Forward-Direction

This might be what Lenore Thomson has in mind by function attitudes and their role in defining a self, including "plugging into the social matrix".

Which way is forward?

Orienting by an extraverted attitude, you feel a need to expand your influence and connections in the tangible or social world:

Se: Having an impact, being noticed, creating excitement and spectacle, leaving your stamp visibly on the world around you. Finding satisfaction for yourself and others at an immediate, visceral level that requires no explanation.

Te: Empirically measurable progress of a sort that can be defined in advance of accomplishing it: "getting more" by your criteria. Putting things in order so they work together to achieve measurable progress; subordinating things to a single, defined goal or criterion. Gaining authority and responsibility on the basis of provably being able to do specific things, especially as shown by credentials and track record.

Fe: Gaining importance in the social world, becoming a person to whom others feel loyalty because they view you as representative of their interests—you're all in it together. Becoming entangled in bonds of loyalty.

Ne: Getting ahead of the rest of the world, especially by thinking outside "the box" that other people are thinking in; showing people ways beyond their "boxes"; being seen as heralding something new and emerging, something that cannot be understood right now, and will change their present understanding of things.

Orienting by an introverted attitude, you feel a need to increase your level of attunement to something, by calling forth the powers of your mind:

Si: Becoming ever more solidly oriented by a mental map of things that endure; knowing better and better what to single out and focus on in a world of overwhelming complexity.

Ti: Becoming ever more attuned to stable mathematical unity within the complexity of the world, first-hand knowledge of causal harmony and relationships that is as entangled as possible with the objects of that knowledge in all their complexity.

Fi: Becoming ever more attuned to the nature of life, the differences among all living things and how they all reflect a common life spirit; achieving moral rectitude and perfection of character.

Ni: Cultivating detachment, a perspective disentangled from all worldly concerns or assumptions, to remain open to perceiving the whole, directly, without reason or justification or explanation; seeing how a system works in terms independent of viewpoints from within the system (thus often seeing hidden points of leverage).

Extraversion, then, leads you to seek, in each situation, advancement for yourself in terms of status, power, influence, visibility, and tangible gain—to expand your presence in the world. Introversion leads you to draw upon the archetypes to create a more refined mental structure for interpreting what you see—creating greater and greater depth as a person.

The theory, then, is that everyone's brains have processes that attempt to push them "forward" as defined by each function attitude. Since "forward" is a decidedly different direction in each case, the need to create a coherent self that can go in one direction long enough to get somewhere necessitates that one function attitude reign supreme. The others still operate, in that they still process all information that the person takes in and they still declare a certain direction as "forward", but their views of forward are not easily incorporated into the person's self-concept (ego). The inferior function pushes its agenda covertly, by sneaking ways to fulfill the needs it identifies into the conscious agenda. The other function attitudes have varying degrees of commonality with the dominant function.

An endlessly difficult part of life is finding ways to incorporate non-dominant function attitudes into the ego so you can address the needs they identify in a conscious and intelligent way.

Note that the above are not definitions of the function attitudes. They are what the person sees as "forward" progress—the direction they feel called to go in in all situations—resulting from the way each function attitude structures information.

Type-guessing

This exegesis makes type guessing very straightforward: just notice the ways in which the person is expanding their presence outward into the world, the forms of attunement that they regard as essential to life, and the interplay between them.

Dominant Function: the person's primary direction in life is defined in terms of this. The gateway to the ego: the person will refuse to go along with anything that opposes the kind of direction supplied by the dominant function. The approach supplied by the dominant function must always be vindicated no matter what happens. To give up this approach would seem to mean giving up one's very self. For example, an INJ can give up everything except detachment. To not maintain a detached perspective above all would seem to be the ultimate in self-abandonment. What self would you have left, if you let the world trudge all over it? An ESP can give up everything except trusting his instincts in action right now. If you didn't go with your gut, why be you? "You" are your gut, from a dom-Se standpoint.

Secondary Function: the mode that has the non-obvious answers, but feels a bit dangerous. For extraverts, their "ace in the hole," the thing that makes them special, not just like everyone else. For introverts, a channel to worldly wisdom and fulfillment—a way to surrender to the way the world is, and thereby find your place in it.

Tertiary Function: the mode that supplies temptations and fuel for rationalizations; more positively, a counter to the dangers of taking the secondary function too far. Also, simply a cherished alternate side to the personality, regarded as enjoyable but not important. A person usually views giving high importance to tertiary concerns as a sign of weakness, both in self and others.

Inferior Function: a person typically has a love-hate relationship with this attitude—on the one hand, trying to expand or be attuned in the inferior way at all times in an intense but clumsy way, and on the other hand, trying to suppress and oppose this approach both in themselves and others because they see it as disgusting and immoral. People often believe that they deserve to have their inferior needs fulfilled but don't feel responsible for fulfilling them. They often have moral arguments for this, which they find compelling, and few others find compelling. (See Larry Groznic for an illustration of inferior extraverted feeling.)

For example, Steve Jobs has made Apple's entire business strategy depend on continuous innovation, staying ahead of the rest of the industry by always having new ideas that change the way people view computers. Dom-Ne. Bill Gates runs Microsoft in a criteria-driven way, aiming to have Microsoft software on every computer by occupying the highest-leverage points in the software economy. Dom-Te, aux-Ni. Unlike "this person kinda reminds me of that person" ways of type guessing, these buckets are pretty distinct.

An opposing idea?

But couldn't "being seen as having an impact", Se, be seen as what Microsoft is trying to do. Or Ne via the beginning of Microsoft (Bill Gates dropping out of college to pursue an opportunity, something linear dominant Te would be wary of doing -- Credentials were not important, having the right stuff (GWBasic) at the right time was important).

Ozymandias

Hypothesis: The poem Ozymandias is a diatribe against Se as described above, suggesting that P.B. Shelley was an INJ.