Section 1

Yermak Objects to Gulenko — Gulenko Objects to Yermak, and Seryozha Savchenko Wanders in the Dark…

(Fragments from V. D. Yermak’s analysis of certain judgments by V. V. Gulenko, occasioned by the latter’s assessment of the former’s theoretical constructions — with my commentary.)

— Good health to you, kuma… — I was at the market…

The most serious attempt to justify the IAs [information aspects] and Model A was made first by N. N. Medvedev, and Yermak followed in his footsteps; trying to improve Medvedev’s approach and slightly altering the “first building blocks” the latter had used, he in fact made Medvedev’s attempt worse. Nor can Yermak’s approach to justifying Model A be considered successful. Having partially drawn on ideas from systems theory, Yermak proved inconsistent in identifying the semantics of the functions — his version did not come out the way Aushra’s did, but he apparently considered his variant impeccable and fully consistent with Aushra’s. So from then on he relied on Model A as if he himself had constructed it in his own work. I discussed all of this in detail in [4], but my analysis received no academic response whatsoever, so I too am entitled henceforth not to reckon with Yermak’s constructions, which I consider erroneous.

Yermak: First of all, I want to thank Viktor Vladimirovich Gulenko for the entirely correct assessment of my conception of socionics as systemic, positivist, structuralist… [1]

Commentary: What is interesting here is that one scholar accepts another scholar’s generalized worldview-methodological assessment of his conception.

Yermak: I do indeed hold that the psychic functions are certain processors that process particular aspects of the information flow of the psyche’s interaction (the psyche itself being a macroprocessor) with the surrounding world, on the principle “information flow — processor” (and not “raw material — tool,” as V. V. Gulenko interprets it [1]).

Commentary: The categories “information flow — processor” and “raw material — tool” relate to each other as species and genus concepts, and there is no fundamental disagreement here: Yermak’s construct is more concrete, Gulenko’s somewhat more general. As for saying of the functions that they are processors, that is no more than a variety of explication in which one term is replaced by an equivalent term from another subject domain.

Yermak: Scientific and life experience (and not only mine) convinces me that models and modeling are, for now, the only effective toolkit for investigating the psyche and obtaining practically valuable results. And not only because the psyche is still intangible and there are no suitable measuring instruments, but above all because the psyche will long remain a supremely complex object with numerous parameters, hard to access for direct (let alone “descriptive,” natural-language) study by the psyche of another human investigator.

Commentary: Here I see no contradiction with the use of the modeling method as established in socionics, but I want to warn at once that in the works of Gulenko and Yermak a substitution has occurred: Model A has been replaced by Models “G” and “E.” The first of these leads to a model with a different semantics of the functions than Aushra Augustinavichiute’s, while the second seriously distorts the very conception of Model A. As a result, a significant portion of socionists were misled for a long time — all the more so because both authors, having changed the content of Model A, kept its form and name, which is, in essence, a forgery.

Yermak: I am convinced that the highly dubious achievements (in any case, the absence of notable breakthroughs) in the study of psychic and social processes in the twentieth century are explained, not least, precisely by the separation of the humanities, which do not use models, from the natural sciences. To this day this separation is actively maintained precisely by the humanists, despite the fact that it became an anachronism half a century ago.

Commentary: Here I agree with V.D. almost completely, except for the claim that in psychology over the last 50–60 years models have supposedly not been used — one can read about this at least in [6] and [7], as well as in my book [4, chapter 4].

Yermak: Gulenko’s critique of my conception was not conducted entirely correctly. Judging by [1], he dislikes it (the conception) because it is based on: — the natural-science paradigm; — the systems approach and, in particular, the concept of control as the starting position for identifying the structure of the psyche; — the principle of the information metabolism of the psyche, which separates the information processes in the psyche and in communicants from their carriers — the material and energetic components; — the subjective character of the human being’s interaction with the surrounding world, from which follows the aspect structure of the information flow; though this last point V. V. Gulenko seems not to have noticed.

Commentary: 1) I adhere to the natural-science paradigm, which in my case consists in this: the world exists objectively, that is, independently of any subject’s representations of it, and the individual psyche, being the bearer of subjectivity, adapts effectively to the objective world and, above all, to its most fundamental structures. However, I disagree with Yermak, and also with N. N. Medvedev, whose conception Yermak adapted to his own understanding of Medvedev’s “first building blocks,” as I wrote in detail in the 2nd chapter of [4]. There are logical errors in Medvedev’s — and even more so in Yermak’s — understanding of the “first building blocks,” and without eliminating them it is not possible to preserve this, on the whole, beautiful approach.

2. The systems approach is a very strong position, to which, it seems, there is nothing even to oppose. However, in Aushra’s reasoning there is from the very beginning a deeper approach — reliance on the thermodynamic image of the four-stroke engine, which Yermak seems simply to ignore. At the base of the entire phenomenology of the world lies, above all, energy. And the laws of energy’s existence are formulated precisely in thermodynamics, and they precede systems phenomenology.

It must be specially noted that Yermak includes in the concept of a system, besides substance, energy, and information, also “signals of rhythmics,” which of course have an informational nature — and this small but important detail indicates that logic is positioned not in the EGO block, and consequently Yermak’s TIM is not LII.

3. Of course, one should write “the principle of information metabolism in the psyche,” but perhaps this is an editorial oversight. It is precisely IM that polarizes the physiological and the psychic, which must not be reduced to each other; rather, one must discover their specificity and their deep mutual connection.

Commentary: Here is a vivid example of practicing eclecticism. What matters to the authors is not the theoretical quality of the methods used but the possibility of selling them effectively. The main thing here is the product’s bright packaging, its easy memorability, and elements of fashionable prestige embodied in the terminology. Yet this too has a certain relation to socionics, since the basic categories of Jung, which underlie it, are used.

4. I disagree with Yermak that the human being’s interaction with the surrounding world is of a purely subjective character. Subjectivity is conditioned, above all, by a person’s individual interests, which are of course closely tied to personal history, to circumstances of a person’s life that are difficult to account for and may often appear accidental. A certain contribution to human subjectivity is made by the species adaptation of homo sapiens, but this contribution is nonetheless lawful and can be accounted for. The contribution to individual subjectivity from socionic typology is entirely lawful and controllable. As for the aspect structure of the information flow, it exists prior to any perception of it by any subject whatsoever and is objective. This is the fundamental difference between my position and the positions of Yermak and Gulenko.

Yermak: However, in his striving to refute the systemic-subjective conception of socionics, V. V. Gulenko made serious errors in his article. And this may reduce the effect of the discussion and disorient readers. It will therefore be necessary to analyze what is written in [1].

Commentary: It appears that here Yermak considers his own conception of socionics to be systemic-subjective, with which one can agree only in part.

Gulenko: “…Not with types, but with universals — …communicative functions… — the term ‘aspect’ does not suit me…”

Commentary: Here Gulenko poses an exceptionally important question about the beginning of the new scientific direction — socionics. And he answers it quite originally: his axiom is the primary existence of communicative functions. He begins directly with them. Here one can sense Gulenko’s subjectivist convictions, which will inevitably lead to the appearance of systematic errors in his theoretical constructions.

Yermak: Meanwhile, from Aushra Augustinavichiute onward it has been held that socionics begins with the structure of the psyche, reflecting the interaction of its elements — the psychic functions — with the surrounding world (including the psyches of other people) in the process of solving the individual, social, and other tasks set before a person; the subjective structuring, by aspects, of the information flow of this interaction generates types of psyche, whose number and diversity are connected with the combinatorial character of the pairing “psychic function — information aspect.” The types of psyche are represented by models of the types of information metabolism (TIM) of the psyche. Can it really be that this approach, laid down by the creator of socionics A. Augustinavichiute and today generally accepted in socionics, is being revised by V. V. Gulenko? Or is a new science being created, attempting to study the psyche from some other angle? Then what does socionics have to do with it?

Commentary: Here Yermak quite worthily disavows Gulenko’s views. And in form I agree with him, although, as it turns out, Yermak and I understand the basic concepts differently. Also interesting is Yermak’s remark that Gulenko is trying to create some other science; but after many years of observing Gulenko’s scientific activity I am forced to conclude that this is precisely how he understands socionics — he cannot do otherwise, it doesn’t come out any other way for him: his intellect has been captured by the intellectual viruses of relativism and subjectivism.

Yermak: Comparing the “elementarist” doctrine of consciousness of the second half of the nineteenth century with contemporary ideas about the structure and elements of the psyche is quite incorrect. One of the founders of psychology, W. Wundt, and the “elementarist understanding of communication processes” can have no “historical identity” [1] whatsoever, since the problem of the elements of communication arose half a century later (more than that, even!) and in a completely different field [3]. And as for rescuing the “…socionic structuralism suffering from staticness (?)” [1] by supplementing the principle of reflection with a “principle of projection” — that means not even suspecting the existence of direct and feedback links in any systemic interaction.

Commentary: A very precise exposure of Gulenko’s superficial yet self-assured attitude toward his own knowledge in the field of psychology. Gulenko is an intelligent and inventive scholar, but he is, unfortunately, very undemanding toward the products of his scientific creativity. Alongside results in socionics worthy of a scholar — for which one may take one’s hat off to him — he has implanted into the broad socionic masses several information viruses, which is tantamount to a serious ideological diversion.

Yermak: “Judging from these positions,” one is no longer surprised by the strange definition:

Gulenko: “…a function is not so much a tool for processing the portions of information arriving at it as an intentional generator of meaning (?!), ordering the external world according to its specificity (?)” [2] ((the marks in parentheses are Yermak’s))

Commentary: This is one example of how Gulenko understands a most important psychic category. And here, in Gulenko’s spirit — or, what amounts to the same thing, in the spirit of liberal anarchism — one could say that everyone has the right to understand everything as he sees fit. The quoted statement resembles a definition in meaning, but it violates the logical requirements for this procedure that are well spelled out in the methodology of science. In fact there are not one but two judgments here — one “concessive-negative” and the other “concessive-positive” — and both of these forms are unacceptable from a logical point of view, since they are hypothetical in character. The first part only partially denies the understanding of the SF [socionic function] as a tool for processing information — simply downgrading the significance of this process in the structure of the psyche. The author says, as it were, that although the function is indeed a tool for processing information, this is a secondary process. The main process — that is, the leading content of the function — is “intentional generation of meaning.” The concept of intentionality, used in its time by Brentano and subsequently adapted by Husserl in phenomenology, means “directedness toward an object.” The use of this term points to a connection with Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, long since disavowed by the development of philosophical thought in the time that followed. The introduction of the concept of intentionality constitutes an indirect, hidden acknowledgment of the existence of the object as such, combined with a principled denial of the possibility of knowing its true nature — a line going back to Kant and represented in more disguised forms in neo-Kantianism. Given the complex dependence of Gulenko’s views on phenomenology, neo-Kantianism, and structuralist views, one may speak of cognitive distortions in his position, which is not at all easy to discern and account for by a person insufficiently trained in the methodology of science. From the quotation one may conclude that Gulenko inclines more toward a subjectivist understanding of the function as a generator of meanings, rather than as a psychic organ providing the subject’s direct contact with objective reality. The analysis also shows that a scholar’s development of natural-science subject matter is strongly influenced by his worldview presuppositions, and without analyzing these it is impossible to assess adequately the concepts he introduces.

Gulenko: “By what right should the methodology of the natural sciences be transferred to the humanities, which have their own specificity?” [1]

Yermak: …the question is posed in the spirit of the Marxist philosophers. Well, if only by this right: that over several centuries of dominance in the humanitarian worldview of the religious and Marxist dogma “man is the highest achievement of Nature, special in the structure of his psyche, in his position and place in the Universe, whole and indivisible…,” the humanists have managed to do essentially nothing not only toward solving, but even toward plausibly explaining, the human problems that had become so acute by the end of the twentieth century.

Commentary: I do not agree with such a categorical condemnation of the “Marxist dogma.” The dialectical ideas introduced into scientific circulation by Marx played a significant role in Soviet natural science, although under the conditions of the Stalinist dictatorship they were ultimately turned into their own dogmatic opposite. However, the healthy dialectical core must be returned to scientific methodology. Model A itself is permeated with dialectical polarities, and this fact deserves special investigation. Much attention was devoted to this question by the remarkable Ukrainian socionist I. Litvinenko [1st volume of this book]. Unfortunately, he did not avoid exaggerations and distortions of dialectical concepts, having begun to look for them where they are not.

Yermak: The natural-science approach has ensured and continues to ensure the rapid progress of technology, while on the problems of the informational inclusion of the human being in control systems the humanists can say nothing…

Commentary: One can understand the pathos with which Yermak speaks of the natural-science approach, but the grounds on which he discerns it in socionics are not clear. That socionics belongs to the natural rather than the humanitarian (?) sciences — this still needs to be proved. Yermak offers no such proofs, and consequently his reasoning on this subject is unsubstantiated.

Yermak: …on systems… Here a “holistic alternative” is proposed to the elementarist “understanding of the system by Yermak” [1]. Alas, no such alternative exists, since an attempt to define a system on the basis of treating the system as a whole (holism) immediately leads to an element (macroelement) of the supersystem and, consequently, to elementarism; this is the “ABC” of systems theory… And the “holistic definition” of a system given in the article evokes nothing but bewilderment…

Commentary: The attempt to tie the concept of a system to one pole — holistic or elementarist — is incorrect by definition. Any system unites both these poles. In the philosophical definition, a system is a wholeness uniting a multiplicity of parts. This is what dialectics teaches us.

Yermak: Having done much for socionics in 1986–93, in the last three or four years V. V. Gulenko, to my great regret, has been going backward, reviving the long-obsolete descriptive (natural-language) humanitarian approach to the study of the psyche. This discredits the shoots of the natural-science approach in socionics planted by Aushra Augustinavichiute, and disorients beginners with the illusion of the simplicity and ethicality of the philosophical-humanitarian approach to the study of the human being.

Commentary: I do not quite understand Yermak’s reproaches to Gulenko regarding the descriptive approach. Does Gulenko not rely on a model just as Yermak does? It is another matter that both Yermak and Gulenko created their own models, differing substantially from Model A, yet present them as if they were identical to Model A, which misleads the consumers of this information. Certainly a model must somehow be described, and in this sense we will not escape the descriptive component; but there must also exist intelligible algorithms for interpreting the model, allowing descriptions to be unfolded. Neither Yermak nor Gulenko has this — they make this transition at the level of intuitive insights. In fact, this is how the overwhelming majority of socionists now proceed, apparently unaware of my development of the corresponding algorithms [4, chapter 11].

Yermak: One would like to hope that V. V. Gulenko will receive these remarks without prejudice and, in correct discussion with colleagues, will continue to develop and perfect socionics.

Commentary: Gulenko used as the epigraph of his article a quotation from the NLP authors J. O’Connor and J. Seymour: “Scientific theories are metaphorical stories about this world; they are not the truth, just one of many ways of thinking about the world, exactly as painting is one of many ways of representing a landscape.” This can be understood to mean that he (Gulenko) accepts as truth the positivist methodological stance contained in this quotation — the impossibility of theoretical attainment of truth. What matters here is that the conclusions of philosophers can strongly influence the methodological presuppositions of particular scientists, and this must be taken into account when assessing the results of such scientists’ work. Clearly, if Gulenko has adopted such a doctrine, then his own constructions too must be treated as having no relation to truth. One is forced to admit that instead of proving the truth of his results, he offers the socionic community a certain fragment of his own stream of consciousness, which is no more than a metaphorical hint at his contacts with the world. Clearly such revelations can be of interest to science only as empirical material for further investigation into the causes of their appearance. I believe that preaching such an attitude to science disorients scientists, turning their work into the production of metaphors unfit — and even dangerous — for practical use. Analysis of Gulenko’s scientific output shows that alongside valuable results he has injected into the socionic community a certain quantity of harmful information viruses, which it will not be at all easy to get rid of.

Gulenko: (The Ontology of Communicative Functions) Where does socionics begin? Not with types, but with universals — the basic components of communication, which I shall call communicative functions.

Commentary: So thinks Gulenko. I think that socionics must begin with axioms acknowledged by the entire socionic community, from which all the basic socionic concepts will then be derived. Clearly, “communicative functions” are Gulenko’s axiomatic limit.

Gulenko: The term “aspect,” habitual for certain socionic schools, does not suit me because it contains an objectal, corpuscular semantics and has nothing of process in it. Moreover, this word belongs exclusively to the visual modality and therefore does not suit people with kinesthetic or auditory perception.

Commentary: The term “aspect” was quite correctly used by Aushra Augustinavichiute to concretize parts of the information flow, and no reasons for a negative attitude toward it are apparent, other than purely subjective ones. Of course there is nothing reprehensible in the fact that the semantics of “aspect” includes notions of objecthood and corpuscularity, and it is entirely unclear why it cannot be connected with process. After all, we are talking about aspects of the information flow, which is of course a process. Can V.V. really not understand this? If so, one must reflect on Gulenko’s real scientific competence. Clearly, with such statements he misleads practicing socionists who are not versed in modern philosophical intricacies and do not always understand that an uncritical choice of worldview scheme is fraught with serious changes in practical and intellectual behavior.

Furthermore, from the quoted fragment it is evident that Gulenko absolutizes the sensory modalities of NLP, turning them into impassable barriers obstructing scientific communication. There is no doubt that all modalities are accessible to all normal people, who are capable of fully using all the words of their native language, albeit with certain individual preferences, and it is absurd to think that the word “aspect” is inaccessible to certain scholars owing to its visual orientation. But it is also obvious that Gulenko has become so programmed by prejudices from the sphere of NLP that he seriously distorts reality — even though NLP itself is aimed at correcting distortions of reality arising for various reasons, including the relative dominance of some sensory modality in the sensory system.

Gulenko: The concept “aspect,” first employed by E. Shepetko, is treated in the works of the Vilnius school of socionics, as well as a number of Kyiv schools, as “element.”

Commentary: There is nothing reprehensible in the fact that the concept “aspect” may be treated by someone as “element” — synonymy does exist, after all, and an information aspect may be understood both as an information element (IE), in which case we would speak of elements of the information flow. What is the problem? Of course words must be used in accordance with the rules of combinability. And if IA points to a part of the information flow, then IE presupposes the non-decomposability of that part within the chosen level of generalization. If these shades of meaning are taken into account by scholars, then what can they be reproached with? But it seems Gulenko sees some defect in the usage he has indicated. Which one? What is he trying to talk the socionic community out of?

Gulenko: I want to recall that the dichotomy element/function or, what is the same, aspect/function has a long history. The elementarist understanding of the communication process is historically identical to the structuralism program of W. Wundt, who sought the building material of the psyche and its structure.

Commentary: Of course, the pairings “element/function” and “aspect/function” are not identical for socionists, and it is unclear why V.V. tries to identify them. SFs process IAs. This is generally accepted, and it suffices. What elements is V.V. talking about? Why introduce needless confusion? That Wundt in his time sought the structure of the psyche and the elements of that structure deserves a positive assessment, but he spoke precisely of elements of the psyche, not of aspects of the information flow. Wundt did the part of the work accessible to him, and we can only be grateful to him. Socionics completed his work, having found the structure of the psyche and the elements of which it consists.

Gulenko: The first to come out against Wundt’s program was the Austrian psychologist F. Brentano, founder of the doctrine of psychic functions. The intentional act (the psyche’s directedness toward an object), according to Brentano, works not with elements-aspects but with functions-processes. Later the name functionalism became attached to this anti-structuralist current. The head of the US functionalists, W. James, asserted that the psyche is not a “chain of elements” but an undivided “stream of consciousness.”

Commentary: Brentano adhered to the concepts of neo-Kantianism, and accordingly sought a description of the psyche that would bear no traces of the “thing-in-itself” — that is, of notions of the object as existing independently of its perception by the subject. And it apparently seemed to him that by shifting the emphasis from the structure of the psyche to its functioning he had found such a solution, since functioning is directly experienced by the subject and is easy to assess as intentional — that is, inherent in the subject and at the same time directed at the object. It is not always easy for a scholar of materialist orientation to understand what all these contrivances are for, but the neo-Kantian orientation demanded it, imposing methodological restrictions on the scholar’s work. At present, inadequate worldview presuppositions belong to the category of cognitive distortions, which explains why scholars obtain different results when trying to understand one and the same phenomenon. The example of W. James is a vivid confirmation of this. A different worldview position makes it possible to understand the stream of consciousness as structured, incorporating elementary objects — though these objects may be variable, which of course complicates the picture but by no means makes it unknowable. The discovery of socionics showed that the presence of a functional structure in no way contradicts the existence of an elemental base. Here we once again invoke the dialectical requirement to take account of both poles of a phenomenon. Structuralism and functionalism should not be torn apart — they complement each other, and used jointly they yield a fully adequate result.

Gulenko: I consider that the principle of reflection habitual for structuralists (the movement of information from object to subject) should be supplemented by the principle of projection (the movement of information from subject to object). Then socionic structuralism, suffering from staticness, will sooner or later acquire a more active form.

Commentary: First V.V. rigidly tied socionics to structuralism, and then he begins to fight against this — whereas no real structuralists ever invented socionics; and it turns out that this quite decent term is turned into a label that is pinned on socionics and turns it into what it is not — a limited dogma denying processes and dynamics.

Gulenko: Judging from these positions, a function is not so much a tool for processing the portions of information arriving at it as an intentional generator of meaning, ordering the external world according to its specificity.

Commentary: Precisely — “judging from these positions.” That is how the neo-Kantian Brentano could assess a function; but a materialistically oriented dialectician has no need to absolutize such an approach and to deny the understanding of the socionic function as the process and result of information processing. As for the generation of meaning, this question must be investigated more thoroughly rather than dispatched with a reference to the original but far-from-contemporary thinker Brentano. Moreover, to say of a function that it orders the world is to exaggerate its conceptual scope. A function may order our representations of the world, but not the world itself in its infinite diversity. Gulenko assesses the concept of the function from the positions of subjective idealism, though perhaps without being aware of it.

Gulenko: Naturally, every author is entitled to introduce the basic components in his own way.

Commentary: V.V. does not understand (has he not matured to it, or is it on principle?) that scientific methodology presupposes unified foundations of a scientific discipline — and not at all as a recommendation, but as a normative requirement flowing from deep penetration into and understanding of the deep structures of the world. The multiplication table can serve as an example here: one may relate to it in different ways, but its essence does not change because of that. As for socionics, the authors of its technological adaptations, Gulenko included, did just that — they changed the understanding of the basic components “to suit themselves,” that is, as best they could understand them. But for socionics to become a science, it is necessary to achieve not merely a unified understanding of the basic components — that could be done by “an order issued to socionics” — but an understanding that corresponds to the methodology of science.

Gulenko: In this article I will dwell on four ways of interpreting the communicative functions — natural-scientific, psychological, everyday, and philosophical. They will represent four aspects of a point of view on how socionic functions can be introduced into use. In other words, our task is to grasp their ontology.

Commentary: It is strange that the experienced socionist Gulenko calls all SFs communicative. In Model A only one function is communicative (the CPF — communicative-probing function = the 2nd according to Gulenko), which carries out communicative contact with the environment; all the other functions have different semantics and perform different, no less important work. And it is of course strange to call attempts at various justifications of the SFs “ways of interpretation.” From an editorial point of view, a substitution of some concepts for others takes place here.

Gulenko: The natural-scientific aspect requires introducing the functions through physical correlates — matter, energy, space, and time, which is what most of Aushra’s followers do. As a result, the spirit of positivism has taken firm root in contemporary socionics. The “father” of this epistemological current, A. Comte (1798–1857), dreamed of rebuilding the humanities on the model of physics. Fortunately, he did not succeed.

Commentary: Of course, the natural-scientific aspect in this case requires nothing. It presupposes that the psychic functions could be explained with reliance on physical entities. But this is only a hypothesis, and it still needs to be argued. As for the set of these entities proposed by Medvedev, although it seems sufficient, closer analysis reveals a defect contained in it [4: chapter 2], and consequently it should not be used for deriving the IAs from it, since in that case the error, in one form or another, will remain. As for the “spirit of positivism,” this is a general defect of the contemporary humanities, connected with a truncated understanding of the methodology of science, and the reference to Comte merely shifts the emphasis. An attempt to justify or derive the IAs in one way or another in no way contradicts scientific methodology — the only question is how correct such attempts are. I think Comte would have been quite pleased — perhaps even surprised and pleasantly delighted — had he learned of the possibility of a deductive construction of a new humanitarian science, socionics; and such work has already been done.

Gulenko: The positivist attack on socionics, though strong, has plans and results that are quite vulnerable to criticism. By what right should the methodology of the natural sciences be transferred to the humanities, which have their own specificity? Reductionism in socionics cannot be justified: it stems from narrowness of thinking, whereas a socionically literate person must possess a broad outlook.

Commentary: V.V. confuses concepts. He does not, in fact, disclose the meaning of positivism in socionics, and what he calls the positivist attack has an entirely different nature. Positivism in psychology is realized in the physicalist reduction of psychic and psychological phenomena to physiological concepts, such as GSR (galvanic skin response), heart rate, or the electrical conductivity of nerve pathways, and their derivatives. In socionics such attempts also exist — for example, the Voll method for determining TIM — but these are isolated cases outside the socionic mainstream. Yet it is Gulenko himself who demonstrates positivist presuppositions, though apparently without being aware of it.

Gulenko: The nomothetic (model-based) and idiographic methods of investigation, whose equal standing and specialization were long ago substantiated in the Baden school of neo-Kantianism (Windelband, Rickert), should not be opposed to each other. They are better combined.

Commentary: I agree with Gulenko that methods of investigation in the humanities, even ones developed more than a hundred years ago, must be respected; but that does not mean they are not subject to improvement and modification. Socionics presupposes symbolic modeling of the structure of the psyche, and there was nothing of the kind in the Baden school; moreover, neo-Kantian concepts may differ significantly from socionic concepts in their worldview semantics. Thus, the illegitimate identification of concepts from different epochs and worldviews is a typical example of the disease of inexperienced scholars, and the essence of this disease lies in the hasty identification of theoretical units from different subject domains and worldview schemes.

Gulenko: Why does socionics, which studies the quantum nature of the psyche, not consider the active role of the observer of the communicative act? For it is precisely he who introduces the aspects into the information flow. Where is the special anthropological function? In this article it is important for me, as a relativist, to occupy a meta-position, which opens up when you turn into an observer of observers.

Commentary: Here Gulenko openly designates relativism as the basis of his worldview, which means that all who understand the limitedness and the fundamental defect of relativism must make corrections for the inevitable systematic error in Gulenko’s constructions and reasoning. It is also curious that V.V. evidently considers the IAs a product of the subject, cutting off the objective differentiation of the information flow, which exists prior to the subject’s contact with that flow. Incidentally, an analogous story took place with the concepts of light and color. For example, in the Christian religion white light was considered a primary indecomposable essence, and colors were regarded as an external coloring of white, in the way that white cloth is dyed. Only after Newton’s instrumental decomposition of white light into the color spectrum was the reality of the independent existence of colored varieties of light acknowledged. So, just as the spectrum of colors exists objectively, so too does the spectrum of IAs exist objectively. And no bugbear of positivism, especially a wrongly understood one, works here.

Also interesting in this passage is how Gulenko constructs his thought: what is the connection between the quantum nature of the psyche and the active role of the observer? It resembles “elderberry in the garden, and an uncle in Kyiv,” but in a more refined and science-flavored form. Incidentally, back in the now-distant year 1987 I held that in socionics we are dealing with quantum phenomena in the psyche, and that this is expressed, in particular, in the fact that between the Jungian polarities there is no smooth transition. Characteristics such as extraversion/introversion pertain to the type as a whole and have no gradations — with which many socionists still disagree. But what does this have to do with the active role of the observer? “Roughnesses” of this kind in Gulenko’s reasoning lead me to the thought that his “structural logic” is located not in the EGO block — and consequently his socionic self-determination is also wrong.

But let us return to the “active role of the observer of the communicative act.” It appears that Gulenko reduces this role to the observer “introducing aspects into the information flow (IF).” I have set out my attitude to this topic several times, and I will repeat here that Gulenko’s attitude to solving this problem is subjectivist. The division of the IF into aspects is objective in the same sense as the division of white light into many colors.

Gulenko: Let us consider another variant of the physical interpretation of the universals. Open systems exchange substance, energy, and information with the external environment. If information stands opposed to energy, then what is the antipode of substance? Obviously, the field. The field is irreducible to substance, to energy, or to information. Substance and field form moving matter.

Commentary: Where did V.V. get the idea that information stands opposed to energy? Who has scientifically substantiated such an opposition? No one before Gulenko has done so. This is a typical example of an intuitive flight of fancy. V.V. has adopted this opposition and is actively implanting it in the consciousness of socionists — in particular, by proposing an energy model as a counterweight to the informational one, which he associates with Model A. And when V.V. speaks of the field, he enters into outright contradiction with physics, for the field is always energy — it is an energetic array, an energetic space, and not some abstract entity that he uses alongside the other three.

Gulenko: If we correlate this four of physical categories with Jung’s functions, the connection will obviously be as follows: the substance component of communication corresponds to sensing, the energetic to ethics, the informational to logic, and the field component to intuition.

Commentary: Here is an example of a very superficial line of reasoning. We need there to be four — so we add the field. N. N. Medvedev’s natural-science four has at least long been tried and tested in physics, though it too contains logical errors. Furthermore, one can in no way agree with the “obvious” distribution of the SFs across Gulenko’s set of physical entities. The defect of the set itself has already been mentioned, which means any use of it will contain an error; but let us nevertheless consider the distribution proposed by Gulenko more concretely.

“…the substance component of communication corresponds to sensing” — Interpersonal communication, or more simply, social interaction, is an exchange of thoughts, emotions, things, and also of the energy standing behind these components, and all this together can in no way be tied to socionic sensing, that is, the ability in one way or another to perceive an object or, more precisely, reality. Things that people may hand to one another in the process of interaction — flowers, say, or plates of food — are not sensing, which after all is not reducible to some one of its modalities, for example the visual or the tactile.

I do not doubt that in the process of interaction people can exchange energy, although in this formulation the problem has not been considered or solved in psychology. One may speak, for example, of energetic recharging or energetic vampirism, but there is no fundamental difference here from when someone gives a person a thing or takes it away — for example, a toy from a child. And no grounds are apparent for identifying only the exchange of energy with the ethical aspect of behavior, since social interaction in itself is wholly immersed in the atmosphere of ethics.

One gets the impression that Gulenko frankly does not understand that communication is always informational, whatever concrete exchange it may involve. If you give someone a box of chocolates, this is not merely an elementary physical transfer of a material object in space. It is a quite definite informational signal which, in accordance with the concepts of socionics, may be connected with any IA — and not only with the “structural logic” named after Gulenko, since it was he who invented this science-flavored concept that does not correspond to the real state of affairs.

And finally, the equating of the “field” component of communication with intuition. And this against the background of the three preceding illegitimate equations. It is done as if the field (the physical understanding of the term is meant, of course) were some entity separate from energy — as if one could communicate separately “by the energetic type” and separately “by the field type.” Colleagues-logicians, forgive me, but when one has to explain to a scholar well known in socionics something that a logician perceives as elementary, can such a scholar be considered a logician — among whom he counts himself?! But let us nevertheless try to enter into Gulenko’s intuitive process.

Gulenko: If we reverse the course of our reasoning and swap logic/ethics and sensing/intuition with the functions of extra/introversion and rationality/irrationality — which, incidentally, are not “aspects” for Yermak — we obtain a no less convincing picture of the external world’s reflection by the individual’s psyche. In the inverted system, extraversion will denote a materialist orientation of the psyche, and its opposite, introversion, an idealist one. Rationality generates a perception of the world dismembered into parts — objects standing in causal connection with one another — while irrationality makes the world whole, continual-wavelike and synchronous, that is, acausal.

Commentary: Here V.V. shares some methodological secrets of his work. The device Gulenko proposes may perhaps have a heuristic effect, though I do not quite understand how “logic” can be swapped with extraversion or with anything else, since psychic and psychological traits in themselves, having qualitative determinacy, are presumed to be identical to themselves.

Gulenko: For aspect-based socionists the theory turns out to be unexpected and contrary to their presuppositions. But its author is none other than C. G. Jung. Jung’s thesis on the correspondence of extra/introversion to two ancient philosophical currents, to which the first chapter of “Psychological Types” is devoted, as well as his concept of synchronicity, would not hurt to be at least mentioned by today’s “aspect-builders.”

Commentary: Here V.V. uses a socionic term of abuse of his own invention — “aspect socionists” — branding socionic dullards incapable of mastering the art of inverting functions. As for the appeal to Jung’s authority in order to convince the reader of the reliability of his own inventions, that appeal needs serious verification: on a socionic reading of Jung it becomes obvious that he, though the creator of a psychological typology, failed to understand a great deal in typology, and understood much with such distortions of the potential meaning that his socionic adaptation and reconstruction are simply impossible. Socionics took from Jung everything that could be taken, and there is nothing more for it to take from him [1st volume of this book: the section on Jung].

Gulenko: There is also a biological variant of the natural-science approach. Its developers hypostatize a direct link between the functions and various zones of the brain. Yermak repeats the traditional opinion that the rational functions correspond to the left hemisphere and the irrational to the right. But what then of the function of emotions? It is located in the right hemisphere, though it belongs to the rational class of functions.

Commentary: Here Gulenko touches on a theme having no direct relation to the psychological side of socionics, but to which many leading socionists have turned, attempting indirectly to substantiate the reality of the SFs by the localization in the brain of their presumed physiological carrier. Of course, questions of this kind are not solved at the level of amateur dilettantism; nevertheless, these attempts are in themselves of interest both as a statement of the problem and as a demonstration of the methodological capacities and presuppositions of socionist scholars in an adjacent field of research.

Of course, the posing of such a problem is quite understandable: its solution could serve as a direct physiological substantiation of the existence of the SFs. However, from a logical point of view we encounter here a disguised paradox. Socionists suppose that such functions exist and try to find their localization in the brain, believing this would become proof of their existence in the psychic field as well; thus, having acknowledged something as existing in one subject domain — the psychic and psychological — the scholar tries to find proofs of this existence in another domain, namely the physiological, although the principle of the irreducibility of the psychic to the physiological apparently disavows such an attempt. The SFs are psychic functions of a high level of generalization. Thus generalized sensing deals not with concrete sensory modalities — sight, hearing, smell, etc. — but with the very capacity not only to detect and distinguish an object but also to withstand its possible negative influence on the perceiver. And although physiologists know the structure of the substrate that provides, for example, sight or hearing at the level of the organs the subject uses, they do not know the informational mechanism of the subjective functioning either of the very capacity to interpret what is perceived or, in particular, of the subjective mechanisms of pattern recognition. The same can be said of all the other SFs. Attempts at their naive distribution over the surface of the brain recall the phrenologists’ attempts to find on the surface of the skull the bumps responsible for abilities.

At the same time, physiologists point quite confidently to the zones of the brain that receive information from, for example, the optic or auditory nerves, and it is known in general that all sensory information enters the thalamus — yet for some reason not a single socionist has attempted to “localize” sensing there. No one has attempted to connect in any way the cerebellum, responsible for coordination of movements, with extraverted thinking. But the motor zone, and other parts of the brain too, are related to it. The expression of emotions is closely connected with the hypothalamus, but not only that is connected with it. The limbic system is deeply involved in the emotional process. These mentions alone make a rigid localization of the SFs in the surface layer of the gray cortex highly dubious.

In the brain the speech zones of Broca (connected with grammatical correctness of speech) and Wernicke (connected with the content side of verbal communication) are quite definitely localized; but speech is nothing other than the objectivation of introverted thinking — so does this mean that the aggregate of these two zones is the projection of introverted thinking in the brain? No, it does not — they are merely particular components of the mechanism providing the processing of information in the psyche with the use of intellectual operators. And of course let us not forget that the brain and the psyche are not the same thing. The brain is the material substrate providing the functioning of a wide spectrum of psychic capacities, in the way that a television set provides the transmission of image and sound while itself being neither the one nor the other, and still less coinciding with the content of the television programs — these are different qualitative levels of the phenomenology unfolding in the world, and they are not reducible to one another.

And even A. V. Bukalov, well versed in the physiology of the brain, did not avoid a straight-line binding of the generalized psychic functions to the surface of the brain, arranging them along the corpus callosum sequentially in the right and left hemispheres — the irrational and rational functions respectively, in order from the occipital lobes to the frontal: LH — e, E, L, l and RH — S, s, i, I. That is, in the left hemisphere introverted emoting, extraverted emoting, extraverted thinking, introverted thinking; and in the right hemisphere introverted sensing, introverted sensing, introverted intuition, and extraverted intuition [8: 539]. It seems that hemispheric asymmetry is understood here too literally, so that the “locus” of extraverted intuition in the right hemisphere is symmetrically opposed by the “locus” of introverted thinking in the left, and so on. At the current level of development of brain physiology this will not do even as a hypothesis, and looks like nothing more than metaphysical fantasies.

It is also known that in theories of hemispheric asymmetry of the brain, emotionality — without rigid localization — is nonetheless associated with the right hemisphere; but Yermak and Bukalov, contrary to this, place it in the left hemisphere out of general metaphysical considerations.

It seems the socionists’ attention has missed the old dispute between the neurophysiologists who sought an unambiguous localization of psychic qualities in the brain (localists) and those who held that such qualities are determined by the work of the whole brain, or at least by the interaction of its different parts (globalists). And it does not occur to some socionists that highly generalized psychic functions are supported by the conjoint work of the entire brain and have no rigid attachment to its individual regions — just as episodes of a television film cannot be attached to particular parts of the television set.

Gulenko: This bold hypothesis contradicts the generally accepted proposition that structuredness and formalism, that is, the function L, are characteristic of the left hemisphere. Perhaps the scrupulous brain researcher A. Filimonov interprets structuredness as the function of business logic (P)? In any case, his neurophysiological erudition commands admiration.

Commentary: In this passage one can see well how distorted initial propositions and terms lead to incorrect formulations. In neurophysiological theories of brain asymmetry the talk is of rationality and irrationality, not of structuredness and formalism, whose combination is not adequate to rationality; and introverted thinking is not reducible to what Gulenko calls “structural logic” — no such scientific discipline exists, and the use of this term misleads the conscientious reader.

Gulenko: I think one can exit this dead end if one supposes that logic and sensing (the managerial functions) belong to the left hemisphere, and emotions and intuitive thinking (the humanitarian functions) to the right. The socials (ethics + sensing) and the scientists (logic + intuition) then turn out to be…

Commentary: After what has been said above, it becomes clear that what is proposed here is a passage from one dead end into another, and it is done for the sake of a metaphysical idea — so that two groups of socionic types, the socials and the scientists, would turn out to be “types with relatively balanced interhemispheric thinking.” While for representatives of the other two groups — the managers and the humanitarians — thinking turns out a priori to be “relatively unbalanced.” Such is socionic discrimination…

Gulenko: Can something more intelligible be opposed to physicalism and biologism? I think the reader would be attracted by the point of view of common sense, which avoids piling up schemes. Here is one example. A. Toffler, in his bestseller “Future Shock,” enumerated the basic components of all situations: things, places, people, organizations, and ideas. Moreover, all of this develops in time.

Commentary: Gulenko holds aloft the frankly metaphysical ideas of Toffler as “something intelligible,” where it is obvious that even the very set of categories he has chosen does not satisfy the requirements of completeness and independence.

Gulenko: Toffler’s idea is simple and graphic. Contact with things occurs through the sensory channel; with people, as animate beings, through the ethical one. Organizations arise thanks to logic, while ideas are generated and perceived by means of intuition. Places set the statics of communication, and time its dynamics. Schematically it might look like this:

            ideas
              ↕
people — PSYCHE — organizations
              ↕
            things

Commentary: This is an example of vulgarizing metaphysics, going for simplification for the sake of schematic simplicity and graphicness. The basic categories chosen here are superficially tied to the generalized socionic functions. It is hard to take seriously “contact with things” as merely their sensory perception. Things are not pictures for looking at; contact with them occurs in all functional modalities — it is not enough to perceive them, one must evaluate them emotionally, understand them intuitively, classify them logically, reproduce them technologically, etc. — but then, Toffler does not know socionics. And people, of course, we perceive not only “through the ethical channel”: we see and hear them, we understand them (or fail to), etc. The height of oversimplification is the claim that “organizations arise thanks to logic,” as if Toffler and the transmitter of this idea, Gulenko, did not understand the existence of complex processes in the formation of social infrastructure. Even ideas, though perceived by means of intuition, also pass through the full cycle of processing by the generalized psychic functions. As for “places,” these are of course concretized fragments of space, whose category, alongside the category of time, provides the physicalist description of the phenomenology of constant changes in the habitat. The concept of place is not commensurate in conceptual scope with the concept of time, which perhaps aids a simplistically understood popularization and which should rather be understood as populism and a populist simplification of science. Certainly the concept of place deserves philosophical reflection — but not at the level of populist vulgarization.

Gulenko: And now let us take into account that a person contacts things, people, organizations, and ideas in a definite place and a definite time. If we introduce the factor of space (place), this gives the construction a rotation around its own axis, while the action of the time factor leads to a blurring of the clear picture. Toffler’s scheme says that the dichotomy statics/dynamics, which the aspect specialists steer clear of, is no less fundamental than the customary Jungian scales. The trait statics describes the geometry of space, and dynamics the course of time.

Commentary: Gulenko is, of course, an intelligent and talented scholar, and he understands the relation between the concepts of place and space — and hence could have recognized the Tofflerian vulgarization of the complex human situation in the world; but when he speaks of the “rotation” of the above construction “around its own axis” (which “axis,” incidentally, does he have in mind — vertical or horizontal?), apparently outside of time, since he introduces it afterward — then, I think, even the advanced “ordinary person” for whom Toffler’s scheme is designed will feel his head spin, and the “blurring of the clear picture” performed after that can only aggravate the dramatic consequences of the intellect’s contact with schemes of this kind. The absence of proof, the superficial use of terms, and the disregard of the methodology of science make reasoning of this kind metaphysical manipulation.

Gulenko: During trainings it is convenient to introduce the communicative functions through psychic states.

Commentary: Gulenko created his own school of socionics, significantly distorting Aushra Augustinavichiute’s understanding of socionics. For some reason he began calling the SFs communicative, although in Model A there is only one communicative function — the CPF (communicative-probing function); it is this function that is directly aimed at communication. All the other functions have different semantics, and to call them communicative is knowingly to mislead the reader. From this it also follows that all of V.V.’s further reasoning contains a systematic distortion of socionic concepts.

Gulenko: What does a person think, feel, and sense when the corresponding function becomes dominant?

Commentary: What is this about? The socionic functions have quite definite semantics and, performing their common work — which, in the final analysis, is aimed at the survival of the individual — operate in a coordinated regime, so there is no occasion here to speak of a change of dominance. Evidently this is a different socionics.

Gulenko: The simplest variant of a psychological introduction of the Jungian functions (sensing, intuition, feeling, and thinking) might be the following. There are four means of interaction to which people resort when they interact:

1. speech as the transmission of some information (the logical channel),
2. intonations, gestures, facial expressions, breathing rhythm (the ethical channel),
3. exchange of objects and physical touch (the sensory channel),
4. eye contact, mind-reading (the intuitive channel).

Commentary: An example of vulgarizing metaphysics. Evidently V.V. either simply does not understand the meaning of the socionic functions, or understands them so differently that he offers the consumer his own counterfeit of socionics. Having replaced introverted thinking with “structural logic,” he commits a further distortion by interpreting speech as the logical channel, whereas speech is a communicative medium capable of transmitting the entire spectrum of communicative modalities. All the “channels” V.V. enumerates are by no means specialized in the way Gulenko proposes; they can serve any combination of the transmitter’s intentions and, in any case, not so unambiguously as V.V. thinks.

Gulenko: Let us continue our brief excursion into psychology. In this science, psychic processes-functions keep surfacing in one form or another. Many theories play on the textbook triad mind — feeling — will.

Commentary: Socionics has overcome the theoretical limitedness of individual psychological schools and needs no correction from their side.

Gulenko: Within this tradition is built, for example, N. Gosudarev’s theory of the “triangular” (three-function) person. The first corner of his triangle is occupied by the sensorimotor person, whose communication is guided by the needs of the body. He is followed by the emotional person, motivated by such feelings as love-hatred. And the figure is completed by the rational person, moving toward his goals under the guidance of reason. Gosudarev, evidently, is “discovering” for the umpteenth time the functions of sensing, ethics, logic. Intuition as an independent function is absent in his scheme.

Commentary: The simplified character of N. Gosudarev’s theory is obvious.

Gulenko: The triadic organization of the human personality is reproduced also in A. Galin. He distinguishes 3 types of thinking — image-sensory, conceptual-logical, and emotional. Intuition he does not discard, as Gosudarev does, but considers a special function representing a synthesis of these three sides of thinking.

Commentary: The simplified character of A. Galin’s theory is obvious.

Gulenko: Three personality types are proposed also by N. N. Obozov, namely: thinker, practitioner, communicator. The thinker is most effective in the cognitive sphere. The communicator, in the sphere of social interaction and interpersonal relations. The practitioner gravitates toward concrete activity with clearly posed tasks of an objectal character.

Commentary: It is clear that socionics long ago overcame such truncated typologies, though perhaps socionists could use some successful findings in them to refine their own observations.

Gulenko: Let us turn, finally, to the classical theory of the higher psychic functions of L. S. Vygotsky (1896–1934). Instead of natural-science functionalism, the scholar developed the cultural-historical and sign-speech aspects of the psyche. He explained the events of a person’s life through four classes of psychic functions: 1) those connected with the biological organism (socionic sensing), 2) interpersonal communication (socionic ethics), 3) formation of meaning (socionic logic), and 4) culture — the historical continuity of ideas (socionic intuition).

Commentary: With all due respect to the remarkable Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, socionics cannot fully rely on his work — simply because they have different tasks, a different orientation, and a different methodology. But the way Gulenko glosses the elements of Vygotsky’s theory constitutes an outright vulgarization of both psychology and socionics. Socionic sensing is a highly generalized function representing the general capacity for perceiving an object, not “the biological organism.” Interpersonal communication is by no means equivalent to socionic ethics, which, according to Jung, is not ethics at all but emoting as a reaction to sensory perception. Interpersonal communication is a special social phenomenon not reducible to the socionic functions, owing to the difference of their qualitative levels. Far more relevant to interpersonal communication is the socionic theory of intertype relations. “Formation of meaning” correlates first of all with intuition; logic merely shapes its expression. And as for tying culture to socionic intuition — culture is of course not only the historical continuity of ideas, but includes the material environment, moral-ethical institutions, and the entire history of the formation of technological means of adaptation to the habitat. Distortions of generally accepted scientific concepts of this kind can be understood either as incompetence or as “playing giveaway chess,” when a partner deliberately changes the rules and aims of the game.

Gulenko: Thus the socionic theory of communicative functions, if one looks into it, in principle does not contradict traditional psychology. Socionics, as we see, did after all branch off from the psychological trunk.

Commentary: “If one looks into it,” what Gulenko writes in his article in principle contradicts both traditional psychology and the classical core of socionics created by Aushra Augustinavichiute.

Gulenko: The most graphic and accessible way of introducing the communicative functions is the sensory one — the everyday-domestic aspect. But it is, unfortunately, also the least developed. Here we are interested in bodily constitution, facial forms, gait, voice pitch, health, clothing, everyday habits — everything we encounter daily in ordinary life.

Commentary: V.V. proposes various ways of introducing the SFs, which he understands merely as communicative rather than generalized psychic functions. The analysis carried out above allows one to assess almost everything Gulenko has written above in this article [1] as a serious distortion of psychological and socionic concepts. Besides, now, after Gulenko’s frank admission of his relativist presuppositions, one can already assess the real harm of the implantation into a scholar’s consciousness of worldview presuppositions of this kind, which are tantamount to a massive cognitive distortion. The scholar loses real control over his verbal output and passes to the level of arbitrary improvisations using scientific terminology. That this compromises the scholar is only half the trouble. In the end, that is his own affair. But what is considerably worse is that socionics too is thereby compromised. Of course, V.V. has developments valuable for socionics, but when in a science the wheat is mixed with the chaff, this substantially reduces its effectiveness. Clearly, a trusting client can, with the use of psychological knowledge, be sold any information whatsoever; but it is time for the client to learn to be more demanding and to beware of technological counterfeits, which under legislative liberalism easily flood the market.

Gulenko: The sensory aspect of socionics, like the theory of E. Kretschmer, is built on the premise that people with a certain body type possess similar psychic characteristics.

Commentary: The sensory aspect of socionics is not the body types of Kretschmer or Sheldon, but socionic empirics connected with direct observation of people from the point of view of socionics. V.V. builds his reasoning on an arbitrary interpretation of general scientific terminology.

Gulenko: For people of high philosophical culture, the ideational (intuitive) way of presenting information will be justified — through the history of humanitarian ideas. It is precisely by this means that C. G. Jung proves the existence of the extraverted and introverted attitudes of the psyche.

Commentary: Jung does not prove the existence of the extraverted and introverted attitudes of the psyche — he detects them, discovers them in his clinical practice, yet never formulates their exact meaning, which was disclosed in socionics.

Gulenko: …As for V. Yermak, who develops the conception of N. N. Medvedev: although he saturated it with numerous logical details, he has, unfortunately, completely lost its specific philosophical meaning.

Commentary: I analyzed in detail Medvedev’s attempt to substantiate the essence of the IAs and how Yermak tried to perfect his approach [4: chapter 2], and here I will only say that, in my view, this variant of substantiating the IAs contains too many inaccuracies. For example, it is entirely unclear why the category of “relations” is linked with introversion: “temporal relations → introverted intuition”? “spatial relations → introverted sensing”? “relations of material objects → introverted thinking”? “energetic relations → introverted emoting”? All this is accepted on the basis of intuitive conviction. In Yermak’s interpretation of Medvedev one senses too superficial an acquaintance with philosophy.

Gulenko: In particular, the fundamental philosophical problem of the nature of universals was passed over. It requires an answer to the question: are the communicative functions/aspects an objective given, or are they merely our thoughts about it? Historically, four answers crystallized:

1. realism (the Platonic-Jungian position), insisting that universals exist objectively and determine the psychology of people’s behavior;
2. nominalism: the opposite position, arguing that universals are no more than a nominal phenomenon, that is, conventions, labels; these views are held by the neuro-linguistic programmers, who assert that a fixed type is a prejudice and a fiction and can be arbitrarily modified;
3. Aristotelianism (moderate realism): universals coexist with concrete things, being their function or form;
4. conceptualism (moderate nominalism): universals exist as concepts generalized by consciousness, located in our mind.

Commentary: Gulenko’s philosophical erudition is on display, but he himself offers no solution to the posed problem, referring the reader to a contradictory multitude of philosophical positions and apparently considering all these positions equal in value, with the reader free to choose whatever he finds suitable. There is an example of a relativist “solution” for you. Socionics offers an effective solution to the problem of universals with reliance on the concepts of extraversion and introversion. The extraverted world — the world of objective reality — consists not only of objects and processes (this opposition is not obligatory) but also of their signal copies, continuously reproduced by the entire totality of media present in the world and in which the objects and processes are immersed. The signal copies are as objective as the objects corresponding to them. The signal copies are present in the signal space in all environmental modalities — for example, in all electromagnetic ranges — but the subject is capable of detecting only those signal copies to whose perception he adapted in the course of evolution, having developed the corresponding organs of perception. Thus the human being sees in the optical range, but copies of objects in the radio range are inaccessible to him. And since the signal copies have a whole series of signal parameters, they can be grouped by the subject. For example, a person may single out the “class of blue objects,” or the “class of small objects,” or the “class of edible objects,” perceived by him through their signal copies. But the corresponding signal copies and the sets of objects they reproduce are really present in the world and are not subjective illusions. It is also easy to imagine the possibility of the appearance of signals to which no objects correspond — these may be more or less random, or perhaps systemic, perturbations of the signal medium, which can also be perceived by the subject, and this will be a special case of perceiving that for which no objectal correspondence can be found. This case we will not consider for now.

Now it is easy to understand that the subject can single out a class of objects corresponding to one or another IA, but to this class there will correspond a real set. So to the objective set — including a concrete IA — there will correspond a subjective class, realized in the subject’s generalized functional selectivity. In other words, in the course of evolution the subject forms generalized psychic functions adapted to work with the sets of objects united by the IAs. The reasoning presented allows one to speak of universals as signal copies with definite parameters. Thus universals exist objectively, and upon perception by the subject they turn into subjective classificatory units. Such a solution to the problem of universals makes the philosophical positions enumerated by Gulenko particular cases.

The subject’s inner world — the introverted world — is filled with signal copies in the modalities of the psychic substrate, whose nature still remains problematic. Problematic, naturally, for science, not for integral human experience.

Gulenko: I am not acquainted with any science that would not declare itself guided by the systems approach. Such too is socionics. But how is systematicity to be understood?

Commentary: Alas, science is not homogeneous in its ethical qualities. Alongside conscientious scholars there exists a large number of gradations of characters filling scientific institutions, who demonstrate a great variety of deformations of productive scientific activity. The core of the Gaussian distribution of the parameters of such activity is still the search for truth, but at the periphery of the distribution we will find corruption, plagiarism, forgery, dirty intrigues, raiding, quasi-scientific activity, and much else. And of course the transition from core to periphery contains a mass of ethical shades — when, for example, a talented scholar may participate in corruption schemes or use dishonest methods in the fight against competitors. In particular, there exists a fashion for using this or that categorial apparatus, and cases are not rare when, within quasi-science, elements of such an apparatus are merely declared. Such too is the concept of system — many quasi-scholars have adopted it in the form of one of its simplified homonyms, where the mere pronunciation of the word, or its mention in the text of an article, is rated as a standard of scientificity. But it is surprising that Gulenko, an unquestionably erudite scholar, asks the question “how is systematicity to be understood?”

Gulenko: Yermak gives an elementarist understanding of the system — as a totality of interacting elements. On such a treatment of systematicity, as I have already said, rests the old research program of W. Wundt, who intended to calculate the first elements of the psyche and then discover the laws by which structures are composed of them.

Commentary: I would not assess Yermak’s position so categorically, for his definition of a system also includes the concept of wholeness. As for Wundt, he took the first steps in turning psychology into a science, and his methodological ideas no longer seem so scholastic; and now, in socionics, we have already calculated the first elements of the psyche and know the laws by which structures are composed of them. So Wundt’s dream is gradually turning into reality.

Gulenko: I more often adhere to the holistic alternative, which understands the system in the opposite way — as a network of connections filled by untyped elements. Thus we have returned to where we began — to history.

Commentary: The holistic alternative is just as one-sided as the elementarist understanding of the system. The full meaning of this concept must hold on to, must synthesize, both poles. And socionics here is a suitable example, when alongside the elementarist enumeration of, say, the ARP in the specification of a TIM, its integral image is also given.

---

In 1999 Sergei Savchenko wrote an article, “The Basic Contradictions in Socionics,” apparently intending to sum up the wild development of socionics across the post-Soviet expanse. However, much of what Savchenko writes looks strange, to say the least. Seryozha writes that “Criticism in socionics is as absent as a ghost in a barracks” — but in reality nobody ever forbade it: if you want to criticize, go ahead, only preferably in a qualified manner. And then Seryozha, starting from the definition of socionics given by Yermak — “Socionics is the science of the structure and mechanism of the psyche” — makes a discovery for himself. He writes: “That is, there exists a psyche. What is it? Unknown.” On the one hand, it is hard even to believe this — after all, we are all bearers of a psyche and must surely have at least some idea of it, all the more so a cultured and highly educated historian like Savchenko. The simplest definition of the psyche is to understand it as a system of subjective reactions. And how do you define the psyche?

On the other hand, official science does not know what the psyche is. To picture the attitude to this problem in Soviet and post-Soviet psychology, it suffices to read the relevant quotation from the dictionary “Psychology” [8]: “The understanding of the psyche (P.) as reflection makes it possible to overcome the false posing of the problem of the relation between the psychological and the physiological, which leads either to the divorce of the P. from the work of the brain, or to the reduction of psychic phenomena to physiological ones, or, finally, to the simple statement of the parallelism of their course. The disclosure of psychic reflection as engendered in the process of the material subject’s interaction with objective reality excludes the view of psychic phenomena as purely spiritual, isolated from the corporeal cerebral processes by means of which the transition of the reflected reality into psychic reflection takes place. However, the characterization of the subject’s activity cannot be directly derived from the physiological processes realizing it, since it is determined by the properties and relations of the objective world, to which it is subordinated and to which, correspondingly, the psychic reflection arising in the subject’s brain is also subordinated.”

From this quotation it is clear that the proposed problem is assigned to the category of pseudo-problems and considered definitively solved — well, perhaps except for some technical details, which can be refined in a working order. Although, on the other hand, everything said in this quotation can be regarded as pure nonsense. Think into it, read into the reasoning presented, and at some moment you will understand this, if you did not understand it from the start. Let us begin with the concept of reflection. How does the author of the quoted text understand reflection? As in a mirror, or what? Perhaps somehow differently? But how? Of this the quoted text says nothing. Apparently, in the times when this dictionary was compiled, it was considered that everyone understood this word as they should. In any case, reflection is a certain action, a certain function — and there is no function without an organ. So within the framework of what organ does this reflection take place? That organ is the psyche. And the reduction of the psyche to a totality of physiological processes is nothing more than the most vulgar reductionism. Vulgar reductionism rests on reducing a phenomenon to the nearest factors by which it can be somehow explained. But scientific explanation must go further and find factors adequate to the phenomenon under investigation. So I must apologize to Seryozha for doubting his doubts, for the problem of the psyche in fact remains unsolved in official science, although the chief psychologists are certain that they at least know what the psyche is.

Savchenko: It is considered that socionics is built on Jung’s psychic functions and attitudes and Kempinski’s theory of information metabolism.

Commentary: Of course, here the author expresses his own opinion — where does this “it is considered” come from; he did not, after all, survey all socionists. Aushra pushed off from Jung’s discoveries and made her own. We can now already say that “Jung’s attitudes” — extraversion and introversion — need not be regarded as attitudes, which, according to Uznadze, belong to the motivational sphere of the personality and are situational rather than fundamental in character. It is more productive to understand extraversion and introversion as differentiating traits (DTs) — fundamental psychic qualities constituting elements of human temperament.

As for Kempinski, this remarkable psychiatrist had no special theory of IM; there was a beautiful cybernetic term, with which was associated the notion of a special psychic function whose disorder Kempinski connected with schizophrenic phenomenology. He was engaged in treating schizophrenia and, to explain it, invoked a disturbance of information exchange.

And here is how Yermak answers this very same phrase of Savchenko’s: “Yes! And what — are there grounds for doubt? First announcing socionics in a popular Lithuanian magazine, Aushra Augusta wrote: ‘To the readers’ attention I offer a typology which Carl Gustav Jung created and which I have somewhat perfected, using A. Kempinski’s theory of information metabolism.’ In another work: ‘The most mature is the typology of C. G. Jung. This is furthered by the author’s approach to the human psyche as a definite structure, whereas all other typologies have a descriptive character. Behind his names are the strongest sides of the human psyche, called by the author psychic functions. The basic functions are the abilities of a person with a special skill to make sense of definite aspects of the world. We shall call these functions elements of the person’s information metabolism.’ So whence come S. V. Savchenko’s doubts about ‘to what extent and how Jung’s ideas entered socionics?’ And how can one, in a work claiming to be a critical analysis of a science, enumerate the foundations of socionics with poorly concealed disdain?! Yes! — ‘there exists a psyche; what it is — unknown.’ Yes! — precisely because ‘it is unknown,’ ‘the structure of the psyche, the psychic mechanisms are reflected in the model.’ Yes! — the functioning of the psyche is based on the principle of information metabolism. Yes! — this is socionics. Thus A. Augusta founded it and thus it has been developing for more than thirty years! And what was S. V. Savchenko thinking of when speaking of bricks — forgive me, of socionics? Of something else? Then of what? I am grateful for the criticism (at last!) and, treating S. V. Savchenko with the utmost respect, am nevertheless compelled to pay a compliment: driven by ‘the duty at least to attempt a critical analysis,’ tormented by ‘doubts,’ in his article, short as a military order, he has surpassed Marshal G. K. Zhukov himself. True, the marshal did not so much criticize as do — and if he did criticize, he knew what he was talking about. Does S. V. Savchenko know? Another ‘problem,’ a paragraph below: — 2. What are aspects of information metabolism? And, incidentally, a curious question. Are the aspects of information metabolism identical to the aspects of the information flow?’ Well, if S. V. Savchenko sees the identity of aspects and, as he literally writes, ‘parameters, things, whatchamacallits’ [khereoveny] (a flash of humor, is it?..), then indeed ‘it is more difficult to sort out the aspects.’ In which case some ‘whatchamacallit,’ in the darkness of knowledge, may well, out of fright, appear to be a ‘delayed-action mine.‘”

Commentary: How much irritation and anger there is in this reply! How much self-assurance and certainty of one’s own infallibility. That is how a boss might dress down a negligent subordinate. And so with every one of Savchenko’s doubts. It does not look like the way an LII — which Yermak claims to be — would answer. And yet Yermak’s attempt to substantiate socionics contains fundamental errors, which makes the attempt erroneous — but he does not even admit the thought. We socionists, however, understand that bearers of different TIMs may answer one and the same question differently.

Yermak: As for definitions of socionics, A. Augusta herself long ago gave one: “The science of the socion, of the socionic structure of society and the socionic nature of man, of the different types of information metabolism and the different forms of relations between them, of the structure and functioning of the model of information metabolism, we shall call socionics” [2]. At the time this definition seemed to me not entirely rigorous (let us forgive Aushra her quixotically slightly slovenly definitions, terms, analogies, justifications, etc.), and I generalized it somewhat, preserving the most essential — the model of the type of information metabolism of the psyche (the model of the TIM of the psyche). This is the definition I gave at the “seminar on the model” (in fact it was a school on the foundations of socionics) in Dnepropetrovsk:

Savchenko: It ((the psyche)) has some structure and some mechanisms ensuring its work. The structure of the psyche, or the psychic mechanisms, or the structure of the mechanisms, are reflected in the model. There are many models — no fewer than there are notions of the structure of the psyche.

Commentary: Savchenko does not know what Model A refers to, and is, in effect, wandering in the dark. And this is a most intelligent man — so what can be said of the others?

Savchenko: Types (people? not people? non-people?) participate in information metabolism. Metabolism, as the biological encyclopedic dictionary informs us, is the same as the exchange of substances. In that case, information is a form of substance — in particular, and of matter in general.

Commentary: I would not have believed that people using socionics could have such notions of their subject, had I not read it with my own eyes. INFORMATION — A FORM OF SUBSTANCE! Seryozha! Address me directly, and I will answer all your questions in such a way that no doubts will remain. Why have you fixated so on Yermak?

Savchenko: Socionics knows 16 types. Correspondingly, one structure for all and 16 different mechanisms. Or the other way round? 1 mechanism and 16 structures. The most commonly used model in socionics, by default, is considered to be Model A. In Model A the so-called psychic functions are structured in a definite way — in no way identical to Jung’s psychic functions.

Commentary: And here G. R. Reinin “in all seriousness” said that he does not know why 16. And in his article he presented a little table with 16 varieties of linden leaves [1st volume of this book], to show how these 16 arise from no one knows where, not only in socionics. And yet all the basic concepts of socionics are derived from a small number of quite intelligible axioms.

As for Model A, it is not merely the most commonly used model in socionics — it is its foundation, and all the other models are the result of its interpretation and of the misunderstanding of socionics enthusiasts, many of whom are very intelligent people. Model “G” (Gulenko) is one of the first distortions of Model A, but he does not call it by his own name, considering it to be the truth of Model A. And many socionists do not even suspect that in reading Gulenko’s books they are absorbing not Model A but its authorial distortion — Model “G.”

Model “E” (Yermak’s) is another authorial distortion of Model A, but executed on a systems basis — that is, the distortion is systemic. I analyzed Yermak’s work in detail [4: chapter 4] and refer the interested reader to my book, but I ask you to note that the semantics of the functions at which Yermak arrives does not merely differ significantly from what Aushra obtained — it is entirely different.

Model “B-3” (Bukalov, 3-dimensional) is a certain refinement of Model “G,” while Model “B-4” (4-dimensional) proceeds from the supposition that the psyche is more complex than Model A can provide for, and that a 4-dimensional model is needed for this [4, and 1st volume of this book: the section on Bukalov].

But where does Savchenko get the idea that the functions in Model A are not identical to Jung’s psychic functions? No definitions, no arguments — but he feels in his gut that they are not identical, even though he supposedly does not understand the meaning of Model A. Nevertheless, this is true, but the arguments are as follows. Jung’s greatest discovery is that he detected the positional semantics of the psychic functions — that is, that they occupy different places in the psyche: there is a leading one, there is a subordinate one, and there are auxiliary ones. But this semantics may be called empirical, in the sense that he simply saw it in his clients. In Aushra, by contrast, the semantics of the functions is intuitive-constructive [4]: she unfolded Jung’s scheme of functions into a single chain, where all the functions stand strictly in their places in the technological process of information processing. This processing is what constitutes IM.

Savchenko: It is considered that the arrangement of the model is constant and identical in all types, while the distribution of the aspects of information metabolism is variable, and it is precisely this that provides the difference between the types.

Commentary: Why “it is considered”? The arrangement of the model corresponds to reality: the psychic functions are the same in all people, but they process different information. The positional semantics answers the question “what does the function do?”, and the aspect semantics answers the question “what information does the function process?” It is splendid that Model A does not contradict reality.

Savchenko: How is the model arranged (1)?

Commentary: The model reflects the information chain, comprising perception (the sensory functions), express-evaluation of what is perceived (the emotional functions), construction of an internal model of the external environment (the intuitive functions), and the technological response to the environment’s influence (the thinking functions).

Savchenko: What are aspects of information metabolism (2)?

Commentary: The use of such a term testifies that Seryozha really does confuse certain socionic concepts, speaking of aspects of IM instead of information aspects (IAs). Of course the term AIM too can be filled with meaning, but then we would be speaking of perception, express-evaluation of the perceived, understanding of the perceived, and the living being’s response to the environment’s influence. The IAs, however, are sets of signal images of objects, perceived by the subject as generalized classes of phenomena and processes. The IAs exist objectively as parameters of the signal field.

Savchenko: Are the aspects of information metabolism identical to the aspects of the information flow (3)?

Commentary: In the sense stated above — no.

Savchenko: The answer to the first question depends in many ways on the answer to the question: To what extent, and how, did Jung’s ideas about psychological types enter socionics? True, such a posing of the question presupposes at least a minimal homogeneity of socionics, and it seems to me that precisely this is absent in socionics. But let us make the assumption that socionics is homogeneous.

Commentary: Socionics took from Jung all that could be taken, and there is nothing more for it to take from him. Let us render him his due and solve the problems facing socionics without further references to Jung — much in the functioning of the psyche he understood so erroneously that it cannot even be corrected. On careful analysis of Jung’s texts, such large divergences are found between the understanding of psychic processes in socionics and in Jung that this part of Jung’s ideas cannot be adapted not only in socionics but in psychology [1st volume of this book: the section on Jung]. As for the question of the homogeneity of socionics, it comes down to the fact that all the variations of socionics rest on the classical core created by Aushra, and within the limits of this core the question posed by Savchenko is fully resolved.

Savchenko: Jung writes of the presence of four psychic functions providing a person’s judgment. The function to which a person resorts more often and more willingly is considered dominant. The function to which he resorts rarely and unwillingly — repressed. And the two remaining functions Jung held to be equal to each other. The functions have vertness and are repressed by functions with a vertness opposite to the dominant one.

Commentary: It can now be said that Jung’s realization of the fundamentality of the functions he indicated forms part of his discovery. Nonetheless, the fact that Jung understood these functions as the basis providing a person’s judgment — this very orientation of Jung’s toward judgment must be acknowledged as limiting, since the fundamentally important moment for the human being is practical activity, while judgment merely accompanies this activity and allows it to be optimized. I took this into account when formulating the Churyumov–Jung axiomatics.

Savchenko: The psychic function is identified with a position of the model. So some socionist untouched by serious basic education may well try his luck at combining the suggestive function according to Aushra with the function of thinking according to Jung. The chaotic Brownian motion of socionists within socionics does not allow one to say whether all socionists hold identical notions of the essence of each of the eight psychic functions of Model A. But from the publications one may conclude that for now socionists converge only in the quantitative assessment.

Commentary: It is exactly the other way round — it is the position that is determined by the semantics of the function. Thus the eyes on the face carry out the function of sight, and for that reason evolution placed them in a spot convenient for it. So too the psychic functions — they are positioned in the functional chain of IM and cannot be swapped around, although, standing in their functional place, they can be tuned to the processing of different aspect information, which is what determines the TIM.

However, let us not orient ourselves toward uneducated people — after all, to drive a car one must, of course, distinguish the steering wheel from the wheels. At the present time it can be said that there already exist about three dozen socionic schools, in which the semantics of the functions is understood differently — according to how well the founder of the school, the “maître” (Yermak’s term), managed to sort it out. In this book I have analyzed the understanding of socionics of several maîtres, and I would like the intelligent socionists to react intelligently: to read what I have written about them and to send me their remarks in an academic mode. I would analyze their remarks and answer the maîtres. And then, at last, a socionic dialogue would begin, and there would appear a chance to bring socionics to the level of a science. For now it is merely the embryo of a science, torn apart into technological schemes, and also used for playing “WHAT’S-YOUR-NAME,” or simply in the mode of mockery, when scientific terms are irresponsibly, and sometimes deliberately, perverted, becoming material for vulgar humor — as was done, for example, by the author of “anal socionics” — HEE-HEE-HEE, “KUPYLA MATY KONYKA, A KONYK BEZ NOGY.”

Savchenko: It may be so, or it may not be otherwise. Which of these principles was laid down in the construction of the model?

Commentary: Seryozha, read my two little books and let us begin a scientific dialogue in academic mode.

Savchenko: The most persistent propagandist of Model A today is V. D. Yermak. Therefore the polemic will most often concern his assertions. But, in my view, Yermak has only brought to the point of discovery the logical contradictions originally embedded in socionics.

Commentary: Alas, Yermak created his own Model “E” and propagandizes it. In any case, it can be said of him that he errs honestly and sincerely disseminates his errors.

Savchenko: Incidentally, Yermak is the only one who declares directly and unambiguously: “The model cannot be constructed otherwise.”

Commentary: I collected and analyzed nearly all the models [4: chapter 4] proposed by socionists, reflecting their level of understanding of Model A — which, incidentally, can be regarded as a test of quick-wittedness.

Savchenko: The model obtained by Yermak is absolutely identical to Model A. Either Aushra guessed brilliantly, or Vladimir Davidovich involuntarily adjusted the fit. Though possibly it also “cannot be otherwise.”

Commentary: The model obtained by Yermak is not identical to Model A: he arrives at an entirely different (“techno-form”) semantics, and this disavows his model. As for Aushra, there is no question here of guessing — she had a heuristic guide, which she followed.

Savchenko: Why are the functions connected not with identical but with different dimensionality? Why does the function of individual experience — the fifth in the model — correlate not with the function of personal social experience — the fourth — but with the function of social norms — the third?

Commentary: Dimensionalities are a beautiful mathematical metaphor that has no direct relation to the psyche. I have described this in its proper place. Moreover, the functions have no numbers — those are conventional little tags for naming them in shorthand. Incidentally, there are several variants of authorial numbering of the functions — well, whoever reached whatever level of understanding. A definite semantics is connected with the functions, which makes it possible to identify them fully and set them in their places without resorting to numbering. The problem is to find a scientific way of determining the functional semantics. I have found it, but apart from a few inarticulate half-insults I have as yet received no feedback.

Savchenko: It is in many ways harder to sort out the aspects. Information consists of information about Space, Time, Matter, and Energy (without definitions). Start giving definitions — and we perish. That is on the first(?) level. The next level of granularity — information about Space and the Relations of Spaces, about Time and the Relations of Time (or Times), about Matter and the Relation of Matter, and about Energy and the Relations of Energy.

Commentary: I have analyzed the attempts of all socionists to sort out or substantiate the IAs [4: chapter 2]. In all these attempts, without exception, there are logical, methodological, and cognitive errors, which a self-respecting scholar must either refute or correct. A scholar who does not want to correct errors is, by definition, not a scholar.

Of course definitions must be given, and I have done so. There is no need to fear that we will perish under the rubble of definitions. It is all within human capacities. Yermak tried to improve Medvedev’s constructions but even worsened them — replacing, for example, MATTER with OBJECTS, thereby violating the semantic unity of Medvedev’s terminology. Medvedev himself, having chosen a “decent gentleman’s set” of categories, alas, failed to notice the defect present in it, which renders this set unfit for deriving the IAs. The point is that the IAs are independent entities — that is, they are not derived from one another — whereas in Medvedev’s set the categories SPACE and MATTER, on the one hand, and TIME and ENERGY, on the other, are pairwise connected. TIME is the introverted image of ENERGY, and SPACE the introverted image of MATTER. The introverted concepts of SPACE and TIME are used in physics for describing the extraverted entities MATTER and ENERGY. Incidentally, Yermak’s error with Medvedev’s categories became for me one of the arguments in favor of the view that Yermak is not a logical type, though he is well drilled in logic — small wonder, 25 years of work in a systems department! What is more, he is not merely an intelligent but a very intelligent man — yet an ethical type. As if ethical types could not be intelligent! Moreover, he is a sensing type, and his TIM is Dreiser — whence that “ferocity” in discussion situations which is uncharacteristic of the Robespierres, among whom he counts himself. Think about that.

Here is another fragment of his reply-bark to S. Savchenko: “Generally speaking, ‘a strange situation has taken shape’ — one gets the impression that from the works of C. G. Jung down to the article by S. V. Savchenko nobody in socionics did or said anything, there were no publications (there is not a single reference in the article). Semi-rhetorical questions, categorical criticism, and ambiguous doubts even evoke the alarming sensation that socionics itself does not exist — the name Aushra is mentioned a couple of times, and then only in passing!.. And what is there? There are only lightweight, irresponsible, in no way substantiated declarations — some impersonal, but mostly Yermak’s — ‘the only one who declares directly and unambiguously’ (a compliment, is it?). And then there is Jung, whom the socionists do not understand, while S. V. Savchenko quotes him in a friendly way, though doubting whether Jung has any relation to socionics at all. In short, ‘the absence of a socionic organization’ in connection with ‘a delayed-action mine for socionics’ leaves a single way out — everyone to the barracks!”

Commentary: How many superfluous words having no relation to socionics.

As for those notorious “relations” of Space, Time, Matter, and Energy — that is pure embellishment. Well, look in my book [4: chapter 2]. So relax and forget about this artifact of Medvedev–Yermak. Still, it was a decent attempt to solve a far from simple problem. Let us render these thinkers their due — and look for something more impeccable.

Savchenko: Such hard-to-pronounce and hard-to-understand expressions were replaced by easily understood (at least, so it was supposed) expressions and graphic signs. The eight (parameters), (things), (whatchamacallits) thus singled out received the name of aspects. Moreover, Aushra paradoxically correlated them with Jung’s psychic functions.

Commentary: My God, how far Seryozha is from the Truth! The IAs were precisely a brilliant conjecture, whereas Aushra’s attempt to substantiate the aspects proved unsuccessful [4: chapter 2]: the categories she chose for this are not sufficiently fundamental. And there is nothing paradoxical in the fact that the IAs (information aspects) correspond to the SFs (socionic functions) — the psyche simply cannot contain content that is not in the external environment. Incidentally, this is very materialistic! What is there not to understand?

Savchenko: And here the socionists performed a trick worthy of H. Houdini and D. Copperfield combined. They substituted for the concepts “space” and “relations of spaces,” for example, the concepts “volitional sensing” (will, force, rebuff) and “sensing of sensations” (comfort, well-being).

Commentary: Here I agree with Seryozha — that was outright philosophical hackwork; but there exists a way to build Model A carefully, without stretches and fudges. And it has already been done.

Savchenko: The odious figure in socionics A. A. Shiyan raised at the thirteenth conference the question: “Socionics — faith or science?” He was, of course, trampled and spat upon: what do you mean, not a science? But to represent space as will, with will moreover identical to force, one science is not enough. What resists criticism is not so much the presence and existence of the aspects as their interpretation.

Commentary: The question formulated by Shiyan is not very correct, but in essence it is right. If socionics claims the title of a science, it must meet the corresponding requirements presented in the methodology of science. It is hard to demand of the motley crowd of socionics enthusiasts deep philosophical and methodological knowledge, but as cultured people, often with a university education, they do after all have at least some notion of it. And the misunderstanding with “space-as-will” is a small working moment, such as happens on the path of knowledge.

Savchenko: The situation that has taken shape in socionics is strange: on the one hand — a mass of interesting observations, unambiguous identifications of types, clear predictions of the behavior of individuals and groups; on the other — a schematic and metaphysical theoretical base. Moreover, theoretical bases exist in more than abundance, and socionists often vainly try to convince themselves and others of the reality of their abstract-surrealist reasonings.

Commentary: There is nothing strange here — this is the normal effect of the wild development of a new scientific direction. Time will put everything in its place. The necessary axioms have already been formulated — let us discuss them, rather than using the technique of silencing, to which the maîtres apparently adhere. A deductive construction of all (!) the concepts of socionics has already been proposed. It remains to sit down at the negotiating table.

Savchenko: Besides the muddle with the aspects, the next terrible scourge of socionics is dogmatism. For me, as a historian, it is extremely amusing to trace how symbols of faith turn into dogmas of faith.

Commentary: Well, with the aspects we have sorted things out, and dogmatism — that is already a matter of scholars’ personal traits.

Savchenko: For example, the dimensionality of the functions. The prehistory of the question. The psychic functions in Model A have different contents on the one hand, and must be compared relative to one another on the other.

Commentary: The contents are different, but what does dimensionality have to do with it? All who have worked with Model A sooner or later began to feel that the functions, besides positional and aspect semantics, have some further peculiarity resembling power, strength, productivity — some quantitative indicator, yet one that eludes awareness. Thus, for example, the talented socionist Evgeny Litrovnik proposed the concept of rhythmics to explain this phenomenon: B, C, A, D. Precisely in that order of letters. B = the person is unacquainted with the material or has only superficial information about it; at best he can order concepts by arranging them on a single line. C — the person is capable of mastering simple classifications, ordering objects on a plane; he easily believes in his own infallibility; the limit of his knowledge is dogma. A — the person is capable of mastering subtle relations, understands the laws of interaction, catches nuances, sees the map as it were not from inside but from above. D — the person is capable of solving complex tasks, shows initiative in solving them, is ready to create the new — this is a creator. As Litrovnik says on this score: “dynamics inside a volume.” Criticizing this approach, one may say that rhythmics has nothing to do with it. Tempo-rhythms were in their time invented by Stanislavsky, using musical concepts for the purpose. Rhythm is set by the repetition of a configuration, and tempo is the speed at which it is traversed. Correspondingly, an actor can perform one and the same sequence of actions at different speeds, achieving the necessary stylistic or emotional effect. Litrovnik’s notion is about something else, and there are no grounds for calling it rhythmics. Inexactness in the choice of a term is a specific defect of a theory.

The talented scholar Bukalov invented, to explain the quasi-quantitative effect, dimensionalities, which he wittily connected with the vectors of selfhood, norms, situations, and globality. This is certainly very witty and does the scholar credit. But to understand the named categories as vectors is no more than a mathematical metaphor. A vector must have magnitude and direction — but in what does Bukalov intend to measure selfhood, or norms, or situations, let alone globality? Thus we have a witty but not socionics-adequate construct — something like a little shed built onto the elegant edifice of socionics.

However, there exists a way to explain the quantitative difference between the SFs proceeding from the semantics of the places of the model — that is, from the positional semantics of the functions, which is determined by the IAs in the model of Don Quixote, in whom the positional and aspect semantics coincide. This coincidence is not accidental — it follows from the algebraic-group properties of the three sets of the socion: TIMs, IRs [intertype relations], and ARP. So then: extraverted intuition in a function’s position determines that function’s capacity to create an IME (internal model of the environment), since it is directed outward, at the environment. Intuition possesses the capacity to handle an object with the maximum degree of freedom, which is equivalent to creativity. Thinking is less free in handling an object, since it is constrained by the demands of reality. Sensing is constrained by the sensory modalities, and ethics is the most constrained, since it proceeds from rigid norms — permitted / not permitted. Thus the quantitative parameter of an SF is the level of freedom in handling the object.

Savchenko: Prerequisites for a solution. The functions are numbered, connected with each other pairwise; there exists a hierarchy and a ranking of the functions.

Commentary: The numbering of the functions reflects the maître’s understanding of Model A. The words “hierarchy” and “ranking” here substitute for the concepts of structure and system. A function is defined not by a number but by what it does — that is, by its semantics.

Savchenko: The solution. The most developed function, dominant according to Jung, has the greatest fullness. By this function the type takes into account the factor of globality or time, of the situation, of norms, and of personal experience. By the least developed function, which does not coincide with the one repressed according to Jung — only personal experience. Conclusions. The functions differ in different dimensionality and fullness.

Commentary: Jung’s empirical semantics has been overcome in socionics, and there is no point in turning back to it; however, it will be useful to preserve the scientific Jungian names of the functions, using the words extraverted, introverted, sensing, intuition, thinking, and emoting. So it is time to finish with the terminology that not only lowers the client to a primitive level of understanding socionics but also distorts the basic semantics of the functions — recall the notorious “sensing-of-sensations” or “intuition of time.” The first of these masterpieces of verbal art belongs to the rubric “you couldn’t make it up,” while the second frankly distorts the semantics of introverted intuition. The functions differ in positional and aspect semantics, in different degrees of freedom in handling the object, in a different neighboring function, which changes their orientation, and in a different level of competence.

Savchenko: The presence of four parameters in a function is objective and can be measured.

Commentary: The differences between the functions enumerated in the previous commentary are objective and can be assessed by an expert.

Savchenko: And what if the functions were not numbered?

Commentary: See the previous commentaries — the functions have no numbers as it is.

Savchenko: Speaking of the first four functions, we speak of the zones of maximal competence and confidence — the dominant function; of the search for similarity and difference — the second and third functions; of the zone of maximal uncertainty — the repressed function.

Commentary: All the functions, not only the first four, have quite definite semantics, and there is no point in confining oneself to the first four.

Savchenko: This is not socionics! Out of the hall! At him! To the stake!

Commentary: Seryozha, one must defend one’s point of view professionally. And if you run into boorishness, intolerance, dogmatic obtuseness, that means there can be no talk of science here. See the first three rules of scientific communication:

1. If an error has been found in a scholar’s reasoning, he must correct it — up to and including the elimination of the construct. If a scholar refuses to correct errors, he is, by definition, not a scholar, and his quasi-scientific activity need not be reckoned with.
2. Argumentation in science must have a through character — from any point down to the very foundation.
3. If you are conducting a discussion with a scholar, you must know his works and refer to them correctly.

Résumé (Savchenko): The question of the meaning and content of the aspects has not been solved and is a delayed-action mine for socionics.

Commentary: The question of the content of the aspects has been solved and awaits scientific discussion.

(Savchenko): Either Jung served only as a catalyst — and catalysts do not enter into the composition of the substances obtained, in which case socionics is connected neither with Jung nor with the dubious offspring of “Psychological Types,” type-watching — or socionics is somehow based on Jung. Then the question: how?

Commentary: Aushra would not have discovered socionics without Jung’s discoveries. Jung could not have made his discoveries had Freud not been before him. Freud could not have carried out his revolution in psychology had he not relied on the enormous psychological experience accumulated by humanity before him. Between Freud and Aushra lies a large number of ego-psychologists, each of whom made his own unique contribution to the understanding of personality. The future, scientific socionics must become the completion of this grandiose work. So: the aims are clear, the tasks defined — to work, comrades!

(Savchenko): Disregard of elementary logic in the development of socionic theories does not allow socionics to become what it could be. More than that: today’s socionics is in general little capable of being anything decent.

Commentary: The leading socionist-maîtres, in creating their technological variants of the use of the classical core created by Aushra, commit not only logical errors. In socionic improvisations there are present, in large quantity, methodological and cognitive errors. Of the existence of the latter, many maîtres simply have no suspicion.

(Savchenko): The absence of a socionic organization in itself substantially hinders the development of socionics as a science, to say nothing of its social status.

Commentary: It has been proved in science studies that key discoveries are made by talented lone scholars, while the most productive units in scientific terms are small groups — 7–8 people with a precise division of labor. Large organizations are good only for solving large state programs with large financing, but even there intrigues, undermining, and the whole set of defective human relations that reduce the productivity of scientific labor are possible. Yet even without any organization we see how ineffective the interaction of scholars can be when ambitions and earnings are at stake.

And to this résumé Yermak let loose the following tirade: “The ‘résumé’ of S. V. Savchenko’s opus, even against the background of his entire ‘critical analysis,’ looks simply indecent. What ‘resists criticism’ is not so much the content of the résumé’s points (the content is simply absent!) as the categoricalness and peremptoriness of the declarations. And thank God that at such a level of knowledge there is as yet an absence of a ‘socionic organization’ à la S. V. Savchenko — otherwise all socionists would surely be marching in formation, professing one single ‘correct truth’!”

Commentary: Comments are superfluous.

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References

1. Gulenko V. V., How Firm Are the Foundations of Socionics? SMiPL [Socionics, Mentology and Personality Psychology], 1998.
2. Yermak V. D., The Contemporary Foundations of Socionics Are Firm Enough, SMiPL, 1998.
3. Savchenko S. V., The Basic Contradictions in Socionics, 1999.
4. Churyumov S. I., The Smile of the Cheshire Cat, Drohobych, 2007. — 560 pp.
5. Druzhinin V. N., Experimental Psychology, St. Petersburg, 2000.
6. Eliseev O. P., Constructive Typology and Psychodiagnostics of Personality, ed. V. N. Panferov, Pskov: Publishing House of the Pskov Regional Institute of Teacher Advancement, 1994.
7. Melnikov V. M., Yampolsky P. T., Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Personality, Moscow, 1985, 319 pp.
8. Bukalov A. V., The Potential of the Personality, “ChB,” Moscow, 2009.

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Translator’s notes: IA = information aspect; SF = socionic function; IM = information metabolism; TIM = type of information metabolism; LII/Robespierre and Dreiser (ESI) are socionic type names; “kuma” is an untranslatable term for the godmother of one’s child / close female friend — the epigraph is a Russian idiom for two people talking past each other (”— Good health to you, kuma… — I was at the market…”). The duplicated “practicing eclecticism” commentary paragraph on p. 67 of the original appears to be a typesetting error and is rendered once. One heavily garbled sentence about the Bukalov hemispheric layout (p. 82, listing “introverted sensing” twice) is translated as printed.