Information Metabolism

Socionics has its basis in Antoni Kepinski’s Theory of Information Metabolism (TIM). For much of Socionics’ development, information metabolism has merely been implicitly referenced as a crucial concept, but there has been not been a single effort to describe what this concept actually entails.

Background

Antoni Kepinski (1918-1972) was a Polish psychiatrist and thinker who was recognized for his significant contributions to the philosophy of medicine and humanistic psychiatry. The most important concept in Kepinski’s work is his idea of “energetic informational metabolism”, bridging the disconnect between the subjective psychological experience of the human mind and the objective biological and thermodynamic processes in the universe. In other words, the human mind abides by the same laws that all other physical processes abide by. However, Kepinski developed this idea in reaction to the medical community developing terminology for mental illnesses which had yet to be substantiated in behavioral terms. He was not aware that it could also be applied to analytical psychology, in particular, Jung’s theory of psychological type.

IM Model

Kepinski compared information metabolism to the functions of a cell, creating concepts in his model which were directly comparable to the micro organelles of eukaryotic cells. In Kepinski’s model, the components were consciousness (nucleus), a perceptual boundary (cell membrane), information centers (endoplasmic reticulum and lysosomes) and energy centers (mitochondria).

Consciousness

The sense of “self” which formally regulates human cognition, managing the activities which are responsible for conscious decision-making and controlling voluntary physical activities.

Perceptual Boundary

Much like how there exists a clear boundary between the organism and its environment, there exists a similar type of boundary between the conscious mind and the outside world. The interdependence between the environment and the conscious mind mimics the relationship between object and subject in metaphysics. The conscious mind is neither a splitting image of the environment it inhabits, nor is it totally uncontaminated from its influence. Both entities influence, but are not dependent on each other.

Information Centers

The human psyche is divided into two parts or layers, the unconscious and conscious. The unconscious layer deals with internal part of the human psyche, the processes of emotions and imagination which have no shape or form in reality. On the other hand, the conscious layer deals with the external part of the human psyche, creating mental representations as the human mind perceives reality through the five senses and rational thinking. Without the five senses and conscious thought, the external world would be entirely formless and unknowable. For both of these layers, they can be accessed at close range (Involved, invokes a sense of pleasure/pain) or long range (Detached, disconnected from pleasure/pain).

Energy Centers

While not directly comparable to the Carnot cycle in thermodynamics, Kepinski derived a similar principle from information theory that can be applied to information metabolism, arguing that the human psyche is an open system which is susceptible to the entropy and negentropy of information. Kepinski describes the two phases of energy metabolism:

• First phase (Processing) – The individual receives energy from the environment and converts it into information, metabolizes it and develops a basic attitude towards it. Depending on how strongly this information is prioritized, the unconscious attitude can either be oriented “towards” or “away” from it.

• Second phase (Behavior) – After the first phase has metabolized the information, options of how to respond begin to develop. Once the individual has reached a decision, they can respond back to the environment, converting the information back into energy via physical action.

Since Augusta unified Jung’s Psychological Types with Information Metabolism, it created the need for new structural definitions to explain how the 8 information elements were different from each other. These dichotomies are – Rational/Irrational, External/Internal, Abstract/Involved and Extroverted/Introverted. The purpose of Information Metabolism for Socionics is to firmly relate cognitive patterns (information) to behavior (energy states).