with the present and future of that young and, it still seems, promising science — socionics. More precisely: its present evokes sadness, and its future — alarm.

Comment: Of course, this is a subjective view, and possibly we are dealing here with a variant of a journalistic genre, something like the “Lament of Yaroslavna” or some sort of “passion of socionics”; but do real facts actually stand behind the sadness and alarm on display? Why not propose a real plan for optimising socionics — or else definitively dispel “the myth of its potential scientific status”?

Kashnitsky: In habitually applying the word “science” to socionics, I have sinned somewhat against the truth. By many indicators it can undoubtedly be considered a science: socionics is one of the spheres of cognitive activity; it accumulates and systematically generalises information about nature, society and thought; it has developed its own mathematically precise research apparatus; it has acquired an informational-research infrastructure — there are collegial communities, textbooks, scientific journals and websites; conferences are held; dissertations are even defended…

Comment: The author does not give us a definition of science as he understands it, and without definitions a discussion loses its meaning. This is nothing more than Kashnitsky’s subjective passions over socionics. Did he personally attempt to sort out the socionic problematics and propose solutions? It is precisely the inability to sort out these problematics that leads to dead-end pessimism in socionics.

Kashnitsky: …to call socionics a science is, to a certain extent, to pass off the desired as the actual. The theoreticians of socionics have never formulated an acceptable axiomatics; the foundational definitions are vague and disputable; the informational basis of socionics rests not so much on scientific conceptions as on hypotheses whose verification is hardly possible in the foreseeable future.

Comment: The comrade is not up to date — he is still stewing in his own juices and is simply unacquainted with the literature [3]. Or perhaps what is lacking here is competence — he simply has nothing to offer?

In this connection it is worth recounting one talk Kashnitsky gave at a Moscow conference in 2008. The topic of his talk was connected with some strange attempt to reanimate a long-since-discredited socionic artefact once proposed by G. Shulman. I mean his CPSS (construction of the periodic system of the socion). Now, Kashnitsky adduced — apparently in defence of this original but, as it proved possible to show, deeply erroneous construction — a no less original, certainly inadequate, but flashy and even beautiful argument. On a slide Kashnitsky showed a coloured political map of western Europe and drew a correspondence between the TIMs of states and the placement of TIMs on the CPSS scheme. Here is the conflict axis England (Stirlitz) — Russia (Yesenin). See — exactly as in Shulman. Here is Germany (Maxim), here is Poland (Hamlet); curious, isn’t it… and so on.

That talk made a strong impression on me. No, it proved nothing, of course, but a “residue” remained. Imagine internalising a theoretical construct so deeply as to see an analogy with the map of Europe! What enthusiasm is needed to seek and find arguments — such beautiful ones, at that — in order to try to galvanise a long-buried theoretical scheme! And on the other hand: where is the theoretical intuition here, where is the ability to distinguish what is valuable in socionics from the approximate and unnecessary? Can one, after this, trust the quasi-scientific pronouncements of the talented journalist? And is it not to precisely this indiscriminateness of the ethical types that socionics owes the proliferation within it of pretty-looking but logically unreliable intuitive insights, which in practice turn into irresponsible embellishments?

It is also not out of the question that Kashnitsky does not count me as a person — well, my TIM is not to his taste… — and therefore does not read my books…

Kashnitsky: Socionic practice, having accumulated an extensive body of statistical material over a quarter of a century, can be characterised not so much as scientific practice, but as a sporadic accumulation of artefacts. The “manual” component in the practical activity of socionists is so significant that it does not allow one to speak seriously of any reliable reproducibility — that is, of scientificity. Socionics shows itself far more convincingly as a folkloric-cognitive movement than as a science.

Comment: Here one can agree with the author, and add that socionic practice on a defective theoretical basis cannot be sound, and constitutes a vanity fair of numerous colourful personalities.

Kashnitsky: The new discipline took upon itself the ambitious resolve to describe structurally the informational-psychic constitution of man and of human communities. But the aforesaid suspension of socionics between science and art has dragged on and continues for that same quarter-century — the period during which socionics, having gone beyond the bounds of small Lithuanian salons, became an object of mass interest in the largest metropolises of the USSR-CIS. Over these years the new discipline has possibly beaten all the records of the traditional sciences in the quantity of hypotheses churned out. But its misfortune is that the hypotheses remain an end in themselves, a narcissistic stimulus for graphomaniac authors. Less and less hope remains that even the most interesting of these hypotheses will ever be tested and get the chance to turn into theories.

Comment: The author develops the theme of pessimism about socionics with journalistic flair, but it would be better if he himself actually pointed out examples of failed developments. Well said, too, about the narcissism and graphomania of certain socionists. And yet the author has failed to notice that a socionic axiomatics has already been proposed, and the basic concepts have already been derived from it, and the author could have taken part in the analytical verification of the work done. But perhaps he has no need of that? For if he convinced himself of the value of what has already been done, would his pessimism not lose its foundation?

Kashnitsky: From the very beginning socionics developed as an interdisciplinary branch of knowledge, drawing into its whirlpool mathematicians and psychologists, cyberneticists and men of letters, physicists and musicians…

Comment: Here the author subtly — one might even say elegantly — distorts the real state of affairs. No, socionics did not develop “from the very beginning” as an interdisciplinary branch of knowledge: the professionals listed above used it to satisfy their psychological curiosity, since official psychology could not do so in full measure. The fact that people of different professions became enthusiasts of socionics does not yet give grounds for considering it interdisciplinary, since, although they used it to solve their own professional tasks, they did not solve its tasks with fundamental use of the specific tools of their own fields of knowledge. And the fact that socionics proved attractive to specialists for solving their professional tasks points not to its interdisciplinarity — which distorts its distinctive character — but to its methodological potential.

Kashnitsky: The exchange of information among the newly minted colleagues, rare in its breadth, promoted the rapid spread of socionic concepts in breadth, but by no means in depth. A narrow and insufficiently precisely elaborated vocabulary of concepts hampers fruitful communication even among socionists, to say nothing of mutual understanding with psychologists and other humanities scholars, while the importation of concepts from adjacent disciplines leaves practically no hope for the development of a scientific metalanguage of its own.

Comment: A small stock of basic concepts is not a defect, though it does, of course, require their complete clarification. That work has already been done and only awaits a conscientious attitude towards it in order to become the basis for full-fledged scientific discussions. I will note, all the same, that almost three decades of work with socionic material have convinced me that socionics is difficult, and that to get at its truth one needs not only surface enthusiasm but real knowledge in the sphere of psychology and the methodology of science.

Kashnitsky: From this objective difficulty flows another, no less substantial one: the determination of the socionic type is carried out in dilettante fashion, in the absence of generally accepted criteria. The years-long collective attempts of socionists to create a universal test instrument for typing have not led to success; more than that, they have convinced us that a negative result of these attempts is the only possible result.

Comment: The problem of creating reliable diagnostic instruments in socionics belongs, objectively, to the extremely difficult ones, and it is not at all surprising that it has still not been solved — but many are working in this direction. However, this does no credit either to the professional psychologists, who have withdrawn from this problem and have not applied even the slightest effort to come to grips with this new phenomenon that socionics turned out to be. Here we are dealing with the very case in which, along with the bathwater, the professional psychologists threw out the ugly duckling, giving it no help in turning into a beautiful swan.

Kashnitsky: A relative achievement of the socionists’ joint research may be considered the conclusion which today hardly anyone disputes: the sociotype is a category of an exclusively metaphysical stamp, completely devoid of any material basis. Attempts to link it to blood group, to categories of temperament, to traits borrowed from genetics, astrology or bio-energy-informatics have not been crowned with success.

Comment: It is not very clear how the author understands metaphysics. Evidently extremely superficially, and mostly in a pejorative sense. The TIM (and, of course, not “sociotype”!) has an informational nature and is realised in the nuances of behaviour, and metaphysics has nothing to do with it. But the TIM also has strictly material projections in facial features and parameters of physique — and, presumably, in the physiological functioning of the human organism as well.

Kashnitsky: …the sociotype, the starting point of all further investigations of the personality, is in many cases so blurry that further steps lose their meaning. To the socionists’ credit, they have always been aware of this problem and have tried to work on, living with it as with an inevitability. Thereby resembling an asthmatic runner who, despite heavy shortness of breath, has no intention of leaving the track.

Comment: Of course not “sociotype” — a journalist ought not to commit stylistic errors — it is, of course, the socionic psychotype, which must not be shortened to “socio-”, which belongs to sociology; but why not the well-established abbreviation TIM? As for the “blurriness” of the TIM, what should be at issue here is the working limits of the concept’s use. Socionics deals, compared with the psychology of personality, with a high level of generalisation, and failure to understand this leads to errors of exceeding the boundaries of the domain of admissible values. Examples of this are those descriptions of socionic types containing such gems as “likes washing dishes” or “gets up at six in the morning and starts sweeping.” Yet socionics, even when used at the phenomenological level — that is, without understanding the true meaning of its basic concepts — is often quite successful in practice, which finds partial expression in socionists’ fees. In the same way people can successfully drive a car or work on a computer without understanding how they are constructed.

Kashnitsky: In 1999 the socionic community ventured on the so-called Dnepropetrovsk experiment: a large group of practising socionists determined, in parallel, the sociotypes of “test subjects,” after which the convergence of the results was analysed. As all sensible people expected, the conclusion proved disheartening: 31% convergence is practically indistinguishable from complete chaos — as if the opinions on the subjects’ types had been solicited from tram passengers. True, some incorrigible optimists pointed to the low qualification of the experiment’s participants (and where, one wonders, is high qualification to be found in the absence of unified evaluation criteria?), to the less-than-ideal methodology of the experiment, to “interference on the air” during the conduct of so massive an event. But the pill could not be sweetened: however much one blames the mirror, the collective self-portrait of socionics had been painted. And comely, alas, it was not. The 12 years that have passed since the experiment are a long enough period to conclude: no new attempts to put the socionic house in order appear to be forthcoming.

Comment: The Dnepropetrovsk experiment was a valuable practical initiative in socionics, and one can only regret that the socionists proved incapable of continuing the work begun there. It was the first attempt of its kind, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that socionists have not yet attained the necessary perfection.

Kashnitsky: However, if events are allowed to take their course, socionics will remain in the history of knowledge as one of those charming pseudo-scientific delusions — something like the theory of caloric, to be mentioned in footnotes for the most inquisitive historians of science. If, on the other hand, one allows that the revelations of C. G. Jung and A. Augustinavichiute had somewhat greater meaning than a momentary amusement for thinking erudites, it would be distressing to leave the legacy of these outstanding people in the toils of conceptual confusion.

Comment: Can it be that in all these years the author has not understood that Jung and Augustinavichiute laid the foundations of a fundamentally new typology of personality — a typology of the utmost fundamentality, touching the very grounds of primordial human differences — and that the problem they posed is in the process of being solved and will sooner or later be solved; but one must work, not indulge in graveside laments.

Kashnitsky: What, in that case, are all of us to do, left as we are at the broken trough of informational psychoanalysis? It is too late to console ourselves with illusions that a new test will lead us out of the dead end, or the next block of subtype descriptions, or the unmeasurable “dimensionality of socionic functions,” or the powdered chaos of the so-called Reinin traits… I submit that every experienced socionist with years of work behind him will not lie to himself, and will admit: neither tomorrow nor the day after will strict criteria for determining the sociotype fall from the sky; and even if our unformed scientific language can talk its way to Kyiv, no revelation should be expected at the next conference.

Comment: Say what you will — a journalist writes prettily: here is the “broken trough,” and “informational psychoanalysis,” and “powdered chaos”… But the matter is not, after all, reducible to fine phrases — what is happening with socionics in reality? Here the author has very accurately, if in an excessively emotionally accentuated manner, marked out some of socionics’ problems; but positive work is being done — evidently the author is not aware of it. One would like it to go faster, but the material that has fallen to the socionists is exceedingly complex and deep. And in a very optimistic key one may say that socionics is passing through the stage of wild formation, the stage of fragmented and disorganised searching, the stage of the battle of ambitions of scholars who already sense something but are still unable to articulate it adequately. It will be interesting to see whether Kashnitsky reads my book, and whether he wishes to discuss with me constructively the problems described there and the solutions proposed. There a productive dialogue would begin; and then, before you know it, others would join in, and socionists would begin to find a common language, and socionics would begin to take on the outlines of a full-fledged science.

Of course, calling socionics “informational psychoanalysis” is possible only at the level of an unfortunate metaphor. From it one may conclude that the author does not consider “classical” psychoanalysis informational — but the whole of psychology, from beginning to end, is informational, not energetic or material. As for socionics, analysis on its basis is socionic analysis, and it has no need to mimic the technology of Freudianism.

The author speaks wittily, too, of the “unmeasurable dimensionality of socionic functions” — but this is merely a minor episode in the unsuccessful attempts to express in abstract categories an intuitively sensed parameter of the SF. Someone senses it as power or strength (Shulman); someone else as parametric dimensionality (Bukalov) or as a rhythm of a special kind (Litrovnik). But there is also an entirely different interpretation of this hard-to-define parameter — the degree of freedom with which a function handles the informational subject-matter of its aspect (Churyumov). In socionics, information is after all the basic category, and it is not difficult to show that the positional semantics of the functions includes precisely this parameter — the degree of freedom in handling the subject-matter of the specific IA located in the position of the given function. For this it suffices to recall that positional semantics is determined by the semantics of the IA in the positions of the functions in the Model A of Don Quixote. Thus the PPF (program-potential function) can be so named precisely because in its position in Don Quixote’s model stands extraverted intuition, which forms the internal map of the external environment, thereby predetermining the individual’s potential possibilities and providing short-term and long-range planning — because only intuition is capable of understanding the meaning of optimal behaviour. On the other hand, intuition handles ideas with maximal freedom, admitting even their fantastic transformations.

In the position of the CPF (communicative-probing function) in Don Quixote stands introverted thinking, whose basic product is algorithms of behaviour. This information is objectified in speech — speech is the objectified form of introverted thinking, in which its products become accessible to other people in the process of communication. That is precisely why it can be called communicative. But within the communicative semantics there is also performed what may be called the probing (Aushra) of the environment — testing the environment for its conformity to the IMEE (internal model of the external environment) — that which manifests in animals as the orienting reflex. On these grounds the full working name of this function is formed. The degree of freedom with which introverted thinking handles its subject-matter is limited by objective laws; but within those limits thinking can do a great deal with its subject-matter — in which, properly speaking, the process of deliberation consists. Thus thinking is more constrained than intuition.

In the position of the ALF (adaptive-load function) in Don Quixote is extraverted sensorics, whose handling of the corresponding subject-matter is limited by the sensory modalities, which places this function, by this parameter, after thinking. Through this function the individual withstands the pressure of the external environment, and within the framework of the sensory modalities the effectiveness of this resistance is an achievement of the TIM’s evolutionary adaptation. So the bearer of a TIM is sufficiently protected — though when the individual threshold of protectedness is exceeded, the individual may not hold out.

And finally, in the position of the CCF (conservative-critical function) in Don Quixote’s model stands introverted emotionating — in customary psychological terminology, understood as attitude — in whose semantics the negative-critical attitude is actualised first of all, since it is precisely this that plays the role of the primary filter of the sensory stream, which is capable of carrying mortal danger for the individual. The degree of freedom with which the introverted attitude handles the aspect’s subject-matter is minimal and limited to the values “dangerous” and “safe,” which places it, by this parameter, in last place.

As for the ART — the Augustinavichiute–Reinin differentiating traits — here, it seems, Kashnitsky is entirely “out of the loop.” To call a well-grounded — including mathematically — fundamental construct of socionics “powdered chaos” is to stand somewhere on the roadside of the socionic mainstream. By now it has not only been proven that the ART are strictly ordered — they have been laid at the foundation of the proof that the socion constitutes a periodic system of TIMs. Regrettably, the understanding of the semantics of the ART still leaves much to be desired; but the process of search and cognition in socionics continues, and it is not at all as simple as some might wish.

And the author’s concluding phrase in the paragraph under consideration sounds altogether doomed and pessimistic, setting a final cross over the prospects of socionics. That is what insufficient acquaintance with the real state of affairs does to a person.

Kashnitsky: If we must nonetheless compare socionics with an analogous field of activity that falls slightly short of the scientific, then in place of astrology — unsuitable for the analogy — I would propose radiesthesia or, in the more colloquial variant, dowsing. A person with a rotating rod in his hand, provided he is not a charlatan, is capable of confidently locating objects hidden from the eye. Yet no objective, instrumental measurements duplicating the activity of the dowsing operator can exist. In other words, the instrument is the person himself, in a special state of mental tension connected with the dowsing search. And this person can be checked only by another person of the same kind.

Comment: Here the author proposes something like a methodology from another sphere; but perhaps he does not know that in socionics there is a successful case of the application of dowsing to the determination of the socionic parameters of the personality. Such work has been carried out for many years by the talented Kyiv socionist E. Litrovnik — though this work, too, needs to be “brought to a common denominator,” to say nothing of the fact that dowsing is not something generally accepted in science. But, naturally, it is not dowsing that should determine the scientific status of socionics, but a methodologically verified system of its concepts. And it already exists — all that remains is to become acquainted with it.

Kashnitsky: We shall never see the invention of a “sociometer.” A socionist can be checked only by a socionist. And if, competently, taking into account the experience accumulated in other similar spheres of activity, we begin to develop control-and-criteria activity, we shall gradually learn to separate the wheat from the chaff demonstrably.

Comment: It is known that when a scientist speaks of what is possible in science and of its positive prospects, he is more often right than when he sets a permanent cross over future discoveries; and, as they say, never say never… So let us hope, and work towards the day when socionics sooner or later emerges from its crisis and turns from the ugly duckling of official psychology into the beautiful swan of a science worthy of the 21st century. Incidentally, I advise everyone who has not read Kashnitsky’s interview in the original to do so. There the talented journalist — of the Huxley type (of the sequence intuition–emotion I have no doubt, so the choice is only Huxley/Yesenin) — describes with alarm the current state of socionics and proposes certain solutions — well, such as he can, in accordance with his type and his degree of informedness.

It must also be said that in most cases socionics is pursued by intelligent and very intelligent people — which, alas, does not guarantee the absence of errors; it is simply that their errors, too, are intelligent and very intelligent, and this is not so easy to disentangle at once. Many leading socionists have erred — this is my opinion — even in determining their own TIM. And this should not be taken as any kind of reproach: it is a working matter, connected with the difficulty of socionic diagnostics and its underdevelopment. And it in no way compromises socionics; it merely points to its difficulty. Such errors are all the more understandable at the first stages of mastering socionics, when we began — and begin — from zero.

Thus N. N. Medvedev was determined to be a Don Quixote, evidently on the grounds that he is intelligent — but intelligent, as we now understand, the bearer of any TIM can be! Just as, indeed, he can be not very intelligent, or a plain fool. Read Medvedev’s texts closely, look attentively at his face, figure, facial expressions and body movement; take into account that he did not compete with Aushra but tried to supplement and improve her developments. Theirs was a semi-dual relationship. Note that Medvedev does not discover the new, but tries to justify and improve what Aushra proposed. Weighing and comparing everything connected with Medvedev, I came to the conclusion that his type is Gabin. Do not, of course, take this on faith — try to gather arguments both FOR and AGAINST.

V. D. Ermak considers himself a Robespierre, and, it seems, the majority of socionists have agreed with this. But Aushra did not think so — she assigned him to the sensorics types. At one time she even thought he was a Zhukov. Ermak behaves rather harshly and assertively, but he is nevertheless an introvert — though not a Maxim. Many see strong logic in him, and that is correct. But his logic is not from the EGO but from the SUPEREGO. It is strong, but it is learned — and no wonder: he worked for 25 years in a systems-engineering department that handled the insertion of space rockets into orbit. His logic stands in the position of the ALF (adaptive-load function), and that is a very strong position, since it is bound up with load-bearing situations. My conclusion: Ermak is an ESI.

A. V. Bukalov considers himself a Don Quixote, and everyone who learns of this at second hand agrees. However, over three decades of work with this remarkable and talented man I have come to a different determination. Bukalov, first and foremost, promotes socionics, looks after its prestige and his own place in it. It matters to him that he is the director of the IIS; it matters that he holds scientific titles and occupies a worthy place among other respected scholars possessing various titles and high posts. More than that — he brings them into the council of the IIS and the editorial board of his journal. And this is of first-rank importance to him. He has managed to organise an economically profitable trade in socionic information. My conclusion: Bukalov is an LSI. He, together with his wife, who positions herself as a Dumas — though by the results of her evident business activity I would assign her to the Londons [LIE]. Her full command of mathematics also points to strong “logic”: her articles on the mathematical justification of the group character of the set of ART are written quite professionally. Taking into account many other, not always easily verbalisable considerations as well, I incline to the view that her TIM is LIE. But I do not insist on this 100%.

V. V. Gulenko considers himself a Robespierre — and has from the very beginning of his acquaintance with socionics. And there are grounds for this: he is an introvert, rational and, of course, intuitive. And yet he is not a logical type — he is an ethical type. Hence, incidentally, his humanitarian socionics, his orientation towards pluralism and “multi-windowed vision.” Close acquaintance with his talks and written texts convinces me that “white logic” in his case is not in the EGO block but stands in the position of the ALF (adaptive-load function). In this position there takes place an imperative accumulation of protective information, which the TIM activates in any situations it perceives as load-bearing. My conclusion: Gulenko is an EII. But I do not insist on this 100%.

G. R. Reinin was determined by Aushra to be a Don Quixote — he is a theoretician, very intelligent, certainly an intuitive. But his discussion energy is lowered, and this gives grounds for assigning him to the introverts. My conclusion: Reinin is an ILI. But I do not insist on this 100%.

T. N. Prokofieva considers herself a Don Quixote. And many agree — but not all. The point is that agreeing with an authoritative person is easy; producing proofs is harder. Yes, she belongs to the extraverts and the thinking types. But her type is sensory — look closely and “appreciate,” at the very least, her clothing with its characteristic sensory markers. Moreover, hers is a rational type — watch how Prokofieva constructs proofs, and how she seeks and finds persuasive arguments. My conclusion: Prokofieva is an LSE. But I do not insist on this 100%. This is information for reflection. The work continues, and I am prepared to consider any arguments, if they are presented.

Seeing no particular point in devoting separate sections to the analysis of certain developments in socionics, I shall make only brief reference to them here in the introduction.

Take, for example, Anna Mitrokhina’s book General Socionics. Beautifully produced, encyclopaedic in appearance, written in literate language. The author, a professional psychologist, compares favourably with many socionic authors in her correct use of terms and psychological concepts. But this proved insufficient. The book is, alas, merely a compilation of certain works previously produced by the socionists most influential at earlier stages. Yet, as the close methodological analysis carried out by me in the two volumes of The Splendour and Poverty of Socionic Metaphysics shows, all these works contain a large number of logical, methodological and cognitive errors. Mitrokhina’s book merely eclectically unites the misunderstandings, myths, approximations, artefacts and even plain absurdities that have accumulated in socionics. The chief matter here is the absence of a verified axiomatic base and of a proven — rather than intuitive-approximate — semantics of the IA, SF and ART, as well as of scientifically grounded rather than homespun terminology, of the sort of “sensorics of sensations” or “ethics of emotions,” foisted on socionics in his day by the talented but insufficiently demanding-of-his-own-mental-production V. V. Gulenko. The informational viruses he launched reached their targets and lodged in the consciousness of those socionists who are inclined to the uncritical assimilation of knowledge they are unable to synthesise themselves.

Among the artefacts one may count the notorious “signs” and “dimensionalities” of the functions, as well as Shulman’s long-since-disavowed but still-circulating “Periodic System of the Socion.” There are also, on the whole minor but nonetheless matters of principle, inaccuracies such as the placement of the TIMs in the socion as fixed in Lyashkevichius’s table. After I developed the cyclic arrangement of the quadras in the form of a square, this is no longer admissible. I named the square after myself, since attempts had begun to use it without reference to me, and there were even cases of plagiarism with its renaming. The “Ch” (Churyumov) square, being a variety of mathematical formula in graphic form, unambiguously determined the placement of the TIMs in the quadras, which made it possible to correct the inaccuracy in Lyashkevichius’s table by transposing the dyads of Stirlitz and Huxley. In Mitrokhina this is not taken into account. Still, as a stage-marking summary of what has been done in socionics, Mitrokhina’s book certainly deserves attention and respect.

Of considerably greater interest is Eglit’s book Socionic Diagnostics, in which impeccable research work is combined, unfortunately, with terminology inherited from less self-demanding socionists, and with frequently accidental or superficially introduced theoretical constructs. I shall consider here only two such constructs: the concept of the sign, and of the dimensionality, of the SF.

But first I want to draw attention to the fact that Eglit uses in her constructions an incorrect placement of the TIMs in the quadras and in the socion. One may ask: well, what does it matter? And what does the correct placement of the digits in the natural number series, or in the multiplication table, matter? True, for some people no law is written — and that, of course, is their affair. But a scientist, by definition, is obliged to correct proven errors. If he does not, then, by definition, he is not a scientist, and there is no reason to reckon with his constructions and arguments. The author might, however, say that she arranged the TIMs by the benefit rings — but then it is unclear why the right ring is placed on the left and the left on the right. To this one can always answer, for example, “it’s more convenient for me that way,” “I felt like it,” or “what business is it of anyone’s how I arrange the TIMs” — but these are not scientific answers. By arranging the TIMs in the socion this way, you cultivate in your reader or listener the conviction that this is the correct arrangement — and thus you mislead him. Moreover, inaccuracies and distortions of socionic information of this kind give grounds for total distrust of the author in her reasoning.

It is curious, too, that for the names of the functions Eglit uses the abbreviations ЧИ — “black intuition,” БИ — “white intuition,” ЧЛ — “black logic,” БЛ — “white logic,” etc.; that is, she in effect uses letters to describe not the SF but the little symbols with which Aushra designated the IA — an interesting artefact. Aushra explained her recourse to graphic symbols by the fact that, when she had to conduct scientific inquiry in an unknown domain, the corresponding objects — pending clarification of their circumstances and nature — had to be designated somehow. The difference between extraversion and introversion she designated by unfilled (“white”) and filled (“black”) figures. In the course of the symbols’ use, however, the terms “extraverted” and “introverted,” being longer, began to be replaced by the names of the colours — whence appeared the “black and white logics, intuitions, ethics and sensorics” — which may be understood as the emergence of a professional jargon. Nevertheless, in Aushra’s usage an intelligible link between the scientific term and its jargon substitute still survived. When Gulenko introduced his own jargon, that link was lost. Something similar happens with Eglit: when she replaces the graphic symbols of the IA with letter abbreviations, the distance between the meaning and the word standing in for it grows greater, and this creates the preconditions for the replacement of the primary meaning by its distortions.

For the names of the IA themselves, Eglit uses the terms proposed by V. D. Ermak:

Table of TIMs with signs from Eglit’s book (p. 148), Table VV.01 — incorrect placement of the TIMs:

+И-л  +с-Э  -Э-с  -л+И
+Э-и  +л-С  -С-л  -и+Э
+С-э  +и-Л  -Л-и  -э+С
+Л-с  +э-И  -И-э  -с+Л

Correct placement of the TIMs:

Ил  сЭ  Эс  лИ
Эи  лС  Сл  иЭ
Сэ  иЛ  Ли  эС
Иэ  сЛ  Лс  эИ

Eglit (on the IA): In socionics all information is divided into 8 informational aspects. These aspects of information are named as follows: Work — ((to this in the psyche corresponds extraverted thinking)); System — ((to this corresponds introverted thinking)); Will — ((extraverted sensorics)); Comfort — ((introverted sensorics)); Emotions — ((extraverted emotionality)); Attitudes/Relations — ((introverted emotionality)); Possibilities — ((extraverted intuition)); Events — ((introverted intuition)).

Comment: I note at once that Eglit is not interested in the ontology of the aspects or their origin; she simply accepts, by default, that they exist. That is the level of her axiomatics. Yet a scholar of her level ought to know that there exists a deeper level of axiomatics, at which the IA are derived deductively.

The IA are entities of a high level of abstraction, and the term “work” is inadequate here by virtue of its relative concreteness. To designate the corresponding archetype it is appropriate to speak of any productive processes and transformations present in the world — such as, for example, the eruption of a volcano, the formation of galaxies, or cell division. It is any process as a result of which some product appears. A more adequate term here would therefore be “transformation.” Obviously work, as something dealing with transformation, enters this semantic field. As for the corresponding function, its Jungian — entirely adequate and scientific — name is “extraverted thinking.” Here the [Russian] term for thinking, myshlenie, shares its root with the words promysel (craft, providence) and promyshlennost’ (industry), which point to the creation and obtaining of a product. In particular, the product may be immaterial. To this belongs, for example, such activity as an advocate’s delivery of a speech in court, teaching and educational work in school, the performance of songs, comedians’ routines, and so on. For this very reason, among others, Gulenko’s invented term “business logic” is not merely defective but harmful, since it does not cover such activity as, say, the stage performance of songs, and it distorts the semantics of the function of extraverted thinking and of the IA standing behind it — but evidently this term is more easily assimilated by the businessmen with whom Gulenko worked a great deal.
The name “system” for the IA standing behind the psychic function of introverted thinking falls partially into the corresponding semantic field, since systems, systematicity and systematisation are widely used in science for the study of the world and are not only objects of introverted thinking but constitute a significant part of its mechanisms — though they do not cover it completely. An essential part of the meaning of the concept “system” is connected with the IA of potential possibilities, and with extraverted thinking as well, since systematicity points to an essential feature of any integral object and enters into the composition of its potential possibilities. Aushra held — alas, with insufficient justification — that the Jungian name “introverted thinking” should be replaced by “logic.” As for logic: as Aushra held, and here I agree with her, its content is the spatial relations between objects — nearer/farther, higher/lower, bigger/smaller, etc. — though not only these. Logic itself is merely one of the intellectual operators, and therefore does not cover the whole of introverted thinking. Introverted thinking is the processing of information inside (intro) the psyche with the use of intellectual operators, logic among them. The replacement of thinking by logic is a logical error connected with the division of concepts by levels of generality, where a difference arises between generic and specific concepts, which must not be confused. In this case thinking is the generic and logic the specific concept. That is, thinking is the more general concept relative to logic. Nowadays it is downright strange to remove thinking from the set of basic psychic functions, substituting logic for it. Thinking is oriented towards the objective investigation of the world. And to it, at the level of the IA, corresponds physical space as a whole. But let us not confuse extraverted physical space — the totality of all objects in the world — with its introverted reflection in the concept of space used by thinking. Let us also note that thinking, in its introverted and extraverted hypostases, is the exit from the psyche into the world, into the environment. It is precisely thinking that supplies the living being’s external answer to the environment’s influence. Given the orientation of the thinking function towards the physical environment filled with interacting objects, towards its maximally objective reflection, it is natural to name the corresponding IA “space.”
Will is a psychic function, not an IA. But in the external world it corresponds to the world’s pressure, its load-bearing impact on the living being. At the level of Model A, to this aspect corresponds extraverted sensorics. In the environment, to it corresponds the very reality of objects, their “will to power,” as Nietzsche put it, their resistance to the subject’s action, their factual existence, functioning and natural manifestations, which can be mortally dangerous for a living being; and it is also important that these manifestations can take the character of pressure or pursuit, as in the case of cold, thunderstorm rain, fire, flood, and so on. For withstanding any pressure of the environment the living being possesses precisely extraverted sensorics, which may be viewed as an evolutionary adaptation — though one should not exclude that this function belongs to the basic functions of any living being.
Comfort is an abstract concept to which, in the habitat, correspond all manner of resources and convenient access to their consumption. This term can therefore be used to indicate the corresponding IA only with a stretch. That IA is the resource as such — but, more precisely, what should be at issue here are the consumer parameters of the resource, that is, the extent to which the resource is capable of satisfying a need. As the SF, to this aspect corresponds introverted sensorics.
Emotions are a psychic function, not an IA. In the objective world to it corresponds the state of an object. Such a state can have a signalling character for the subject and carry a message of danger — for example, an awakening volcano — or a message of a resource — for example, a ripening fruit. This term, therefore, can be used to indicate the corresponding IA only with a stretch. That IA is state. The state of an object can become dangerous for a living being, which can — in the process of evolutionary adaptation — learn to perceive signals of a changing state as a source of possible danger or, on the contrary, of a possible resource capable of satisfying a specific need.
Attitudes/Relations — this term presupposes above all a subjective disposition connected with other objects or subjects. In the real environment to this corresponds the multitude of connections, whose limiting form is wholeness — and this is what may be matched to the corresponding IA. As the SF, to this aspect corresponds introverted emotionating.
Possibilities — this concept could quite well be matched to the IA to which extraverted intuition responds — potential possibilities — but it nonetheless has a subjective tinge, in the sense of something one can make use of. Closer to the object here would be the concept of content. As the SF, to this aspect corresponds extraverted intuition — that is, understanding directed at external objects with the aim of ascertaining their semantic content or, what is the same, their potential possibilities.
Events — with this concept for designating the IA connected with the function of introverted intuition it is hard to agree, since events are external phenomenology, whereas what should be at issue is its internal reflection. More than that: what should be at issue is the internal reflection of the content of objects. The subjective reflection of objective content is meaning — content is extraverted, bound to the object, while meaning is introverted, bound to the subject.

Now on the signs of the SF. It must be said at once that this concept in socionics is an artefact — an artificially created construct devised by Gulenko in accordance with his understanding of the SF somewhere around 1990. And, as became clear later, at that time we had only just barely begun to sort out the socionic concepts, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that it could seem to a talented scholar, at the level of an intuitive insight, that what distinguishes same-named functions — for example in kindred TIMs — is fully described by mathematical signs. Later Gulenko partially abandoned this construct, but the informational virus had been thrown into the socionic community and, unfortunately, a large number of socionists proved infected by it.

Gulenko proposed the concept of the sign of the SF back at the dawn of the Kyiv enthusiasts’ learning of the basic concepts of socionics, passed to us by Aushra Augustinavichiute in 1986. The construct was plainly contrived, the signs of which could be detected in the over-complicated specification of the sign, consisting of four positions: quality, directedness, scale and distance. This set of parameters was not derived from socionic axioms and is of an approximate, empirical character — that is, there could be more or fewer such parameters and, in principle, they could be different ones, as indeed proved to be the case when the concept of the sign was correlated with the poles of the ART.

The simple semantics of the mathematical plus-minus sign, tied to the arithmetical operations of addition and subtraction, was unjustifiably complicated by Gulenko through the introduction of four parameters which in combination were supposed to determine the sign of the SF — and, conversely, the sign placed on an SF was supposed to indicate the values of the functional parameters Gulenko had singled out. Yet for refining the primary semantics of an SF within Model A — which is precisely what the sign in Gulenko’s name was supposed to serve — the semantics of the function adjacent in the block is entirely sufficient, as I will show a little later.

Let us consider the specification of the sign proposed by Gulenko.

a) Quality: “competence in the positive region of properties with incompetence in the negative region” (+); “competence in the positive and negative regions of properties, withdrawal from negative properties towards positive ones” (−).

Comment: What is understood here by the positive and negative region of properties? Which properties? Properties of what? No corresponding definition is given, but examples are adduced from which the reader is supposed to guess what is meant. For example: “Avoidance of the negative: I cannot quarrel, cannot break off contact with someone… I lack some kind of inner energy… if people do not interest me, I keep my distance from them… if a conflict arises, I withdraw, I will not interfere, I will not reconcile anyone…” From this one can understand that what is meant is the emotionally load-bearing variant of a situation as opposed to the emotionally comfortable variant — that is, the issue is not properties at all; which means that the scholar who proposed the verbal formulation of his hypothesis about signs did not manage the careful introduction of terminology. That is, of course, a defect in his work — though at the first stage of introducing a new idea, as they say, thanks even for that. Naturally, at subsequent stages the terminological defects should have been removed. As we see, that did not happen, and the unfinished construct was launched into the system of teaching, consulting and the solving of psychological problems, becoming the basis of a jargon usage of language — which obviously does not conduce to the positive image of a scientific school.

But what, all the same, of the use of the concept “quality” in Gulenko’s specification? Let us try to sort it out. Socionics deals with a high level of generalisation of the concept of a function: for example, such sensory psychic functions as sight, hearing, touch and the rest are united into one psychic function — introverted sensorics. Thus individual sensory modalities are not considered in socionics. Analogously, all the concrete variants of emotional reactions to situations are generalised up to the psychic function of emotionating, where emotional modalities such as joy, sadness, greed or boldness are not considered. This means that the concept of quality in socionics is likewise generalised, and must be used accordingly. Such a generalisation might precisely be undifferentiated positive or negative. Here concrete emotional modalities like joy or sadness, enthusiasm or anger are not introduced; they are generalised up to positive and negative psychic states — and that is what could be matched to the concept of quality at the socionic level of generalisation. This is what needed to be made precise when introducing the new construct.

But when the author introduces the opposition of plus and minus as applied to the generalised function, he plainly violates their presumed symmetry. In the case of “plus” it is “competence in the positive region of properties with incompetence in the negative region,” while in the case of “minus” what is meant is “competence in the positive and negative regions of properties, withdrawal from negative properties towards positive ones.” In the author’s scheme the conceptual volume of plus turns out smaller than the conceptual volume of minus, which raises serious methodological doubts.

The asymmetry of these definitions, presented as a graphic scheme, resembles in outward appearance a one-eyed pirate with a wooden peg in place of one leg. Such a scheme makes visible the semantic asymmetry of the plus and minus signs introduced by Gulenko, which in no way corresponds to the mathematical use of these well-proven constructs. This graphic asymmetry compromises such definitions. Moreover, the socionic generalisation does not include the differentiation of, say, emotions from the standpoint of their negativity (sadness, anger, hatred) or positivity (joy, enthusiasm, love) — simply because emotional modulations, diverse emotional states, are inherent in all types, though it is quite plausible that different types relate differently to positive and negative emotionality; such observations exist, but they need to be assessed and comprehended theoretically.

Consider, for example, extraverted and introverted emotionality in the Model A of Dumas and Yesenin. In Ermak’s school it is held that extraverted emotionality in the CPF position (communicative-probing function = 2nd function) in Dumas carries the sign minus. According to the “theory of the signs of functions” this means that people of this type are “competent in the positive and negative regions of properties, or try to move away from negative properties towards positive ones.” For example, in an interview, in answer to a suitable question, one might hear: “Well, who likes negative emotions — but sometimes they too are needed, as a deterrent,” or “Sometimes negative emotions, like anger, have to be switched on, but I don’t want to stay there long…” — a perfectly convincing demonstration of the function’s minus. But without any signs at all, one can assess Dumas’s answer on the CPF as concretised, emotionally coloured, and directly on the question posed. Yesenin, by the theory of signs, ought on the same question to say something like: «(“Plus” e, f.8) → ((Du) = (RTF(e)). If this corresponds to reality, then the TIM is determined by a single function. I understand RTF (Dumas) as “the creation of relations” = RTF-creation + e-relations. But there must also be the correction of the adjacent function: ITF (Dumas) = S (volitional concentration on) → “volitional concentration on the creation of relations.” Compare with Yesenin: ITF (Yesenin) = I (inventive concentration on) → “inventive concentration on the creation of relations.” How do they differ? The first is harder, more imperative, more rigid; the second more flexible, more situational. Thus, if a respondent exhibits rigidity on the RTF (e), that is an argument in favour of Dumas. Thus we manage without the concept of the sign, using the adjacent function as a modifier.»

b) Scale: locality (+) vs. globality (−); “close-up” (+) vs. “wide shot” (−); concreteness, detail (+) vs. universality (−).

Comment: From the standpoint of scientific terminology, what is at issue here are the levels of abstraction that distinguish the positive function from the negative one. But this difference is fully determined by the function adjacent in the block. Thus the intuition of Don Quixote, which, in accordance with the adjacent introverted thinking, may be called thinking intuition, determines a higher level of abstraction than the intuition of Huxley, which may be called emotional intuition and which plainly gravitates towards greater concreteness. An essential argument for this conclusion is that the objectified form of introverted thinking is verbal language, while the objectified form of introverted emotionating is the language of art. It is curious to note here that in art, too, we can deal with something like abstractions — indeed even in the literal sense, when it comes to abstract varieties of art: abstract painting, abstract music, and the corresponding experiments in theatre and cinema. Nevertheless, the language of art is more concrete than verbal language, simply because the former rests on the first signal system — that is, on the immediate impressions of the senses — while the latter is bound to conventional sound-signs which, in themselves, without correlation to the objects of the external world, may have no meaning. Thus in the case of “scale” the sign proposed by Gulenko becomes something like crutches, which ease the life of an invalid but impose needless complications on the healthy.

Incidentally, Aushra considered and assessed this difference in typological characteristics in her work Intertype Relations. If anyone remembers, she assessed, for example, the combination “Il” — extraverted intuition in combination with introverted thinking — as the abstract perception of processes; and this concept covers all three notions Gulenko uses in this position: globality, “wide shot,” universality — but Aushra did not tie her subdivisions to signs. In this key one can speak of the abstract and concrete perception of processes, and likewise of the abstract and concrete perception of objects — which determines the difference between the irrational and rational functions.

c) Directedness: “care for the protection of one’s own circle” (+) vs. (−).

Comment: To sort out the problem here, one must answer the question: does care for the protection of one’s own circle really stand typologically opposed to influence, pressure, aggression into external space? It is very plausible that this is not a socionic but a gender opposition. Males form the shell of a population, females its core (Geodakyan). Male behaviour correlates to a considerable degree with the testosterone content of their blood, which stimulates aggression and lowers pain sensitivity. The basic elements of female behaviour — care for offspring and readiness to mate — are determined by the proportion of oestrogen and progesterone. Accordingly, the male will first of all fight for his female as the means of realising his genome, while the female will protect her young. However, the gender disposition can be strengthened or weakened by the distribution of the IA within the TIM. In socionic terms, basic aggressiveness is maximal in the bearers of those TIMs in which extraverted sensorics is in the EGO block — that is, in Zhukov, Napoleon, Maxim and Dreiser.

Let us try to find a functional configuration that could be linked to these parameters. It is plausible that ethical types will care first of all for their own circle, and sensory types will show aggression — but can one really say of Zhukov that he will not care for his own? A rather too categorical requirement. For example, Don Quixotes and Huxleys are good defenders — their extraverted sensorics stands in the ALF position (adaptive-load function) and hence switches on when a situation grows acute, though in other cases they are not aggressive.

Let us see to which TIMs the first characteristic applies: Dumas, Hugo, Gorky, Yesenin, Dreiser, Napoleon, Gabin, Dostoevsky. The asymmetry in this list may point to its insufficient justification and, possibly, to the fact that the chosen characteristic is not typological and the question itself is wrongly posed. In that case it is meaningless to tie a sign to the chosen characteristic. At the same time one may suppose that the talented scholar Gulenko intuitively caught certain psychological particularities not yet accounted for in socionics, but failed to describe them adequately — which means the work must be continued.

d) Distance: what is meant is the manifestation of typological effects at close distances (immediate contact) (+) and at far distances (absence of immediate contact — the bearers of the TIMs do not meet, but may see each other’s photographs and possess some other information about each other) (−). The concept of distance in socionics was first introduced by the Ritchik–Shepetko–Filimonov group in 1990 and underscored the difference in typological effects depending on distance. At close distances the effect is obvious. As for the far distance, it is most plausible that the effect is simply absent or extremely weak. Did the duality between Stalin (LSI) and Hitler (EIE) manifest itself in anything? Beyond explanations involving great stretches, it is hard to propose anything here. It is held that before the war Hitler managed to outplay Stalin on several points: to conclude the non-aggression pact and then violate it; to plant false information about the Soviet high command and provoke Stalin into destroying many outstanding commanders, etc. But whether the relation of their TIMs played a role here, rather than the luck of German intelligence, remains unestablished. Nevertheless, without knowing a person personally, we can, on the basis of various information, including portraits, form a certain attitude towards him, showing sympathy or antipathy in the gradations of the socionic relations. For example, reading Dumas’s novels, we may be carried away by the intrigue and the images of the heroes, remain indifferent to them, or regard them as idlers wasting their lives on trifles — but no convincing statistics exist to show that such an attitude is conditioned precisely typologically rather than, say, socially or professionally. In any case, not a single SF takes account of this difference; each is oriented only to direct contact — and consequently this option has no relation to the sign.

The introduction of the sign could have significance only for establishing the difference between kindred and business TIMs; but, first, this is too narrow a parameter to apply to the whole of Model A, and, second, this difference is fully determined by the second function in the block. As for the attempt to tie the necessity of the sign to the difference between the right and left benefit rings — that is altogether a misunderstanding, incomprehensible to non-logical types: to introduce the sign of the functions at the level of a hypothesis, and then to assert that it is precisely the sign that determines the difference of the benefit rings! That is like asserting that the Sun revolves around the Earth because Copernicus discovered it. The difference between the benefit rings has meaning in itself, independently of whether a scholar intends to ascribe signs to them or not. And the myth that has formed in socionics — that communication between the quadras is carried out along the benefit rings — is a misunderstanding, connected with the hasty idealisation of the benefit quadruples, which likewise belong to Reinin’s regular quadruples.

Aushra correctly introduced a sign for distinguishing PO–NE (positivism–negativism), tying it to the arrangement of the functions in the mental ring clockwise (+) or counterclockwise (−); but no necessity thereby arose of placing signs next to each SF. This case might have served as a hint at a sign differentiation for each ART — in which case one would have to place 15 signs before each SF; but this differentiation is realised even without that in the ART specification of each TIM.

The existence of competing explanations for one and the same construct is a hint at their dubiousness.

In general, the signs resemble crutches attached to the functions: they ease movement where there is a disability, but to a healthy organism they do harm, unteaching it the normal use of its own capacities. For distinguishing the semantic shades of same-named functions in different types, the semantics of the function adjacent in the block is entirely sufficient.

At the round tables from November 2011 to January 2012 a presentation was given by a number of the leading socionists. The conclusion of Gulenko’s talk was that the signs bear no relation to the model, though they may be used to characterise certain particularities of the SF.

Eglit’s talk was distinguished by the conscientiousness of its treatment of the topic and by a solid scientific style; however, incorrect basic assumptions render her final conclusions doubtful.

Bukalov’s talk cannot be taken as anything other than the exposition of a model hypothesis with a very approximate justification. He starts from the more or less intelligible assumption that Model A should presuppose not IM in general as such, but above all such parts of it as the reception and output of information — in connection with which he splits the model’s rings in two, doubling the number of functions and introducing the signs plus and minus for the purpose. However, he adds that there is no unambiguous division of the new circuits’ work into reception and output, and that in each concrete case such a division has its own particularities. In any case his text sounded barely intelligible, and most of the round table’s participants remained unsatisfied.

Chikiris, who spoke after him, expounded her thoughts with considerable temperament, but behind them one sensed neither depth nor solidity. A significant part of her argumentation was syntactic in character — that is, it concerned not the content of the model but its form. Thus, for example, she said that the signs in Bukalov’s variant make it possible to expand the model, or make the descriptions of the contacts of orthogonal and kindred quadras more convincing — which is, of course, interesting, but is a secondary consideration for the justification of the signs.

It is important to note that the argumentation for introducing the signs of the functions in Ermak and in Bukalov exhibits significant paradigmatic differences, which makes the possibility of their synthesis problematic.

From Gulenko’s statements one can understand that the thought of the signs of the SF occurred to him in connection with the fact that the semantics of identical functions in kindred types shows differences — and consequently some factor must exist that is responsible for this. This factor Gulenko linked to the signs plus and minus, and then devised a complex specification defining the semantics of the signs. This is an example of a hasty solution, for the simple semantics of the mathematical signs — connected with quantities laid off along an axis in opposite directions from the zero mark — was distorted. The entirely reasonable thought that a cause exists for the difference in semantics of identical functions in different types can be given form without violating the semantics of signs as accepted in mathematics. As the semantic modifier it is natural to take the function adjacent in the block. Then in Don Quixote extraverted intuition may be understood as thinking intuition, and in Huxley as emotional intuition. Don Quixote’s intuition may be understood as more abstract, oriented to high levels of generalisation, and striving for objectivity. Huxley’s intuition is more concrete, oriented to establishing contact with the other person, with psychological attunement.

One further consideration rendering the theory of the signs of functions doubtful is that neither the positional nor the aspectual semantics in itself requires signs. The first, because it is identical for all types; the second, because the IA in themselves likewise carry no signs. How then, when two signless sets are superimposed, do signs appear? The modification of semantics is entirely explicable by the adjacency of functions in the blocks and their closer coupling in the processes of IM. The considerations adduced are entirely sufficient for doubting the signs of functions foisted upon socionics as an appliance external to Model A and not following from its structure.

I also want, in this introduction, to give an example of an inadequate reaction to my works on socionics. I mean a short note by V. Gulenko which he entitled “Information Noise” — a title suggesting that he simply does not understand, and perhaps is not capable of understanding, my texts; after all, he does not analyse them, he merely abuses them. As one can gather from this note, he opposes his own understanding of socionics, which he designates as humanitarian socionics, to informational socionics — thereby admitting that his socionics is not informational, although it is precisely the principle of IM (information metabolism) that lies at the foundation of the classical paradigm of Aushra Augustinavichiute’s socionics. It looks as though behind this stands Gulenko’s keen, ambitious striving to set himself against the inventor of socionics by means of altered terminology and small pragmatic improvements — sometimes, admittedly, quite substantive ones; but even very good practical additions must not work to the detriment of the basic theoretical content. Very strangely, Gulenko apparently invests the notion of “informational socionics” with a meaning that is not merely negative but, above all, abusive, saying that socionics “as Churyumov understands it” exerts a destructive influence. He does not, admittedly, write in what exactly this destruction consists or what its limits are. Of me he writes: “The personification of extreme informationism here in Kyiv is Semyon Churyumov.” That is: in place of a constructive analytical assessment, Gulenko confined himself to sticking on a label. In his appearances at the Round Tables (November 2011 to February 2012) he insisted on the unambiguous priority of the practical side of socionics, obviously ignoring the dialectical principle of the unity of theory and practice. Yes, theory without practice is dead — but in what does he see the rupture of theory and practice in my works? He confines himself exclusively to abuse and labels; more than that, apparently, he has nothing to say. But he forgets the second half of the dialectical dictum: that practice without theory is blind. And it appears that, having exhausted his theoretical potential, he has finally taken up the position of extreme pragmatism, opposing himself to the “extreme” informationism he himself invented. I have no wish whatever to deny the positive part of the work carried out by the talented scholar Gulenko — several of his finds in socionics successfully combine the practical and the theoretical principle; recall if nothing else his “ORIENTATIONS TO KIND OF ACTIVITY”; but his unsubstantiated attacks on my works, his unwillingness to remove from his own developments the errors discovered in them, can be understood as symptoms of celebrity sickness, bound up here with confidence in his own infallibility. As for his emphasis on the purely practical side of socionics — may it not end in a “slide into the swamp of creeping empiricism,” as the classics loved to say, which, as everyone knows, always ends in mere money-grubbing.

He goes on to write:

Gulenko: “In the contemporary socionic movement Churyumov performs the role of ‘Critic.’ This role is, of course, needed, but it must be objective.”

Comment: Of course — if by criticism one means the detection of logical and methodological errors; but he evidently does not see the constructive, principal part of my work. Above all, I propose demonstrative schemes in socionics resting on an axiomatics — which Gulenko lacks, and which he tries to refute, in effect denying the possibility of a deductive construction of socionics and considering the use of this method inadmissible: he says that it is applicable in geometry but inadmissible in socionics. Whence this prohibitive position? I have done this work — so let him point out where I err, instead of fobbing me off with general phrases.

Personally, I position myself not as a critic but as a person who wants to understand why 30 different socionists give, in their books, articles and practice, 30 different understandings of socionics, and what must be done to bring such positions to a common denominator. Or perhaps “feudal fragmentation” in socionics suits Gulenko? Interesting — why? What subconscious motives stand behind this? Surely not chieftainism? Or, worse still, “guru-ism”? As for objectivity: Gulenko adduces no concrete examples of how I violate objectivity. What can be more objective than the detection of errors and their detailed demonstration? Is this reference to a lack of objectivity not the most banal psychological projection of Gulenko’s own subjectivism, manifested in his foisting of populist terminology on socionics and socionists? Here I name a concrete and already accomplished fact, when Gulenko’s extreme pragmatism turned into not only a terminological act of sabotage but an outright assault on the Russian language — or perhaps disdain for it — expressed in a departure from linguistic correctness in science, justified by “pragmatic” references to the claim that terms like “sensorics of sensations” are more comprehensible to “simple people” — as if these same “simple people” could get by in socionics without the concepts of extraversion and introversion.

Gulenko: “Churyumov occupies the extreme orthodox position of an informationist and an idealist to the marrow of his bones.”

Comment: Is this where Gulenko gives us an example of objectivity? One would like to know what an “informationist” is in Gulenko’s understanding, in what the orthodoxy consists in this case (orthodoxy with respect to what?), and what “extreme position” means in this context. As for “idealist to the marrow of his bones” — that is a typical label of the Soviet-era stamp. In Stalin’s time such labels were the resort of informers, with all the known consequences.

Gulenko: “That is his (Churyumov’s) right, but the recommendations he gave over the course of the conference I assess as direct harm to the dissemination of socionics.”

Comment: So where is the objectivity here? General phrases and not one real example. One would like to learn which of my recommendations are meant — but evidently Gulenko has no need of concreteness and analysis; indignation bordering on slander suffices him.

Gulenko: “It is bad enough that our Kyiv variant of socionics is recondite, divorced from the demands of practice; on top of that Churyumov (with the best of intentions, naturally) adds fuel to the fire, turning socionics into a veritable theoretical monster with which teachers of psychology will frighten students.”

Comment: Here we see something like self-criticism, since it is, after all, “our Kyiv variant of socionics” — that is, Gulenko’s too. True, one has long been unable to speak of the Kyiv school of socionics as anything unified. However, I, for one, would not speak here of reconditeness — that is nothing more than abuse. Negative impressions ought to be given concrete form: define reconditeness and adduce concrete examples of its manifestation in the works of the Kyiv socionists. I, for example, do not consider Gulenko’s works recondite. They contain a certain quantity of errors, inaccuracies and arbitrariness, concrete examples of which I have adduced in my works, but recondite they can by no means be called. His unsuccessful informational “injections” are entirely explicable by the search mode in which socionics still finds itself. On what grounds, then, does Gulenko accuse the Kyiv socionists of reconditeness? The sole criterion here, evidently, is Gulenko’s confidence in his own infallibility. Nevertheless, this opinion of his about Kyiv socionics is interesting — but one would like it more concrete and more objective. Now, the names of the socionic functions foisted by Gulenko on the socionic community really do inflict harm on socionics and socionists — the harm consisting in their distortion of the semantics of the corresponding concepts. Nor do I think the works of the Kyiv socionists are divorced from practice. On the contrary, one might rather say that they are excessively oriented to practice, while the theoretical component contained in them is extremely weak. Well, the bit about fuel and fire is a metaphor out of place in a theoretical text — I shall pass over it. But socionics as a theoretical monster — now that is interesting. It characterises Viktor Vladimirovich himself: has he really become so divorced from scientific methodology as to be incapable of sustaining a minimal level of theoretical abstraction? And yet he knows about the ancient Greek schools of philosophy, and about structuralism, and even about Strawson, whose not entirely adequate ideas he used in his articles as an attempt to justify Model A. One even gets the impression that Gulenko frankly dislikes logic.

Gulenko: “Churyumov is a rare retrograde. He should stick to his mathematics, criticise breaches of formal logic, and not poke his nose into humanitarian practice. What a knack one must have, with a Jesuitical smile, for slipping one’s science-like information noise to the bewildered novice, unsteady in his knowledge.”

Comment: So Gulenko calls me a retrograde — but a retrograde is one who drags things backwards, whereas I am showing the way forward: how to make socionics a science, and not an accumulation of technological appliances around the theoretical core of socionics. But since he adduces no indications of my “retrogradism,” this must be counted ordinary abuse. It looks, moreover, as though this abuse is Gulenko’s projection of his own conservative attitudes onto his immediate surroundings. But when Viktor Vladimirovich undertakes to advise me what I had better “stick to” and where I had better “not poke my nose” — that looks like outright tactlessness and even undisguised rudeness; a fine state of affairs! However, what Gulenko somewhat haughtily calls humanitarian practice is nothing more than that modest work which he conducts with the public. Well, I too conduct such work with the public, and I began it considerably earlier than he did — in the 1960s, as a lecturer of the “Znanie” society.

And now about the “Jesuitical smile.” This elegant observation by the much-experienced humanitarian ought to be corroborated by my photograph placed in his article — I have preserved it in this text. We socionists must understand that people of different types perceive one another differently, and therefore I do not rule out that Gulenko, looking at my image, sees in it something that is not there. But as for my “slipping my science-like information noise to the bewildered novice, unsteady in his knowledge” — that is outright invention and slander. What did he do — spy on me at my socionics classes, which I have conducted since Aushra’s first visit to Kyiv, when I gave introductory lectures for her at the Institute of Cybernetics, after which she answered the listeners’ questions? Aushra approved of my presentation of the material — well, understandably: she was a person of a different type from Gulenko. And what, one wonders, does Gulenko “slip to the bewildered novice, unsteady in his knowledge”? Ah yes — “sensorics of sensations” and “ethics of emotions.”

Gulenko: …many serious researchers have renounced “black” sensorics, “white” intuitions and other such absurdities. And here Churyumov begins a campaign against the terms for the psychological functions that I proposed back at the dawn of socionics’ dissemination and that have taken root well enough (such as force sensorics, intuition of time, and others).

Comment: Here my opinion partly coincides with Viktor Vladimirovich’s. I too have explained in my works why “black” sensorics and “white” intuitions are jargon and not science, and I am glad that serious researchers have renounced them. But it is a great pity that unserious practitioners have uncritically exchanged one jargon for another, more dangerous one — for it frankly distorts the semantics of the concepts standing behind it. The unserious practitioners have adopted, alas, unscientific but populist terms, replacing such scientific Jungian terms as “introverted sensorics” or “extraverted emotionality” with Gulenko’s “sensorics of sensations” and “ethics of emotions.” In me, as an editor of many years’ standing, such terms evoke a natural revulsion, as in the literary column “YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP”: “…approaching the station, my hat flew off…,” “goat’s naki” instead of kozinaki (a variety of oriental sweet)… Yes, terminological kitsch must be fought, and I, fulfilling Aushra’s testament, will fight until socionics becomes a full-fledged science and not a laughing-stock for psychologists and people of literary taste. But it is strange that Gulenko, by no means a stupid man, does not understand that the words extraverted and introverted, extravert and introvert, cannot be excluded from socionics — they are used in it regardless — and one should not try to replace them with homespun terms on the plea that “simple people” find it more comprehensible that way. Can “simple people” not, in the end, make a small intellectual effort and, instead of Gulenko’s “business logic,” use the Jungian term “extraverted thinking”? Does Gulenko really not know that there is no such science as “business logic” or “structural logic”? There is formal logic, mathematical logic, dialectical logic, the logic of predicates, the logic of propositions, modal logic and others — but “business logic” does not exist in nature. It is a “new word in science” — unfortunately, an unsuccessful one. Possibly it is a projection of the ambition of Gulenko, who wants at all costs to “say a new word in science.” And yet he really does have quite good finds, both theoretical and practical. A talented man, after all! But that does not mean all his ideas are truth in the final instance. One simply needs to be more demanding of oneself.

Gulenko: “Churyumov presents almost as a new word in science his letter system, in which the extraverted functions are designated by capital letters and the introverted by small ones. Why not the other way round? It comes out that the introvert is regarded as a diminished extravert. Why entrench the Western stereotype of the second-rateness of introverts? Besides, by this he lays limitations on the system at its very first stage.”

Comment: At last Viktor Vladimirovich has produced a real fact of Churyumov’s “extreme informationism,” “retrogradism” and “idealism to the marrow of the bones” — the letter system for designating the IA. I have used it since 1987, simply because it is convenient: so as not to draw geometric figures in chalk on the board and shade some of them in besides — for my type that takes too long. May I be permitted, after all, to remain “my own type”? Naturally, I never spoke in this case of any “new word in science” — that is Gulenko’s invention, which amounts to slander. My symbols are graphic in the sense that their letter-case is easily linked mnemonically with the basic socionic concepts of extraversion and introversion: I — extraverted intuition, i — introverted intuition; what could be simpler? In theoretical formulas this is convenient. Note that what I designate in this way are not extraverted and introverted people but informational aspects. Hence Gulenko’s discrimination worries — that people will think introverts are smaller than extraverts — are an exaggeration, of the kind so characteristic of Viktor Vladimirovich. But when he says “and why not the other way round?” it emerges that discrimination “the other way round” — that is, against extraverts — would suit him; though possibly he simply did not notice this. As for the claim that “by this” a limitation is laid on the system at its very first stage — that is entirely unclear; more concreteness, please. Well, if socionic practitioners prove that a limitation of socionics lurks here, they can easily renounce it.

Gulenko: The small letters should be used for second-order semantics — the designation of functional shades. For example, Ef — emotions of anger, Ei — emotions of curiosity, Er — emotions of shame and embarrassment.

Comment: Here Gulenko, leaning on his authority, teaches us how small letters ought to be handled. Well, what can one say? If that is how he likes it, let him do it that way — these are minor formal conventions, and have no relation to a “new word in science.” Though I like this idea of his, and I shall certainly use it — with a reference to him, of course — although I “thought my way” to it myself as well: the find is not exactly revolutionary.

Gulenko: The terminological creativity of the informationists, resembling noise in a communication channel, will sooner or later lead theoretical socionics into a dead end.

Comment: Of whom is Viktor Vladimirovich speaking? Was it not he who created the term “sociotype” (a bad term — the component “socio-” is reserved for sociology), “intuition of time” (a bad term, since it distorts the semantics of the concept behind it), “linear-assertive” (a good term — capacious, and conveying the semantics of the group of types well), “Seeker” for Don Quixote, “Mediator” for Dumas, etc., where the TIM is supplanted by the sociotype? Ah, but of course — he is not an “informationist” (what a stupendous term!) but a “humanitarist,” so in his channel there is no informational noise, only “humanitarist” noise — although it is precisely some of his terms, partially named above, that are informational noise.

Gulenko: There is no social demand for extraverted thinking. There is a social demand for business logic!

Comment: Extraverted thinking, translated from the homespun into scientific language, is Gulenko’s “business logic” — but evidently Gulenko, thinking in his own jargon, does not understand this. As for good theory, there is always a demand for it in society — though what sells better is whatever comes in a bright cover, more “comprehensible” to the “simple folk.” And one should not call one’s own activity a social demand when at its basis lies, after all, simply the necessity of surviving in our far-from-simple reality.

That is all the talented Gulenko managed to say about the “idealist to the marrow of his bones” Churyumov — namely, nothing concrete: only labels, abuse, inventions and slander.

But if the attentive reader has only a dim notion of Gulenko’s theoretical work, I shall, by way of example, adduce a small fragment from one of his journal articles. No, it is by no means a bad article; it is the normal product of the work of a scholar who searches, finds some things, errs in others.

Gulenko: Having finished the analysis of examples, let us formulate the article’s conclusion. The transformation of the perception of information into its reproduction takes place through the reduction of informational signals of any nature to the communicative units of the program function. In the synthesis block the informational image is saturated with an energy carrier — impulses of energy arriving along the vertical link from the vital instances — which imparts to the synthesised information motion along the mental ring. Thanks to this mechanism, in our view, a stable energy-information exchange of the psyche with the surrounding world is assured.

Comment: What a specimen of theorising! Of course, for “simple people” this is a bit complicated, and looks very like a metaphysical contrivance — like “the fluctuation of immanent distributions in subconventional counter-regressive substrata of the four-dimensional continuum” — though personally I find Gulenko’s train of thought intelligible and interesting, and I want to work out how his intellect functions; that is, he here serves me, in this respect, as an empirical object generating theoretical texts. It is immediately clear that what he writes is a hypothesis, although the author does not stipulate this but serves it up straight away as truth. What does Gulenko say in this conclusion of his article? I understand it thus (perhaps wrongly): that the program function, according to Gulenko, having received information from the environment external to it, transforms it into communicative units.

But Gulenko has his recondite variants too. Some ten years ago he wrote an article in which something like an attempt is made to justify the 16 TIMs by comparing them with the 16 schemata of two-part propositions, expressed in speech by conjunctions of the type “and,” “or,” “if…, then…,” “both… and…,” “neither… nor…,” etc. Analysis showed that the entire article was written under the sign of the logical error of “absence of sufficient grounds” — which the reader will readily grasp on realising that, for example, between the four wheels of an automobile and the four elements there is no analogical connection. Just so, the coincidence of the number of TIMs with the number of two-part propositions is not a sufficient ground for assertions of their analogousness, still less of their essential identity.

Well, what can one say? This note [of Gulenko’s] cannot be called malicious, but it is nevertheless somewhat obtuse. Though possibly that assessment is bound up with the perception of Gulenko’s type by Churyumov’s type. But it is unquestionably written from a position of dogmatic confidence in one’s own infallibility and unwillingness to move towards the new — which fits the definition of a retrograde. In this note there is neither objectivity nor anything positive. But it is full of undisguised tactlessness, concealed indignation and anger. Let us recall the ancient saying: “Jupiter, you are angry — therefore you are wrong.”

Gulenko is one of the most prolific authors in socionics, yet his constructs are far from indisputable — above all because he often does not think them through to the end, contenting himself with outward plausibility and a problematic comprehensibility for the “simple folk.” Let us consider one more theoretical idea from his arsenal.

Let us consider certain assertions from the article “THE PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD BY THE SOCIOTYPE,” written by Gulenko in 1997.

Author: In our view, the line of research that describes socionic phenomena through a set of partitions, and the singling out on that basis of numerous traits scarcely distinguishable in practice, cannot be assigned to logic. Within such an approach the fundamental hallmark of logic is violated — the clear separation of the principal from the secondary.

Comment: Here an authorial definition of the fundamental hallmark of logic is introduced. This is the author’s own invention, which thereby supplants the axiomatics of logic. For formal logic, “the clear separation of the principal from the secondary” is not a live issue — it monitors, first and foremost, the formal correctness of any statements whatsoever: principal and secondary alike.

Author: All the traits turn out to be equally principal or, what is the same thing, equally secondary. What does a logical type see in such a description? A continuous transition from one state to another, a mass of nuances that does not allow a stable structure to be discerned. Such a description is a typical example of the work of the socionic function T — the intuition of time.

Comment: Possibly the author is describing the process of his own thinking, but in textbooks of logic you will meet nothing of the kind. As for the function “intuition of time,” this is a misunderstanding bound up with the author’s failure to grasp socionic introverted intuition, which is the understanding of the subject’s inner world, enabling his self-identification. The author, having supplanted the scientific names of the functions proposed by Jung with his own terms — terms reflecting the level of understanding of socionics the author had attained — distorted their basic meaning and thereby misled a large number of inexperienced people who became his students.

Author: Proceeding from the postulate of the equal significance of all the functions, one must accept this description, but constantly bear in mind that it is irrational and therefore does not intersect with the purely logical description by the function L — abstract logic. Between these functions there obtains a relation of parallelism, and so to prove which of them is better makes no sense in principle.

Having established this fact, important for the further polemic, let us turn to our immediate theme — the perception of the world through the leading function of the socionic type. For this let us enlist the chief instrument of rational socionic research — Model A, which for simplicity we shall henceforth call the sociomodel.

Comment: “Which for simplicity we shall henceforth call” is put somewhat over-familiarly — for what could be simpler, or more precise, than “Model A”? To call it a “sociomodel” is already an outright distortion, since the prefix “socio-” is, in editorial practice, reserved for sociology. In the quotations, therefore, we shall restore justice and call Model A Model A.

Author: Model A describes the process of the type’s energy-information exchange with the surrounding world. As in any other model, however complex its construction, there must without fail be represented, first, functional inputs receiving the incoming energy-information stream and, second, the outputs corresponding to them, issuing the processed energy or information outward.

Comment: In Aushra Augustinavichiute, and in other authors (Ermak, Churyumov), Model A is described with informational inputs and outputs, and it is strange that Gulenko writes as if this had not yet been done. Here, however, we are dealing with Gulenko’s attempt to develop the concept of “energy-information exchange” in opposition to the concept of “information exchange.”

One may, to be sure, speak both of the informational and of the energetic exchange of a living being with the environment. In my articles and in my book [3] I introduced and examined the three-component metabolism continuously taking place in nature: the transformation of matter (M), the transformation of energy (E) and the transformation of information (I). I called it the matter-energy-information metabolism, the MEI-metabolism. Obviously this is the limiting form generalising all processes occurring in nature. All three exchanges also take place in the organism of living beings. And though there is no doubting that they are all interconnected, each nonetheless has its own specificity. Matter in atomic-molecular form enters the animal organism with food and respiration — here we shall for the moment disregard the fact that there are other routes of penetration into the organism, for example by microbes, which are, after all, themselves complexes of matter, energy and information.

Matter, being a complex entity always containing within itself energy and information, can nonetheless be regarded as an independent agent of metabolism. Thus, in the process of digestion, from the matter being transformed in the digestive system its material components are separated off — for example proteins, which go to the formation and repair of the body, that is, perform a plastic function; and, of course, the energetic component is extracted, including in field form — which is how physics, properly speaking, represents energy — though the greater part of the energy is extracted, in special physiological processes, from such energy carriers as fats and carbohydrates. A particular role in energy exchange is played by phosphates. Thus, for example, ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is used directly in the energy system of the heart. Fats are used not only to support the current activity of the living being but are also laid down in various depots “in reserve,” simultaneously performing a plastic and an energy-storing function. But what role in the vital activity of a living being is played by the information contained in matter — this science has hardly investigated, since the informational paradigm in physiology still remains a problem, connected in part with the absence of an understanding of information adequate to its nature. Thus one may speak of the predominance, in physiological processes, of the transformation of matter and energy. The informational component there is still almost unstudied. At the same time it is obvious that in the psyche the leading process is the transformation of information — and this notwithstanding the fact that information does not exist apart from its carrier, whose role can be performed by material as well as energetic substrata. More than that: the psyche itself is an energy-information complex ensuring the living being’s contact with its habitat, its adaptation to it, and its survival. But can one assert that in the psyche, besides informational exchange, energetic exchange also takes place? What, properly, would that mean? Does a conversion of certain energies (which?) into others (which?) occur in the psyche? Does the psyche absorb some energy from the environment? Does it transmit some energy into the environment? The last could be asserted only on condition that the psyche is capable of acting on the habitat directly — that is, without using the musculoskeletal apparatus and instruments. The integral experience of humanity says that such action of the psyche, and upon the psyche, exists; but science is still unable to answer this question adequately. Thus it is scientifically proven that energetic exchange takes place in the body of a living being; but that it takes place in the psyche is not known to science — though the integral experience of humanity points to the possibility of direct psychic action of living beings on one another and on inanimate objects of nature.

At the same time, a human being expends energy continuously — it is spent both on maintaining the organism’s vital activity and on all forms of behavioural activity. Can one on this basis assert that the expenditures of energy on the performance of everyday work have a typological character? One may suppose so; but for such a supposition to become truth, proofs are needed. In favour of such a supposition speaks the principle of the wholeness of the individual. This should mean that if the psyche has a type bound up with the processes of the reception, processing and output of information, then the corresponding typological particularities will find their reflection in the build of the body, the features of the face, the mimicry, the body movement, the speech, the use of energy. But since these particularities depend not only on the typological component of the personality but on a multitude of accidental biographical factors, a random multitude of distortions depending on those factors will be superimposed on the typological bodily markers. As a result the typological may be heavily masked, which will demand great effort in the diagnostics of the type. But in what could the energetic markers of the type be expressed, if they are typological? Power, speed, amplitude, precision, harmoniousness of movements will, of course, have typological components — and, of course, biographical components along with them. But all this enters into the definition of the type of information metabolism! The typological markers we use in diagnosing the TIM can be discovered in the modalities of any entity of the fundamental triad: at the level of matter — the body; at the level of behaviour — energy; and at the level of ideas, utterances and texts — information. And at any level one and the same TIM will be obtained! And this means there are not three separate TIMs — bodily, energetic and informational: at any level we shall always have the informational type or, more precisely, the type of information metabolism. The physical body, and the energy enclosed in it — which science still does not recognise as a systemic wholeness, as just as full-fledged a fractal component as the skeleton, the cardiovascular or the nervous system — are substrata that fix and carry informational wholenesses, among which is the psyche.

Author: Moreover, since it is perfectly obvious that the functioning of the model includes both informational and energetic aspects, one is inevitably compelled to consider four poles of the model — two informational and two energetic — each of these pairs consisting, naturally, of the model’s input and its output. Let us list these poles: 1) informational input; 2) energetic output; 3) energetic input; 4) informational output.

Comment: It may well be “perfectly obvious” to the author “that the functioning of the model includes both informational and energetic aspects,” but in the article this ought nevertheless to be justified. “The functioning of the model,” as the author calls it — if Model A is meant — corresponds only to the transformation of information; the transformation of energy is not accounted for in it. This is the author’s contrivance, and it bears no relation to Model A. It is also unclear, purely terminologically, why the author calls the presumed inputs and outputs “poles.” Figuratively, perhaps? And if not figuratively, then what do the informational poles of the model and the energetic poles of the model mean? In any case, from an editor’s standpoint, this is an extremely unfortunate sentence — the more so as it remains incomprehensible in meaning too. It is by no means obvious that the model has, or should have, energetic inputs and outputs — if only because Model A is psychological, not physiological, and this model describes, in the most general form, the movement of information, not of energy at all — though information never exists apart from its carrier, while being able to pass easily from carrier to carrier.

Yet the author, having drawn a completely non-obvious conclusion, begins to create artefacts: energetic inputs and outputs that do not correspond to the specificity of the model — and with alternation, at that. Why, for example, after the informational input must there come an energetic output? What are the informational and thermodynamic preconditions for this? What exactly, having entered through the informational input, is supposed to exit through the energetic output? And why must the presumed movement of energy begin with an energetic output rather than an input? This is completely non-obvious. It appears the author understands the subject’s activity as purely energetic, forgetting that energy merely carries and realises informational programs. Evidently the author distinguishes the introverted formation of programs of activity and their extraverted realisation in the form of products of activity. But the latter are merely the extraverted substrata of the informational images previously formed in the psyche.

Author: On viewing the proposed sequence of segments of the informational tract, questions may arise in the reader’s mind. That the input pole in our list alternates with the output pole can hardly provoke objection: in order to enter a new structure one must, naturally, exit the previous one.

Comment: Yes, questions do arise. However, the fact that “the input pole … alternates with the output pole” provokes not objection but bewilderment. The author uses the parenthetic word “naturally” rather too light-heartedly here, since it is not difficult to imagine structures where one can enter another without exiting the first — for example, nested or hierarchical ones. The unjustifiedness of the author’s reasoning makes his text extremely hard to understand. What the author understands as the alternation of poles corresponds, in the psyche, to the movement of information along the functional chain of its transformation.

Author: But why, inside such a two-pole structure, is information transformed into energy and vice versa? To answer this question let us occupy ourselves with the model’s informational input, responsible for the manner in which the psyche of the socionic type perceives the world.

Comment: The conversion of information into energy is one of the misunderstandings lying at the base of the author’s theoretical constructions. Information is not energy and never converts into it, nor vice versa. The truth is that energy is the substratum, or carrier, of information, while information governs the movement of energy. Governance is a purely informational phenomenon. The well-known dialectical law does not permit the reduction of the higher — in this case information — to the lower, in this case the energetic substratum. These two entities — information and energy — are closely connected, but the difference between them is analogous to the difference between psyche and body.

Author: The influences of the external world, in the form of signals of various nature, are perceived by the receptors — the sense organs — and through the nervous system are fed into that part of the psyche which is modelled by the program function of the socionic type. It is this that is, in essence, the conscious informational input of Model A. The third function (by the numbering of the Kyiv school) we interpret as the energetic input of the mental ring of Model A.

Comment: The author evidently forgets that socionics deals with highly generalised functions, at whose level the sense organs are not distinguished, being represented by a single function — sensorics; and “the influences of the external world in the form of signals of various nature” are likewise described in socionics at a high level of generalisation, as the input of the IM. The very numbering of the functions in the Kyiv school distorts the essence of Model A, in which the third — Kyiv-style — function is the first mental beat of information reception. This means that the interpretation of this function as an energetic input is a distortion of the informational essence of Model A. Hence all the “energetic” misunderstandings.

Author: Until now the individual functions of the type have been regarded as something whole, unstructured. In actual fact the program function, like all the others, has a complex internal construction.

Comment: The socionic functions “have been regarded as something whole, unstructured” because socionics deals with a high level of functional generalisation. But let us see how the author attempts to structure them. The author’s reference to what happens “in actual fact” is simply incorrect, since by it he ascribes to himself the capacity to know this directly and reliably, whereas knowledge of what happens in actuality is precisely the goal of scientific research, with which it concludes.

Author: It (the socionic function) consists of at least two central devices — the synthesis block and the filter — and many peripheral ones, which ensure its connection with the subconscious layers of the psyche and with other parts of the mental instances.

Comment: The author describes his knowledge of actuality not as supposition but as direct seeing. And all would be well if he then adduced logical justifications. But he confines himself to parenthetic words like “perfectly obviously,” “naturally,” etc., which merely put the reader in an absurd position, since to the reader it is neither obvious, nor do the author’s considerations appear self-evident. Whence this “synthesis block” and “filter,” and the “many peripheral devices”? It looks like something out of computer engineering — but what has the psyche to do with it? One of the requirements of methodology is that the transfer of terms and concepts from one subject area to another must be justified.

As for the indication of a “connection with the subconscious layers of the psyche and with other parts of the mental instances” within Model A — for all its portentousness it is simply out of place, since socionics deals with maximally generalised psychological situations and functions, to which Model A belongs.

Author: The structure and connections of the program function — this most complex device for the reception and primary processing of information — we picture, in a first approximation, as follows:

IS → SB → InF → FPI → ERSI; downward branch → OutF → P

Abbreviations: IS — input signal; SB — synthesis block; InF — input filter; OutF — output filter; FPI — further processing of information; ERSI — external representation of the synthesised information.

Comment: The author’s proposal of a complex structure, and his description of that structure, is a hypothesis, and he is of course entitled to formulate it — but can such a hypothesis be tested and confirmed in experiment? The socionic functions, being informational processors, have no physiological substratum, as sight or hearing do, and therefore physiological observations cannot become the basis for establishing their structure. How then did the author arrive at the scheme he proposes? Apparently only by analogy with technical devices and from general — read: metaphysical — considerations. The corresponding reasoning might look as follows.

Since the function perceives some part of the information stream, it must have an input. Since the function passes on the information it has processed, it must have an output. Since some information “is inside” the function in the course of processing, the function must have a memory. Since the function processes not just any information but only that which corresponds to its IA, it must have a corresponding filter at the input.

Let us consider the remaining arguments more attentively.

The socionic function is a psychic, not a physiological organ, and one cannot — at least not without special justification — ascribe to it the properties of physiological organs or technical devices. For example, it cannot be compared with the eye or the ear. The latter perceive not information but a signal, which has a physical nature and is processed by the physical structures of the corresponding organ. Information, as something having significance and meaning for the subject, is perceived and processed by the psyche. But how this happens “in actual fact” contemporary science does not know. All that can be supposed on this score is that the psyche does it intuitively. Possibly the psyche “somehow” sees the modulations of the informational signal and understands these modulations as information. One might therefore attempt to identify the inputs into the psychic organs with the corresponding physiological structures — but that is the long-standard error of identifying the psychic with the physiological. Hence one can speak of inputs into psychic structures only as mental constructs. In Model A these inputs and outputs are designated either by arrows — which is, of course, a convention — or by the adjacent functions. The ALF (adaptive-load function) is the input into the mental ring. Its output is the CCF (conservative-critical function), which is simultaneously the input into the PPF (program-potential function), whose output into the environment is the CPF (communicative-probing function). The semantics and interaction of the functions I justified in [3].
By the considerations set out above, one may suppose that no physiological experiment exists by which the output of a generalised psychic function could be detected.
Apparently one can speak of the memory of a psychic function only figuratively. There exists physiological memory, in which the informational signal is stored — but how the psyche reads it off, science does not know.
Since one can speak of the inputs and outputs of psychic functions, at the present level of science’s development, only speculatively, the “filter at the input” also remains something speculative. And for this it is entirely sufficient that each function in each TIM corresponds to a definite IA. It is precisely the IA that is the equivalent of the filter.

It is also unclear from what considerations the idea of a filter at the output appears. Just in case, perhaps? No “technical” necessity for it is visible. Does not the function’s very capacity to process information impose the necessary restrictions on the informational product?

Summing up the above analysis of the author’s constructions, one is forced to conclude that the author employs a speculative-metaphysical methodology — which is, of course, his personal affair; but the integral experience of methodology gives grounds for considering such an approach unproductive, notwithstanding the plausibility of the author’s proposed schemes of the “structural construction of the socionic functions.” Continuing the author’s scheme of structuring, one could begin to speak of the structure of the filters, inputs and outputs — which, from an engineering standpoint, might have made sense; but for the macro-language in which socionic discussion is conducted it is superfluous. It could be regarded as a deepening of the model; but since the socionic Model A is entirely adequate to its purpose of setting out the principal scheme of IM in the psyche, such a “deepening” is objectless, impractical and redundant.

It is interesting to compare the author’s constructions with the structural representation of the psyche in the form of Model A. In that model, after all, there are also inputs and outputs, in whose capacity certain functions turn out to serve. At the same time these same functions, together with their informational aspects, perform the role of informational filters — at the input, at the output, and inside the psyche. The point is that in Model A the elementary components are maximally generalised psychic functions, whose concrete prototypes are empirically reliable and well studied. And these elementary components are not treated in socionics as internally structured. That is, from a practical standpoint, unproductive, since it cannot be used in work with people, and it leaves the researcher at the level of metaphysical speculations.

Author: By means of the program function there takes place the synthesis of the incoming signal with the model of the world stored in a person’s long-term memory. The synthesis block available for this purpose compares the information received from the receptors with the existing model of the world, establishing similarities and differences between them, and forms a judgement. Moreover the model of the world may, in its turn, decompose into a large number of stereotyped situations worked out in the practice of everyday intercourse and fixed in memory. Hence judgements are both of a general and of a particular character.

Comment: The author’s reasoning is sustained in a technical modality, but the initial premises from which it could be derived are not intelligible. One may say they are introduced “by analogy.” I, for my part, proposed a set of axioms that could serve this purpose in the talk “The Churyumov–Jung Axiomatics” [Section 9 of this book]. At the base of the PPF (program-potential function), as the setter of subjective meanings, lies intuition, whose mechanisms are unknown to science — for which reason it may be accepted, without causal justification, simply as the empirically observed basic capacity for understanding anything whatsoever. It is precisely intuition, on the basis of sensorics and the emotional evaluation of sensory data, that forms the internal model of the external world (IMEE); and within the framework of a model of IM, which is what Model A is, there is no point in specifying where the IMEE is stored — such information is redundant here. Of what the IMEE consists there is, at the socionic level of generalisation, no point in specifying either. And here the author plainly “spreads his thought over the tree,” specifying where general and particular judgements come from.

Author: The memory block (long-term memory is meant) is located, in all probability, within the vital ring. The character of the informational exchange between the first function (the mental program) and the seventh (vital control) is discrete.

Comment: At the socionic level of generalisation there is no point in specifying where memory is located, since, for example, in the process of socionic consulting that information is redundant. The character of the informational exchange between the SF in the model does have theoretical meaning — but why in the given case it is defined as discrete remains unintelligible. In Model A the PPF (program-potential function) and the ITF (imperative-temporal function) are the mental and vital poles of the more general function of INTUITION that unites them, within which, apparently, the connection between its poles is effected; but why it should be discrete rather than continual is in no way explained by the author. I would insist that this connection is natural, similar to that which connects the poles of a capacitor: the potential forming on one of its plates is simultaneously mirrored on the other. Similarly the ITF stands ready at any moment to secure the execution of the programs forming on the PPF. The expression “at any moment” contains the seme of continuity, and on that basis the connection between the PPF and the ITF may be assessed as continual.

Author: The vertical link can be satisfactorily analysed only within a 16-component model. Let us present this link in formulaic form using the example of the ethico-intuitive extravert in the ethical variant: [(+E) → (−E)] → [(+R) → (−R)] → … Note. Letter designation of the functions: E = extraverted emotion, R = introverted emotion, or attitude.

Comment: This is an example of metaphysical reasoning divorced from the practical work of the socionist-consultant. For the practical work of a psychologist all that matters is that the two functions, as two poles, have between them a continuous connection which instantaneously secures the realisation of the programs — though in reality a delay may always arise, connected with the concrete circumstances of the subject of activity. And the 16-component model is a tribute to the author’s theoretical inconsistency.

Author: Let us decipher the formula. The element +E performs the role of a synthesising device, uniting the incoming external signal of any form with the model of the world or a part of it. The synthesised information is filtered, being recoded into the element −E. From this moment the information can, first, be issued outward in explanation, narration, the analysis of some topic and, second, be passed for further processing to the second (realisational) function. The information recoded into −E and filtered of admixtures proceeds along the vertical link to the seventh function of the Id level, +R, where, in all likelihood, the memory block is localised. There it is stored in the form of a “folded” image of the world.

Comment: The work of Hamlet’s EGO block and its connection with the work of the ID block can be explained without recourse to a 16-component model. Hamlet’s PPF, E (extraverted emotion), saturates the IMEE (internal model of the external environment) with emotions of the requisite modalities, which become the load-bearing support of the programs formed here. The condition of the fulfilment of these programs, forming on the ITF, is the modalities of attitudes, e. But with such an explanation one must not sunder the functions either of the EGO block or of the ID block. Hamlet’s emotionally saturated programs are oriented to the broad temporal interval set by the second function in this block — the CPF (communicative-probing function). In the given case that is introverted intuition, which sets the subject’s heightened self-feeling, connected with the reaction to the emotional modality of the IMEE. In accordance with this, on the ID block, in the ITF, there is formed — on the basis of the attitude to concrete objects — an image of their potential possibilities, I, which is then embodied, that is, extraverted, for example in the capacities of concrete people, or in the corresponding programmatic texts necessary for the creation of such capacities — as, say, was the case with Nietzsche (Hamlet).

The author’s reasonings have the character of speculative judgements, since sufficient empirical and logical grounds are not adduced for extraverted emotionating — to which the author ascribes positive significance by the plus sign — to act in the role of a synthesising “device.” Emotionality can be understood as an evaluating function on the scales “good–bad,” “like–dislike,” “want–don’t want” — but that is merely one of the preliminary conditions for a possible synthesis. The natural semantics of the plus-minus signs in combination with emotionality ought to be interpreted as positive and negative emotions — but then it is unclear why positive emotions, as a result of some synthesis, are “filtered” and recoded into negative ones. Possibly, however, the author ascribes to these signs some other semantics — which again sets one musing on metaphysics. No less speculative is the concluding phase of the movement of negative emotionality “along the vertical link” to positive introverted emotionality, where, as the author says, “in all likelihood the memory block is localised.” As we see, the author does not always distinguish the psychic from the physiological, since emotionally coloured information belongs to the former and memory to the latter.

Author: From the memory +R the information cannot be fed directly into the synthesis block +E: the like charge of the communicative units prevents this. It is first recoded and filtered through −R, and only in the form of that aspect does it become fit to participate in the process of synthesis on +E.

Comment: Here, within the framework of metaphysical construction, the author introduces the notion of like and unlike charges of communicative units, transferring to them, without sufficient grounds, the properties of electric charges. The author likewise begins, without sufficient grounds, by ascribing signs to the psychic functions without motivating them in any way.

Author: This complex chain of acts of transformation of energy into information and back is the process of the perception of the world by the human psyche.

Comment: At the base of this reasoning lies the author’s initial delusion about the possibility of “transformations of energy into information and back.” From this reasoning, however, it becomes clear that possibly the author here understands by “energy” the energetic carrier on which information is recorded. But in the act of perception what occurs is not the conversion of “energy into information” but the translation of signal information into subjective informational codes.

Author: Why is it precisely to the program function that we assign the leading role in this process? For the reason that information of any kind is in the final analysis presented to a person’s consciousness in the form of the communicative units of this function.

Comment: This reasoning is interesting from both a cognitive and a philosophical point of view. Here the scholar asserts — but in essence this is a hypothesis — that it is precisely this function (in my terminology the PPF) that forms the communicative units corresponding to it, which consciousness discovers. There is no proof here, but the hypothesis itself is interesting and merits discussion. Let us turn to the positional semantics of the PPF. At its base lies the archetype of intuition — on the grounds that, since in Don Quixote’s model the positional and the aspectual semantics are bound to one and the same archetype, namely intuition, it is precisely from intuition that both semantics must be derived. Generally speaking, intuition does not require the verbal formulation of thought, which is characteristic of verbal thinking and of the verbal transmission of thought into external space, where other subjects are located for whom it may be intended. In Model A the CPF (communicative-probing function) answers for this process, and therefore the communicative awareness of a thought formed in the intuitive field is naturally to be linked not with the PPF but with the CPF. Let us note that an intuitive image may not be brought to awareness at all, but be converted at once into verbal form. Still, this problem requires more thorough justification. If, however, I am right, then the author’s further reasonings contain a systematic error and are incorrect, notwithstanding their logical correctness.

Author: With this aspect any comprehension and internal judgement concludes. Information does not proceed to the second function until it has presented itself in the forms of the first function.

Comment: So thinks the author, without adducing sufficient arguments. It is more plausible that on the PPF there is formed an intuitive image of what the subject intends to transmit into external space, and only on the CPF does the logical and grammatical formulation of the intended message in verbal form take place — and with it becomes possible the conscious processing of the corresponding information by the thinking function, with which the CPF is correlated.

Author: Hence we may say that the outcome of a sensory type’s reflections is a concrete sensation, and of an intuitive type’s — an abstract image. The thought process of a logical type will necessarily reduce to some structure or regularity, and of an ethical type — to an emotion or experience.

Comment: The author’s preceding reasonings were preparing the conclusion contained in this excerpt, but here the author’s thought is formulated more concretely — which, incidentally, confirms the supposition that the final communicative formulation of thought takes place on the CPF. But let us look at the author’s text more attentively. “…THE OUTCOME OF A SENSORY TYPE’S REFLECTIONS…” — “REFLECTION” is the process of the work of the thinking function, which in Model A is identified with the CPF, not the PPF. A “CONCRETE SENSATION” cannot be the outcome of REFLECTIONS, but it can arise as a result of the work of the intuitive function, and only after that become an object of reflection and communication. A CONCRETE SENSATION cannot be transmitted directly without the aid of telepathy, which in connection with Model A we do not consider. Of course sensory types transmit their thoughts to other people just as everyone else does — verbally; and this, in accordance with the semantics, must proceed through the CPF. The same reasonings apply to the intuitive’s “ABSTRACT IMAGE,” the logical type’s “STRUCTURE OR REGULARITY,” and the ethical type’s “EMOTION OR EXPERIENCE.” On the PPF appears the intuitive image of an idea, whose filling is connected with the IA in the position of the PPF. But its elaboration, its verbal and grammatical formulation, is carried out by thinking, to which in Model A corresponds the CPF. Thus one may speak of the author’s failure to distinguish the intuitive and the thinking phases of the processing of information. This can be explained by the fact that the thinking phase can succeed the intuitive one almost instantaneously, and in the act of self-observation the scholar may fail to register it.

Author: Let us consider concrete socionic types by way of example. SLI (sL). Its program function is “s”. The result of reflections and observations for the SLI is sensations. He can take delight in the tranquillity and harmony of nature as against the unpleasant sensations of a disharmonious society, which one wants to get rid of as quickly as possible. He thinks about the unpleasant sensations of old age or illness, about a dirty or uncomfortable workplace, about an uncosy, badly furnished apartment, about excessive loads on the organism that give no guaranteed return, about defects in people’s appearance, about the practicality and functionality of clothing, about the treatment and prevention of illnesses, about how to prepare simple but tasty food, and so on.

Comment: A beautifully and convincingly written paragraph — except that the sign minus is ascribed to Gabin’s PPF without explanation. But this paragraph contains inaccuracies. “SENSATIONS” cannot be the result of REFLECTIONS and OBSERVATIONS. One can reflect on “SENSATIONS,” one can observe them, but they appear as a result of the work of the sensory function. However, intuition (the PPF) can summon up sensory images, which may become objects of reflection in the form of internal dialogue or be brought outside in writing or verbally — but the latter proceeds along the CPF. In ascribing the minus sign to the PPF the author as it were justifies it by mentioning “the unpleasant sensations of old age or illness, a dirty or uncomfortable workplace…” — but he had said before that the SLI “can take delight in the tranquillity and harmony of nature as against the unpleasant sensations of a disharmonious society…” — so what has the minus sign to do with it? Which means the author is fitting his descriptions to the sign he has invented.

Author: Everything (in Gabin) reduces in the final analysis to sharp, unpleasant sensations and the search for ways of ridding oneself of them. That is the principal content of this sociotype’s internal dialogue. With the people around him, however, the SLI strives to speak of the pleasant, the beautiful, the nuances of sensations, good health, etc. — the information passes the filter +S.

Comment: The author skilfully constructs his reasoning, behind which the reader will easily divine the minus sign which, as the author holds, corrects the semantics of the IA in the position of Gabin’s PPF. But here one may ask: why in Gabin does “everything reduce … to sharp, unpleasant sensations,” while in Dumas, consequently, because of the plus sign, everything must reduce to pleasant sensations? One gets the impression that the author is fitting the result to a preconception he already holds. Whereas without any pre-imposed signs on the SF, using the function adjacent in the block as a modifier, one can specify the semantic range of the function in the concrete type. Gabin’s introverted sensorics (s) in the CPF position means an orientation to practicality, benefit, convenience, good health, high-quality but undemonstrative self-expression. The function adjacent in the block — extraverted thinking (L) — requires that all of the foregoing be secured by purposeful technological activity. With such a reading of the symbols of Gabin’s EGO, no grounds are visible for introducing any sign whatsoever.

Author: IEE (Ie). Its program function is “−I”. The result of its observations of the surrounding world and its comprehension of the information received is alternative possibilities. It sees the true face, the hidden underside of a person or situation, which are usually concealed in every way, hidden because of negative features.

Comment: The author ascribes the minus sign to Huxley’s PPF. That means that, in accordance with the generally accepted semantics of the mathematical sign, his intuition should be called negative — which is no better than calling it black. Yet in the description he proposes there is nothing negative, except that Huxley sees what others hide “because of negative features.” Thus the author tries to justify the sign he has invented — but the issue is the negative features of others, not of the Huxley TIM. And of course Huxley is by no means confined to the negative side of a person’s particularities — he sees all the characterological particularities of a person.

Author: The IEE thinks about everything unusual, deviating from the norm: about people endowed with unusual abilities, about how a given matter could be done differently. He argues and disagrees, because he reduces everything to the alternative, to the reverse side, to the unexplored and untried, to mystery or sensation. His thought concentrates sooner or later on people’s negative manifestations and on things contrary to common sense.

Comment: The author forgets that Huxley is a negativist, and by virtue of this he will first of all advance arguments “from the negative” — not at all “from the minus sign.” The difference is that the negative is the second pole, standing over against the positive, which is always present in any TIM, but only one is activated. Both negativists and positivists have and see both poles, but they begin from the one that is dominant in them. The minus, on the other hand, is a sign ascribed to the function on top of the already fixed dominant. If the minus here duplicates the negative pole, it is not needed. If it carries its own meaning, then that meaning differs from negativism, and the TIM would in that case manifest itself “from the sign.” But by what? Huxley’s intuition sees across a wide range, sees both the positive and the negative, but his dominant underscores what hinders, what has not been done, the deficiencies present — and this is done in order to avoid or forestall possible unpleasant consequences. Aushra writes that such people “report not on what has been done, but on what has not been done” — and this gives the concept of negativism an entirely different semantic shade from the shade connected, say, with the desire to do everything contrariwise or with fundamentally hostile behaviour. One may say that the positivist contents himself with the result achieved, though he does not necessarily stop at it, while the negativist points out what was done wrongly in achieving the result, so that this can be taken into account and not repeated in future. Both work for the good and are, in this sense, both positivists — but their approaches differ. With higher probability Huxley concentrates on the negative, on deficiencies; but if a positive side is discovered, that can and must become an argument, if one can insist on it convincingly — and Huxley will not fail to make use of it. Therefore, while not ascribing a negative mathematical sign to Huxley’s intuition, let us not forget that he is a negativist, and that his TIM, like every other, is bound up not with one but with 15 polarities. Note that, in warning of unpleasant consequences, Huxley’s intuition performs positive work. This balance of the negative and the positive the mathematical sign does not reflect, since it fixes, at best, only one pole of one of the fifteen traits — and to place fifteen signs would be rather cumbersome.

Author: The process of internal thinking concludes in the IEE with an alternative proposal, an unexpected turn of a familiar matter, a play of fantasy exaggerating the original, promising side of events and of people’s actions, a presentation of the situation in the form it could take — the grey is transformed into the colourful, the boring into the interesting.

Comment: Here is an example of an almost impeccable description of the Huxley TIM. The single inaccuracy — evidently owed to the author’s own TIM — is the use of the image of exaggeration. Huxley does not exaggerate; he sees positive possibilities: the original, the promising, the interesting — but he also sees what stands in the way of cleansing the world of banality, routine, boredom. And he is the herald of such a world. The Huxley archetype manifests vividly in such an element of the infrastructure as television. Obviously it would be absurd to ascribe any single sign to television; and if one puts both signs, that is equivalent to their absence.

Author: Good treatment (+R) is deserved only by astonishing people. They must be made such, enthused, encouraged. Therefore what is brought outside is information that has passed the filter +I — that is, in the form of compliments, the underscoring of prospects and positive abilities.

Comment: Good treatment is deserved by all people who bring positive things into this world — and not at all by exhibits from a cabinet of curiosities capable of provoking astonishment. But note: in this paragraph extraverted intuition appears with a plus sign, designated as a filter. And is minus-intuition not a filter? Both filters are present in the TIM simultaneously; hence plus and minus define two modalities of the work of one and the same function — and the socionic level of generalisation overrides the difference of these modalities.

Author: LII (lI). The program function of this sociotype is “−L”. The outcome of its observations and reflections is general regularities, universal structures, logical generalisations. He thinks about how everything is constructed, of what constituent parts it consists, in what order it develops, what stages it passes through, what laws everything obeys. He is interested in all-round examination, the objective picture, the answer to the question “what is principal, and what can be neglected?” His thoughts, like every intuitive’s, are abstract.

Comment: Although the author here, as in the previous cases, ascribes the minus sign to Robespierre’s PPF, no minus is visible in the description itself. General regularities, universal structures and logical generalisations are not in themselves anything negative.

Author: With the LII everything reduces to schemes, structures, classifications, mechanisms, blueprints, models, rules. Any situation, phenomenon or action the LII in the final analysis reduces to a particular manifestation of some law or general proposition. The chaos of the world acquires order in his head. Hence his characteristic striving for interdisciplinary and fundamental research.

Comment: And here no negative is visible.

Author: The information synthesised by the LII is issued in the form +L — that is, confirmations of the operation of a law or general proposition, as well as illustrations and analogies. The world presents itself to the LII as a complex mechanism that must be cognised and explained.

Comment: Naturally, the information synthesised by the LII is issued outward not only in the form of concrete explanations and various examples — after all, he issues his schemes, structures and classifications outward too. Thus the author distorts reality, cutting off whatever does not correspond to his preconception.

Author: LSI (lS). The program function of this sociotype is “+L”. Compared with the LII he proceeds by the reverse route: if the LII, on encountering real facts, seeks a scheme for their explanation, the LSI, having chosen a clear scheme, imposes it on reality — seeks a place for all the facts within this system.

Comment: I interpret introverted thinking in the PPF position in both TIMs as “the gathering of information”; whether this gathering acquires an intuitive or a sensory tinge depends on the function adjacent in the block. The LII converts the information he has gathered into “highly potentiated” devices or services, while the LSI converts the information he has gathered into governing organisational structures. The terms used here are, however, too approximate, and one is forced to use them for want of more precise terminology. Highly potentiated devices and services are everything that eases people’s work in all spheres of life — useful inventions; and here we see the link with the semantics of extraverted intuition. Governing organisational structures are any organisations in which governance of people is carried out and which carry it out — and here we see the link with the semantics of extraverted sensorics. Both can be used in a negative and in a positive variant. Thus weapons of mass destruction are an invention with a predominance of the negative, while bureaucracy is an example of a negative governing structure. But it would be wrong to absolutise the description given above. Both Robespierres and Maxims are capable of working in both ranges, though their dominants differ. To describe this difference by ascribing positivity to one TIM and negativity to the other would be a distortion of reality for the sake of simplification.

Author: The LSI thinks about the particulars and details of the matter occupying him, about its clear organisation, about functional duties, about everything being taken into account, nothing escaping control, everything in the chosen sphere being checked and tied together. Abstractions and images his thinking does not admit.

Comment: The LII, working on an invention, thinks in exactly the same way “about the particulars and details of the matter occupying him, about its clear organisation, about everything being taken into account, nothing escaping control, everything in the chosen sphere being checked and tied together.” As for the LSIs, when necessary they can work with abstractions too — and all the more with images, for example in the modelling business.

Author: The result of the LSI’s thinking is instructions, resolutions and directives, which are to order and fix everything. His logical schemes are carefully thought out, clear and neat. The world appears to him chaotic and rather depraved, because people do not observe laws, permit themselves liberties, overstep the bounds justifiedly assigned to them — in a word, behave unreasonably. Hence the surrounding world must be organised, subordinated to good laws, made to live correctly — otherwise it will perish.

Comment: With which function, and with which sign, does the author link the fact that “the world appears to him (the LSI) chaotic and rather depraved…“? A worldview component is evident here, which allows it to be assigned to the PPF. The negative tinge of such a worldview ought to presuppose a minus sign — but the author links the PPF with a plus!

Author: Outward the LSI issues information in the form −L: just order, the deficiencies of organisation, non-submission to objective rules obligatory for all, criticism of disorder, slackness, irresponsibility, the necessity of fighting against all this.

Comment: “Outward” — that is, into the external environment — works the contact function, the CPF; and there the LSI has extraverted sensorics. Why then does the author speak here of introverted thinking? Is this an error, or does some specific argumentation stand behind it?

Author: Having concluded the analysis of examples, let us formulate the article’s conclusion. The transformation of the perception of information into its reproduction takes place through the reduction of informational signals of any nature to the communicative units of the program function. In the synthesis block the informational image is saturated with an energy carrier — impulses of energy arriving along the vertical link from the vital instances — which imparts to the synthesised information motion along the mental ring. Thanks to this mechanism, in our view, a stable energy-information exchange of the psyche with the surrounding world is assured.

Comment: After the analysis carried out, it should be clear that the article’s conclusions are erroneous. The combination of words “the transformation of the perception of information…” is wrong even in purely terminological terms, since what is transformed is not the perception but the perceived information. The transformation of information in any model, in the most general form — which corresponds to the socionic level of generalisation — passes through four stages: sensory perception (ALF+ERF), emotional evaluation (CCF+MMF), formation of the IMEE (PPF+ITF), and the communicative issue of information into the environment (CPF+RTF). The author, however, speaks of “the reduction of informational signals of any nature to the communicative units of the program function,” as if that were the goal of the transformation of the information received at the sensory input. The final goal of the transformation of information arriving from the external environment is the survival of the living being, and the return of the processed information back into the environment becomes the criterion of the effectiveness of that processing. The author supplants the principal task of the processing of information in the psyche of a living being with the particular problem of the communicative units of the program function.

The strange assertion that “in the synthesis block the informational image is saturated with an energy carrier” suggests that the author is confusing something. Information is recorded on an energy carrier by its modulations. If one increases the amplitudes of the modulating curve here, that will increase the volume — but will in no way change the meaning of the message. The entire disquisition about “impulses of energy arriving along the vertical link from the vital instances…” gives the impression of a metaphysical embellishment.

Nor did any feedback on my works arrive from such a leading “maître” as V. D. Ermak, my analysis of whose model was given in [3]. He, evidently, remained satisfied with his “justification” of Model A, while at the ROUND TABLES of late 2011 and early 2012, even to elementary remarks on the difference between asymmetry and antisymmetry, the only words he used were: “That is all rubbish. That is all verbiage.” Such is the argumentation from a man who considers himself a logical type. Incidentally, many years of interaction with this unquestionably intelligent man have allowed me to doubt the correctness of the determination of his TIM: he has always considered himself an LII, and all the leading socionists supported this; but the particularities of his concrete behaviour — the striving to assert himself by means of the social structure, emotional aggressiveness alongside ethical demonstrativeness, the large number of logical errors in his works, and a subtle defect, not immediately striking, of his entire conception — an imbalance of its different parts and elements — first aroused in me the suspicion of an inaccuracy in his typological identification and self-identification, and then led me to the conviction that he belongs to the type ESI. The point is that many socionists consider his logic strong; but on closer examination one can discover that this logic is not even trained but, rather, “drilled in” — easily explained by 25 years’ service in a militarised research institute engaged in rocket-and-space work. He is undoubtedly acquainted with systems theory; but his article on the subject — apparently intended to acquaint socionists with the strong sides of systems theory — can provoke in a logical type only bewilderment: can systems theory really be expounded so unsystematically? His article is a disorganised scatter of empirical observations served up as laws and principles. It is almost obvious that only “from the SUPEREGO” can one write like that — as Aushra liked to say whenever, in the theoretical reasonings of a speaker at conferences, she caught the “sagging” of the theoretical thread of the text being presented. Incidentally, she herself considered him a sensory type — even a Zhukov: that is, she saw the sensory component; but, as we know, a Dreiser can nonplus even a Zhukov. Clearly visible, too, was another phenomenon, connected with his relations with I. Marinich, who always considered herself an SEE (Napoleon). Those relations were friendly and warm — which, by socionic lights, is extremely problematic between Napoleons and Robespierres. However, the particularities of her physique and her evidently refined intellect make more probable the hypothesis that she belongs to the TIM ILI. If that is so, everything falls into place. The relation between ESI and ILI is activation — which is precisely what was observed in reality.

I wish to stress, incidentally, that the remark I have made in no way casts a shadow on the socionics enthusiasts I have mentioned, towards whom I have always felt great sympathy; and Vladimir Davydovich’s talks on the systemic justification of Model A aroused my deep interest from my very first acquaintance with them back in the early 1990s, which allowed me to penetrate to their very essence. And gradually, from a spontaneous and uncritical acceptance of them as the standard of a logically verified text, I began at a certain point to catch logical inaccuracies in his reasonings and, in the end, described his constructions in detail and offered an analysis of them. All the details on this subject can be found in [3].

I should also like to mention cases of the revision of typing results. Some such revisions are entirely justified by the fact that with time a person presumably raises his socionic qualification, and what earlier seemed acceptable may later prove doubtful. Thus, for example, back at the end of the 1980s the opinion took shape that Einstein belongs to the type ILE (Don Quixote). This was accepted by the then still small and diagnostically inexperienced socionic community on the strength of intuitive plausibility. A man who worked out the fundamental theme of cosmic relativity, a Nobel laureate, unquestionably intelligent, capable of theoretical generalisations — that is, there are preliminary grounds for considering him a logical and intuitive type. The particularities of his hairstyle and facial “vegetation” likewise did not, as it were, contradict the socionic image of Don Quixote. However, many years of subconscious refinement of socionic characteristics led me to doubt that Einstein belongs to this type, and to suppose that his TIM is SLI (Gabin). This thought had long visited me, but concrete data were lacking, and shortage of time did not allow me to concentrate on seeking them.

The ground for doubts about Einstein’s TIM became, for me, the refinement of the TIM of an acquaintance of mine (Ya. A. Dubrov), who bears a certain resemblance to Einstein — and not only an external one: he is a candidate of mathematical sciences, inclined to global generalisations — indeed, after acquainting himself with the socionic conceptions of IM he generalised the Boltzmann equation by adding an informational component to it — and the socionic crowd, without any particular discussion, recognised Dubrov as belonging to the type Don Quixote. But after many years of acquaintance, having come to know him more closely — his habits, way of life and emotional dynamics — at a certain point I understood that his TIM is SLI. All this, of course, requires concrete refinement.

Another example of disagreement in the determination of type is the TIM of Putin — when I learned with surprise that the unquestionably authoritative socionists of the IIS group consider him an EIE. Meanwhile other socionists, from Yaroslavl, whose competence is considerably less known to me, were entirely certain that he is an LSE — that is, Stirlitz. When I tried to find out from them what their certainty rested on, I was told: well, he served in intelligence and has a command of the martial arts… At the same time television and the Internet make it possible to obtain sufficient information to draw a conclusion about his TIM; and his very habitus, as physicians say — the external data that can be gathered on outward inspection — speaks in favour of his being an introvert; hence EIE and LSE are excluded. Whereas rationality, soft emotionality, intuition and a heightened humanitarian orientation are quite legible. So I am convinced that this is EII (Dostoevsky) — but this contradicts the dogmatic conviction of certain socionists who profess the myth that only the second quadra can rule in Russia. And yet, by those same socionic conceptions, Dostoevsky, being the quasi-identical of Yesenin — and hence a variety of his activator — is entirely harmonious for the Russian mentality. I also consider it wrong to assign Medvedev to the TIM Napoleon on the grounds that this type is the benefit-recipient of Hamlet, which would supposedly explain the Putin–Medvedev tandem — that already smacks of fitting-up. Medvedev, being an introvert and a sensory type, fits well into the TIM Gabin. And that, too, explains well the positive contact of the two statesmen.

I have adduced these examples to show how far from simple socionic diagnostics is, and how unreliable self-assurance in the determination of a TIM can be.

And, in conclusion, a few words about the IIS (International Institute of Socionics) and its journal SMPP (Socionics, Mentology and Personality Psychology). The creation of their own institute in the early 1990s by those remarkable enthusiasts of socionics A. Bukalov and O. Karpenko, and then the publication of a large socionics journal, was an important event for the formation of socionics, which received its own tribune for the propagation of socionic ideas and the exchange of research results among what was by then already a noticeable number of authors — about three dozen; by 2010 there were two hundred of them. That is a large army of scholars — but, strangely enough, quantity has here not yet passed into quality. The exceptionally liberal character of the journal, with an almost complete absence of censorship — every article was printed that contained an intuitively intelligible text of socionic orientation, excepting outright nonsense or criticism of the journal’s editorship — made the journal popular not only among the socionic public but also among a part of the intelligentsia which, though it had not joined the socionic movement, took a lively interest in the phenomenon of the new scientific direction. This, indeed, contributed both to the journal’s popularity and to the growth of its print run. But this same liberalism led to a high level of methodological irresponsibility on the part of a number of authors, who, without any feedback, published their socionic musings, remaining in complete confidence of their own scientific infallibility.

The attentive reader could notice the appearance of substantial — paradigm-level — differences in the understanding of the basic categories of socionics, while the socionic schools that had formed by the mid-1990s proved incapable of finding consensus and only strengthened the impression of disarray in socionics. By 2010 there were already about three dozen variants of the understanding of socionics, but the IIS was no longer capable of bringing them to a common denominator — which means it had in fact lost the role of a consolidating scientific centre, having finally turned into a consulting centre specialising in the socionic servicing of large and medium-sized firms and enterprises capable of paying well for such services. As a result the scientific side of socionics fell into decline, and socionics became predominantly a technology. That too, of course, is not bad — from the standpoint of earnings, for example — but the lowering of scientific status is an unconditional sign of the degradation of a technology’s theoretical support, which is fraught with the appearance of systematic errors. And, of course, the scientific side of socionics suffers, while its dogmatic and conservative opponents can rub their hands in satisfaction, since they may consider that their predictions concerning the scientific inadequacy of socionics have come true.

After a decade and a half of the journal’s existence, signs of conservatism and dogmatism appeared in it, manifested in the fact that the collective opinion of the journal’s editorship came to consider its notions of socionics the only correct ones and subject to no correction whatever. Thus, from issue to issue, in the journal’s reference section, the outdated table of the placement of the types in the socion was dogmatically repeated — although there had already appeared my proof of strict orderedness and the mathematically grounded order of the TIMs and structure of the socion. Voices began to be raised ever more often about stagnation in socionics, about the dubiousness of a number of ideas introduced into socionics by the journal’s editor-in-chief and IIS director A. Bukalov — that exceptionally intelligent scholar, erudite in many areas of culture and science, who defended a doctoral dissertation in the sphere of philosophy, psychology and socionics, but who refused to adopt real discoveries in socionics if they did not coincide with his notions of the truth. Complaints also began to appear from individual authors that their ideas, slightly reworked or even without reworking, began to appear in articles by the editor-in-chief after the material had been submitted to the editorship — but without references to the source, and with the author’s own publication delayed. Such cases are, of course, hard to prove, since many socionic ideas are “in the air,” and there is nothing surprising in their occurring to several scholars almost simultaneously. Nevertheless, such rumours acquired a persistent character.

The absence, from the journal’s very founding, of scientific peer review — which at first played a positive role as an accompaniment to creative freedom and scientific search — led with time to the journal’s becoming a conduit for a significant quantity of methodologically defective articles bordering on idle fantasies dressed in scientific terminology. The impression arose that methodology is something optional — well-nigh the invention of idle theoreticians perpetually dissatisfied with something.

From 2010 the IIS began to confer scientific titles, thereby raising its administrative prestige. Socionists who had worked for many years on enthusiasm alone became bachelors, masters and doctors of socionics — although socionics has never been recognised as a science by the official scientific structures. A specific situation arose: socionics captured broad strata of the population, becoming even more popular than astrology, while at the same time being better grounded than psychology with its nearly three-hundred-year history. Several hundred dissertations have been defended on socionic subject-matter and on the basis of socionics — especially many in pedagogy — which speaks of the demand for socionics and its effectiveness; but the official instances still do not find it possible to recognise socionics as a science.

There is probably nothing surprising in psychology’s traditionally being considered a science, since it has an object, a method and a social function — and for the positivist understanding of science that suffices. There exists, however, another point of view, which demands that a science possess, besides practical recipes, a generalising theory as well — which psychology to this day lacks. Thus, in the stricter sense, psychology, being a technology, is not a science. At the same time socionics, possessing a generalising theory and a rich practice, is bureaucratically denied recognition as a science. Such are the social paradoxes… A. Bukalov has appealed many times to various instances so that the scientific bureaucracy would recognise socionics as a science, but the corrupt official science has proved insensible to the exhortations of the IIS director. It is curious that Bukalov himself insists on the scientific status of socionics on the basis of his own extensive consulting practice, holding that practice is the criterion of truth, and also in connection with the fact that several hundred dissertations in other sciences have been defended on socionics and on its methodological basis. A simple and intelligible point of view, resting on a pragmatic world-feeling — but what is needed is a direct, not an indirect, determination of scientificity. Suffice it to say that at the present time socionics is still not a science, remaining in the status of the embryo of a science.

References

Gulenko V. V., THE PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD BY THE SOCIOTYPE, 1997.
Eglit I. M., Determining the Socionic Type, Moscow, “Chornaya Belka,” 2010 — 301 pp.
Churyumov S. I., The Smile of the Cheshire Cat, Drohobych, 2007 — 560 pp.

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Section 0

The Splendour and Poverty of Socionic Metaphysics — Volume 2

Contents

Preface to the Second Volume

References

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Table of Contents