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by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė | Source (Mirror) | Symbols for IMEs
Machine Translation Revised by Augusta Project with fully translated segments by Sophia from Classic Socionics
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Addendum
Translator’s note: This translation was enhanced with photos.
1. The Nature of Erotic Feelings
What is the reason for erotic love?
Is it our primal sexual instincts?*
*Translator’s note: Adapted from (“очелове́чить”), lit. “humanized” – this is in reference to “human nature”, but more in the form of a lower, “animalistic” being.
While this is a common belief, love satisfies two completely distinct needs: the need to relieve sexual tension, and the need to connect with another individual’s mind. These needs depend on a variety of factors, including intelligence, culture, and social conditions. And although they are related, they are not the cause of each other. The most convincing hypothesis for the phenomenon of love for us is that humans being are naturally meant to exist in pairs.
Many philosophers have contemplated this.
Ludwig Feueurbach writes:
Isolated man by himself has not the essence of man in himself. The essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man…
Theses on Feueurbach*
*Translator’s note: This seems to be the quote that Augusta took from Karl Marx’s Theses on Feueurbach. However, this seems slightly paraphrased from the original version: Principles of the Philosophy of the future which is: “The single man in isolation possesses in himself the essence of man neither as a moral nor as a thinking being. The essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man with man…”
We read from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
The true essence of love consists in giving up the consciousness of oneself, forgetting oneself in another self, yet in this surrender and oblivion having and possessing oneself alone.
Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics
Erich Fromm makes a similar argument:
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
The Art of Loving*
*Translator’s note: At the time of this translation, this book is not publicly available online.
Another way to describe this difficult-to-understand phenomenon is through the Ancient Greeks. In Plato’s book, The Symposium, Aristophanes describes the myth of androgynes to Plato, which was that people in general had conjoined bodies: two pairs of arms and legs and two faces. But the angry Zeus cut them, leaving people only in halves. Therefore, all people are now only half-souls, constantly yearning for the full restoration of their former selves.
Jurij Rjurikov writes similarly:
The physical experience of merging with another person is absolutely fantastic. We know that in a normal state, people cannot feel or experience the feelings of other people, and only at the apex of intense love does some strange psychological illusion occur, as if the “I’s” of people disappear, merge with one another, and transform them into psychological androgynes. It is the almost literal “transmigration of souls”, as if part of your “soul” moved into the body of another person, fused with their nerves, letting you feel their feelings just like your own… It is unclear why this only happens to people in love, and only with close individuals: psychologists and physiologists have yet to solve this mystery.
Unknown Source (adapted from Russian)
If erotic love is a consequence of the psychological structure of human beings, then not only can it be communicated through the language of art, but also the precise language of science. The assertion that people marry for more reasons than just having children and a sex life, and that living single – as well as feeling alone in marriage, are abnormal phenomena, are reasons for us to take a more serious look at marriage.
2. Problems of a Psychological Complement
If an individual is looking for someone to psychologically complement them, that means that not every physically attractive person can complete them, but only those with certain qualities of the mind. These qualities must be established. To some extent, those who claim that “opposites attract” are right. However, our research shows that not all of these “opposites” complement people. Some “opposites” create constant tension and conflict, and others extinguish the activity of their counterparts. There are complementary opposites, though, which bring balance to the human psyche and the activation of their life. We find the answer in every typology used by psychiatrists, including Pyotr Gannushkin, Ernst Kretschmer, Carl Jung, Antoni Kępiński, Andrey Lichko, and Karl Leonhard. In all of them! Some people are simply compatible and incompatible with each other. And everyone who is aware of at least one of these typologies can verify this for themselves. In general – as with all discoveries, the answer is so simple that it’s hard to believe how nobody has ever come up with this, either in our country or abroad.
The typology most ripe for understanding the compatibility and incompatibility of different types of people is Jung’s. This is because the author describes the human psyche as having a definite structure, while all the other typologies are descriptive in nature. We’ll begin with his. As for the other typologies, for those who are interested, a comparative table (Table 3) is presented which shows how the same types of individuals are described by various authors.
The question may arise as to why the aforementioned authors failed to notice the law of complement between two individuals. The first reason, probably, is that these were all psychiatrists, and, by nature of their occupations, they worked with individual patients: which deepened their knowledge of the qualities of these individual types of people, but did not let them observe their interactions in permanent, small collectives, such as at work or in the family. Besides, for quite a long time, the mainstream opinion was that all mentally healthy people share the same type and that traits of certain types only manifest as deviations from the norm. That all people are “average”, and only with deviations can an individual observe the accentuations and psychopathies* belonging to certain types. However, Lichko unambiguously claims that certain accentuations only arise from certain types of personality. Additionally, the type of personality not only determines people’s propensity towards mental illnesses but also fully varying somatic diseases.
*Translator’s note: Psychopathies and Character Accentuations were terms in Russian medical literature for mental disorders, where the former primarily meant lifelong disorders, while the latter represents neuroses that were accumulated later in life and could be more temporary.
3. Advantages of Jung’s Typology
We have already discussed one of the advantages: that it is a structural approach. Moreover, Jung characterizes healthy, not disordered people, so the names he uses are not as unpleasant as the others. (See Table 3) The names of his types do not contain mental disorders, but the strongest aspect of the human psyche, which the author refers to as psychological functions. The basic functions are the special abilities of an individual to understand certain aspects of the world. We will call these functions the elements of human information metabolism.
Unfortunately, Jung’s names are not quite suitable for us either. Therefore, what he calls “Thinking”, we refer to as “Logic”, and what he calls feeling, we refer to as ethics. We are not asserting that our names are perfect and that something more suitable will never be found in the future, but they are more accurate than Jung’s. For example, when Jung contrasts Thinking types with Feeling types, it seems that the former “thinks” while the latter “lives through feelings.” In fact, however, they both think, but their thoughts are about different matters: the former thinks about the objective parts of the world around them, while the latter thinks about the subjective parts. Therefore, if we claim that for the latter group “ethical thinking predominates”, it would not sound as absurd as saying “feeling thinking predominates.” Individuals with “ethical” forms of thinking have a tendency to judge their surroundings in terms of the ethicality/unethicality of attitudes and actions. People with “logical” thinking are mainly interested in the logicality/illogicality of attitudes and actions.
So, on the one hand, we continue to use Jung’s principle of using names based on the most developed sides of the human psyche, while on the other hand, these names were slightly adjusted. So instead of Jung’s names: Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition, we use Logic, Ethics, Sensorics, and Intuition.
The second adjustment we needed to make was to double the amount of names. Jung himself argues, which we have also seen in practice, that a person’s type is not determined by one, but two “functions”. When, for example, we describe a logical type, we do not know which kind of logical type: the one with sensorics or intuition. And they are very different. The former, guided by sensorics, is a practical, active person. And the latter is more of a strategist than a tactician, inclined to theories, philosophies, and building so-called “sky castles”. They completely differ in everyday life and all the little things. The first is neat, knows what looks beautiful and doesn’t, and is always composed. The second is absent-minded, and although they try as much as they can to be tidy and concentrated, they don’t always succeed.
We replaced Jung’s terminology of “Extravert-Introvert” with the more common “Extrovert-Introvert”*, though we consider the most suitable terms to be “Extrathyme-Introthyme” by analogy to Schizothyme-Cyclothyme. This is because Hans Eysenck‘s works, whose tests tend to call sociable people extroverts and withdrawn people introverts, have become widespread, making the original terms ambiguous.
*Translator’s note: In Russian, the terms used in translations of Jung are (“экстравертированный”) and (“интровертированный”), which are significantly longer to write than their modern counterparts, (“экстраверт”) and (“интроверт”). A similar process has occurred in English in which the traditional Jungian term of “extravert” fell out to the modern version of “extrovert”, but the term for introversion remained the same.
4. Humor and the 16 Types of IM
Due to the fact that differences in personality type are nothing more than differences in the way individuals exchange information with the environment, we will refer to personalities as the types of information metabolism. In short, the types of IM.
How is this related to information metabolism?
It turns out that the human mind breaks down the world around us into various constituent parts – aspects. Each type of personality receives highly differentiated and realized information about one of these aspects, while information about other aspects is perceived in an undifferentiated, compressed form. Therefore, different types of personality, despite being in the same situations, remember and describe completely different things about them with different words. Stories are described with different facial expressions and emphasize different aspects of the situation. The main reason why one person listens pleasantly and alertly and the other feels unpleasant and tired is precisely due to what kind of patterns in phrasing in which they express their thoughts, as well as the facial expressions, gestures, and intonations they use in tandem with their speech. When an individual hurts another, it is not done so much by their actions, but by the way they explain their actions, which is the motive that they put forward. That is why one individual can be forgiven for something another individual cannot be.
You may recall that the term information metabolism was borrowed from the author of Polish psychiatry’s classic – Kępiński. It seems that he was the first to suggest that what causes people’s psychological discomfort is disturbances in their information metabolism. We now know that these disturbances are nothing more than a lack of necessary stimulating signals from individuals with complementary psyches, and the overload of unnecessary, tiring, and irritating ones from people who are difficult to interact with due to the fact that they express their thoughts in an incomprehensible and unacceptable way to the individual’s type of IM.
Individuals with incompatible types of IM often get traumatized by remarks or jokes that neither provide information nor reassure the individual, but only irritate them. Jokes only seem like jokes when they inadvertently answer a burning question and calm us down. Everyone has a limited range to their sense of humor, as people take comfort in different things. And it’s quite common that when someone is offended by our joke, we take it to be that that individual has no sense of humor. However, the reality is that their sense of humor is simply different than ours: the other individual tends to make jokes with different words about completely different matters.
There are a total of 16 types of IM. Some of them are better at selecting certain signals from the environment, while others are better at selecting other ones. Signals available to some people are unavailable to others. What distracts and is a point of obliviousness for one individual is different for others. So how did these types come to be? Apparently, on the long path of human development, the psyches of individual people specialized, while simultaneously developing a form of one-sidedness. Particular pairs of competing mental properties are formed: and if a child develops one intensely, the growth of the other gets delayed. Therefore, the mental structure of all individuals and their personalities are asymmetrical and one-sided. Humans are social beings not only because goods are produced collectively, but also because due to the one-sided way their psyche develops, they need a complementary mind, which they receive from their social environment during communication and cooperation with people of other psychological structures. Several people acting together become more purposeful, decisive, and effective when they have intellectual support from people with different mental compositions. This is one of the secrets behind easy cooperation.
5. What Interests Who & Who Understands What
For an individual to satisfy their needs, a person needs a complete view of the surrounding reality. In a society that properly serves individuals, people cooperate. The mechanism behind this phenomenon, according to our current understanding, is quite simple: the brain reflects individual aspects of reality with differing degrees of differentiation and awareness. The aspects which the individual only uses for themselves are reflected in relatively generalized ways, in the form of images, experiences, and skills. The aspects which the individual transmits to society are perceived in a differentiated way with high precision, allowing them to comprehend it and transmit it in a verbal form.
What are these aspects?
The way an organism adapts to its environment is through a continuous chain of physical activity. Everything that happens around a person in the objective world is nothing more than a chain of actions of physical activity. We could say that everything happening to us and around us is part of this same chain of actions. This chain of action is nothing more than four cycles of an internal combustion engine:
- Potential energy.
- Transformation of potential into kinetic.
- Kinetic energy.
- The use of kinetic energy.
These are the four aspects in which people perceive the surrounding world and since type is inherent to people’s nature, these are each perceived with different degrees of awareness: one individual is more aware of the potential and abilities of others (phase #1), another individual to people’s emotional lives (phase #2), and yet another to how they work (phase #4). We will assign a symbol to each of these aspects and refer to them as the extrathymic elements of human information metabolism:
: Potential energy.
: Transformation of potential into kinetic.
: Kinetic energy.
: The Use of Kinetic Energy
Thanks to these elements, an individual receives information about:
- : Potential energy. The potential energy of the observed object (including the subject), their physical and mental abilities.
- : Transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. The object’s excitation and excitability, and people’s moods and emotions.
- : Kinetic energy. Information about the mobilization, willpower, strength and beauty of the observed objects (including the subject).
- : The use of kinetic energy. Information about the activity of the object (including the subject), and their ability to work.
However, the world around us not only consists of moving bodies, but also the fields in which they interact. These can be called “psychological fields”. These fields are comprised of relations between objects and processes, which get perceived by people as certain feelings. So there are four more parameters of the surrounding world, which, because of type being inherent to people’s nature, an individual also perceives with varying degrees of awareness. We will also assign a symbol to each of them and call them the introthymic elements of human information metabolism.
: Relations between processes that happen at the same time – space.
: Relations between processes that happen in sequence – time
: Objective relations between two objects and their individual properties – the ratio between them, or how one object would measure if the other object was used as a measure.
: Subjective relation between two objects (which could include the subject) – attraction or repulsion.
Thanks to these elements, an individual receives information about:
- : Relations between processes that happen at the same time – space. About the qualities of the space, i.e. what happens in it and how people in this space feel.*
- : Relations between processes that happen in sequence – time. About the temporal relations between processes, events and actions, about whether there is time left, and whether the future is dangerous or safe.
- : Objective relations between two objects and their individual properties – the ratio between them, or how one object would measure if the other object was used as a measure. About the objective ratio between the objects, about their weight, size, value and any other properties that are commensurate.
- : Subjective relation between two objects (which could include the subject) – attraction and repulsion. About the attractive or repulsive force of the objects and subjects, about whether they need each other, about likes and dislikes, love and hatred.
*Translator’s note: The phrase “how the person feels”, as well as the word “state”, are both an adaptation of the Russian word “самочувствие”. This word is not fully translatable and is defined as “a general mental indicator of the physical and spiritual state of the individual at any given moment; consists of specific sensations and general feelings”.
A few words about the origin of the IME symbols:
We designated Extraverted Sensorics with a circle (), a shape that creates an impression of the fullest contact with the entirety of the external world. We designated Intuition with a triangle () which fits perfectly into a circle. Logic and ethics are the outer form and the inner content of the same process. Therefore, if we designate logic as a square () as a symbol of the rigor of its thinking, then for the internal side of the same phenomenon – emotional intensity – it is necessary to select a symbol to place it in a square. So a square without a corner () appears.
The introverted elements have been designated with the same symbols as their opposite-attitude counterpart but with different colors: , , , and .
So, in the process of information metabolism, an individual uses 8 elements of information metabolism. Each of them reflects one of the objective aspects of the surrounding world. We will assign these elements a tentative name which we will use in the future.
Table 1.
| Aspect Reflected | The Name of the Quality of the Human Mind (Element of IM) Which Lets a Person Receive Information About This Aspect of The World | Symbol of the Aspect of the World and Its Corresponding Element |
|---|---|---|
| Potential energy | Extraverted Intuition | |
| Transformation of potential into kinetic | Extraverted Ethics | |
| Kinetic energy | Extraverted Sensorics | |
| Use of kinetic energy | Extraverted Logic | |
| Space | Introverted Sensorics | |
| Time | Introverted Intuition | |
| Objective relations | Introverted Logic | |
| Attraction / repulsion | Introverted Ethics | |
All eight elements of IM are in every individual’s psyche. That is – we all use the same forms of perceiving and processing information. But when it comes to complex situations that require intellectual effort, people tend to only trust one pair of elements: one of which is extraverted and the other introverted. They determine the type of IM and give us the right to call it Logical, Ethical, etc.
Two elements can be considered as more intellectual and realized to a greater degree than all of the others. Therefore, when someone who wants to be intelligent makes an effort, to the full extent of their willpower, will only use these elements in all of their activities. For example, an individual with developed logical thinking will avoid talking about their feelings.
Let’s now familiarize ourselves with the whole list of the types of IM with the names that we use in all of our works (see Table 2).
It was interesting to uncover which properties of the mind and what types of IM were widespread among the population of the republic (the Lithuanian state of the USSR). We surveyed 100 men and 100 women for this purpose. Such an insignificant totally random sample of 200 people undoubtedly cannot represent the republic. But it is enough to understand that no single type of IM is prevalent among exclusively men or women.
This is why femininity and masculinity are such relative concepts: each type of IM understands these terms differently. An extraverted man sees “real femininity” in an introverted girl, while an introverted man would see “real femininity” in an extraverted girl. [In general], an individual with a logical type of IM views ethical thinking [as ideal], and vice versa. There is no such thing as absolute femininity or masculinity. There are women and men with differing structures of the mind who not only appear to be, but actually are the perfectly feminine or masculine ideal when they properly complement our own structure.
Therefore, when we talk about the combinations of the structures of the mind, for the sake of brevity, we will not take gender into account. We will speak about individuals with Sensory, Intuitive, Logical, and Ethical types of IM. In the examples where we say “he” for the sake of imagery, we could also use “she” in the same way.* In some specific samples, however, the distribution of the types of IM was highly polarized. For example, in the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute in 1978-1979, there were 28 female students whose leading IMEs were Ethical, and only a single student led with a Logical IME. In addition, 20 of them were introverted and 9 of them were extraverted.
*Translator’s note: Russian is a gendered language, and it is generally difficult to avoid using gendered pronouns to describe people in general, so the male form is typically used. This is not a problem in English, so the translations on this website consistently use the “they/them” form when speaking about people in general.
Table 2. Distribution of the Types of IM Among Men and Women of the Lithuanian State of the USSR.
| Type Name | Type Symbol | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Logical-Sensoric Extravert | | 5 | 2 |
| 2. Logical-Intuitive Extravert | | 4 | 2 |
| 3. Logical-Sensoric Introvert | | 6 | 3 |
| 4. Logical-Intuitive Introvert | | 6 | 5 |
| 5. Ethical-Sensoric Extravert | | 3 | 10 |
| 6. Ethical-Intuitive Extravert | | 5 | 9 |
| 7. Ethical-Sensoric Introvert | | 3 | 4 |
| 8. Ethical-Intuitive Introvert | | 3 | 10 |
| 9. Sensoric-Logical Extravert | | 9 | 3 |
| 10. Sensoric-Ethical Extravert | | 4 | 9 |
| 11. Sensoric-Logical Introvert | | 12 | 8 |
| 12. Sensoric-Ethical Introvert | | 7 | 15 |
| 13. Intuitive-Logical Extravert | | 11 | 4 |
| 14. Intuitive-Ethical Extravert | | 10 | 6 |
| 15. Intuitive-Logical Introvert | | 8 | 2 |
| 16. Intuitive-Ethical Introvert | | 4 | 8 |
| Total: | 100 | 100 |
Total Counts of Dichotomies:
| Property | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Extraverted | 51 | 45 |
| Introverted | 49 | 55 |
| Logical | 61 | 29 |
| Ethical | 39 | 71 |
6. The Consciousness of Love
Is love a conscious or unconscious phenomenon?
When an individual loves someone whom they willingly chose among others for reasons such as: having an advantageous distinguishment, being more interesting, valuable, or successful, love is subordinated to the consciousness. It is love by choice. If the love interest does not fulfill the individual’s hopes, and they have an opportunity to find another, more suitable partner, then they can calmly abandon their prior love interest. But not everyone loves in this way. Only Sensoric-Ethical types of IM love in this way. Those without sensorics or ethics developed (all Logical-Intuitive types of IM) choose who they love, not love who they choose. Love is not about what someone does, but what happens to them.
There are also people who have conscious feelings but unconscious physical attraction (all Intuitive-Ethical types of IM). And also people whose physical attraction is conscious, but cannot consciously control their feelings (all Sensoric-Logical types of IM).
All ethical individuals (an ethical element in the Leading or Creative position) understand the feelings and emotions of both themselves and others excellently. They do not shy away from them, easily talk about them (this applies to all kinds of feelings: love, fear, and admiration), and if not to a love interest, then to friends since feelings and experiences are what ennobles the individual and makes them more valuable. For logical individuals, feelings are displaced and silence, because any feeling is considered a weakness and the opposite of reason. This is because they have so little consciousness of their feelings that these feelings are not subject to the control of their mind.
All sensoric types have a good understanding of the physical needs of themselves and their partner. They know how to assess and use physical data. They are the ones who openly attract a partner’s attention with their elegance and graceful movements. Intuitive types, at best, believe what they are told. And only as long as they’re being told something, They are, as a result, always afraid of becoming dependent on individuals who give out compliments. Just as the logical type is hesitant to believe they are loved, intuitive types constantly doubt what is attractive, beautiful, and needed. The sensoric type is the one who is elegant to be noticed. Intuitive types can often be even more elegant, but only in order to not stand out and be noticeable. It’s as if they “hide behind their elegance.” Sensoric types easily admit physical attraction – and not just internally. Physical attraction is an ordinary, understandable phenomenon and part of their beautiful, healthy nature. Intuitive types are afraid of their physical attraction and do not dare to impose it on others.
To generalize, we could say that some people want to love while others want to be loved. Some people desire while others want to be desired. Some people can fully be justified in being called lovers, while others would call themselves objects of love interest. Therefore, some people can fully take the initiative into their own hands, while others can be partially inclined to, and others leave it completely to their partners. This is where the selection of a mentally complementary partner begins. When both have equal amounts of initiative or an equal lack of it, it is easy to cut off the relationship.* Either they get tired of competing for the initiative, or tension forms as the partners mutually distrust each other’s feelings.
*Translator’s note: Adapted from (“дружба”) lit. friendship. This is likely a cultural phenomenon, as it wouldn’t be necessary for relationships to start as a friendship during the dating phase in many Western cultures.
What one type of IM could call love, making them feel loved and respected, may seem as only evidence of a lack of feeling to another type. Therefore, if resentment develops early in the relationship* (which often gets unwisely concealed), then there probably is a mental mismatch that must be accounted for in advance. When partners are perfectly matched, they aren’t able to offend each other with a careless word or gesture because they perceive the motives behind each act, word, and mood. These are the red flags that nature has provided to humans so that they can choose the right partner for themselves. People often do not want to see these signals, instead hiding their real reactions or hoping something will change in the future. But what stems from the mental structure that is formed from childhood does not change. The discrepancies only get worse.
*Translator’s note: See above.
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