Socionical approachin studding of nations
Ethnosocionicsconsider nations as psychoinformatoin systems (integral persons), of which theJung’s persons’ typology is true.
VolodymyrScherbyna, Russia
It is not new idea toconsider ethnos as integral person (collective subject). This idea was advanced and was substantiated in theworks of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Nikolay Berdyayev, Nykolay Lossky, etc. Inparticular Carl Jung wrote that “people’s psyche is only more compoundstructure than person’s psyche”. It is logically to consider this integralperson to be reasonable, i. e. this integral person has consciousness, memory,action logic, emotions. Ethnosocionics considers ethnos aspsychoinformation system, of which the persons’ typology is also true. In eachethnos there are persons of different psychological types. In spite of this theethnos is the macroorganism of the certain psychological type. Just this oftento be named as “national character”. So this science studies ethnoses’psychological types, features of their behaviour, mutual relations with othernations, etc.
Ethnosocionics is one ofthe directions of socionics, a young science, which was born on theboundary between psychology, sociology and information science. Socionics isbased on the Jung’s typology andAugustinavichjute’s Intertypes’ Relations Theory. It is considering persons asbearers of the certain types of information metabolism, which are developingand interacting on the base of objective laws.
Each person is beingexamined over 4 main pairs of signs (coordinates): logical ¾ethical(emotional), sensorical ¾intuitional,rational ¾irrational,extravert ¾introvert. Whilestudding the concrete person one can determine the mentality type, this personinclined to: logical or emotional, concrete or abstract etc. Having determinedeach of 4 pairs of signs one determines the one of 16 sociotypes the personunder determination belongs to.
Let us remind their names:
– Intuitive-logical extravert (ILE, ENTP*)
– Sensoro- ethical introvert (SEI, ISFP)
– Ethico- sensorical extravert (ESE, ESFJ)
– Logico- intuitive introvert (LII, INTJ)
– Ethico- intuitive extravert (EIE, ENFJ)
– Logico- sensorical introvert (LSI, ISTJ)
– Sensoro- logical extravert (SLE, ESTP)
– Intuitive- ethical introvert (IEI, INFP)
– Logico-intuitive extravert (LIE, ENTJ)
– Ethico- sensorical introvert (ESI, ISFJ)
– Sensoro- ethical extravert (SEE, ESFP)
– Intuitive- logical introvert (ILI, INTP)
– Intuitive-ethical extravert (IEE, ENFP)
– Sensoro- logical introvert (SLI, ISTP)
– Logico-sensorical extravert (LSE, ESTJ)
– Ethico- intuitive introvert (EII, INFL)
Socionics considers personas information system, the bearer of the certain type of informationmetabolism. The body of person lives exchanging substance and energy with theouter world. And the psyche part of the person lives sharing information withthe outer world. All information, which person receives from the outside (theinformation about outer world) and from the inside (the information aboutpsychophysical state of person), is the common information stream.
Each person can make outsome aspects of information stream better then other ones. Psychologicalfunction is the ability of person to make out one aspect of informationstream. Socionics descries 8 aspects of information stream and 8 psychologicalfunctions accordingly. These functionshave graphical conventional signs, names and “duties”:
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*) In the SOCIONICSpsychological (socionical) types have 3-letters conventional signs, andin the western literature — 4-letters ones.
abilities’ intuition
the knock of human abilities’ feeling; sensing of development’s perspectives; integral perception of the world, feeling of its unity, interdependency, reiteration on different levels of world’s hierarchy; understanding of the very essence of subjects and processes.
time’s intuition
the understanding of contradictions in outer world and in human psyche; the understanding of opposites, which separate people and events; feeling of danger; aptitude for seeing vainness
volitional sensorics
aptitude for controlling of outer spaciousness; ability for putting pressure on others and to stand up to anyone’s pressure; understanding of enemy’s force and enforce; power; will to win; authority of power
sensation sensorics
capacity for body’s necessities satisfaction, sensation of own body; beauty, design, turning towards the high inner quality; cosiness and comfort
dynamic logic
reasonable acting logic; technology, process, method, procedure, rule, algorithm, conveyor, cause and effect, enterprise
static logic
aptitude for systematizing knowledge and phenomena; deep understanding of logical correlation between objects; facts’ system, hierarchy, classification, statistics, register and verification, machinery
emotions’ ethics
capacity for feeling persons’ emotional state, for its controlling; ability for inspiring people with joy, enthusiasm or fear, horror, anxiety, panic.
relations’ ethics
world’s perception through people’s relations; the ability for adjusting needing relations; sense of duty; tolerance, love, kindness, charity, humanity
It is established thateach sociotype has his own number of the “strong” and “weak” psychologicalfunctions. On this base the person’s psyche functioning model (sociomodel) ismade. The socionical model helps to understand how to use person’s “strong”features and to defend “weak” ones; it also helps to understand mechanism ofmutual relation between people. Intertypes’ Relations Law is based on theunderstanding of sociomodel’s functioning. This Law defines features of theinformation exchange and mutual relations between sociotypes.
So ethnosocionicsuses socionical laws and methods and studies:
– socionical types of ethnoses and nations (“nationalcharacters”);
– their history, relations with neighbours and othernations;
– nation’s construction and national-state construction;
– national leaders; their accordance with the epoch andwith the national sociotype;
– national elite’s construction; its accordance with thenation.
The knowledge of nation’ssociotype offers to approach scientifically to strategic planning of state’sdevelopment (like the knowledge of person’s sociotype helps in professionchoosing)
As the example, let usconsider briefly how to determine one pair of main signs: logical (pragmatic)or ethical (emotional) the nation under examination is?
Some features of logical (pragmatic) nations:
1. main criteria inthis societies are: logical-unlogical, correct-uncorrect, cleverly-foolishly,advantageous-disadvantageous, economical-uneconomical etc. Actions of othernations, states and persons are estimated from the point of view of logic,reason, activity and not of the emotion maintenance (kindness, sympathy, responsiveness etc.)
2. They try to solvetheir problems by themselves, with the help of their own abilities. As a rulethey don’t ask somebody and don’t persuade somebody. They prove their rightnessby deeds and unanswerable arguments.
3. Their promises aremore reliable. Their care of truth stirs up the real esteem: it is not thedeclaration but really truth; it is not the formal replay but really law, thissociety lives under.
4. Fashion and manyother human society’s dynamic attributes are changing more slowly in thesenations than in emotional ones. One of the cause is the pragmatic advantage tobe one of the paramount values of such nations.
5. Constructive logicin these nations restrains influence of social myths. New myths are being bornbecause of the shortage of needing information. But the existence of the newsocial myth in these nations is short and expedient.
Some features of ethical (emotional) nations:
1. Pragmatism is notstrong virtue of such nations. Main criteria in these societies are: well-bad,human-unhuman, honestly-dishonestly, will be offended — will not be offendedetc.
2. Truth and untruthhave relative character, not absolute one: it is seemed to be good all, that ispleasant for people (sometimes even if it is not truth). By this reason lawshave less rigid functions in these nations.
3. These nations aremore spontaneous while contact with other societies and cultures. Their ethicsis creative, initiative and primary before logic.
4. There are manyimpulsive and unreasoned in these nations. Forces of pragmatic and scientificconstructing are not enough developed. Utter emotions don’t afraid people inthese nations. It is seemed often that people seek them intentionally.
5. The influence ofsocial myth is stronger in these nations than in logical ones. Myth caninterprets each event. Often political leader wins elections because ofpeople’s sympathy and not because of his program.
While using this approachwe can determine as logical next nations: Americans, Canadians, Danes, English,Germans, Japanese, Jews, Lithuanians, Scots etc. We can determine as ethicalnext nations: Austrians, Belorussians, French, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles,Russians, Ukrainians etc.
The similar approach isused while defining other pairs of signs. Psychological features of nations areexpressed in language, literature, art, religion, science, mythology,nation-state construction and other sides of social life.
While studding theseexpressions one can draw a conclusion about the mentality type, the nationinclined to, prognose probable trend of development and mutual relations withother nations.