Development--Take 3

And I do have many thoughts about the development equation and type which are informed by my coaching and consulting practice, and the development research that gives us a pretty good picture of the challenges or issues adult development entails.  Some may say it is "my type" and in the spirit of sharing biases, I am highly skeptical of formulas and neatly symmetrical models when it comes to understanding the human experience. 

This means that principles, guiding rules of thumb, trends, and working propositions govern my thinking.  The difference between nomothetic (population studies) and idiographic (study of individual experience) makes the point for me--what may be true of a million people is not necessarily true of the human being sitting in front of me.  This is one of the reasons that Step II of the MBTI or Subscales of the Golden or Majors assessments are so attractive--you get at some of the differences within the type, largely a by-product of individual experience.

I've found that for each type we can sort development into three general buckets across three kinds of changes.  The buckets are the agile, typical, and frozen.  Agile types are those who learn both how to use their type processes and quickly integrate the new learning into how they operate in the world.  Typical types are what gets described in most booklets about type.  Frozen types are those whose typology is a caricature of the type--a rigid form of type expression where learning is really difficult and the individual generally has his or her nose just about the waterline.

The three kinds of changes I see are horizontal, vertical, and integral.  Horizontal is when the individual adds a new skill--say a Feeling type begins to employ de Bono's logical models as an expression of Thinking qualities.  Vertical is when the individual shifts a point of view or embraces a paradigm that is inclusive of old and new information such that a qualitative choice about behavior exists that didn't before. This is the kind of shift that goes from practicing empathetic-like listening to experiencing empathy and all it means in an interaction. Integral is when a shift occurs that changes the whole way an individual operates in the world.  Integral is related to becoming more whole, complete, and fully integrated.  And you might find this shocking--a frozen type who believes he or she "has arrived" and is "whole" sees the world with such profound negativity that the energy of anyone near the person is completely sapped. Metaphorically, this is like engaging with a vampire. 

Of course, the bucket analogy is a way of organizing complex information and removes subtleties which are always present. Nonetheless, several important reminders emerge from this kind of thinking.

First, adding skills helps us use various type related processes and is a way to explore how to do something from your perspective at the moment.  Second, if you've added skills and you've noticed that there continues to be that feeling that there is a gap between how you operate now and how you want to operate in the world, the change that is required is more than adding skills.  Important work on the assumptions, biases, frames of reference that you use to make sense of things needs review and adjustment.  Type is a system of psychological energies which is dynamic and influx.  Learning how to be more conscious of that system requires work but the pay off is rich.  Finally, type is connected to the whole of who you are.  There is no escaping that if you are open to experience and willing to learn, the whole system shifts and your way of adapting and being in the world through your type is more satisfying.

My task in future blogs is to give more examples for the sake of learning from others to move us forward.  And one nagging issue is the relationship between health--emotional, mental, moral, behavioral, physical--and developmental correlates.

Let me know if this interests you.

Roger 

Development continued

There are a couple of dimensions of development from a type perspective that merit some reflection. At the most profound level, type development is about full and clear perceptions and sound and discerning judgment. But getting there isn't necessarily about adding skills to the backpack. You can't quite say, "I am an Intuitive so I'll engage in Sensing focused activities and thereby increase the range of my perceptions." while there is virtue in testing out the opposite (as I explored in a previous post), I don't want us to confuse that with a development solution. In fact, I suspect it is more difficult than engaging in opposite-like activities. The tension inherent in the opposites of our typeology is the source of potential development. Imagine a rubber band being pulled by the pointing fingers of both hands. The energy in the rubber band grows as the two fingers are pulled in larger distances apart. In a sense, we need to come to grips with the opposites of our own nature to discover the energy needed to work with these opposites, as essential as they are. Our first step toward type development may well be the recognition of our tensions among our competing sources of perception and judgment. Second is to seek the wisdom of the opposite in any given situation. Third, to create an internal space to understand these competing forces within your own psychology and engage in a kind of dialog about how to use this energy to enhance perceptions and judgments. More to come. Stay tuned.

More Skills Is Not Enough----What is type development?

Myers indicated that good type development required conditions for developing one's preferred perceiving (S,N) and judging (T,F) processes and preferred attitude (E or I).  Further, each type has a preferred dominant process aided with an auxiliary that keeps you "in balance" which needs identification.

Being clear about your preferences and what you do not prefer, followed with knowledge of appropriate use, sets the stage for learning how to use your type for effectively.  For example, Thinking is for analysis and Feeling is for identifying what is of value to you. This conscious awareness of appropriate use facilitates a greater confidence in oneself.  Finally, Myers further noted that specific experiences can create barriers to development.

Jung focused on the development of the unique self in his exploration of differentiation of which type is a part.  You will not find instruction from Jung on type development; in fact, I suspect he would have found the idea somewhat odd--why develop just a part of a more organic whole?

If  you step back and look at a larger picture of the nature of development, we know that experience is the most effective teacher.  Further, testing new insights and experiencing appropriate support are essential for development to occur.  There is a predictable sequence to learning new behaviors.  At first there is the realization that a behavior needs to change or adjust.  Then there is the effort to learn the new form of the behavior which may hav many fits and strats. Eventually, when you learn how to use the refined behavior, you realize that you are operating at a higher level of effectiveness.

So we have a couple of somewhat disconnected ideas floating around:
(1) type development requires clarity about one's type and how it works
(2) using one's type preferences effectively strengthens the type
(3) type is connected to a larger psychology within each person and changes as the organic self changes
(4) development requires learning and learning is hard work

A number of years ago I collected some data and analyzed some research about hobbies of the types and discovered that there were a good many ISTJ and ISFJ women who like hobbies like knitting, weaving, and the like.  So, I wanted to test the assumption that doing activities like those who are drawn to it naturally whould have a beneficial effect.  The class was astonishing--participants would show me yarn that appeared to me to be exactly the same and they could talk for 20 minutes on how different the two yarns are.  Each class was a wave upon wave of awareness of that I do not pay attention to and just how much energy it requries from me to do what these other folks in the classs did as easy as breathing.

I learned to weave.  My family learned to not be home on Tuesday nights when I returned from class because, as my daughter said, "you really are different when you come home from that class Dad."  I've sense tested this notion of stretching to do something not typical of me and then explored what I learned.  There is no way I will ever be as talented at identifying yarn qualities and weaving as the members of my class were naturally inclined to do.  I could do it but it brought no joy.

I could learn the skill but that wasn't enough.  I developed a new kind of appreciation for the art of weaving and the depth of richness of Introverted Sensing.  But that appreciation does not translate into more competence with introverted sensing.

I think we could put all of the type functions on a continuum from:

>>unconscious, unaccessible>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>natually talented use

We would fall anywhere on the line depending on our life experience, preferences, and curent challenges as related to each of the eight functions such as Extraverted Thinking, Introverted Sensing, etc.  Hopefully, what we prefer is more talented use and what we least prefer is more likely out of our awareness.

From the example I shared above, I moved my Introverted Sensing a bit further down the path of greater comfort to use but I have no desire to move up the continuum--I'm prettty functional at the moment. 

We can add more skills to our preferred and least preferred processes but that doesn't mean we are necesssarily developing our type.  Psychological type needs us to not only develop a greater awareness and use of our type functions but also (a) more effective at perceiving and judging functions and (b) agile access and deployment of our type functions (consciously and adaptively).

More to come on this as I've just started and I'm out of time for today.

Perception and Judgment

As I've read over the last couple of entries, I am prompted to think about Isabel Myer's comment to Mary McCaulley that we should use perception on the world and judgment on ourselves.  There is a good deal of wisdom in that observation when it comes to human relationships and perhaps even in all matters.  Daily I am reminded that things are not what they seem and only after a great deal of questioning and exploration do I find there are layers of information and insight I need to consider before I get to making decisions about the situation at hand.

Jung noted that perceiving was irrational and by that I think he meant that it is always "on" and isn't under any direct control.  We don't go around saying "My sensing perceptions informs me that..." or "My intutiion informs me that..." Yet, this is precisely what our perceiving processes do.  While it is easy to quickly differentiate the notion that sensing is concrete and sensory, and that intuiting is abstract and mysterious, I suspect that the truth is more complex.  As I suggested in an earlier blog, we are better off seeing this as a metaphor for complex perceptions and are about how we attend to information.  The most practical idea is that type gives us four pretty strong hints about the kind of information we might dig out: (1) Reliable, specific data, (2) Precise, in-the-present data, (3) Linked or patterned information, and (4) possibilities and scenarios given what is presenting itself.

Judging processes--and this one many folks have trouble with as related to Feeling--are rational, as Jung noted, because they use predictable methods and criteria which can be established as relevant. I've read alot of opinions about Thinking and Feeling and it seems to me that most of the characterizations of Feeling judgment are of immature or poorly developed Feeling.  My hunch is that these differences are so psychologically polarized that it takes a considerable effort to hold both ideas as equally valid--and it seems that most people can't do it.  Just about everyone gets that Thinking is about the energy that drives a logical, analytical, critical approach to decisions.  What is almost never questioned is whether the logical or critique are competently used or even appropriate to the situation at hand. 

I plan to write a good deal more about Feeling in the future.  We have a more difficult time coming to recognize, accept, and own how Feeling works within the psyche.  It is the judgment process that tells us what is meaninful and interrelated in a situation.  Much is made of emotions and Feeling, which is misguided.  If you want to see emotions, challenge the competence of a Thinking type.  I think emotions get tagged with Feeling because as a general rule the Feeling process takes into account the wisdom of emotions while Thinking processes do not.  

Emotions are our internal markers for what is meaninful and in what way it is at a gut level.  If you are angry, it is usually because you feel a violation of some sort as occurred--someone broke an arrangement, got in the way of reaching a goal, etc.  But anger is the marker and only when you own the emotion are you able to use it productively.  And this is true whether you are a Thinking or Feeling type.

As perceiving provides four useful clues, judging processes provide four more: (1) What is the underlfying model, principle, or framework for the decision?, (2) What are the critical and analytical considerations verified by others?, (3) What are the relational and human connective tissue in this decision?, (4) How will values and ideals be realized in this decision?

Some thoughts for today.  I'll be interesting when people start checking this blog out what their reactions are to these suggestions.

A Practical Metaphor

As I reflect on the almost obsessive way some folks approach type, it is as if they think that there is an actual part of the brain where the functions of type are located.  And such "thinking" about type is somewhat dangerous as it leads to an overly concretized view of how all of it works.  And that is just one step away from a deterministic view of personality.

I prefer to think that Jung was attempting to give us a practical metaphor for very complex things in the way the brain works.  He was reporting on patterns observed in literature, philosophy, and available evidence from his lab studies.  In essense, I think it is helpful to think of Sensing, Intuiting, Thinking, and Feeling as labels for very complex neurological processes.  In a sense, each is a "gestalt" of a particular neurological system.

An example I offer is the difference between Sensing and Intuiting.  Jung referred to these as irrational and I prefer to see them as pre-rational processes.  As perceiving processes, we don't turn them on or off--they just are and they serve our need to have information about the world.

If my proposition is correct that Sensing and Intuiting are labels to lots of complicated elements of perception, then think of Sensing as the aspect in our psychological processes that calls upon realistic awareness and verifiable evidence.  Intuiting is the aspect in our psychological processes that seeks out patterns, linkages, or pathways among data points.  In either case there is a great deal going on, which is why I think it is often hard for individuals to imagine doing the opposite of their preference.  It feels like it would take a great deal of energy to see the world from the others' lens.

And I think it would take a great deal of energy for Sensing folks to work on Intuiting and Intuiting folks to strive to see the world through Sensing in any exculsive way. 

We double the trouble when we start reflecting on how these perceptions operate with Extraverted or Introverted energy.....which of course they do and produce remarkable consistent takes on what is real and how to perceive experience.   And I plan to share some thoughts about this complication in a later blog entry.

A metaphor serves as a a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, or is something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

We certainly know that there are specific parts of the brain dedicated to sensory input but how that sensory input gets transformed into an aspect of the Sensing preference as we think of it in type is both very complicated and mysterious.  So Sensing as a term is a metaphor (a figure of speech representing something it is not in a literal way) about how much psychological energy is put into the experience of life in a direct way.

And in a more profound sense, when we think of Sensing and Intuiting as contrasting ways of becoming aware of experience, we realize that together they make more of a whole than just by themselves and that they are tied together in a way that only consciousness and unconscious processes can make sense of.  So if you have a preference for Sensing in conscoius awareness you can count on Intuiting processes being very busy in unconscious ways, and vice versa for Intuiting.

I call it a practical metaphor simply because it makes complex things accessible and understandable; it gives us a way to understand experience--our blindspots and our pulls toward and away from information in life.

It seems freeing to me to think of type this way as it indicates that we are at a gateway of a journey not at the end of it.  We are just beginning to discover rather than have an answer.  Further, it implies that propsection about one's psychological patterns is more useful than description.  In other words, how I use the understanding to move toward solutions and adaptation is more important than the degree to which am absolute in my description of the processes of type.

Psychological Energy

When I think about psychological type, I think of psychological energy.  And the word energy is quite useful. ( And please stick with me through the following stage setting.)  Definitions include:

The strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.

A feeling of possessing such strength and vitality.

Consider a somewhat more scientific set of issues: "It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems....The total energy contained in an object is identified with its mass, and energy (like mass), cannot be created or destroyed..... A system can transfer energy to another system by simply transferring matter to it (since matter is equivalent to energy, in accordance with its mass).  Energy may be stored in systems without being present as matter....."

Energy is about strength and vitality which "works" on other things and can be transfered and stored.

With psychological type, the word energy is often first associated with Extraverting and Introverting processes.  You might hear comments like: Extraverts get their energy from engagement with the outerworld and Introverts get their energy through reflection and cogitation in their inner world.  You might also hear that extraversion is using energy in the world outside your skin while introversion is using energy in the inner world. 

Jung writes of how the extravert directs energy on to objects in the environment while introverts direct energy to internal thoughts.  Martha Wilson's work in the 90's showed that those with an Extraverted preference were stimulus hungry and those with and Introverted preference were not--they had enough going on in their heads.

This is vital to keep in mind: both extraverted and introverted "energies" however directed and acquired are essential for every human being to adapt to their daily life demands. 

When any individual is engaged in his or her environment, it is safe to say that engagement is an expression of extraverted energies.  But what kind of focus and expression is it?

Focus on factual concrete things is different from expressing ideas and possibilities.  Again, you do both but not at the exact same time or with the same level of effort and interest.  It is safe to say that these forms of extraverting and introverting energies are different and serve very different purposes in giving you a psychological lens on life:

Sensing that is Extraverted (Purpose: scanning and mentally placing)
Sensing that is Introverted (Purpose: contretizing and cataloging experience)
Intuiting that is Extraverted (Purpose: generating possible paths of action)
Intuiting that is Introverted (Purpose: identifying emerging scenarios)
Thinking that is Extraverted (Purpose: analyzing for "logical" outcomes)
Thinking that is Introverted (Purpose: critiquing to find the underlying model)
Feeling that is Extraverted (Purpose: connecting with others to promote comfort)
Feeling that is Introverted (Purpose: evaluating and applying ideals to actions)

I've only touched on one aspect of the purpose of these eight kinds of energy.  My point is that there are different kinds of psychological energy we need to manage and survive.  Much of it goes on at an unconscious level; nonetheless, they serve us to keep us stable in the midst of overwhelming stimuli that need to be sorted, organized, and acted on.

Why does this matter?  Do you have an energy problem?  You may have if you find that you aren't making psychological space for these energies to be activated.  And the absence of any of these energies show up in errors (to name a few)--missed body language of a colleague, inaccuracies, lack of innovative effort, missing logical sequences, or failed connectivity with others.

I do not believe we can be fully conscious of these eight funcitons all the time--nor do I think we need to.  I think we need to know these are operating 24/7 and serve us and that we should be intentional about stretching them from time to time (hobbies, stretch assignments, etc) to build capacity. 

I want to be clear: each type (e.g. ENFJ) has an energy system integrity that is different from another (ISTP).  Though both of the types in this example use all eight of the energies noted above, these are used with different qualities, frequencies, and utility.  

Opening Invitation

For more than thirty years I have been watching how psychological type affects everyday life. I am inviting you to engage with me as I share observations about how type can enrich your life.  My hope is to expand both your understanding and application of a very dynamic model.

If you have taken assessments like the MBTI(R), Golden Personality Type Profiler, Majors Personality Type Indicator, you have been exposed to psychological type.  Far too often, individuals confuse the instruments with the theory or model, and far too often, the descriptors are prescriptive and judgmental.  I want you to be exposed to the theory (with all of its warts) so that it may become more useful to you.

Psychological type is about patterns in perceiving and judging every day experiences.  It is about how psychological energy is distributed and renewed.  Psychological type is connected to our conscious and unconscious selves. 

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