Can the MBTI considered to be a type of phenomenology?

[onesteptwostep]

MBTI is basically a descriptor of experiences, and is somewhat a quantitative study on them. The cognitive functions, chiefly, is the prime example of this.

 

[Black Rose]

Intentionality refers to the notion that consciousness is always the consciousness of something.

Jung said intuition was about the unconscious. Introverted Intutition being the collective of a persons architypes inside them (holographic representation of forms). Extroverte Intution being the external trigers of new architypes. A person may see things in dreams that never existed. Someone that has never seen a giraffe before may dream of one (Ni). Or dream up stuff the way doctor sues created his stories "cat in the hat"(Ne). Phenominology only deals with consciousness not the unconscious. I am aware of my unconscious to some degree but it is not a "something". I am aware of no-thing in my unconscious. I expreienced the void once where I had no body and it was total blackness. This was not a thing, it was the void. Intution is not a thing. It is the unconscious. Your awareness can have no object of awareness. But in doing so manifestation happens. Images and sounds can arise from the void. But the void itself is not a thing, it is empty space (Intuition).

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Nice. You know, this is something I guess I knew since I've studied some phenomenology and I look at them both in terms of "directly analysing experience" (I try to do this in a moral fashion as well as metaphysical). So, often my source of inspiration for describing things about the MBTI is that I am describing my own experiences, and tying this into the language of personality typology. Which reminds me, that typology really is a much broader subject than just the personality, and to me is more of a study of the nature of groups of inter-related elements, especially when divided under some particular real divisions.

I think part of the allure of the MBTI, is that it holds up to a fair amount of phenomenological scrutiny. When adopting it as a model, it does indeed become a decent way to divide one's experiences, especially given a fair bit of leeway in interpreting just what it is that the model really says (an issue when interpreting any scientific model supposing to have objective existence). So we have 2 primary information sources - the sensory world and the world of ideas; likewise, we have 2 primary methods of analysis - logical analysis and balancing/harmony (this I believe quite appropriately characterises the Feeling function - it is sort of a test between how the parts of the region being analysed are relating together. So, for example, whereas a single wrong idea in a logical analysis could disrupt the whole analysis, in a feeling analysis it has less of an impact - rather, it is the measures of harmony that are the most sensitive to change). Then, on each of these are two distinct approaches - whether it is towards subject or away from subject in terms of energy - with the other side being the objective (note: we access other subjects through the subjective, however the person is both subject and object). Finally is a note about the balancing factor within the psyche, and how this balancing tends to mean that a given type displays a particular configuration of energy, i.e. the P/J in the MBTI and p/j in socionics.

Part of the puzzle, of course, is figuring out how to interpret the information in a way which provides the best descriptors of your own experience, and what other means of doing so exist.