Featured Ni Power

Hello @David Nelson, and thank you for your post. I'm glad you have shared some thoughts on Introverted Intuition, because it's a topic that can spur some very interesting ideas for discussion. Would you agree it can be a difficult function to define and describe, precisely due to the "psychic" character of it? And I hope you are open to some open-ended thoughts about this.

• The "power" of Ni? Is Ni a "power" cognitive function? In my opinion, yes it can be, but it depends on which position in the functional stack it is in. For instance, I ask myself, why is it that ENTJs and ENFJs are always archetypal viewed as leaders, kings/queens, CEOs, mob bosses, etc, and INTJ and INFJ are often not viewed this way automatically? Ni-doms tend take on the archetypal image of "masterminds"(INTJ), "mystics"(INFJ), monks, artists, counselors? The ENTJ and ENFJ have Ni in their auxiliary position, so their personhood, who they are, is not based on Introverted Intuition. It's based on their position in an already established hierarchical system. For ENFJs, their social circles, and where they fit in those social circles, is extremely important to them and their identity. The same goes for ENTJs when they identify themselves within an ordinal structure(aka. corporate, government, military, etc. structures). Thus, ENxJs actively, consciously, wield Ni as a tool or weapon to accomplish their objectives within a defined system, which makes them very likely to make it to the "top" of these system's hierarchies. So when it comes to the question of Ni and "power", this to me, clearly shows Ni as a very powerful function. Why? Because ENxJs understand better than anyone else the power of the imagination. If you can make someone believe in something that they previously didn't believe in before, you can make them do anything. You don't need to make it, solve it, or create it all yourself, in the way an Ni-dom needs to, to prove what is possible, since, you have the backing of the system behind you, if you are an ENFJ or ENTJ. Also, imo, I think Ni by itself is a useless function(Carl Jung himself said of Ni-doms: “From an extraverted and rationalistic standpoint, these types are indeed the most useless of men.”), but it is essential. I think Ni-doms, especially, understand how much the nature of reality is shaped and formed by the individual's ability to perceive it. It is up to Ni-doms to decide what to do with this level of awareness. And as for INFJs, I think it comes from their Fe, which when coupled with Ni allows them a nearly infinite range of flexibility in terms of expression and blending.
  
• As for my thoughts on Ni versus Si: I agree with @aeon and @Asa here in that there are no "superior" functions. They are all there in every individual. I highly suggest reading(and I'm giving a bit of a "shout-out") some of @Ren's blog posts on cognitive functions, as well as his excellent book The Ecstatic Soul: A New Look At The INFJ Personality for a good and in-depth look at the metaphysical nature of the INFJ personality, as well as how it differs from the ISFJ, who are a lot like INFJs but have Si in their dominant function. In my opinion, they are simply different and not at all superior/inferior. I really don't like a lot of the online comparisons of personality types with IQ-score, college degree status, and career patterns. It really boxes people in, imo, beyond what is practical, healthy, and true based in real world experience. From my experience, Si-doms, and specifically ISFJs, are very smart, saavy, and "smooth" people. A good popular example of the ISFJ personality would be the U.S. President Barrack Obama. They also have a wide range of expressive capability, in relation to INFJs. They make up about 15% - 20% of the population (which is why, from my pov, most people won't see anything particularly special about an INFJ, nor is there anything strange or different at first glance about an INFJ person, because they very easily blend in with 15 - 20% of the world's ISFJ population). Si is extremely good at paying close attention to details, hard facts, familiar objects, and particular items. ISTJs can be very "powerful". A good example would be someone like Amazon CEO's Jeff Bezos. Te is often perceived as the "power" function. However, no function has "power" alone. Fi is the best counter to Te. A good recent example of this is the current Russia/Ukraine conflict. I think of Russia's direct and forceful bombardment of Ukraine as a very Te-style form of power. You overwhelm your opponent to force them into submission. I think of "Fi" as the necessary element of war, that in order to hold your newly won territory, you must win over "hearts and minds". So even if Russia takes over the capital of Kiev, that will not stop Ukrainians from resisting the Russian power structure. All functions can be "powerful", especially if used optimally. There are because of INFJs rarity, unfortunately, not a whole lot of great modern-world examples of "powerful" INFJs, in the proverbial sense of "power". But there are examples of successful and highly influential INFJs(which are found here on the forum). They are especially influential as "Big idea" people, saints, martyrs, philosophers, model-builders, artists, humanitarians, and authors. They need the acceptance and cooperation of a social or ordinal system in order to do this, imo.
  
• Have I had similar experiences[of "premonitions" I assume?]. Yes, all the time. I have seen all kinds of layers of reality, too. I won't divulge in this talk too much though. Nobody cares. It's a lot of the same stuff people make fun of and say, "it's outside of reality". Or, "what have you been smoking"? It's shit. The key is being able to use this perception for the better ends of the world, the people around you, and the systems that hold up our reality as it is in place.

A final note: On this forum, and this is just a neutral observation, I see a lot of talk about "power"; and I admit, it strikes me because I don't hear people talk about these notions very often or so directly and openly outside of the forum. But it seems very important to a lot of people who come on here for some reason. Not a bad thing - it's just something I notice. I really liked the blog post by @John K Accountability and Power, which gives a thoughtful examination on some of the aspects of seeking leadership and positions of power that don't often get talked about. All in all, all power ultimately belongs to a higher power(s) found in the universe, and I mostly see us mortals, and especially the INFJ, as a "vessel" for communicating the power of truth, faith, and love.

 

Hi David. These sound like significant experiences that have made a distinct impression on you. I wouldn't be too sure that these are tied to your Ni - they may be, but I don't think they are limited to people with a preference for Ni, though that might predispose us to them. The big issue with the first one is where the information that you perceived actually came from. If you had observed them subliminally beforehand and your unconscious had deduced the question from that then it's probably Ni at work, but if you hadn't actually seen them beforehand then there is some sort of esp going on and Ni isn't the most prominent aspect of the result. Ni definitely isn't a paranormal function, though of course it can make use of information obtained that way.

Dreams are an expression of our unconscious minds, and any and all of the functions can be manifest in them, whatever our type. In fact it's very likely that some of our not-preferred functions are represented in a shadowy fashion in our compensatory dream motifs. It's interesting that you saw the magic behind the writer's creativity, which is Ni, but the desire to surpass it goes beyond perception and into judgement - you are comparing yourself with the dream author and see a challenge or a goal in there maybe? If you chew this dream over consciously, you will either suddenly see what's going on, or you will get more dreams that build on it.

I agree with the others here, that the functions complement each other. I worked on project teams that throve on the variety of function preferences represented within them - the folks with Si preferences are immensely valuable for their intimate inside feel for the detail of what is and what is known to work. And if I'm buying a seven figure amount of IT equipment, give me a really good ESxJ from our purchasing department to front the deal-making any day over an Ni dom - we INFJs avoid the conflict of negotiating, and the INTJs tend to either get too clever with it, or too confrontational.

I had a sort of precognitive dream a few hours before 9/11 - it was unlike any other dream I've had, before or since. I gather there was a lot of people who had similar experiences. I don't know why this particular disaster was singled out for me this way - maybe that was a world history turning point of a more significant sort than other, similarly awful events.
Another, more prosaic. A few months before our twin grandkids were born, I was walking into town with my wife. We'd not been in touch with my son and his partner for a couple of weeks, and was just about to say we must get in touch and see how things are going when she said exactly that to me - and as she said it, my phone rang and it was our son with an update. Coincidence? - maybe, but I'm always impressed by triple coincidences.

I don't think either of these were manifestations of Ni, though my response to them certainly was lol.

 

Well when it comes to precognitive dreams I am no stranger having had more than a few come to pass in some form or another over the past decade usually with in weeks to months prior though the details are not always straight forward. One I'll never forget is one I had January of 2011 of a Tsunami hitting what I had thought to be Rio only for the big one to happen on March 11 in Japan that killed over 20,000 people but anyway I've had some real horrors like getting to briefly experience what it is like to watch cities like London or New York getting nuked. In the one about London was just standing there in some random street seeing many of the buildings having had their upper floors blown away while everything that landed in the streets was burning then seeing what remained of a clock tower in the distance and knowing that Paris was also gone. The one about New York was a bit wild that many had already left yet for some reason or another the remaining couldn't leave but yet were still allowed to go to their jobs then watching one going off above one of the boroughs, can't remember as to exactly when I had that one perhaps in 2012 or 2013.

 

This isn't how I understand Si. An analogy - someone with good Si is like a driver with a satnav built into their minds and an ability to navigate effortlessly, but the emphasis is on their process of navigating not the information content they have access to. Scottie in the original Star Trek series is a good example of an Si user - he isn't just a walking catalogue of how The Enterprise's engineering works, but has such a close affinity with the ship that he can respond immediately with good solutions to many of the most challenging problems involving the capabilities and limitations of its structure and mechanisms. What he cannot do very easily is think out the box and come up with innovative new solutions to new types of problem - and he's quite risk averse in protecting his baby. It makes a lot of sense having a safe pair of hands like that in charge of a complex system that needs to maintain its intricate integrity in order to work properly long term. So it seems to me that Si isn't just a model of the world, but an ability to be effective in complex known and understood situations.

 

This sounds like you're overcompensating for years of alienation. I see it happen all the time.

Be an outsider -> try to "fix" yourself through psychology -> discover cognitive functions -> "I was fine all along, THEY are the idiots for not seeing my gifts!" -> obsessive identification with the functions and ego inflation.

Declaring something superior is a value statement. Considering you have no direct experience of Si qualia, that valuation is based mostly on your familiarity with the other category. Ni can be grandiose, which gives a false impression of importance when decontextualized from the massive web of causality in which it fits. If superiority is perceived merely as situational aptitude then sure, but it's also redundant. Just because a hammer is better at pounding nails than paper doesn't mean I have to treat it with reverence unless I really like pounding nails. And then we're back again at the root of the problem: injecting merit into something you're personally familiar with.

Also worth noting that from a Jungian perspective, introverted perception is by definition modified interpretation of reality, therefore nothing to do with data or facts. If anything, Ni is closer to "facts" by extrapolating from photographic details of Se while Ne is memetic in nature. Si is an impressionistic worldview that's substantially more complex than memory or data, especially since it works with Ne. The result can be just as insightful, but from a different vantage point.

Ni doesn't really care for the future or goals, it only synthesizes universal principles which can then be used as projections to the future. But the power you speak of is always from a metabolism of Je, the gravitation towards a tangible agency in the world.

 

You've been drinking too much INFJ kool-aid. How convenient that your particular set of functions just happens to be the best at all these incredibly wide-spanning fields!

Fine, write more about how exceptional you are while living vicariously through deeds of other people. And when you start changing the world, the INTJs will be there to fix your mess as usual.

Still no.