Socionics and psychosophy. What are they about? We answer briefly!
by Timur Protskiy, director of Archetype Center
Socionics is a psychological method, a typology that studies 16 psychological types. According to socionics, each person belongs to 1 of 16 types. The psychological type of a human being is only one, it is inborn and does not change to another type during lifetime.
Popular socionic sources and type descriptions give a number of occasional behavior patterns and models which allegedly belong to this or that type, but this approach is out of date as for now. It is simply not correct, because actual experiments and continuous observations show that people of the same type can have quite different behavior models.
Instead of behavior, socionic type describes the method of processing and the type of information that our mind perceives. The socionic type shows:
- Which information areas our psyche is naturally strong in;
- Which information area is a blind spot for us;
- What information our psyche needs,
- What information it rejects on an automatic (psycho-physiological) level.
This mechanism of attraction-rejection plays an important role in human interaction – intertype relations in socionics are based on information compatibility. That is why one of the most important fields of socionics application is the search for a suitable partner (for creating a family, for business, etc.).
| Psychic functions in socionics | |||
| Logic | Ethics | Sensation | Intuition |
| Rational functions | Irrational functions | ||
These functions are dichotomies — that is, if a person has a strong logic, then his ethics is weak (and vice versa); if you have strong intuition, then your sensation is weak (and vice versa).
Ethical types are distinguished by the fact that they understand and feel people much better than logical types do. Ethical types are observant to people and understand human nature more deeply. Writers of ethical types describe in detail the feelings and emotions of the characters, their interrelations (e.g. Jane Austen).
Logical types are oriented to the perception of the «inanimate» part of the world: science and technology, logical schemes and concepts. Relations between people of logic try to explain through logic circuits or algorithms, understanding other people is not an easy task for them. Writers of logical types mostly concentrate not on characters’ feelings, but on building a logical sequences of the plot (e.g. Agatha Christie) or descriptions of adventures (Jack London).
Intuits have imaginative and abstract associative thinking; sensation is closer to tangible material reality. Sensors’ thinking is “attached” to material reality and is better oriented in it, intuits are good in spheres where unconventional approach is more important than following traditional methods.
Sensation and intuition (as well as logic and ethics) are manifested in speech, thinking and creativity of man. Intuits are dominated by abstract, metaphoric and images divorced from reality; sensation types are more household, “down-to-earth”. In most cases, intuitive types are more curious and susceptible to novelty, sensation types are more conservative, and prefer the familiar and proven. Writers of intuitive types – Edgar Allan Poe, Howard Lovecraft. Writer of sensory type: Arthur Conan Doyle.
There are two attitudes of the psyche: introverted and extroverted. Every person is either an introvert or an extrovert. In socionics, there is no concept of “ambivert”: even if you are an active introvert, or a calm extrovert, your prevailing attitude (given by nature) can be determined using proper methodology.
Understanding of introverts and extraverts in traditional psychology and socionics is different. If you consider yourself an introvert, because you are not very sociable, from a position of socionics, you can still be an extrovert (most often it happens during typing).
It’s fun that well-known author Susan Cain who wrote book “The power of introverts” and who considers herself an introvert – actually belongs to extraverted type according to socionics.
Socionic type can be determined by analyzing your speech in the process of typing — you need to answer questions of a special form, record a video on it, or fill out a questionnaire in writing. Typing at Archetype Center takes place remotely — your physical location does not matter. Thanks to the method developed by us, remote typing is reliable as if you came to us personally.
Socionic type has almost no effect on how you behave, it is not related to the level of intelligence, social success, personal qualities like honesty or kindness. Socionic type shows what kind of information your mind processes better, and which one is worse, which one it needs, and which one it ignores at all. Socionic type is a “skeleton” of our psyche, its deep mechanism, like our temperament.
Socionic type is almost not connected with your character. Character manifestations in behavior refer to another typology, which is called psychosophy.
What is psychosophy?
Psychosophy is a typology that arose on the basis of the ideas of Jung and socionics in 1980s, but at the same time it successfully complemented socionics and showed the psychological properties of a person from a different angle. We use socionics with psychosophy together, because in sum they are capable of showing the suitable profession and field of activity for a person in detail, as well this combination of typologies helps in prediction of interaction with people of other types. Socionics type + psychosophy type give a detailed portrait of a person’s psychological features.
Psychosophy shows not the processing of information within the psyche as socionics, but your priorities which influence your behavior and way of your social realization (and way of specific realization for your socionics type).
Psychosophy studies 4 functions:
| Emotion | Physics | Will | Logic |
Psychosophy has a model of psyche which is different from that in socionics. The four psychosophic functions are not dichotomies (not opposite to each other like in socionics), they all present in human psyche, but their strength is determined by their order in priority row – from the strongest to the weakest function. This priority row constitutes a pchychosophic type.
Emotion shows your emotional component in your behavior, how exactly you tend to show emotions and emotionally interact with other people, how much energy do you have on emotions and how strong your emotional-aesthetic perception of the world is. The position of Emotion is important for any profession related to art and for any area where emotional communication with people is needed. Michael Jackson and many famous musicians have strong psychosophic Emotion.
Physics. How important for you is the material world, wealth, financial security, living conditions. Do you have a lot of requests in this area, you have high performance and how do you interact in the physical world with other people. The position of Physics largely determines domestic and sexual compatibility between people. The majority of people on Earth have strong Physics.
Will. Are you a strong-willed and purposeful person, can you influence other people, can you be a leader and be responsible, what is your leadership style, do you have the strength to defend your positions and resist external factors. The position of the Will directly affects your leadership qualities. Someone has them by nature, someone needs to develop them, and someone is not recommended to be a leader with great responsibility, and there is nothing to worry about. The majority of people have no strong psychosophic Will.
Logic. Defines interest, amount of energy and approach to the study of anything. Strong psychosophic Logic gives a person goals in the intellectual and logical sphere, science and education of any kind. The position of Logic shows how much energy you have there, whether there are goals there, how do you interact with other people in the field of Logic, whether there is potential for development, whether it is worth going in this direction, etc. Many scientists and researchers have high (strong) Logic: e.g. Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, or “grandfather” of socionics Carl Jung.
For each person, these 4 functions are arranged in a certain order. At first position — the strongest function, the second – a bit weaker (but still strong), and then the rest two functions in descending order. Someone is stronger in Logic, someone has strong Physics, and so on. Types are indicated by four letters: for example, a person has the strongest function of Emotion, also strong Physics, but his Will and Logic are weak. This type is denoted by EPWL:
| Function order | Energy (power) of functions |
| Emotion | ~ 50% |
| Physics | ~ 30% |
| Will | ~ 15% |
| Logic | ~ 5% |
Since psychosophy was created by a Russian researcher A.Afanasiev within Russian culture, so many types in Psychosophy are named after famous Russian people. For example, the abovementioned type EPWL is called “Pushkin” in honor of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin who possibly had such psychotype.
My type is LPWE, it is named “Plato” after Greek philosopher.
| Function order | Energy (power) of functions |
| Logic | ~ 50% |
| Physics | ~ 30% |
| Will | ~ 15% |
| Emotion | ~ 5% |
In total, 24 psychotypes are obtained in psychosophy. Any socionic type (1 out of 16) can be combined with any psychosophic one, 384 combinations of socionic and psychosophic types can hypothetically exist, and one of them is yours. If you know your types in socionics and psychosophy, you can choose the optimal profession for you. We provide consulting online on the basis of socionic and psychosophic typing. If you know the types of people around you, then you can accurately describe and predict the comfort of your interaction with this or that person – much better than using socionics types only.
Each person has strong and weak functions — the way we interact with people around us and to a large extent the way we implement ourselves in society depends on their location.
The bad choice of the type of activity or partner is often connected with the fact that people do not know about their psychological types and do not take into account their features. Socionics and psychosophy clearly show that not every profession has a development perspective and not every partner has a chance to establish a life together. Knowing your psycho-types, you can save years of life without spending them on inappropriate work or with a knowingly unsuitable partner. Knowing the types of your loved ones, you can better understand their motives and priorities, smooth out sharp corners, prevent conflicts.
You can determine your psychosophic type remotely, as well as socionic type using modern methodology of Archetype Center. Here:
Contact us: info@archetype-center.ru
About the author:
Timur Protskiy
Director of Modern psychology center «Archetype».
Psychologist, Bachelor of socionics (2013), Master of socionics (2017).
Involved in socionics since 2006, professionally — since 2011.
Author of books: «Modern Socionics» (2018), «Develop Your Will» (2019), «Socionics: 100 Worst Stereotypes» (2021) [in Russian].
Teaching experience: more than 150 courses in socionics, psychosophy and other areas of psychology.
Experience in diagnosis and counseling: over 6000 people (as of 2021).