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 Webmaster (St. Petersburg, Russia)

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Authors and Translators of the Site

Socionics is based on their ideas:

	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 (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 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 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

Interesting non-socionic typological sites

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

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.

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Updating Plans