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by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė | Source (Mirror) | Symbols for IMEs
Machine Translation Revised by ReaJXPlass and Augusta Project
Note: This was a letter to Elena Dubova provided digitally by Grigory Reinin.
I will once again return to the problem of personality, as you’ve made me consider an aspect that I haven’t thought about until now.
A personality and a personality type are certainly not the same. A person with the same personality type in our culture would be completely different compared to someone in an Aztec one. Even in our classless society, you will find plenty of variations of ILEs and SEIs. A personality is a set of relationships of some kind. Although I don’t like that definition. I would say that personality is a product of the totality of these relationships. That is why personality means one thing in the system of social and familial relationships, and another in other systems of relationships. Besides, the qualities of personality are the education and culture of an individual. But these are also similarly, relationships. How much education or culture a person receives is determined by the specifics of the society and the place they occupy in it. Besides, there are natural qualities that one cannot avoid, which are also a part of personality, or rather the qualities of a vessel in which certain social content is injected.
I apologize for being so detailed and even primitive in my writing, but at the moment I’m just trying to figure out how I see it all.
A personality type is something different [from a personality]. Perhaps it could be called a form of personality. A form that is inherent to people both today and millennia ago. At least since people began to speak. Or maybe even think. But not thinking in general, because a wolf thinks, and even has memory, but not thinking as we understand it today. That is, thinking that’s not about passively adapting to the situation, but to change this situation according to a preconceived plan. And in fact, it’s not even like that. Individuals who “think” (in our sense) are always the ones whose plans extend to other people. And by the way, as I see now, what a person thinks about is only for others, not for themselves. The things an individual thinks up are also things they are unable to realize in the absence of support, feedback, and the blessings of other people.
The simplest model looks like this:
– Person A thinks up a way to solve some situation and using the second signal system, communicates it to others.
– Person B is glad that they have been told what they need to do and rushes to implement it.
– After that, Person A also joins in the active realization of their idea.
But I have deviated a little, you can see this from the last characteristics, especially the SLI Characteristic.
Therefore, a personality type is a form of personality or a form in which a person’s thinking fits, a form of their information metabolism. Strange and unusual as it may seem, but just like how the body feeds on food and produces energy, the psyche feeds on information, signals and stimuli, and also produces energy. Mental energy or informational energy.
For the production of psychological energy in a certain form, a certain sequence of psychological contact with the surrounding reality is necessary. If this doesn’t happen, then no energy gets produced. Such a person has no surplus, more precisely – the presence of psychological energy, which they need to realize in some way. Socially speaking, this is a completely passive person. And from a certain point of view – it makes no difference how they managed to erase the form of their personality – whether through alcohol or esoteric teachings. Such an individual does not need social recognition: they are not a member of society because they do not have a definite place in society.
What do I know about the formation of personality types? It is formed before the age of five, but only if the child interacts with beings who also have this personality type. A child raised by monkeys may be a human being, but they can’t have a personality type. So it is genetically conditioned on one hand and socially conditioned on the other. What do you call it otherwise?
Part of the personality type is innate. You’re either born as a schizothyme or cyclothyme*, I don’t know if introversion is innate. I have no theoretical argument that it should be innate. Although practice shows that for some reason, introverted parents often have introverted children. True, there are some hypotheses about when a child receives maternal qualities (qualities of the person who raised them) and becomes the identical or quasi-identical (parallel intelligence). Or when it becomes a dual or quasi-dual (conflict). But in fact, very often everything happens a little bit differently: it’s as if a child chooses between two related types and becomes either a supervisor or a requester for the mother. The latter is even more common. The child’s psyche adapts to others, and they find the safest possible situation for themselves. From what I’ve observed of juvenile criminals, they are mostly children of single mothers and controlling mothers. This is the most difficult attitude for raising children – no controllability. Even in a very intelligent family, such a child gets a 3.0 grade point average**. Their mothers complain that they’re as thick as molasses***, and they feel inaccessible and hard to concretely understand. But this is a normal feeling. Every supervisor [experiences] something like this, but only [the supervised one] is very uncomfortable when they get caught in the supervisor’s “molasses”, because they can’t get this off. But the supervision is also quite unpleasant [for the supervisor], only in a different way.
*Translator’s note: Augustinavičiūtė later changed her mind on this decision in a later letter, claiming irrationality and rationality are also acquired.
**Translator’s note: Russia uses a 5-point grading system, where a grade of 3.0 would be considered a satisfactory, but not particularly good grade. Roughly equivalent to a “C” in the American grading system.
***Translator’s note: Adapted from Kissel, a thick and sticky Slavic dessert.
What do I know about how personality types manifest?
There are balanced and unbalanced people. That is – there are facts of balanced and unbalanced personality types.
If an individual grew up in their dyad or lives with their dual, they have a very balanced personality. Often, when looking at them in a photo, it’s hard to tell, for example, whether someone is an ESE or their dual, the LII. Personality traits are aggravated when a person has to defend themselves because of a bad psychological climate. We had a couple of architects who we knew even beyond seeing their photos, and we were certain that they were both LIIs for some time, and we were only surprised by their statements that they behaved completely differently at work.
When an individual’s defense mechanisms get particularly strengthened, things called accentuations and psychopathies* develop. I think it’s also cyclothyme or schizothyme. Unless there’s some kind of somatics involved. In any case, as much as I know it from Ernst Kretschmer, Antoni Kępiński, and Andrey Lichko (I can hardly understand Karl Leonhard – I wonder what type he is) and from Clinical Psychiatry (1967) by Grule, Jung, et. al. When in a defensive state, all extraverts get activated in the search for recognition and understanding, while all introverts become passive, in the same pronounced search for recognition and understanding. This is not only a search, but also a passionate desire to transform those around them into duals who do not hurt. A person is angry with others because things hurt. Things hurt because as long as someone has a personality type, they need to be understood, and they aren’t getting understood. And a personality can’t function normally when it doesn’t find its place in the Socion. It is impossible to enter society without the mediation of one’s dyad or quadra.
*Translator’s note: Accentuations and psychopathies were psychiatric disorders in classic Russian medical literature.
Twice in my life did I consider myself a reasonable worker, where my activity was not hindered by anyone while being supported in every possible way. It’s better not to talk about my other working situations. I know now that in both of these situations, however, that my immediate higher-ups were SEIs.
This is different from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These are two ways of escaping an unfavorable psychological environment. But that’s not what we need now. We need alcoholism.
I see alcoholism as a more or less conscious effort of a person to change themselves in such a way so things “don’t hurt”. Alcohol helps in this because it removes the inhibitions of human manifestations, which are imposed on them by their form of thinking, their form of personality, and their type of information metabolism. It is much easier to live without form in unfavorable conditions. In any case, it is possible. Even having a blue nose wouldn’t bother me, i.e. how others perceive me doesn’t matter at all. There is only one thing: my direct perception of the situation.
Esoteric teachings are interesting from this point of view. There, the same (or seemingly the same) result is achieved by long work. I have seen a couple of pictures of mahatmas. Just based on external appearances, each had not one, but two types in them. Strangely enough, both were ESE & EIE. I saw some of our colleagues as well. I think one’s type is even kind of sharpened in the first phase of this work. Or perhaps they are simply capable and better utilized. Then, it is true, you get some blurring. But sometimes, there is a bad flavor to it. Simply because an individual doesn’t know how exactly to dissociate themselves from their personality, and simply portrays anything but themselves.
Augusta Project 