I recently had the chance to e-mail Lenore Thomson.
If you don't know who Lenore Thomson is...she's the lady that wrote the 'The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki', an e-book that Adymus has recommended and described as the best source out there and the most "cutting-edge".
I linked her to Adymus' Cognitive Functions 100 thread, the 16 smiles thread and the "Guide to Typing in Real Time" thread. Enjoy.
Below is her response:
Hi,
Thanks for writing. I wasn't aware of the method you're talking about, so I took a look at the sites you referenced. The people who are writing this stuff have done a great deal of hard work, and I appreciate a lot of what they say. What gives me pause is their overriding premise.
>>Uh, recently...there's been a new typological method introduced to the various typology/mbti forums on the internet.
Since it's inception...it has managed to fascinate people because the model is so CONSISTENT. The thing that irks me though is that Carl Jung himself had thousands of hours of experience and yet he couldn't see the same thing?<<
When you say this model is consistent, do you mean that you've used the method successfully in your own life, or do you mean that the people who introduced it have structured it to be reliably predictive?
I'm asking because all the examples I see at the site involve celebrities, and unless the people introducing this method have actually typed these people, they've simply organized a selective handful of photos and videos according to their own assumptions. For example, I don't see how they're controlling for the fact that celebrities are often projecting public Personas rather than their actual preferences.
I do understand what you mean about the brain maps reflecting what I said in my book about functions and the hemispheres, but, wow, they've taken that association very literally. I used the brain map not to sequester each function in its own little cubicle, but to illustrate functional and attitudinal opposition in a way that was easy to understand. Even so, the neurological end of type is less about the functions than it is about the tasks we associate with the functions.
For example, Extraverted Thinking (Te) is generally associated, in type parlance, with defining and distinguishing objects according to general principles of logic. Thus, when Te is dominant, one can assume that the type is inclined to some form of impersonal judgment or control in the outer world. Clearly, the cognitive processes that enter into this preference can't possibly be located in one part of the brain. Executive judgment requires working memory, emotional investment, and the sort of abstract representation permitted by the hippocampus.
But the fact remains that if the left frontal lobe of the brain is anesthetized, linguistic discrimination and impersonal judgment are rendered impossible. The left frontal cortex is crucial to the tasks we associate with the term Te.
If the right back hemisphere is anesthetized instead, impersonal judgment remains possible, but it occurs without reference to real subjective experience and evaluation. Apart from posterior right-brain input, the left brain will simply fabricate whatever appears to "explain" how consequence is related to cause.
It's not surprising, then, that we associate Introverted Feeling (Fi) with precisely such experiential and evaluative inferences. The crux of the matter is not that there are structural entities in the brain that can be defined as the causal source of T and F. Rather, Te and Fi, as we've come to define them, strike us as opposites for good neurological reasons.
More pertinently, I think the people who are introducing this new method have been influenced by Temperament Theory more than by anything I said in my book. They clearly believe that type preference is innate and, thus, determines everything that crosses a person's face. I don't.
I don't believe it's even possible to determine a person's type from their outward behaviors. Type is a psychological orientation, not genetic destiny.
As I understand him, Jung wasn't interested in temperamental constraint. He was interested in the fact that conscious awareness separates us from other biological organisms. Because we're able to represent brain states to ourselves, we're capable of short-circuiting and influencing their progression. In this way, we commandeer some of the energy generated by instinctual demands, which ARE hard-wired into EVERY human nervous system, and channel it into cognitive choices that nature did not specifically anticipate.
If we were simply doing what came naturally to us, we'd feel happily authentic when we put a fist through a wall in frustration. But we don't. We feel out of control. The fact is that we work very hard to channel our natural responses into behaviors that will serve our conscious goals.
I don't know if I've addressed your questions well enough. If not, please feel free to write and ask again.
Regards,
Lenore
If you don't know who Lenore Thomson is...she's the lady that wrote the 'The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki', an e-book that Adymus has recommended and described as the best source out there and the most "cutting-edge".
I linked her to Adymus' Cognitive Functions 100 thread, the 16 smiles thread and the "Guide to Typing in Real Time" thread. Enjoy.
Below is her response:
Hi,
Thanks for writing. I wasn't aware of the method you're talking about, so I took a look at the sites you referenced. The people who are writing this stuff have done a great deal of hard work, and I appreciate a lot of what they say. What gives me pause is their overriding premise.
>>Uh, recently...there's been a new typological method introduced to the various typology/mbti forums on the internet.
Since it's inception...it has managed to fascinate people because the model is so CONSISTENT. The thing that irks me though is that Carl Jung himself had thousands of hours of experience and yet he couldn't see the same thing?<<
When you say this model is consistent, do you mean that you've used the method successfully in your own life, or do you mean that the people who introduced it have structured it to be reliably predictive?
I'm asking because all the examples I see at the site involve celebrities, and unless the people introducing this method have actually typed these people, they've simply organized a selective handful of photos and videos according to their own assumptions. For example, I don't see how they're controlling for the fact that celebrities are often projecting public Personas rather than their actual preferences.
I do understand what you mean about the brain maps reflecting what I said in my book about functions and the hemispheres, but, wow, they've taken that association very literally. I used the brain map not to sequester each function in its own little cubicle, but to illustrate functional and attitudinal opposition in a way that was easy to understand. Even so, the neurological end of type is less about the functions than it is about the tasks we associate with the functions.
For example, Extraverted Thinking (Te) is generally associated, in type parlance, with defining and distinguishing objects according to general principles of logic. Thus, when Te is dominant, one can assume that the type is inclined to some form of impersonal judgment or control in the outer world. Clearly, the cognitive processes that enter into this preference can't possibly be located in one part of the brain. Executive judgment requires working memory, emotional investment, and the sort of abstract representation permitted by the hippocampus.
But the fact remains that if the left frontal lobe of the brain is anesthetized, linguistic discrimination and impersonal judgment are rendered impossible. The left frontal cortex is crucial to the tasks we associate with the term Te.
If the right back hemisphere is anesthetized instead, impersonal judgment remains possible, but it occurs without reference to real subjective experience and evaluation. Apart from posterior right-brain input, the left brain will simply fabricate whatever appears to "explain" how consequence is related to cause.
It's not surprising, then, that we associate Introverted Feeling (Fi) with precisely such experiential and evaluative inferences. The crux of the matter is not that there are structural entities in the brain that can be defined as the causal source of T and F. Rather, Te and Fi, as we've come to define them, strike us as opposites for good neurological reasons.
More pertinently, I think the people who are introducing this new method have been influenced by Temperament Theory more than by anything I said in my book. They clearly believe that type preference is innate and, thus, determines everything that crosses a person's face. I don't.
I don't believe it's even possible to determine a person's type from their outward behaviors. Type is a psychological orientation, not genetic destiny.
As I understand him, Jung wasn't interested in temperamental constraint. He was interested in the fact that conscious awareness separates us from other biological organisms. Because we're able to represent brain states to ourselves, we're capable of short-circuiting and influencing their progression. In this way, we commandeer some of the energy generated by instinctual demands, which ARE hard-wired into EVERY human nervous system, and channel it into cognitive choices that nature did not specifically anticipate.
If we were simply doing what came naturally to us, we'd feel happily authentic when we put a fist through a wall in frustration. But we don't. We feel out of control. The fact is that we work very hard to channel our natural responses into behaviors that will serve our conscious goals.
I don't know if I've addressed your questions well enough. If not, please feel free to write and ask again.
Regards,
Lenore
