SOCIONICS: Personality Types and Relationships
Socionics: the English section

Welcome to the world of Socionics!

News of the English Section

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You can also browse the Russian section using an online translator: http://babelfish.altavista.com/

2006, April 22: D.Lytov, M.Lytova. Why Our Test Is Called a "Multifactor test"?

A new interesting article found in the Internet: Lytaev S., Voronov A. et al. War against Terrorism: New Challenges to Military Personnel Selection.

2006, March 26: a new multilingual socionic forum of our site is launched in test mode (official opening on April 3). You can already register, post test messages (which will be wiped by April 3 anyway), start discussions and report possible bugs. If you cannot post your bug report at the forum, please write directly to the site administrator.

2006, January 12: two new pages—Informational Exchange Functions and Clubs (Action Attitude Groups). The Celebrities section has been revised, some alternative opinions added.

2006, January 9: V. Gulenko. The Centripetal Law of Communication. Estimate Your Chances in Business Competition. 1998. Translated by Dmitri Lytov.

2005, November 3: Model A: some notes on functions added.

2005, September 30: D.Lytov, M.Lytova. Introduction into Socionics (in 3 parts).

If you have any suggestions or remarks concerning this text, please send your opinion to the authors:

Contact Persons

Dmitri Lytov
Dmitri LYTOV

Webmaster
(St. Petersburg, Russia)

See also:

Authors and Translators of the Site

Socionics is based on their ideas:

Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav JUNG (1875—1961)
Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist.
In his researches he proved that personality types differ not only for mentally ill people but for healthy people as well. His typology served later as a basis of socionics and several other type theories—Gray-Wheelwright Test, MBTI, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Eysenck Temperament Test, NEO-PI-R etc. Read more about Jung and his theory here...
Isabel Briggs Myers Isabel Briggs MYERS (1897—1980)
She was a school teacher by her occupation. Based on Jung's psychological typology, she developed, together with her mother Katharine Cook Briggs, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is now extremely popular in the US (along with its derivatives, such as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and some other tests). Socionics is often confused with her theory, although there are several essential differences between them. To learn more about her biography and test, visit the site www.capt.org !
Antoni Kepinski Antoni KĘPIŃSKI (1918—1972)
Polish psychiatrist. In his work Psychopathology of Neuroses he introduced a concept of informational metabolism, which, in his opinion, could explain certain regularities in people's stable relationships. Later his theory of informational metabolism, along with Jung's typology, was laid by A.Augusta as a foundation of socionics.
Aushra Augustinavichiute
Aushra AUGUSTA (1927—2005)
Real surname—Augustinavichiute.
She lived in Vilnius (Lithuania). She united Jung's psychological types and Kepinski's theory of informational metabolism into Socionics, a theory of relations as information interchange between personality types. Economist by occupation, later sociologist, in 1968—dean of the faculty of family problems at Vilnius Pedagogical Institute.

Socionic SItes in English

Psychology types
Maintained by Elena Zamanskaya, Igor Vaisband and Oleg Khrulev (Moscow, Russia)
INTERNATIONAL SOCIONICS INSTITUTE
Maintained by Alexander Boukalov and Olga Karpenko (Kiev, Ukraine)
THE16TYPES.INFO
The site contains information partially taken from our site, partially from other sources, + a socionic forum in English!
Maintained by Jimmy Cartrette (USA)
SOCION.INFO
A new and interesting site on socionics with a forum.
Maintained by Reuben McNew (Southern California, USA).
SOCIONICS.US
Original materials on socionics theory and applications.
Maintained by Rick DeLong (Kiev, Ukraine).
MSI PRESS: BOOKS ON SOCIONICS AND LEARNING STYLES IN ENGLISH
Maintained by Betty Lou Leaver (Salinas, CA, USA)
SOCIONICS.COM
The approach presented at this site is not traditional for Socionics: it proposes a hypothesis of Visual Identification of types, which we do not support.
Maintained by Sergei Ganin (London, Great Britain)
SOCIONICS DATING
This site represents a very good overview of socionics in English; however, its author overestimates (in our opinion) the meaning of duality.
Supported by Vitali Vorobiev (Kiev, Ukraine)
SOCIONICS.INFO
All about socionic sites all over the world and their updates
Maintained by Sergei Ganin (London, Great Britain)
SOCIONIKA.COM
This site supports the physiognomical theory, which contradicts to the "classical" socionics.
Maintained by Tommy Loveday (USA)
Compatibility of the Personality Types (Enneagram).
Based on the Enneagram typology.

Interesting non-socionic typological sites

SIMILARMINDS.COM
This site is not about socionics but rather about various personality typologies in comparison. However, socionic topics are often discussed at its forum.
TRACKING THE ELUSIVE HUMAN
By Mr. and Ms. Arraj. This is an Internet book that presents a very detailed review of C.G.Jung's typology and compares Jung types with Sheldon types (physical constitution).
TYPELOGIC.COM
A different (non-socionic!) theory of intertype relationships.
Supported by Joe Butt and Marina Margaret Heiss.
TYPETANGO.COM
One of the best type dating sites containing links to type descriptions from different authors.
PSY.RIN.RU
Psychology at Rin.ru
PERSONALITY100.COM
Compare your typologicl profile with the average for your population!
LEARNING-STYLES-ONLINE.COM
Discover your learning styles - graphically!

The MT Test is closed

Dear site visitors,

the MT Test is closed. Those who already downloaded the questionnaire and began to fill it in may send it to us but not later than by November 3, 2006.

In the meantime, we are going to improve the test or maybe invent a different one.

Thank you for your participation!

What is Socionics?

Relations between people are predictable, believe the adherents of socionics—a comparatively new (since 1970) psychological theory. These relations exist between the 16 personality types, to one of which you belong as well.

The very name Socionics derives from socio- and bionics (biology-based modeling), thus meaning a discipline studying social modeling based on C.G.Jung's psychological types.

Personality type, also called sociotype, is not transient—it changes neither in a day nor in a year. Psychological type is distinctly separate from one's education, cultural level, and occupation: it is a model of informational and actional exchange (metabolism) with the surrounding world. Each type has characteristic strengths and weaknesses: the differentiation of socially useful traits comes at the expense of the suppression of others. Sometimes persons of the same sociotype look like twins, being in fact not even relatives. Probably the sociotype is "preprogrammed" genetically.

Sociotype plays a greater role in human relations than education. There are different theories of interpersonal relations in psychology. Many psychologists ignore the influence of personality type on one's relations—they say everything depends only on one's cultural and social level, upbringing, occupation etc. However, even among those who accept the correlation between people’s characters and their relations, viewpoints are divergent. Socrates could not answer the question, which friend is best—the most similar or the most unlike one [Plato: Lysis]?

Socionics grades relationships between sociotypes by their compatibility. For example, a relationship between two identical types do not always develop well: understanding each other in an instant, they are nevertheless likewise unadapted to the same problems; in other words, mutual assistance in such pairs is of low quality. Relationship between two totally different types is, however, much worse—it results in permanent conflicts. Where is the golden mean?

Enter duality – a psychologically complementary relationship. Socionics splits the 16 types into 8 complementary or dual pairs. Such pairs are the most stable in intimate interactions.

If you want to know what type you belong to and what possibilities are concealed in your relations with the people around you – then this is the site for you. If you want to learn more – send us your feedback!

All socionic sites support the viewpoint that Socionics, on the one hand, and MBTI (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), on the other, are not the same, in spite of mutual resemblance due to common origin from C.G.Jung's theory. If something in MBTI theory contradicts to the theory of Socionics, there is only one way to determine who is right: by performing comparative experiments.

Main spheres of application of Socionics . Pedagogy (interaction between teachers and students/pupils, problems of understanding the training materials), family consulting (marriage and divorce, problems of age), personnel consulting (career guidance, compatibility within a working collective, strategy of a company based on sociotype contents of its staff), fundamental scientific researches ( mathematical modeling, genetics, psychophysiology, morphology – external parameters of sociotypes), psychological games and trainings.

Basic differences between MBTI and Socionics

Revised on September 30, 2005

MBTI and its derivatives (Keirsey etc.)

Socionics

In addition to Jungian type dimensions a new dimension called J/P (judging/perceiving) has been introduced J/P is considered to fully coincide with Jungian dimension of Rationality/Irrationality
Personality type is described statically, i.e. either by 4 dimensions or by a functional model Psychological type (sociotype) is described dynamically, i.e. through its variation in different situations according to the so called Model A. For introverted types Model A is different from the MBTI functional model
Type descriptions are focused on actions Type descriptions are focused on motivation, peculiarities of thinking
There are different, mutually incompatible theories of interpersonal and intertype relationships. All relationships are considered symmetrical. Many MBTI adherents do not recognize a theory of intertype relationships at all There is a uniform theory of relationships based on the A Model, which allows forecasting progress of relations. Several intertype relationships are considered asymmetrical
"Political correctness"*: types are described, first and foremost, through their strong traits (describing their weak traits is considered “politically incorrect”) Both strong and weak traits of the sociotypes are described. Neuroses arising from the weak traits are studied. It is these weak traits that helped to explain mutual dependency and interaction of people belonging to different types and to build a theory of intertype relationships
Testing is the main method of detecting a type. Actually, several million people have already passed MBTI or MBTI-based tests (Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children etc.) Tests, although used, are considered to be insufficient and not always reliable. Methods similar to medical are more widely used, such as observation, interviewing, external data etc. However, socionists are not adepts of "visual identification" which is misrepresented as "know-how of socionics" at some popular sites.
Number of types is limited by 16 Subtypes (32 and more) and their relationships are also researched

NOTE: it is probably not easy for Western readers to understand why the very term "political correctness" and everything associated with it awakes strong negative reaction among Russians. It is, however, easy to explain. For many years Russians had no choice in the ideological sphere, all publications were censored (before 1917—for conformity with "Christian values", and later—for conformity with the "Communist moral"). Although American "political correctness" is based on somewhat different moral principles, it is often (mis?)perceived by Russians as public hypocrisy.

See also

Updating Plans

 

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