Between personality types

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MBTI
INFPishy
So, when you're just on the border between F and T, or J and P, it's difficult to identify with one type more than another because a number of types may fit.

For those who're on the borderline, how do you see yourself fitting with the dueling or opposing functions? For example, if you're bordering between F and T or P and J, how do you see each in your personality or how do you see both battling for dominance or prominence in your personalities?

Here's a chart that you may find helpful:

Problem Solving and the Cognitive Processes
Adapted from Linda V. Berens, Dynamics of Personality Type: Understanding and Applying Jung's Cognitive Processes (Telos Publications, 2000) *Used with permission.
INFORMATION-ACCESSING PROCESSES—Perception
SeExtraverted Sensing: Experiencing and noticing the physical world, scanning for visible reactions and relevant data
Being attracted to and/or distracted by changing external events. Adapting and changing your mind according to the situation. Focusing on facts. Asking lots of questions to get enough information to see the pattern. Going ahead and responding to raw data. Physical self-expression.

SiIntroverted Sensing: Recalling past experiences, remembering detailed data and what it is linked to
Being heavily influenced by prior experiences. Distrusting new information that doesn’t match. Assuming an understanding of a situation because it resembles a prior one. Focusing on facts and stored data. Giving lots of specific, sequential details about something. Rating and making comparison.

NeExtraverted iNtuiting: Inferring relationships, noticing threads of meaning, and scanning for what could be
Being attracted to new ideas and possible realities. Holding different and even conflicting ideas and values in mind at once without articulating them. Assuming a meaning of something. Focusing on inferences and hypotheses. Extemporaneously connecting ideas.

NiIntroverted iNtuiting: Foreseeing implications, conceptualizing, and having images of the future or profound meaning Being strongly influenced by a vision of what will be, which may involve an abstract, even vague understanding of complexities that are difficult to explain. Focusing on a preconceived outcome or goal. Perhaps not articulating or even aware of premises or assumptions behind envisioned implications. Describing implications and the final picture.
ORGANIZING-EVALUATING PROCESSES—Judgment​
TeExtraverted Thinking: Organizing, segmenting, sorting, and applying logic and criteria
Expressing thoughts directly, readily critiquing and pointing out what has been left out or not done. Getting to the point efficiently and getting the task done. Taking decisive action, which may be misread as closed mindedness. Focusing on logic and criteria for setting up systems of organization.

TiIntroverted Thinking: Analyzing, categorizing, and figuring out how something works
Defining principles, differences and distinctions. Pointing out inconsistencies and critiquing inaccuracies. Engaging in detached observation which can be misread as dislike or disapproval. Not expressing thoughts unless illogic and inaccuracy are overwhelming. Focusing on identifying, analyzing, naming, and categorizing.

FeExtraverted Feeling: Considering others and responding to them
Expressing positive and negative feelings openly. Disclosing personal details to establish rapport. Pointing out how to attend to needs of others and complaining when others are not considerate. Expressing of warmth, caring and concern and interest in others, which can be misread as suffocating or not attending to a task. Focusing on appropriateness and connectedness.

FiIntroverted Feeling: Evaluating importance and maintaining congruence
Clarifying what is important. Pointing out contradictions and incongruities between actions and espoused values. Expressing quiet reserve, which is often misread as aloofness. Adamantly insisting on what is important, or what you want or like. Not expressing inner convictions unless important values are comprised.





Some Important Communication Principles:
  • Develop and trust your leading role and supporting role processes. This is how you were designed to operate.
  • Chances are, you will be naturally attracted to situations where those processes are appropriate and effective.
  • When you get stuck, find a way to engage your relief role process. It should provide a way out of being stuck.
  • For important decisions, consciously engage as many processes as you can. Find friends, family, or coworkers who can help you fill in the gaps and suggest aspects you might not have considered.
  • When you want to consciously engage an introverted process, you may need to set aside time to be alone.
  • When you want to consciously engage an extraverted process, seek out the company of others.
  • Be open to input from all sources.
  • Be patient with yourself and know that when you have to use a less-preferred process, it will take more energy.
Adapted from Linda V. Berens, Dynamics of Personality Type: Understanding and Applying Jung's Cognitive Processes (Telos Publications, 2000) *Used with permission.
Click to expand...
http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/communication.html
 
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I'm on the T/F line and it's basically like this, I have strong compelling emotions. sometimes they will sway my decisions but often I will force myself to not use my emotions in my decision making processes.
 
Don't go by the four letters. Go by the eight functions.
 
Res said:
So, when you're just on the border between F and T, or J and P, it's difficult to identufy with one type more than another because a number of types may fit.

For those who're on the borderline, how do you see yourself fitting with the dueling or opposing functions? For example, if you're bordering between F and T or P and J, how do you see each in your personality or how do you see both battling for dominance or prominence in your personalities?
Click to expand...

This is why we should consider order of functions, not letter only:)
Example, if you are Ni Fe Ti Se - INFJ (we all know that:). So, if you think that you are on border with F/T, you could be INTJ. Difference is not only one letter, but order of functions changes dramaticly:) Ni Te Fi Se...As you see, it is not just one letter, but Fe -Fi and Ti - Te. I think that things are complex...
 
Dragon said:
Don't go by the four letters. Go by the eight functions.
Click to expand...

whether it's four letters or eight functions, the goal is for those who feel they're on the borderline to describe how they see or balance the difference in their own personalities.
 
Honestly, I think that being borderline is far more rare than we think. because - we function at our way...we can't function different. So we always have first function etc. The question is to recognize our pattern...We have to be honest.
 
I'm just curious to see how each person understands the difference for themselves in their own words.
 
And for typing others I found theory of four temperaments useful. SJ/SP/NF/NT somehow makes sense to me...
 
Jana said:
And for typing others I found theory of four temperaments useful. SJ/SP/NF/NT somehow makes sense to me...
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Who's to say Jung's way of breaking up the mind and the decision making processes was the only way in the first place, the way it works could be sorted a million different ways. Sometimes I think we get to caught up in the terminology and forget that this is just an outline or a starting point.
 
Sali said:
Sometimes I think we get to caught up in the terminology and forget that this is just an outline or a starting point.
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I agree, but using terminology does not mean we are caught up in it. Theories are useful. I found that this one works well for me and for my relationships with others.
 
Sali said:
I'm on the T/F line and it's basically like this, I have strong compelling emotions. sometimes they will sway my decisions but often I will force myself to not use my emotions in my decision making processes.
Click to expand...


Although we all have both F and T, i find that although my INFP thought processes are supposedly (Fi+Te+Si+Ne) my actions are often more Fe. Not sure what this means, but there's a distinct difference between how i think and the what i communicate externally.
 
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Jana said:
I agree, but using terminology does not mean we are caught up in it. Theories are useful. I found that this one works well for me and for my relationships with others.
Click to expand...

You're right of course it's generally a fairly decent outline, orders of functions seems somewhat boxing to me however. I'm tired and fairly irritable at the moment though so I suppose everything seems somewhat constrictive to me right now, lol.

also can someone explain to me how the order of cognitive functions has anything at all to do with MBTI type I'm a little lost on how that conclusion was drawn in the first place? I've seen this theory all over.
 
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Well...this is where things can get complicated.

Jungian theory and using the functions is different from MBTI. MBTI will "allow" you to be on the boarder between types because it's more behavior based while Jung functions really aren't. Jungian functions talk about the pattern your mind makes when it puts together information, and that pattern becomes your personality. Jungian functions is "first this, then this, then this, then this". MBTI is "how do you feel"?

So if you're using Jungian functions, your pattern of thought has to be Ni-Fe-Ti-Se for INFJ because that's the preference order of your thoughts. It's more unconscious than conscious. And you have to go that direction, because that's how the theory says we think. We come up with the thought, we filter it emotionally, we thinking about it, and then respond - and then all together that creates the "INFJ" pattern.

But, when we start really looking into that pattern I think it's easy to become confused. It's hard to "look" at how we think, and it's easy to say, "well I *feel* this way" rather than look at the function processes. Jungian functions are really hard to pin down; but it's more of an on/off switch - you either are doing it, or you're not because their introverted function pairs and extroverted function pairs. You exhale and inhale; you extrovert and you introvert the pairs.

Anyway, that's a reeeeally simplified, pared down version of Jungian functions. I think if anyone feels on the line (which can happens) maybe it can help to think about the function pairs more; or maybe you can (try) to "catch" your first conscious thought and compare it to a cognitive function description (er...maybe!).

Good luck, though! In time it can and will make sense. It just takes time.
 
arbygil said:
your pattern of thought has to be Ni-Fe-Ti-Se for INFJ because that's the preference order of your thoughts. It's more unconscious than conscious. And you have to go that direction, because that's how the theory says we think. We come up with the thought, we filter it emotionally, we thinking about it, and then respond - and then all together that creates the "INFJ" pattern.
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See, this is the part I don't quite understand. Why does the pattern of thought have to be Ni-Fe-Ti-Se? Do we have no choices? no will? no preferences? or no way to override our emotion with logic or override our logic with emotion? Couldn't the function we use be entirely situational?

These aren't really fair questions to ask here I suppose, I will have to find answers to these questions on my own, It's just very confusing when it's not applied to one specific situation but rather a "general preference."

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that the conclusion isn't necessarily dependent on the process, other factors can come into play.
 
Res said:
Although we all have both F and T, i find that although my INFP thought processes are supposedly (Fi+Te+Si+Ne) my actions are often more Fe. Not sure what this means, but there's a distinct difference between how i think and the what i communicate externally.
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INFJ functions are Ni Fe Ti Se

INFP functions are Fi Ne Si Te
 
Curiosilla said:
INFJ functions are Ni Fe Ti Se

INFP functions are Fi Ne Si Te
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Doesn't matter because i wasn't listing them in order. My point was not about the function order but how i, personally, actively behave in social engagements in the world, compared to how i think through things.
 
Res said:
Doesn't matter because i wasn't listing them in order. My point was not about the function order but how i, personally, actively behave in social engagements in the world, compared to how i think through things.
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1. If you act different thatn you feel then you have reason for that.
2. Reason also can be somehow explain.

So, why do you act differently and do you really act diferently?
 
Jana said:
1. If you act different thatn you feel then you have reason for that.
2. Reason also can be somehow explain.

So, why do you act differently and do you really act diferently?
Click to expand...

thx, but i'm more interested in what others have to say about how they experience the borderline.
 
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