INFJs simply don’t have Ne. 

@@PowerRedBullTypology I’m trying out slightly more polemical videos here and there, shorter formats as well. Keeping things new-ish is tough especially with so much competition for people’s attention all around.

Maybe your bring a little more adamant about things is a good strategy to get more viewers and clear up confusion.

@@Coneman3 I think so, yes. But since this is still relatively new for me, I need to do a bit of… calibrating, lol

@@AlesiiTS Those three minutes are well worth it if you want to understand what follows with any degree of depth.

"Ne memes." Not memes in general.

@@Elodie_N_INTJ_Analyzes I don’t think so. « What if » is just as much Se, but we all tend suffer from a reductive view of that function generally as « the function of the body » and nothing else. It’s a data gathering function just like Ne is.

@@RensRoom She's right. we all have access(whether one is aware or not) to all 16 functions.

@@Transfiguration_ You mean 8 functions, presumably. 16 sounds like a *lot* of functions 😄

@@RensRoom 8 is still more than 4...

@@Coneman3 This is exactly how I see things as well. Just keep it simple - everyone has some deficit in some areas and strengths in other areas and defining them as such is the simplest way to describe the entire theory, and doesn't include too many variables. Why do I suck at doing boring tasks especially if they involve figuring out the most efficient way to order things? Terrible Te. Why do I suck at coming up with a list of random items or finding rhyming words on the spot? Bad Ne. Why does my friend suck at emotional support? Bad Fe. Why does my other friend not value logical consistency and just says whatever he feels like in the moment? High Fi, low Ti. Etc. It is interesting to dive deeper, but no need to overcomplicate and over-explain, keeping it straightforward is the way to go imo.

yes I agree. The actual lived experience should come before theory. Theory is merely a tool to aid understanding of reality (science in general is the same). This ties in with another of my interests - I’m an audiophile and have explored that subject in depth over the last few years, as I have MBTI. In Hifi, there are 2 general camps - subjectivists and objectivists. Objectivists only believe a modification or statement that a component being better than another one is true is by objective proof (measurements and/or logical theory and/or double blind tests). Subjectivists believe that the proof is in the pudding - in this case personal listening judgements. The former objectivists tend not to trust human judgements (yes, both groups accept they are flawed) but trust objective measures. They also generally fail to appreciate that objective measures do not sum up all the performance of a component and don’t accept that there is no substitute for the reality of ear/brain perceptions.

I didn't make the point that if something can't be proven it can't be real, no. But I do believe that the combo of 1) overdetermination of theory by evidence due to an overabundance of explanatory variables; and 2) the fact that a completely unstructured "shadow" compound below the 4th function can't have the agency of a cognitive function => leads to the inescapable conclusion that 8-function models don't work. In this respect it's interesting to observe that "mainstream" science and Jung are in agreement. Jung saw a century ago that this approach didn't make sense. It seems common sense to me that to the extent INFJs are able to introspect on their emotional states, they don't do it with what would have to be completely dysfunctional "shadow Fi" (dysfunctional for the reasons given above) but with Ti. Same would apply to Ne. A lot of people don't seem to be understand or to want understand my arguments, articulated again and again in my videos, that it is not possible for a shadow compound to have the agency of a function, even though Jung insists on this everywhere in in his books. From my perspective it's a really interesting observation that's worth noting: people are still very attached to the idea of being able to access all eight functions and won't give up that belief easily! The only 8-function model I could contemplate being coherent is one where people can "flip" between Ni and Ne, Fe and Te, etc., in other words where our functions come in pairs at all times and where the basic units are Pi, Je, Ji, Pe. In other words it would be an 8-function model without "shadow functions". This model would still have a lot of work to do to explain why e.g. an INFJ would flip between Ni and Ne, Ti and Fi, etc., and would have to defend the view that Ne, Te and Fi are quite integrated for INFJs after all, since they belong to overall function pairs; but at least that model wouldn't be incoherent. In fact this is the view defended by the "spectral hypothesis" of Cognitive Type, which I encourage people to look into, as it is *by far* the most plausible conception of an 8-function paradigm. It does require a bit of prep work to get into the universe of CT, though.

I think where confusion sets in is the identification of specific characteristics/behaviours/cognitive activity with specific cognitive functions. That’s why I have said everyone must use all functions to live ‘normal’ lives. The complete lack of any function would seem to me to make one highly autistic or even impossible. But this is if you define all cognitive activity that comes under a missing function as due to that function. If I lack Ne as an INFJ, can I have any lateral vision? If I do, how do I achieve that? Using Se? But can Se alone do that? Does it get help from Ni? You may well be right Ren about the 4 function model being supreme. I’m just trying to understand it in cognitive and theoretical ways that make intuitive and logical sense.

@@Coneman3 Well, certainly the complete lack of any cognitive function would be highly problematic! 😅 but yes, I believe that ultimately we get by using the 4 cognitive functions in our stack. This implies coming to a view of function pairs (Ne/Se, Fi/Ti, etc.) as overlapping a lot more than dichotomy-based tests or models would have us think. Of course, this is not to say that those functions are the same, and there will be cases where Se will need the support of Ni to work out what Ne might be able to do on its own. It's an empirical question how all that is to be sorted out, whereas my point in recent videos was more conceptual than empirical. Either way, I have to be careful not to create a storm in a teacup - INFJs the vast majority of the time make sense of their lives in practice using the 4 functions in their stack and rarely mention functions like Ne and Fi. Ultimately, it probably doesn't make much difference to INFJ's concrete living whether they prefer a 4-function or 8-function model, and it was too extreme for me to call the latter "worthless" in retrospect.

@@JAHANNUM *demonic laughter*

Funny! But is this a Ne or Se joke? I instantly understood it and laughed, still now I am genuinely confused and very much delighted by the confusion. I think I am in the process of learning what is going on.

@@Coneman3 Ne is an extraverted perception function just like Se, which means it’s also about real-time gathering of data. Jung was explicit about a four function model. Myers and Briggs typology was also a four function model. Any idea about having eight functions is a product of other systems and people like Beebe’s model, the different Socionics models, etc. Ren has already covered briefly why four over eight in this video. I recommend rewatching it and trying to digest it.

@@JAHANNUM Yes Ne is real time but being about intuition, its awareness of different perspectives and options and manifests a lot via social fluidity and dynamism. Hence ENTP are good in social settings and politics, and ENFP are good at selling and making a brand of themselves. Are you sure Jung and MB actually ruled out shadow fucntions? Any theory can be subject to future modification/refinement. Thats how we progess. No theory is necessarily fossilised truth. Without Si, how would INFJ have memories and remember facts??

@@Coneman3 yes i’m sure about there being no “shadow functions” in the original theories. Jung was explicit about four functions and not more or less, which is tied into his general views about the psyche, symbols, the collective unconscious, etc. he believed that trinities were incomplete and that another (fourth) element had to be added, thereby having a quaternity which represented wholeness. as for the other points you made, I’ll specifically address INFJ memories and Si. no function has anything to do with memory in of itself. one must also talk about what kind of memory one is speaking of too. episodic? semantic? there’s much more to unpack there than one might think. if one is going to make some correlation to memory, we could say there is some relation in the way the function(s) registers data. the introverted perception functions register the objects within their corresponding datasets and understands these objects by their temporal wholeness/totality. this means prior instances of objects and their broader context are understood within their mental map. objects that are registered in real-time (Pe) trigger a recollection process whereby those objects that Pe registers is then associated to the stored objects in the mental map (Pi). this may sound complicated, but the TLDR is that both Ni and Si have the capacity to have a recollection of past events and remember things. imo Al Pacino is INFJ and if you watch any of his interviews you’ll be able to see how naturally he gets into narratives and recalls them.

So the ‘problem’ then is defining certain qualities as being ‘owned’ by specific functions. Although the correlation of, say, memory for facts with Si is not incorrect, it is simply the most common form that that happens. In individuals lacking Si, a different method is used? That’s useful to know. Seems to debunk a lot of csjosephs content.

He seems to have addressed your comment in this video though? I'm pretty sure that he thinks that all eight-function models are bad because they overcomplicate personality theory. Things attributed to Ne can easily be explained by Se. In his previous video, he said that the idea of the four 'lower' functions doesn't make sense because they would have to be weaker than the already inferior fourth function (in our case, Se). If our Fi was truly that low, we would be akin to robots. You mentioned the lower functions as "potential causes of stress or difficulty", but Ren basically says that these functions, if they do exist, are too unstructured to be of any use for analysis, and as a result decrease the validity of the four main functions because it would make everything overdetermined. In essence, it is worthless to account for these potential variables because doing so largely invalidates the main idea of the cognitive functions, as introducing an "or" or a "maybe" into your explanation would render it useless. Ren supports the idea of a four-function model because he thinks that it can adequately explain behavior and personality by itself.

@@ellewong137 I’m relieved to see that my points are actually well taken by some viewers! It seems to me I went pretty in depth about the various incoherences (in my opinion unfixable) that would attend to any 8-function model. The only exception I might consider is a model that claims to have some merely descriptive value and no claims to explanatory power at all.

@@Murrpheus Sorry, lots going on in my life at the moment, I barely have enough time to record videos. Hopefully that will change soon though. My videos were targeting 8 function models in general, the incoherences having (I believe) general application across the board. But sure if you want to share more about the specific model you use then I’d be happy to look into it and discuss it!