Interview aarcha

Recently I encountered a practice of community typing sessions where various self-styled experts collaborate to interview a subject. This occurs nowadays in a variety of socionics communities. I had initially low hopes for this practice, but after trying out a couple of interviews collaboratively with this method, I was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the technique. There is nothing terribly good about swapping in between different interviewers with different priorities and who all want time to be convinced individually of their own reasons -- this tends to cause interviews to balloon in length and doesn't necessarily add clarity for the observer -- but there is something good about having a diversity of opinions among a panel of experts. Of course, the "experts" always have different skillsets, but anyway. We will consider on this blog a subset of particularly interesting and informative interviews I encounter produced by this method. In the first interview, we will discuss aarcha, which is an interview anyway where I did the majority of the interviewing.

The most immediately obvious feature of Aarcha's interview is his tendency to ramble on, in a train of thoughts that meanders in different directions, sometimes seemingly neverendingly. Aarcha elaborates his ideas slowly and is prone to using very complex vocabulary (a sample, "context", ), spends time searching for the correct (complex) words to precisely and artfully convey his meaning (15:25 an example of "searching for the right word"), and frequently preemptively revises his thoughts before he is done speaking, to add clarifications and details. Ironically, the net effect of aarcha's care to articulate his ideas precisely is that he is very hard to understand, it is generally requires a lot of sustained attention to unpack the complex choice of words and follow his ideas in their lengthy elaborations. It also doesn't seem that aarcha simplifies his thoughts for the benefit of his interlocutors, or tries to make a connection with the people he's talking to in such a way that he checks whether they are understanding -- he seems to give very little thought to his interlocutors' thoughts.

Another broad theme that emerges from Aarcha's narratives about his world, especially his limited social world, is that he has great difficulty conjuring specific examples to support his ideas, when I asked him repeatedly. Sometimes, his examples contradicted or were not very much like the general principles he described -- like when he spoke about his slightly abrasive "protectiveness" over his sister's ideas, I asked for an example, and he talked about how she doesn't like eggs and he considers that it's important to consider that "it's standardly cool [in pop culture] to like eggs" (39:30 -- for what it's worth, I found this idea in particular very confusing), or how they discussed what were their favorite colors (41:40). Perhaps these were ideas that came to mind for him that weren't much like the theme he expressed of being protective over someone else's ideas -- but anyway he had difficulty articulating much specific detail. Another example of a directly inconsistent narrative (at 56:10), he said that over some time he changed his behavior to become less abrasively demonstrative about expressing his annoyance with other people and correcting their ideas, and less involved in debating things (these ideas first emerge a few minutes earlier, from the timestamp given might not be fully clear, for the whole segment listen from 51:30), then asked what changed (56:35), he says that nothing changed, that all of the things he does now and the kind of person that he is now, is the kind of person he always has been.

My typing of Aarcha is the IEI. The other interviewers all came to different other conclusions, so I will attempt here to explain some of the specific reasons why I reached my own.

Aarcha makes reference to his "lexical problems" and he speaks in more specificity about how his learning disabilities have affected his life and career, beginning around 59:45. The exact nature of the learning disabilities are not entirely clear, and probably not that important; we can certainly see some difficulties Aarcha has in regular communication between human beings, as alluded to with his complex speaking style above. As with all mental disabilities generally, the etiologies are not clear; maybe Aarcha's difficulties with attention and speaking are an extension of the personality variables of thinking slowly and carefully and wanting to present the self in a precise way, or perhaps, theoretically, the difficulties with speaking are some other condition that is extraneous to personality, and if we could remove it, the true personality could shine through more quickly. If anyone knows how to remove mental disorders to see the underlying personality, please comment below how to do it. Certainly it is true from hearing him talk briefly about his history with these difficulties that Aarcha's learning disabilities are in at least some respect responsible for the highly diminished nature of his social world and especially his career prospects. Whether or not these challenges are a natural feature, but unusually pervasive feature of a more usual personality, or a separate disorder, or some mix of both, is not very clear, and I don't think anyone else can know the answer to that either. My point in bringing it up is this: regardless of the etiology of lesrning disabilities, I think it is particularly useful to notice that Aarcha might not match our expectations of certain types especially in their styles of communication. At one point during the interview, I thought that Aarcha might not be the ILI, since the ILIs with Fi mobilizing would often have a more clear decisive characterization about the people around them, even if they are still unsure about how to evaluate their ideas of people normatively. But, in the context of Aarcha's overall difficulty with expressing himself clearly, maybe that's not the right expectation. At the same time, I would say that Aarcha's comments throughout the interview, when he can express them, were very candid and intentionally open, even in a potentially vulnerable setting.

Aarcha seems to be a clear introvert, he describes himself somewhere near the beginning of the interview as a "social extrovert", he elaborated that by this he means someone who gets energy from interacting with people, likely energy that he does not normally have himself. He describes himself subsisting almost entirely in a virtual social world, with pretty few other activities, at least few enough activities that he considers notable enough to tell us. This may become more common in the future, but the Ni dominant types are those most at home living in a mostly virtual world behind their computer screens, relatively disembodied, interacting with people mentally and with little need to go different places.

There is an unusually clear description of source fluidity at 14:00. Source fluidity is the idea that individuals valuing Ti/Fe do not prefer to discriminate between information from different sources (generally, people), instead, they will take information available from any source with a willingness to assess that source's motivation and biases, and deciding whether that information is correct or consistent, based on "the logic of it", and whether it is consistent with other information they know. It is fair to say that in his description Aarcha emphasizes the Ti part of whether information is consistent with his knowledge and could make sense in the way he understands things, than the Fe part about deducing unknown motivations of other sources. Source integrity is in contrast to source fluidity, preferred by Te and Fi valuing types, who prefer to be able to find sources (generally, people) that they trust, with which they can have unambiguous communication, or unidirectional flow of information, without having to filter it.

Aarcha's social anxiety that he describes, seems to betray a rather extensive conscious awareness and concern for how other people perceive him (This topic is under discussion loosely for the entire last 30 minutes of the interview, beginning at the question around 1:15:20). This is very unlike the ILI with Fe vulnerable or other types with weak Fe. Aarcha also speaks about his tendency towards being accommodating and his intentions to be sensitive to other people in certain circumstances (around 1:33:00). Likewise, he responded in the affirmative to my question about the authenticity of his self-presentation (at 1:26:45) It's possible that Fe suggestive types like the LII and LSI can be aware of, and quite nervous about, how other people are perceiving them -- usually this skill comes with growth and is not so accessible early in life. Aarcha is relatively young and, at a glance, seems like not a terrible nor excellent self-observer, it seems more likely that this focus would be coming from a type with strong Fe as opposed to suggestive Fe. I would also say that among the more clear topics that Aarcha talked about in an energized and clear-minded way, related to his lengthy discussion about his relationship to his sister, which I intentionally kept asking him questions about for this reason, roughly around 25:00 to 45:00. (In the spirit of disclosure, I have some outside knowledge not pertinent to this interview prior to starting, that suggested that this was among the more clear-minded topics for Aarcha to discuss). I think it would be fair to say that, while Aarcha has difficulty articulating the character of his sister and other friends and family members, he has difficulty articulating a wide variety of things during the entirety of the interview, and that he does have some things to say about the character of his sister and himself, and the interplay between the two of them based on the sorts of people that they are, although it took a little bit of time to get him to focus on them, he was much more interested in talking about his own thoughts and responses than the character of other people. This is broadly consistent with a preference for Fe, but also room for Fi, characteristic of demonstrative Fi in the IEI. Arguably, it can also match a Ti dominant type.

Aarcha describes himself as having a self-absorbed style of expression (52:20, the comment is out of context but the context is as a less serious aside anyway), but more pervasively as having a "silly" or "goofy" lighthearted style. Both IEIs and ILIs have a propensity for guardedness and "goofiness" originating from an tendency to see the world around them as unimportant, and to make fun of it in certain ways. When asked for examples of weightier, more important subjects, he didn't really describe any. But he came to this description over and over, that some things about him, especially the way that he was inclined to correct other people's ideas (or, as he pointed out, to protect, and "affirmingly make them believe their views that they already believe, better" 53:00) was simply, naturally his disposition, the way he often is. It seems to me that Aarcha has a pretty big naturally argumentative side, and that he lives in a world of intellect and ideas, critical of other people's contributions and with his own strong opinions about how to think about things. Alpha types like the LII do live largely in a world of ideas, but are not so naturally argumentative, and are more open-minded, receptive, and accommodating, and not always as definitively producing their own ways to think -- or to the extent that they are, they are more accommodating about other people's ideas and not so inclined to have clear judgments about them. In my opinon, Aarcha's assessment of other people has at least as much of a component of evaluating and judging other people based on their ideas as their character -- he speaks only very loosely about other people's character, it's certainly possible that in certain ways he judges other people by their character. By contrast, he somewhat more directly describes that he judges other people by his ideas "I mean, we're all people and we all [...] don't like something, we all have sentiments of disliking people when they believe something differently that we find annoying/asinine as hell and it's probably good to acknowledge that aspect of ourselves" (1:42:40). That judgment based on ideas, seems a little more clear than his judgments by character, although it is certainly possible that he judges by character as well. We see this archetype very often in the socionics community of IEIs who are more intellectual (and as Peter Bartl pointed out many years ago, more often in men) -- who nonetheless have a high focus on the way they appear to others (being intellectual and "nerdy" is an "acceptable" social role for men more often than women, although of course female IEIs can also sometimes be quite intellectual). There are many examples of this throughout the socionics community throughout the years, just to mention a few examples in my opinion for those familiar with the long history of the community, ArchonAlarion, Simon Jacobsen, and Paul Abrusley (aka hitta).

Another point, Aarcha spoke relatively later on in the interview about the idea of "social games" -- it is interesting and perhaps more likely for someone attuned to the emotional environment to describe social games, but probably a variety of other types might also discuss things in this way, and Aarcha's explanation of the reasons and dynamics for those social games, when prompted, was not very elaborate -- mostly again he spoke about his own possible foibles that people might view negatively. In my opinion, the evidence that Aarcha is focused on and aware of the way he comes across to others, his family and peers, is stronger than the idea that he is very aware of other people with hidden ulterior motives -- it is also not clear that he isn't keenly aware of that, and maybe there is evidence unrelated to the interview that he is inclined to attribute such motives in some cirucmstances.

Regarding alternatives and the other conclusions from the other interviewers -- the other types that were mainly discussed were ILI, LSI, and LII. I considered ILI somewhat more carefully during the interview -- I think it is preferable to see Aarcha as a beta introvert with Ti and Fe values. LII I didn't consider nearly as carefully in this current interview, I think Aarcha has some signals of being quite distant and reserved from the real world and also seems, as I said before, argumentative, in a way that makes all of the Ne valuing types quite unlikely. LSI, being the closest type to IEI, is more interesting, and maybe merits some more consideration. It is very easy for me to see Aarcha as emphasizing Ti and Ni and Fe, instead of Ti and Ni and Se, as the LSI might do. As noted above, the Ti dominant type, especially those that have leveled up their awareness in life, can be aware of the way they come across to others, indeed, they can be quite obsessively concerned about how they come across to others. So perhaps that is not impossible. But overall, I see suggestions that Aarcha has Ti and Ni and Fe, instead of Se, and I don't think it is preferable to think of him as a Ti dominant type compared to an Ni dominant type.

One rebuttal made by some other interviewers with different conclusions is that they liked many aspects of seeing Aarcha as IEI, but that they prefer Fi over Fe values. I already addressed that at some length. Another argument was that they did not think of Te vulnerable as very appropriate. If so, LSI or LII wouldn't help much since Te ignoring in my view, wouldn't be much different at all; Ti is still prioritized and winning, and Te is still absent. I don't have a difficulty seeing Aarcha as Te vulnerable, and seeing Ti as highly prioritized without Te. Possibly, this objection comes from Aarcha's critical nature and his tendency to focus rather decisively on the world of ideas, and opinions, and debates, and the way in which other people are inclined to think correctly and accurately about things. Certainly, those are features of how gamma NTs with Te and Ni think as well, but I think it is reasonable to see Aarcha as navigating the world of ideas and ideologies, and in a highly critical way, while prioritizing consistency, and concordance with prior expressed knowledge, rather than measurability and applicability; those topics weren't brought up in the course of interview (although things like, expressing other people's positions faithfully and with integrity so as not to misinterpret them, did come up, the meaning of which is more difficult to interpret). A difficulty thinking of concrete examples, and a concomitant propensity for unconstrained, magical thinking is something that IEIs tend to often have difficulty with -- with Aarcha there is no magical thinking that we can see from this interview, but there is an obvious dramatic difficulty with concreteness in his examples. Maybe it is less significant, if there are other speech problems -- but still, it seems more like an IEI's expression of Te to me than any of the other alternatives.

Interview Lukas

I interviewed Lukas

I had a slightly difficult time with this interview, and I went down some wrong paths.

Major observations:

• Lukas has a slightly scattered discursive style. This is a rather general impression that I get from the range of topics discussed. Lukas does stop and think a lot and allows the conversation to get very directed by me, but still, I don't necessarily have any very powerful specific evidence to back up this claim. (Also, Lukas describes himself as "scattered" at 4:30).
• Lukas focuses most naturally on *what he does,* but does so inconsistently. For instance, at the very beginning of the video, Lukas seems a bit taken aback and unsure how to respond to the high degree of open-endedness in the "Tell me about yourself" question (which is normal). He then proceeds to start talking about some of the objective information about his life and *what he does* in his life, but only actually gives a small amount of disconnected information, and then relatively quickly, becomes unsure what to talk about, and stops rambling and asks for additional specificity. One could imagine watching other people, uncertain of what they should talk about in such a situation, talk at much greater length about what they do. Another example of Lukas failing to speak with uninterrupted attention to what he does, at 26:30 Lukas speaks for about 45 seconds about a job, and speaks ONLY about the features of the job, how long his breaks are, how much contact he has with colleagues and how this makes him feel, until after about 45 seconds I stop him and ask him what the job is (I rather doubt that an extroverted logical type would ever describe their job in that manner, without saying what the job is). Another similar example occurs at 46:30, where Lukas starts explaining a graphic design job but doesn't give detail about what the job is about.

We find Lukas at a point in his life, having graduated from his university studies only a very short time ago, when he is at a major decision point, in which most people try to decide on a career path. So, I spent considerable time, perhaps with didactic as well as diagnostic intent, discussing this decision, more time perhaps than was valuable; however, as an interviewer my goal was to talk with Lukas openly about this important decision occurring at this time in his life, and seeing what he thought about it. A few points emerged:

1. Lukas was not really sure about what to do with himself; one theme which recurred was a desire to keep his options open (normal, at this stage of life, but still interesting).
2. In a certain way, Lukas has not given a lot of thought to his career; he has some thoughts about it, but he seems to prefer to figure some things out later rather than making plans prematurely that he might feel restricted by.
3. Lukas spends a lot of time talking about what he is "interested in" (frequently occurring words: "interested" and "interesting"; we also explicitly discuss this topic at 17:30 and Lukas agrees with my observation, but doesn't comment further.) and, while relatively flexible, really does, I think, have a drive to primarily do things that are interesting.

My typing of Lukas is ILE. There are some additional observations that go into this typing.

• Lukas doesn't talk much about physical activities. While he had a few things to say in response to my question at 1:04:40 "What are your three favorite activities to do outdoors" -- he had trouble thinking of the third activity, and had not mentioned any of the three activities earlier (for example, in the "What kind of person are you?" question). He has very limited other things to say about his physical surroundings, in general. I concluded that Lukas was not an Si dominant type such as the SLI, even though in SLIs sometimes these types of comments are a bit muted and hard to find.
• Lukas spends very little time talking about individual character. Actually, there is almost no time in the entire video discussing the qualities of any other person, besides Luke himself, including when this discussion was more prompted. There was probably more discussion of (negative, angering) qualities of someone in the question at 1:10:00 asking about conflict, than there were in the questions that followed at around 1:18:00 about relationships and the direct question 1:27:30, "What about the friends that you had in college made them your friends" -- instead of answering this latter question by speaking about their character, he explained who knew who, who lived nearby, and what activities he liked to do with particular friends. It's not clear from his answer how closely he knew any different people. The greatest that was said about the qualities about his friends was "shared interests, shared values, things like that" and "We all liked to drink a lot" I conclude that a focus on Fi is less likely.
• Lukas is kind of ambiverted, expressing a range of activities to do with other people and in the outside world but also expressing a lot of nerdy, mental activities and time spent away from other people.

That said, besides ILE, the other type that would make the most sense, I think, is the IEE. In my opinion, there is a fair amount that Lukas has noncommitment and indecision characteristic of Ne types -- as we see for example in the restraint from strong judgment of the individual that took the car in the story about the conflict with the car. This story was not really conclusive about telling between the ILE and IEE. The delta theme of good-faith judgment, where judgment is slow and alternate explanations to "this person is evil" are preferred to quick conclusions, is on display in that story. However, ILE also is a type that prefers not to be judgmental; to tell the difference between ILE and IEE it is most helpful to examine other situations to see if there are any other times when it seems that the character of others is a principal focus of attention. That was the purpose of the subsequent few questions, and my interpretation from the subsequent questions, is that there is no evidence to suggest that character of other people is ever a strong focus.

Following the interview, Lukas and I had a discussion about this point, without reaching a strong conclusion. One thing that Lukas mentioned, correctly, is that the discussion about the guy who took the car can be seen as an evaluation of character and that Lukas expressed some negative feelings about that guy. It's true that despite the lack of strong judgment, that there was evaluation of character -- however, I contend that this is an easier situation to evaluate character of since the outcome of the situation is highly negative. If Lukas were the IEE (which may still be the case, as both delta NF types are often "shy" about displaying their inherently noncommittal judgment of others -- the IEE is still less shy). I'd like to see more evidence of good-faith judgment of other people to change my mind. I think there were a lot of opportunities to talk about people during the interview, but perhaps it would be more informative to ask Lukas about some specific people (it also felt to me, especially talking about the wide range of people at college in different cliques, that Lukas didn't keep very many if any people real close to the vest, but perhaps I'm wrong; I didn't ask him about it anyway).

I'm okay with seeing Lukas as having Te mobilizing and Fe demonstrative. However, it works just as well to see Lukas as having Ti creative and Te mobilizing -- where the focus on what people do is in relatively even competition with focusing on certain general structures and principles for understanding and interacting with the world. Some passive, inconclusive evidence for Ti: I think that there is some suggestion that Lukas has an ideological bent (for example of the discussion around 34:00 about political activism and the uncertainty around Lukas felt of how involved to be, as well as a past interest in Libertarian philosophy, briefly discussed around 1:19:30). There are some other small instances in the video which are not as easy to point out specifically where Lukas seems to be answering something based on a general principle understanding, and has an inclination to discuss the general principle, and doesn't think to address any specific supporting example -- I won't go through the video and find every such instance because that would be really hard, but one example, is at 36:30 through around 40:00 where I ask Lukas a complex question about how he wants to work, and he talks in general about how he liked working in certain ways, without reference to specific examples or details about those work environments.

I also feel that Fe mobilizing fits relatively well; at times in answering these last few questions about socialization, Lukas mentioned things like how he wants to be part of a community and he is bothered by being alone and not being part of a group (43:15) -- Perhaps this is rather general and not necessarily entirely conclusive. On the whole though, there are bits of nonconclusive, circumstancial evidence that lead me to solidly prefer ILE to other suggestions like IEE.

What are some other possibilities? LII comes to mind. It might be possible, but I don't think it is preferable; I would expect an LII to be less active and more consistent.

Interview Alice

I interviewed Alice.

Please note that there is a technical problem resulting in a brief discontinuity at 58:15. A few moments of Alice's commentary was lost.

Observations:

• Relaxed posture, posture shows affirmation and attention to my questions, extensive gesturing. Head back in "thinking" pose while answering questions, you can see the thinking process in the face.
• In response to "How would you describe yourself?" questions of identity are particularly central. One of the first things dsescribed was "I'm a musician" which turned out to be a hobby. The vocation "I'm a barista" was thrown in at the end of the answer, almost a comparative afterthought.

Themes:

• Alice's work life is bothering her for several reasons, mainly:

1. Her work as a barista is not sufficiently stable in hours, and thus pay.
2. Her work involves too much standing and is physically difficult.
3. Perhaps the most pressing issue, her work involves a lot of superficial interaction with rude customers.

However she doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas about how to improve her work situation. To the extent that she does have ideas about how to improve her work situation, they are relatively inchoate and indecisive. For example, Alice muses that she might prefer to work in an office, where she does not have to interact with customers -- but that doesn't narrow it down a lot nor actually speak to the type of work being done or the skills necessary to do it. We spent large portions of this interview talking about work life and types of work, beginning around 19:30-33:00 and then again at 37:00-50:00.

It seems to me, that the type of work that Alice enjoys doing, is helping other people. She does actually say that in her experience, she enjoys "helping people help themselves" (see 45:00) but makes a distinction between helping people outright or helping people be "self-sufficient." But it seems interesting, that when she discusses her experience of taking care of other people, she seems to be talking about helping them manage their emotions and relationships, rather than their physical surroundings (see 12:30, debatable?)

• Alice has a certain aversion to conflict, and repeatedly discusses a preference to maintain a good natured relationship with nearly everyone around her -- rude customers, unfriendly colleagues, and people in general. If she doesn't like a person around her, she says that she doesn't let them know about it. (see 30:00-37:00 )
• Alice has a history of inactivity and depression. It seems that inactivity makes her unhappy. She has intentionally made moves to balance her natural proclivity for inertia with some other things in her life. 19:20 "My activity level right now is the highest it's ever been and probably at the peak of my capacity for activity, but I have pushed the boundaries for my limits many times." This is a common story for many introverts who tend towards depression, including LII, SEI, IEI, ILI, EII, but there is also an element in the narrative of how important it is to concomitantly have gradual self-improvement, and, perhaps, also a sense of self-blame -- which are less common stories.

My view is that Alice is the EII. There are a lot of themes that match my view of this type. Alice seems to express good faith judgment, characteristic of EIIs with introverted ethics and extroverted intuition, like above where she claims to avoid having negative relationships with other people in almost all circumstances. There are a number of other instances in the video where Alice consciously tries to maintain a tenatively positive view of other people (see, 36:30, although in fairness preceding this discussion is a brief overview of Alice's experience's in therapy).

Clearer is Alice's embodiment of a concept I call, perhaps inexactly, "noncommitment." Noncommitment means, viewing the world for its' potential features, and having a difficulty with committing oneself to a particular path or plan, instead preferring to be able to pursue a multiplicity of paths or plans that might potentially occur. All four Ne ego types in some way have a disposition towards living in a world of theory rather than a world of practice, but this is especially true of the EII type in particular. Alice seems to have difficulty with putting plans into action, and especially with, figuring out what are the best circumstances to put herself in. For example, Alice told us that she has often intended to move on from her job as a barista, but instead has stayed in that vocation for over five years, and has thought about certain features of the circumstances she would like to find herself in, but perhaps too vaguely, with few concrete objectives and certainly without a detailed plan to improve her circumstances. That's not necessarily unusual for young people to have no concrete plan about what to do, but this indecisiveness seems to have been a particular issue for a long time in Alice's life, both during her schooling and working life. Remember also -- another sliced example -- that Alice first described herself at the very beginning of the interview as a musician, but she is not a professional musician; despite her enjoyment of music, she has taken few steps to pursue it in a more serious way, and essentially views music as a rather solitary hobby.

This difficulty doesn't seem to extend to being organized and stable. It seems that Alice may not have always been stable, but seems to lead a relatively stable life now, but perhaps without much drive for career advancement or excitement.

Alice further mentions self-sufficiency, another concept of mine referring to delta types, but Alice's view of self-sufficiency seems to mostly refer to other people's emotional well being, rather than direct oversight of resources seen in the SLI and LSE types. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Alice does not mention use of resources (other than in passing, the need to get paid on a consistent basis) or nature, or any kind of physical surroundings at all any point in the interview.

Greg

In this post I discuss the World Socionics Society interview with Greg, embedded below.

I was not able to get in touch with Greg who did not respond to my messages. I would prefer to have the permission of the people who I analyze in a detailed public fashion, but I found this particular interview so compelling that I decided to post about it anyway. While I would prefer to have Greg's approval, ultimately I consider it ethical to examine for public analysis a video that is shared publically.

Here is a selection of the notes I took about Greg while watching the video:

Lots of use of corporate, businesslike language. Very involved and identified with his profession.

Strange, energetically-driven comments, "I am fortunate to have the ability to see between the molecules, to have a greater comprehension of the human condition."

Shows somewhat limited emotional range although becomes much more comfortable in the later part of the interview

Idealistic commentary about his profession, a bit unusual in the context of a marketing job perhaps. Sees a portion of marketing as helping people and driving innovation.

Describes interesting "pre-instigating" -- taking the initiative before other people have a change to take the initiative whenever he senses that someone else is about to initiate

If these observations do not seem substantial to you, and/or you did not get a whole lot out of the interview to understand what sort of person Greg is, you are much like me, at least the first time watching through the interview. The interviewer's suggestion of ESE initially appeared reasonable to me, but I wondered about other types especially ILE and IEE; I did not have a good sense of what was going on.

The second time I watched the interview, I caught a lot more. The meat of the interview is subtle. Pay close attention to the language used. Here is a selection of comments:

"I am highly loyal with my friends [...] My friends and I are very open, we tell each other that we love each other [...] We're vulnerable around each other; there's an authenticity to our engagement"

"I am very touchy-feely in relationships; I have a high degree of emotional sensitivity and physical sensitivity, so I like to express myself physically and emotionally"

"I try to maintain relationships with my family that are authentic"

"My perception of the given emotion in that moment is that my whole life has felt that way, it's very extreme [...] I struggle with the desire to say what I feel in any given moment regardless whether it's appropriate or not"

"I'm a good channeler of otherworld energy"

"I'm in tune with the world's energy, which isn't always a good thing, I think I suffer a lot because of it, but I do feel honored that I have the ability to sense that, I'm on a wavelength that if I watch a news report, I'm there and feeling it the way that people there would be feeling it."

These comments are stated without much emotional energy, but I was drawn to the extremity of these comments, and especially of the somewhat bland telling our friends that we love each other. All of these comments are spoken softly, but their emotional depth is quite strong and a lot of types are not comfortable saying things like the things he says he says, with such open emotionality, especially towards strangers.

The comments about "between the molecules" and "otherworld energy" are particularly well described. This sort of language, reading the "energy" of other people or situations is something that is most often described by Fe ego types. Typically these are stated in vague ways such as e.g. "I am good at reading the energy of situations" which is vague and sounds metaphysically implausible. Greg's descriptions of this phenomenon, especially the description of watching news reports and feeling things, and his experience of observing riots in Belfast, do an excellent job of very precisely showing exactly what these comments are supposed to mean. That is, he expands on the vague statements like "I am a good channeler of otherworldly energy" and describes that what he really means by this is tapping into the emotional mood of the world around him, basically a picturesque example of Fe orientation towards the exterior emotional state.

It is also worth noting that a key component of Greg's emotionality is his *openness.* He has an altruistic idealism towards the world, a friendliness towards others and seems to be not at all judgmental, ideological, or heated. A typing of EIE wouldn't necessarily be extremely unreasonable from this video, but I interpret that alpha values are better.

A few other observations

Interesting comment, "I tell what is going on in each specific moment and then figure out what is the best thing to do at that moment, but I can't plan more than a few steps ahead"

But I can plan very meticulously somethnig that is self-contained, like a six-week vacation I can plan every part in advance.

These can be thought of as Si ego statements with Ni vulnerable. The argument that they are suggestive of Si immediate-moment attention is stronger than them being Ni vulnerable.

One of the reasons I wanted to post about this interview is because I felt that a lot of the informative content in this interview is very subtle and it took me a little while to realize it was there. However, the interviewer picks up on all of this subtlety and offers ESE as a typing very quickly -- as well as offering a sound explanation of the care with which Greg takes his image to explain why Greg's emotionality is so subdued in spite of this typing. Of the twenty-odd World Socionics Society interviews I have watched, most of them are pretty good, but still I identified some mistakes or choices that I found questionable in the interview methodology. This one is, as far as I can tell, virtually entirely free of executional flaws (apart perhaps from the interview questions). In no other WSS interview does the interviewer do a better job than in this one. Unlike some of the other interviews, the interviewer played his role in moving the discussion forward, generally did not make leading statements or speculate about motivations that were not stated in Greg's words, picked up on all of the subtle cues he was supposed to, and explicitly provided good explanations for why they were so subtle in his conclusion (which of course I think is correct). I can say without question that if I were interviewing Greg I would not have done as good a job.

Interview Rachel

Here I interviewed Rachel in the video which is embedded below:

Some observations and interpretations:

• Firstly, Rachel shared situations in which she seemed to fail to contemplate alternative paths. I got the impression that Rachel had difficulty with thinking of alternatives quickly in the interview from her discussion of being lost and unmotivated in psychology classes and discouraged from pursuit of clinical practice but neither contemplating an experimental psychology track nor having any actionable ideas of anything else that she might have wanted to do or study. Rachel's discussion of her experience floundering in college starts at 3:30-8:30 and my analysis describing the difficulty with contemplating alternatives follows right afterward at 8:30. We see some additional evidence that Rachel might not have contemplated alternatives in her description of social media activity, for instance in the story starting around 25:30 Rachel handled the people she was in conflict with on social media by removing them, without considering different technical or social engineering solutions, and further evidence of being especially inattentive to alternate ways of doing social engineering in the social media episodes described at 1:12:30. At multiple points in the interview, she describes that changes in her circumstances, both in work and family life (31:25), have removed the "guesswork", which allows her to focus better. 
• For much of the interview Rachel had a physically stationary posture. She moved her neck a great deal as she was thinking and communicating (for instance at the segment at 15:00). However there is very little motion when she stops talking and very little motion of the arms (e.g. for gesturing).
• Rachel has some mostly deep interests in physical subjects such as conditioning and animals, including birds (27:55), octopi (29:55), dance and martial arts (54:30), and physical therapy. Some of these interests are more fleeting or untapped, but some of them seem to have a lot of associated excitement and run rather deep.
• Rachel describes anecdotes that reveal a tendency to be very spontaneously and harshly critical of others, at times audacious critical. The situation described starting at 44:35 where Rachel had a confrontation with a supervisor could be considered audaciously critical. Rachel is critical of her colleagues starting at 20:50. She has critical comments about people on social media around 37:00. Rachel seemed especially critical of people who "don't shoot straight" as in her anecdotes about workplace gossip (23:00), and those who don't focus on their work (21:20, 22:00). It doesn't seem like Rachel is averse from conflict or confrontation.
• I mention this explicitly in the interview at points, but on the whole it seems like Rachel is a spiritually much more well developed person than she was in her youth.

Relatedly to the last observation it seems like Rachel is fulfilled by her life circumstances, and specifically by her responsibilities, by her ability to work with her mind, and by the lack of ambiguity that her current life's circumstances present to her. These three factors are my best interpretation of the things that seemed to matter for Rachel; they are debatable but they seemed to stand out in several ways. I thought it seemed uncanny that, having had a lengthy series of "just a job" jobs that Rachel described suitable fit and fulfillment from her job in the insurance industry, explaining insurance contracts and "putting down the law" on faulty insurance claims. Many people would find this job excruciatingly boring, detailed, or emotionally draining. Of course Rachel described that the best thing about the job was the compensation and benefits, and not the job description, but she also praised the job for various characteristics. I think the three characteristics I described above of regular, consistent responsibility, lack of ambiguity and emotional management, and the ability to work with the mind are all important aspects of why this job seems to be tolerable for Rachel.

My view is that Rachel is the LSI.

What is most clear from our interview is that she has Se values . She is readily confrontational, and appears to have had some deficits in planning in her life, especially in the realm of exploring different possibilities or different things to do.

When I first conducted the interview, I had not considered the LSI carefully, and thought more readily of Se dominant types, more likely the SLE. I think that there is some evidence to suggest the SLE typing, most notably the education and work history consisting of a sequence of short, odd jobs that Rachel held, with little long term direction or planning, and at times, little impulse control. .

When I reviewed the interview, taking it as a whole I was not inclined to see Rachel as impulsive. Instead I observed that was contemplative and had a stable amount of energy (including physically, with her posture). She also did not seem talkative; at many points after she was finished talking, and while I was writing notes or thinking, she did not proceed narrating, instead regarding the thought as concluded (she did continue her thought through the pauses sometimes; more often than not she didn't). These observations are debatable. It's true that Rachel has had a sequence of poorly planned events encompassing her entire life for a period of time. But she also seems to have gotten much better at planning and living intentionally, since then.

Rachel was very spontaneously demonstrative of her irritation or anger towards other people. This facet of Rachel is probably quite obvious even to the beginning observer. In her irritability there is a nervous energy, I think, which is a contradiction with the previous observation that her energy levels are stable. I think both are true.

Rachel mentioned very early on that she has a history of depression and at 31:45 that she has an "addictive personality." These are very common mental health difficulties and in my opinion, while different types of people have different mental health challenges that they are more susceptible to, it is difficult to say much more about how we can interpret this information with respect to quadra values and types. She has definitely progressed dramatically in terms of her spiritual progress, since her more acute mental health episodes. My point in bringing this up is not to make an "excuse" for data points that do not fit with my typing (such as impulsivity in work history), but rather to paint a richer picture of Rachel and to point out that the data points may not be inconsistent in any case.

In Model A, my opinion is that Rachel's difficulty with ambiguity better reflects Ne vulnerable than Ne role. She seems to have an affinity for work that involves working with impersonal information and applying a rule-based procedure, which in my view reflects a Ti ego type, likely Ti and Se. She does not like situations where she goes off-book from the protocol, and describes that she is uncomfortable with situations where things were not done correctly (see at 25:00) although this could be for multiple reasons).

Rachel seems to be an introvert in the colloquial sense of the term. She certainly does not describe herself as doing a lot of activities outside of a small world consisting of family and work. It seems most likely to me that her world really is just as small as that, as a stereotypical introvert.

As I discussed in the video (see dialogue beginning at 1:15:00), it seems that Rachel has at least some loss of focus towards the intentions and desires of other people, and especially other people that she isn't particularly close to. It's also interesting how she describes at multiple points (13:30, 1:00:40) that she doesn't want to sacrifice of herself in order to help people, or even seem particularly motivated to help other people (in a generalized way) at all. You could reasonably infer that Rachel's lack of focus on people is a total blind spot that better matches Fi vulnerable than Fi role, but I think it is not as clear, beyond saying that Fi is subdued in Rachel's psyche. Another possibility is that Rachel's lack of focus on people is a high level of selectivity associated with Fi valuing types, and that Rachel is a gamma type such as LIE or SEE. But a gamma extrovert seems to fit much less well with the overall observations, especially my view that she is an introvert.

Rachel does not seem very ideologically rigid, and is hesitant to generalize about other people. Although many LSIs are prone to categorical thinking, this type of intentional restraint from making categorical generalizations is also a reasonably common feature of LSIs.

The best alternative to LSI, I think, is the SLE. I have already discussed some reasons why it is or is not a good fit. So for many reasons I think the SLE typing is less likely, but I see where other people would find merits in that typing.

Interviews - Michael

I had the opportunity to interview Michael

Unfortunately my normal microphone equipment was not working correctly and the backup equipment apparently was nearly inaudible. Unfortunately my sound quality in the interview is awful. However, Michael's sound quality is fine, and the viewer can hear all of his answers, if not always my follow up questions. I apologize for the sound quality; I should have delayed the interview instead of conducting it on poor equipment.

Some observations of Michael:

• Straightforward, direct, terse answers; does not naturally or easily elaborate beyond the parameters of the question
• Defensiveness; there is a certain reluctance to part with information giving a privileged, close-up view of the self

Some themes that recur in Michael's answers:

• Preference for acting, rather than planning [45:40]
• Self-confidence, mainly in own ability to navigate the world (especially socially ["I don't need much life advice 30:30" ; "I get a lot of compliments about my sense of humor", pay close attention after around 23:40], also professionally [19:40]])
• Competition 
• Certain disinterest in "intellectualism" for its own sake [34:20]
• Extended focus on evaluating the character of others and, situationally, restricting the interaction of the self with others (definitely disputable)

My view is that Michael is the Se dominant type. The most important feature that stood out to me about Michael's narrative and experience was the relative lack of planning evident in his comments [see segment around 45:00 as background].

I feel that we learn the most about people, anyway the most accurate information about people, by making sense of the contradictions that describe them. Michael seems to be a very hardworking student with a situationally high degree of work ethic, who essentially flunked out of the architecture program at his school, and tells and shows us how also spends much time in the same body appearing "too laid back" to respond to the exigencies of life which other people sometimes expect of him. My view is that the common thread in this contradiction is inconsistency.

I think Michael is a poor self-observer. He prefers to describe himself with a narrative that he is successful in a wide range of areas of life -- social, relational, professional, intellectual. This narrative is not untrue, but there are a number of signs that Michael's life is much more variegated and less consistently successful than the narration makes it seem. Probably most clearly, we see that Michael's work ethic for schoolwork has not remained very consistent throughout his education.

The lack of planning is evident not only in the explicit description around 45:40, but also in the lack of elaboration for many of the real plans that Michael does enumerate (and the replacement of planning with sheer self-confidence). For instance, Michael mentions his interest in political science as a genuine desire to learn more about political stances, and describes himself as "having an instinctive understanding of geopolitics" (What aspects of geopolitics?) and working in politics, perhaps as some kind of political consultant. While of course Michael has plenty of time left, and experiences to encounter, before settling on his professional goals, these plans are fairly unelaborated.

Likewise, Michael describes to us that he has not planned at all about the circumstance from the interview question I borrow from Peter Bartl, "What would you do with your time if you had enough money to live comfortably".

In my view of socionics, the lack of planning -- in particular, genuine but inconsistent attempts to make careful plans, and the difficulty of planning being a sensitive pressure point of the psyche, is a good description of Ni suggestive.

Likewise, the sheer confidence, inconsistent lifestyle, competitiveness, and lack of spontaneous elaboration (or "storytelling") is much like the Se dominant. There is an element in the lack of spontaneous storytelling, as I allude to in the observations, of self-protection; I think Michael is sometimes less than fully cooperative in his depiction of himself (although, even this level of cooperation is still "mostly" cooperative, merely with some detail omitted). The meaning of this behavior is much less clear; this ego-protectiveness can occur with a variety of types for a variety of reasons. I think it exists sometimes in the Se dominant types, although more commonly in the SEE and in the other gamma extrovert, LIE. Worth noting, in many cases Se dominant types do not have this ego-protection, rather they have no filter on top of their spontaneity, which usually doesn't serve them well in life. I think that many representatives of these types learn early in life to police themselves for protection.


So I have described some reasons why I see Michael as the Se dominant type. I think it is much less clear whether Michael is the SLE or SEE, and I think this is very difficult to tell from the interview between these types. I was quite unsure between these types, and had a short, unrecorded follow-up session with Michael after the main interview to help disambiguate between them. This session is difficult to summarize convincingly; after all, it is unavailable to the reader, which is the opposite of what I attempt to do on this blog, I try to present everything to the reader, explain my own reasons, and let the reader find their own conclusions.

But it is important to say that I got some information from this session. I was more convinced after asking questions in this session that Michael 

1. is not obsessively concerned with the discrepancies in how he feels he "vibes" and how other people feel he "vibes"
2. is spontaneously tuned to evaluating the character of other individuals, at least some of the time
3. is emotionally present and probably rather more emotionally labile than he might seem, although I do not feel 100% sure of this.

As the reader may guess, I think Michael is the SEE, and not the SLE. The SEE is a Fi-valuing type which in my view has a spontaneous attention to the character of other people and sources (and can be expected to sometimes spontaneously discuss these topics). The SLE is an Fi vulnerable type with no attention whatsoever to the character of others and a great deal of attention to how they are perceived and whether they are fitting in the way they would like.

However, I think the interview really is insufficient evidence to make this distinction of Michael. I consider the SLE typing reasonable, and it is a very realistic alternative to my typing of SEE, and may nonetheless be correct.

Another contradiction present in Michael, I think, is that he tells us he is a nondiscriminating, friendly person who easily and without anxiety initiates new contacts, and also declined to carefully detail some of his most pressing personal conflicts. It is worth considering this comment skeptically for its accuracy, but taken at face value, this is similar to how I see the manifestation of harsh judgment in the SEE. Representatives of the SEE type, in my experience, usually do not easily identify themselves as having harsh judgment, because they prefer to be positive and upbeat and do not identify themselves as critical of others. However, the common theme of the SEE is their inconsistency, in their emotionality and in life. For the SEE, I describe that harsh judgment occurs "in the moment", indeed they might be the most volatile and critical type of the whole socion in particularly stressful circumstances.

I think there is some evidence to suggest an interest in the character of others in the interview, in the description of the "SLE" friend and the other "ESI" friend in the saga about the trip to Colorado that did not ensue, and various other designations of friends throughout the interview. But the character assessments are not made very clear in the interview, and there is a reasonable argument that these stories depict the opposite of character assessment; rather "chunking" of the concept of character into simplistic socionics boxes. Looking at everything, I don't think so (and in my experience in this interview context many types refer intrusively to socionics concepts; this is sloppy thinking regardless), but that argument is certainly a consistent interpretation.

Interviews - Patrick

I interviewed Patrick:

Observations:

• Quiet, careful, thoughtful demeanor. Easily receptive to formality of interview setting.
• Not prone to interruption or excess display of energy (debatable?)
• When asked to describe conflict - beginning at 1:25:15 (continuing to around 1:33:00) - there is a clear tendency to represent conflict from subjective, emotional point of view. Conflict is not described not as the causal history of objective external circumstances (e.g., "This is what I did, and the other person responded by doing such and such behavior, and I reacted like this"). The causal histories of conflicts are described in Patrick's responses in a somewhat neglected way. Instead what he appears to be focusing on pointing out by way of explanation, is the subjective response; the emotional charges, and ideological stances of the participants are the focus.
• Likewise, the conflicts discussed seem minor in scope -- it is noteworthy that Patrick chooses to even discuss (and, perhaps, engage in) such conflicts. Rather than, for example, a response similar to "I had a [distant] friend who said some really dumb things to me which I thought were ridiculous and/or cruel, so I essentially ignored that person and decided they weren't very smart [and it doesn't necessarily occur to me to discuss this unimportant dumb person at all.]"

Themes:

• Simplify, get to the point, only give me the information I need to know - the main point, the "basics".
• Limit scope of information acquired to reality, rather than speculation - 42:50 "I don't want to feel like I'm spending my time doing something that will turn out to be completely irrelevant to the job I'm getting; I know that if I work really hard on interviews, that is something that will literally happen [...] it's actually something that will happen in physical reality [...] so that's what I can spend my time on to get the maximum benefit." Also around 1:09:50, "I don't care because it's not going to happen."
• Little discomfort with initiative or taking action. Much less impulse to act. Limited impulsivity, but also inconsistent self-control (from standpoint of inner narrative). Inconsistency of motivation.
• Initiative limited by shame, fear of judgment. Literal stated preference for free expression.

I found this interview very difficult to interpret. Probably partly it is my fault, I focused on some of the wrong things and went on some unuseful conceptual digressions which wasted time (although which might be nonetheless interesting for my small readership here).

But perhaps the main reason the interview is hard to interpret is because, for the most part, Patrick is very even-keeled and doesn't show us much. He tells us more than he shows us; he is a dry, astute, studious, career-focused, and very verbal person. We are left to piece together his comments by context, and make what observations he can.


The most consistent unique theme from the interview, in my view, is it's emphasis on "reality" opposed to speculation, as in the observations explained above. The word choices Patrick uses are telling; he is concerned with "what will happen in physical reality" and not at all with speculative possibilities, which he dismantles articulately as, not relevant to his life. Even, perhaps, when those possibilities are not so unlikely. This focus on reality, and dismissal of speculative possibility, seems unlikely for an Ne valuing type, and instead suggests a type with a greater focus on limiting possibilities, perhaps an Ni valuing introvert. Although, the range of types that I thought about carefully certainly included the LIE and SLE as well.

It seems to me, as well, that Patrick is more correctly described by his rejection of what is uncertain, than by any positive possibility; that is, by any formative vision of what he might expect to become, e.g. a specific vision of what he would like to focus on in his career. But it is still difficult to rule out any of the Ni valuing introverts, based on such inferences.


Interestingly Patrick expresses around 1:16:50, a strong, a preference for environments of free expression "people might judge me harshly or look at me critically and I don't know how to respond to that". It's difficult to know exactly what to make of this; the preference is told and not really shown and Fi valuing types will also report that they prefer not to be judged than to be judged (for obvious reasons). Arguably, Patrick's comments are spontaneous and occupy a high pressure point in the psyche. This picture is consistent with his comments that he strongly prefers exterior emotional space environments of enjoyment, but does not always understand how to behave in order to (or have the confidence to) cultivate environments of good fun.

We are painting the picture of the LSI, of course, with Fe suggestive and Ne vulnerable, and Ti+Ni values, as the best fit for Patrick's type. But we should also consider the other types that might fit this same picture. 
The SLE is a somewhat reasonable fit, but my opinion is that Patrick lacks certain qualities that I would expect to accompany this type, including impulsivity, any history of erratic choices, managerial attitude towards other people

• The SLE is a somewhat reasonable fit, but my opinion is that Patrick lacks certain qualities that I would expect to accompany this type, including impulsivity, any history of erratic choices, managerial attitude towards other people (arguable that he does have this, but in my opinion not to the same degree). By way of comparison examine Ihor Pidruchny's interview done by Jack who is an extremely focused people mover, and others.
• The ILI is a fair fit -- but only if we dismiss Patrick's comments about free expression as told not shown and therefore not valid. This supposes that he prefers to interact with the interior emotional space than the exterior -- all of the language about "ingratiating" himself into environment of free expression seems to go against this. The best I can figure from this interview -- from the language, and the expression, is that the comments about preference for emotionally rich atmospheres is a strong pressure point like Patrick says.
• The IEI is a real possibility here which shouldn't be discounted. Like the LSI this type also has a strong preference for free expression, some difficulties with motivation, and can indeed appear quite studious and rational (especially male IEIs). As in the description above of Patrick's explanation of conflict, we see some (strong) reasons to describe Patrick as focused on emotional information (which could be "tapped" Fe suggestive). But we also find reason to see Patrick as perfectionistic and formal. We could also make some arguments that his "definiteness" and language in describing reality over fantasy, suggests Ne vulnerable and not Ne ignoring, although this is a very tenuous comparison.