At the risks of sounding totally nuts and unhinged, I'm going to share some weird experiences that Ive had lately. Its hard to explain these experiences because I dont really undertand it and its hard to put such strange 'feelings' into words.
Over a month ago I was hanging out with my INTP friend and we were having a deep and meaningful. I was looking at his face, listening intently to what he was saying, when I felt like I could see 'another face' morph over his. It was like his facial features metaphorically morphed into a more 'generic face'. All these other faces of people that I know popped into my head as I was staring at him, people I thought of as INTP. I felt that all these faces had a similar 'quality' to them They do no look alike, or related, but there was a deeper quality present in all of them that is hard to explain. I snapped out of it quickly and tried to stop tripping out and concentrate on what he was saying, but each time I looked at him I could still imagine the 'generic' face.
This happened again with different types, when I have interacted with an ESTJ, ENTP, ISTP, ENFP and ISFP. On occasion when I see someone new, I can imagine their face morphing into the 'generic face'. Most of the time I dont even think about it though, or forget to think about it and just concentrate on interacting with the person. I'm pretty bad at reading faces from photos but I think it would be fun to experiment a little more with it
I imagine that these generic faces may be 'archetypal faces', or maybe Im just nuts. I havent discounted that completely. There is also a chance I'm simply reading too much into this, and I'm wary or creating self fullfilling prophesies when dealing with people. I certainly dont want to pre-judge anyone or lie to myself.
I had a look at the VI stuff in socionics. Some of the stuff seemed compelling but overall I think that its pretty flawed. I had a look at all the famous type photos trying to see the connection in the faces and for a lot of them I couldnt. I did find the body language information interesting, and could relate some of it to myself and people I know. But a lost of it was hit and miss. I definately think that socionics has its cognitive function orders screwed up. I'm supposedly an INFJ in socionics as well and I do not relate to the FiNe function order, although I do realise that scoionics has different understandings and descriptions of all the indiviudal functions, and that my understanding could be flawed or misguided. Some of the relationship dynamics stuff is very interesting as well.
Socionics asserts that inner processes manifest themselves through outer boundaries. Heres a link to the section on VI on the site
http://www.socionics.com/advan/vi/vi.htm
Im finding this all very confusing and interesting. I dont know if VI is possible or even real. And if it is true, why is it so, and what are the implications? Where do these archetypes come from?
Has anyone else experienced anything like this?