Explain Ni!!

It's pretty damn hard to put something solid to something is inheriently internal, and further based almost entirely on something theoretical and abstract. You are likely looking for an answer that simply does not exist.

I will try my best though. Obviously as I am INFJ my dominant function is Ni, and it is synonymous with everything I think and do. I will use an example of what something that happened earlier today. I went to a talk in the chemistry department about how HCl actually goes into solution. On a molecular, mechanistic level. I personally found it extremely fascinating. As the professor was explaining how it works, I found myself having many "ah ha" moments (which is a hallmark of Ni, ideas coming from seemingly nowhere). What he was explaining hydrogen deuterium exchange (atoms switching places) on the surface of the solvent (the stuff the atoms were on top of), I wasn't entirely sure I made sense of it. My Ni was toying with it in my mind. I was loosely thinking about it and trying to understand it, but it had not locked. It was not until he explained the mechanism and maxwell-boltzman distrubution (basically a bunch of data) curves that my Ni got it. All the sudden, the data and information in front of me all fit together in an instant. I could imagine what was happening with the surface of the liquid, how the ions aligned themselves on the surface, and where they moved to and why happened on the timescale they did. The thing is though, all of this detailed understanding came after I had my ah-ha moment. All of this information entered me and made sense all at once because my Ni unified it into a central whole. I intrinsically understood how it worked without "thinking it through". I then back processed this, and extracted what I knew in detail.

There you have it, Ni. I am not sure if that is what you are looking for, but that is just an example of how my brain in particular thinks. I also understand this might be a bit hard for some people to understand because this was really advanced chemistry that I was learning.

 

This is sure to be interesting. I'll give an example as you asked. Hopefully ... doesn't mind because it involves him and ....! When ... first joined the forum, they didn't tell anyone that she was the gal that he was dating. The one he had been talking about on the forum a lot. As it progressed, I began noticing how quickly they took to each other. How they playfully bantered. I thought it a bit odd.

I got that little tingle in my brain. It began to bother me like that unsolved problem that I know I know the answer to. I know my subconscious began working on it. It would come back to conscious though anytime I was on the forum.

Then the epiphany! Riding my bike at work and it just popped into my head. She was ...! She was ...'s GF, and they had put her on the forum without telling anyone. I was sure of it. It all made sense. But I then did what I always say not to do, and second guessed it. I went and looked at his wall and he had cleverly planted dis-information there. A convo or two that made it seem like they hadn't met. How clever my friend!!

I backed off and didn't say anything for almost two more weeks. But my Ni kept poking me, so I finally said something to ... and she admitted it. She was his girl. There was no one big thing that started it and lead me to it. It was the initial itch because of the banter. Then I began noticing a lot of little things. My sub-conscious took all these little facts and sewed them into a coat called (insert name)! That is my Ni story....and I'm sticking to it!

 

Its just something certain knights say to terrify and intimidate passersby into bending to their unreasonable demands.

 

Indy and QP said it pretty well. I loved QP's example : )

It's an AHA moment, sent from the subconcious gods, or Oprah.

 

I see Ni in two ways (excluding the non-cognitive process Ni).

1. Ni is analogous to Si, except it is pattern-based rather than detail based. If you know what Si is, and what the difference between Se and Ne is, you should be able to deduce what Ni is.

2. Ni is the true "aha" type intuition. You might argue that everyone has "aha" moments, but I see my processes as much more "trackable". I'm constantly generating new perspectives, but (once my Si developed) pretty much anything I know can be traced back to whatever subtle cues I had picked up initially.

 

Interesting examples.

 

Ni is the proper Modern Greek pronunciation of the letter pronounced in Classical Greek as Nu. Arthur's more scholarly companion's pronunciation erred because he was more familiar with the classics (the sort of classical philosophy that leads to such wisdom as knowing that one who weighs the same as a duck is a witch) than the modern tongue.

p.s. Have you ever watched it with the Subtitles for People Who Don't Like the Film? As awesome as the film is, it is better when you see how it follows the dialogue of Shakespeare's Henry IV. The cartoons are really just filler for spaces where they could not think of their own dialogue to parallel the original play.

 

Wow, those are good examples. QP should be an internet cop!

 

Simplest answer? Ni is connecting the dots into an answer. Putting random bits of data together from what you know of a subject into a single cohesive answer.

 

I think this is the most succinct way of putting it, actually. Ni picks up on clues that exist, but no one sees. It could be the unconscious ways people act, or it could be one word in a sentence that sets off Ni. We constantly know when something is "off" initially, and then we let Ni work to put the picture together. But we can be taking in data unconsciously for a long time, so when someone asks us something we'll have the answer instantly.

My latest Ni "aha" was with a coworker. She's a friend of mine, but she came into my office with a different demeanor, and she told me she had some news to tell me, but I couldn't tell *anyone* yet.

"You're pregnant," I blurted, grinning. She looked shocked initially, but beamed back and agreed. No way could I have known, but my Ni kicked in. But I knew her, and knew when she got private with me it was usually something intimate regarding her life and family. I don't know how it all added up in my mind that she was pregnant, but she was.

I've grown to notice that I take in a lot of subtle information, and I'm hyperaware of things on an unconscious level. This all comes to play when Ni makes a decision.

I seem to be much better at using Ni for others than I am with myself, though. :/

 

How about this? Does it seem too simplistic? Don't most people question at least simple matters/motives like these ones?

There are a few other explanations on this page: http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=3694

 

Ni sees what should be, evaluating from patterns that are absorbed in inner world to shape the outer world...

I think

 

Now I are confused. What's the difference between Ni and Si?

I read an article about Si. It feels like missing a detail. I feel like that sometimes, but it's an extremely dark place for me. I'm not looking for an experience. I'm looking for information.

 

the pages quoted in the following (which I did not put together) are from Marie-Louise von Franz' "Lectures on Jung's Typology" http://marie-louisevonfranz.com/b/jt1/
Extraverted Sensation
“The extraverted sensation type is … someone whose gift … is to sense and relate in a concrete and practical way to outer objects. Such people observe everything, smell everything, and on entering a room know almost at once how many people are present. Afterward, they always know whether Mrs. So-and-So was there and what dress she had on.” (p. 27)
“The ES type has the best photographic apparatus...This is why this type is found among the good mountaineers, engineers and business people, all of whom have a wide and accurate awareness of outer reality in all its differentiations.

Extraverted Intuition

“Intuition is a function by which we conceive possibilities. A sensation type would call this object a bell, but a child would imagine all sorts of things you could do with it. It could be a church tower, this book could be a village, etc. In everything there is a possibility of a development. (p. 37) Intuition needs to look at things from afar or vaguely in order to function, so as to get a certain hunch from the unconscious, to half shut the eyes and not look at facts too closely. If one looks a things too precisely, the focus is on facts, and then the hunch cannot come through. That is the way intuitives tend to be unpunctual and vague.” (p. 38)

Turning this function towards extraversion are entrepreneurs, journalists, publishers, stockbrokers, fashion designers… “One finds them wherever there is something new brewing, even in the more spiritual realms. They will always be in the advance movement.
“It is generally the creative artist who creates the future. A civilization which has no creative people is doomed. So the person who is really in touch with the future, with the germs of the future, is the creative personality. Now the extraverted intuitive, because he is capable of sniffing the wind and knowing what the weather will be tomorrow, will see that this perhaps completely unknown painter or writer is the man [or woman] of tomorrow, and therefore he will be fascinated. His intuition can recognize the value of such a creative person. (p. 37-38)
(Also good in a therapist)

Introverted Sensation

“In describing herself, [Emma Jung] said that the introverted sensation type was like a highly sensitized photographic plate. When somebody comes in the room, such a type notices the way the person comes in, the hair, the expression on the face, the clothes, and the way the person walks. All this makes a very precise impression on the introverted sensation type; every detail is absorbed. The impression comes from the object to the subject. It is as though a stone fell into deep water: the impression falls deeper and deeper and sinks in. Outwardly...you do not know what is going on within [the IS]. He looks like a piece of wood with no reaction at all — unless he reacts with one of the auxiliary functions, thinking or feeling. But inwardly the impression is being absorbed.” (p. 34)

Introverted Intuition
The introverted intuitive has the same capacity as the extraverted intuitive for smelling out the future… But his intuition is turned within, and therefore he is primarily the type of the religious prophet, of the seer. On a primitive level, he is the shaman who knows what the gods and the ghosts and the ancestral spirits are planning...In psychological language...he knows about the slow processes which go on in the collective unconscious, the archetypal changes, and he communicates them to society. The prophets of the Old Testament, for instance, were people who, while the children of Israel were happily asleep — as the masses always are — from time to time told them what Yahweh’s real intentions were, what he was doing now, and what he wanted his people to do. The people generally did not emjoy hearing these messages. ( p. 41)
And then there was Jung…

Difficulties in noticing the needs of the body and appetites. "

 

EDIT: didn't realize I was resurrecting the thread. Sorry!

I'll give you a few examples, because they're just different instances and "usages" (as you said, not the right word!) of my Ni!

One of the most common ones is that I tell my closest friends that I can predict what they will next do, about 50% of the time. It's like a probability kind of thing. At that current moment, he or she has the highest probability to do something or the other, based on the way they are. Like there was once I went out for a movie with a bunch of friends. After the movie, we left the theatre, and my close friend disappeared suddenly. Another friend asked nobody in particular "Where's (person's name)?" And I didn't realize he was gone, but once she asked that, I knew for sure that he was inside the theatre, looking for the title of a song he heard during the show, because he recognized a song from the movie and wanted to confirm that it was that song. I asked him, he confirmed it.

Another instance in the same vein is that another close friend of mine often writes letters to me. She wrote me one recently, and without mentioning the things she was worried about at the time, I intuitively knew what she was thinking about; and I wrote back to her asking her if that was the case. She affirmed all of them to be true.

On a more regular basis, I can often predict what people will say before they even finish saying it. Not that I know exactly what they will say, but I know what idea they are trying to put across. So before they finish I know what they are trying to get at.

As a water polo goalkeeper, at the peak of my ability - there was this one instance during practice where an excellent cross was made inside to a shooter at the two meter line. (essentially, the closest you can legally shoot at in water polo) I looked at the shooter's face for a split second and I knew that I knew that I knew he was going to shoot at the top right corner, exactly at that spot of the top right corner, and I saved that shot easily with two hands, plucking it neatly out of the sky. My teammates thought I was incredible; I walked around that day with a secret, thinking "Only Ni." That was fun.

Once my ISFJ brother bought a book called "Understanding Emotions". He was telling me that it was a great book, and that it really helped him know more about what people are feeling. Most of the book was linked to how a person's face can tell you what someone is feeling. And I told him something along the lines of "isn't that pretty easy?" (bear in mind I was very young then) He was disbelieving and tested me with a few faces. I managed to get most of them right, with a few slightly off.

On a math test when I was 11, there was a question I didn't know how to do. But something inside of me told me that I had to do this precise set of workings. And I didn't know why. But I just did it - and it came back right. Until today (granted I didn't really look at it after that exam review) I have no idea how I did it or why that answer is right.

I get what IndigoSensor said in my own studies now as well. My Chemistry lecturers and teachers tell me things and I just understand it. I drink it up naturally - from physical to organic, gas laws to organic synthesis mechanisms. The thing about epiphanies happened to me before in Literature. When I first looked at poetry seriously, I could get stuck on not knowing exactly what the poem meant, until I read it enough times and something would click and connect:

At that moment it'd be an epiphany, like in that single momentary split-second everything flowed and connected. I knew what the poem was about. From there I could look at literary device, word choice etc and show how it helped to produce this effect in the poem. (and I feel that the ability to deconstruct, to work backwards from intuitively knowing something is the result of Ti acting after Ni has worked)

I was once really interested in this girl, but she was a complete stranger to me. I didn't even have 5 minutes of conversation with her, but she struck me as someone so incredibly amazing. But subsequently, I made a lot of guesses about her which turned out to be true - she writes poetry, her grades, her music taste, etc... And of course, now that I do know her better and I'm no longer had a crush on her, she did fit my initial observations of what I thought she was like: caring, dreamy, passionate, slightly moony, etc.

My closest friend can talk to me without talking. I wouldn't know for sure, but I think it's because I know her well, and she knows me well, and so we know what each other would most likely respond to each other. We would tell/hint each other what we meant through facial expression.

Of course... these are the success stories. There are many times I guess things about people and they're wrong. Practically thousands of times on instinct I've mentally completed someone's statements and they were wrong. That's just an example of the many times my Ni fails. But that's to be expected, I'm not someone with a predicting the future ability or mindreading.

 

Very good overview. I especially relate to the use of intuition to understand poetic meaning. I've always connected with poetry, especially Romantic poetry, on an intuitive level i guess. Could say the same for particular types of media, tv shows, themes, characters, or film. While everyone would be confused about what's happening in the story, i got the meaning readily even if i didn't have the background knowledge or experience to figure it out. I could easily read the silences, the subtleties of body language, and know what it meant, or was intended to convey. But intuitive understanding of media is quite different from intuitive understanding of body language irl.

Another way in which i see my Ni working is in languages. I am not great at languages but i've always connected with French language, the sounds, but more so the meaning. I'm not sure if i'll ever be fluent in speaking the language, but there's something about the communication of meaning in inflection, emphasis, accent, which is astounding, in many cases more than the words themselves. I think this is why i enjoy performance art; it's the performance of the words or sentiments which often gives the communication true meaning, especially the motive or intent beyond what is said which affects how it is said.

In music, especially in music which is more dramatic or emotional in content, i'm often in tune with emotions or sentiments in the song besides the intended meaning of the lyrics accompanying the melody. This only works with particular types of songs or artists.

My Ni picks up on emotional content very quickly, but not on details or specifics.