Socionics Introduction

Socionics is a theory of personality type and information processing, describing how fixed patterns of cognition form the human personality and how these personalities interact with each other in society. The theory occupies a unique position between the fields of psychology, sociology and cybernetics. More precisely, a system of information processing inherent in personality type (cybernetics) has an effect on the behavior of the person of that type (psychology), which in turn has an effect on other people in society (sociology). In context, Socionics can be also defined as the study of the Socion, which is the 16 personality types and their inter-type relations.

Background

In the 1960s, Lithuanian psychologist Aushra Augustinavichiute (her name is often shortened to Augusta by English speakers) developed an interest in Jung’s typology after reading his famous work Psychological Types (1921). During this time, she was the dean of the Vilnius Pedagogical University’s department of family science and her work at the university led her speculate why some relationships work better than others, a question which had intrigued her, but Jung had no answer to. For the sake of finding answers to these philosophical questions, Aushra organized and held meetings where psychologists and sociologists met once a month to discuss the potential of Jung’s theories. In 1968, there was one session where Aushra had a “Eureka moment”, that Carl Jung’s model of 4 functions (Model J) had to be expanded to 8 functions to account for all aspects of reality within a person. Not only did this expand the number of psychological types from 8 to 16, but Aushra noted that the 8 original psychological were actually the different aspects of reality. She named this structure Model A, after her last name. By 1980, the theory of Socionics was founded and outlined in full in her foundational works The Socion and The Dual Nature of Man, improving upon Carl Jung’s Psychological Types and Antoni Kepinski’s theory of information metabolism.

Jungian Foundation

Aushra regarded Jung’s typology as deeply insightful, but structurally incomplete. The primary reason why Jung wrote about types in the first place is because from his experience, he saw a way to improve upon Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche (Id, Ego and Super-Ego). According to Jung, he observed four semantic categories of human consciousness, which he named Sensation, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling. He also noted that each category of consciousness had an Extroverted and Introverted attitude, thus generating 8 unique cognitive functions of consciousness. The information elements in Socionics are based upon Jung’s cognitive functions, but they do not share the same definitions and should not be treated the same – Aushra’s definitions are an explicit improvement upon Jung’s.

Individuation of the Psyche

A central concept of Jung’s work which was incorporated into Socionics is the individuation of the psyche. The reason why are even 16 personality types in the first place is because the human mind has evolved biologically to concentrate on different areas of information processing over others. This is what defines a personality type in the first place. Each socionics type has unique asymmetries inherent to them, which can be defined by the Law of Psychological Asymmetry. The law states that every type has an asymmetrical preference for one type of information over its opposite. Types are will be strong kinds of information and are better at processing different kinds of information. (This is a basic overview of the idea, I go more in depth in the article on Model A).

The Socion

Humans are not merely atomized individuals disconnected from social experience, we need to communicate and cooperate with others for the sake of survival and to reach our full potential as a species. Every human personality perceives reality through a particular lens, providing information to others which they lack and receiving information from others that they lack themselves. One form of information processing alone cannot develop independently without outside input. With the advent of human culture and society, realizing the potential of humankind became possible – we all complete each other. That is the meaning of the Socion.