I really am sorry if this is not making sense, I'm just describing it the way I see it in myself. I'm not using any official descriptions, just personal experience - so I understand that I may be mistaken...
no harm meant, I do not mean to sound overbearing at all, so I'm sorry. I know Berens and some prominent others explore Fe in detail in their writings, you can probably find things online.
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Honestly, I think Fe is hard to pinpoint because of the "emotional" aspects that get dumped on the F functions and sloughed off T functions. I think in most of the hardcore discussions you will see people just come out and say, "F is about VALUES, not feelings/emotions." Still, our values are tied to feelings in some ways more than our thinking logic is, so it is hard to separate.
The Fe strong people on our board are interesting for me to read (ExFJs), I sometimes think I still fail to grasp what they say. Because it's not my natural mode.
As far as the chameleon thing goes, yes, I think it's part of that. I probably described it in the past, but here is my background, which forced me to Fe like crazy... but in lopsided ways:
My father (ESTP) is an alcoholic. My mother (ISFJ) is an enabler and was raised to be a model woman in a country baptist-style church and never lost that. My home wasn't safe for me to Ti much at all. Ti'ing would only draw my dad's ire (where he would immediately dismiss or crush my viewpoint) and only hurt my mom, who was SOOO Fe-oriented and also vulnerable from dealing with my father that she only saw life in terms of doing your duties and being nice to people; anything else would send her crying.
Couple that with my social anxiety, and that is how Fe got used. I applied all of my Ti and Ne towards "learning the social rules." I would immediately size up people, figure out their expectations before I interacted with them, then seek to make a connection and ingratiate myself (all for good reasons). I would not show them all of me, I would only show them the parts of me I intuitively knew they would value and accept.
That's basically the chameleon effect -- where you become who you need to be to mesh with whoever you're around. I would be very uncomfortable (to the point of tears) in new situations where I didn't KNOW the expectations and was afraid of offending someone by accident; I would feel like I had a lack of integrity if I felt certain ways inside but acted differently on the surface just to avoid conflict; or if I shared too much with someone that I knew could get around and disrupt my masks with other people.
This was basically Fe at work, but it was Fe being used to manipulate for my own safety and comfort. So it was lopsided.
In the last few years, being so actively involved with online communities, I realized Fe could actually be used in LOTS of ways. It's used to signal your commitments to someone through a socially agreed-upon sign.
(Basically, it's like telling someone you love them or respect them, but without having to use words; it allows them to EXPERIENCE your commitment by your action or ways of saying something. It's not actually "fake" although you can of course manipulate people using Fe. INTPs seem to value words and telling people things; but other sorts of people actually can't value words that much, they need to experience it. See how a conflict arises?)
It's also used to draw hard boundaries when you feel like someone is encroaching on yours. The same lines of connection that you feel are "caging" you sometimes can also be used to protect yourself and draw limits.
It can be used positively, to pull people together, rather than to dominate them by your way of thinking.
As far as the emotions go... I'm not sure how all that fits in. I just want to avoid the thought that Fe is all about "showing of feelings," although feelings do often come along with values-expression and might even drive what values we hold to some degree. INTPs might explode in an Fe-attributable fit of rage when they're stressed, but Fe is a lot more than that.
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Anyway, when someone says the "Fe Inner Child," I'm left thinking more about a child who wants to please people and be accepted into the community.
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We often experience it first in its negative aspect of projecting our “shoulds,” fears, and negativities onto others. The qualities of these fears reflect the process that plays this role, and we are more likely to look immature when we engage in the process that plays this role. There is often a fairly high energy cost for using it—even when we acquire the skill to do so. As we learn to trust it and develop it, the aspirational role process provides a bridge to balance in our lives. Often our sense of purpose, inspiration, and ideals have the qualities of the process that plays this role.
I agree with all this, although it doesn't really flesh out at all how a particular function probably 'works' in tangible reality. How do we think Fe would manifest for an INTP? How does it differ between INTPs? Etc.
For me, it was the sense that I am actually part of a community, rather than some isolated observer, and I can use my insight and imagination to direct the social current. I realized that the interaction is far more than a discussion of the content, I'm actually "weaving together a community" -- a web of safety and openness and fairness and other intangibles -- that people can experience on some level and lock into. My role is important in a diverse community, but not better than another's. THis might limit my role, but it also gives me my "place" in a way that I can expand to fill that place. So it is empowering.
Fi is harder. I think it messes with Ti directly. You either look at the essence of things as they are, or you look at how you personally value that essence. THey're both in competition with each other. (Fi is where I am learning it's okay to fight for something just because I believe in it and value it, even if I can't show why it's more important to fight for than something else or can't prove it's inherently better.)
