Socionics, Mentology and Personality Psychology

Alexander V. Bukalov

Socionics is connected with psychology, sociology and informatics in triangle form. The scientific basis of Socionics was created in early 70-th of the XX century by Aušra Augustinavičiūtė (Lithuania). Socionics is a further development of Jung and Myers-Briggs typology transformed into a science of 16 psychological types of personality. A.Augustinavičiūtė used Kempinsky's concept of information processes in creating her own informational model of human mind actually known in 2 forms - the "J" (Jungian 4-element) model and the "A" (Aušra's 8-element) models. This allowed describing various aspects of personality thinking and behavior by representing personality as a type of informational metabolism (TIM) with indication of its strong and weak sides.
This implied the possibility of describing and forecasting not only behavior of IM types, but relationships between such types as well. These relationships are conditioned by informational exchange between identical IM functions located at different positions in the IM model of types. Such description is an advance in the sphere of sciences about human being.

There are 16 types of relationships, which emerge between 16 personality types in the process of communication; they range from the "conflict" to the most attractive one called "duality" (mutual complement). At the same time, the whole complex of IM types and their relationships makes an integral system - socion, defined by A.Augustinavičiūtė as a "unit of integral human intellect". There are four closed groups in socion called "quadra". Each quadra consists of 4 best compatible IM types. Quadras are connected with relationships of social order and social control, which determine transmission and treatment of information in socion.

Large practical importance of socionics is obvious compared to the traditional psychology, which possesses descriptions (although incomplete) of personality types, but lacks descriptions and prognosis of human relationships. Thus it became possible to resolve problems of compatibility of partners in family, collectives and in business; to create steady, united groups for managing different tasks in any sphere of human activity.

Further development of socionics demonstrates the necessity of giving more precise definition to its initial concepts and forming new theoretical proconditions of practical value to extend the sphere of application of socionics. The fundamental part of this works has been performed by scientists of the Kiev school of socionics, mostly collaborators of International Institute of Socionics (IIS).

Now let us regard the fundamental results achieved by collaborators of IIS and the directions of its activity.

One of them is the discovery and development of the law of succession of quadras. It makes possible analyzing historical and political processes in society. This law is tightly connected with the concept of society as a psycho-informational system and with ethno- and linguosocionics, which makes possible to consider types of human culture as IM types with certain structure and specific interaction. Socionists have discovered the role of each quadra in socion and the role of IM types in quadras, revealed fractal structure of socion coinciding with type structure. They also developed the concept of functions signs and 16-component model (the "B" model), the idea of 4 levels of type description, introduced into practice integral function of human mind. It was a significant step forward to consider genesis of types from standpoints of profound psychoanalysis and to discover the inner structure of IM functions, which made possible complex description of type behavior and type relationships. This coexists with describing types and type relationships via the "J" model and development of the idea of so-called second level relationships. And another important discovery is the quantum holographic model of mind, which allows to explain the origin of IM functions.

Practical using of socionics implied the necessity of considering steady small groups for forming efficient collectives, discovering technologies, making detailed descriptions of types and type relationships, which resulted in a series of tests and technologies of examination. Socionists established and implemented in practice a conception of subtypes, which allowed more accurate application of socionical technology. Socionics is also applied in pedagogy for creating educational groups, selecting teachers etc.

A great part of researches of the Institute is engaged in analysis of historical personalities and political processes, researches in the sphere of art. Certain scientific results were reported at conferences held in Poltava (1988), Novosibirsk (1989), Vilnius (1990, 1991), Švientoji (1990), Kanev (1991), Palanga (1992), Kiev (1992, 1993). The necessity of using socionics in management has been successfully proved.

IIS performs great cultural and enlightening work: it provides schooling, seminars and training teachers, doctors, specialists on psychotherapy, managers etc., consulting of companies and enterprises in the issues of selecting and positioning of personnel. A series of monographs on socionics has been published, and some more are in publishing. The teaching program for postal tuition of Socionics has been worked out and found wide application nowadays.

Finally, socionists have discovered connection between Socionics and other disciplines, and later demonstrated that socionics represents only a part of the whole system they have defined as mentological, and which - within the limits of mentology - represents a science about mental level of human mind. At the same time, mentology is only one system in a hierarchical series of similar systems.

With regard to the aforesaid discoveries, we the authors called this collection "Socionics, Mentology and Personality Psychology".