Tertiary Defense

p. 94: "If we don't turn to our secondary function at this point--that is, if we insist on doing what we've always done--we eventually reach a point where our water-skiing tertiary takes over the ship. Our tertiary function has been coasting on our dominant momentum for a long time, and that arrangement is now in jeopardy. So this function frantically climbs aboard, tosses the secondary function over the side, and insists that we get out of this mess at any cost."

Why is the tertiary best suited for "defense"?

One of the Main Propositions in Lenore's book seems to be that when a person's dominant attitude is challenged (either directly by other people or through natural consequences), they typically resort to their "tertiary function" for moral justification of the doomed course they are on. It makes sense that Extraverts would grab for another Extraverted attitude while Introverts would grab for another Introverted one; at least it is consistent with what seems to be a main theme in Lenore's book: if there is one attitude a person will fight to the death to maintain, it's their dominant's orientation (E/I).

Beyond that, it's less obvious which of the three rhetorical allies a person would choose for their "tertiary defense." A possible selection principle might be this: a person whose dominant attitude is challenged adopts the rhetorical style that most opposes the rhetoric their actions elicit from other people. Another one might be that they use the rhetoric that most opposes the attitude they should be adopting (i.e., the secondary) out of some sort of perverseness (which implies that some part of them knows what is needed).

Is it observably true that, say, when ENTJs go amok they are likely to hear Ni preached to them, and therefore counter-preach Se? Why not counter-preach with Fe: "Not only is my plan obviously logical, but it serves the greater good of the community--those who want to act on their own are selfish." In other words, why isn't Fe an ENTJ's tertiary function? If it were, this would imply (by symmetry) that an ESTJ's tertiary weapon would be Fe as well, which would make sense: those sharing the same dominant function would be likely to get into the same kinds of trouble, and therefore hear the same rhetoric from other people.

The anti-secondary

Here's a possible answer. Instead of people turning to the tertiary to oppose other people's rhetoric when it's in the style of their secondary attitude, they turn to the tertiary because they don't trust their own secondary attitude.

They're especially distrustful of following their secondary attitude because it's gotten them into much of the trouble they're already in. They don't see how the trouble they're in is actually part of the process by which more of their potential will be released. They see it as a threat, and they turn against what they perceive as the way of Orienting themselves that's gotten them into this mess. The feeling is that following the secondary attitude would be like walking into an abyss.

What makes the tertiary the tertiary is simply the fact that it's the opposite of the secondary. It's as anti-secondary as you can get.

A sketchy example

Here's how it might work for many ENTJs. From their dominant perspective, the only sensible way to do anything is make decisions based on a solid foundation and clearly defined criteria (Te). Relied on too heavily, such a Life Strategy of hill-climbing eventually gets you into situations where "winning" is actually losing, but for reasons you can't understand.

Part of what's made most ENTJs successful is that they've been attuned to the way the system works. They've been able to take a perspective where they aren't limited to behaving in ways that make sense within the rules and expectations of the system. They see things that are unseeable from the perspective of the system. They're able to look at "the hill" and see the ways in which it can trap hill-climbers, and thereby find other ways to reach their goals.

At some point, what counts as "successful" begins to no longer work. They know perfectly well what the goal is and how to get there, but everyone around them seems to be idiots. A comic example is Lex Luthor in the movie Superman: "Why is the greatest criminal genius of all time surrounded by nincompoops?"

What needs to happen is not for them to find a more effective way to reach their goal, but to realize that their goal is actually not such a good thing--that indeed surmounting of obstacles and achieving of goals is not all there is to life. They need a perspective from which they can evaluate goals: a perspective that goes beyond "what can be defined and tested according to 'objective' criteria that all can recognize and apply." Maybe committing big crimes is not the best way that Lex Luthor could be using his talents.

Fi gives you exactly the needed perspective, since it relates everything to innate human nature as it unpredictably manifests itself in every moment. But that is just too much of a leap for one whose only practiced way of Orienting is anchored in the observable, sequential, and well-defined.

Ni, however, has always been a partner. It's enabled Lex Luthor to see how various other people and institutions and security systems reflect limited assumptions, and that squirrelly reality always lurks outside those assumptions. At some point, what's needed is for Lex Luthor to turn Ni on himself. That would give him a way to see how his own choices of goals and ways of comparing possible achievements are themselves reflections of his own limited assumptions, and that he has other alternatives that take more of the full reality into account. He might then be able to see that the "idiots" he's surrounded by actually have something worthwhile to tell him. It just can't be understood in terms of committing bigger and bigger crimes. What the "idiots" have to say just doesn't even relate to that.

Turning Ni on himself, though, seems terrifying. It would essentially deprive him of reference points, tossing him into an abyss of the "subjective" and "irrational" where nothing is ever final or fully defined. He's gotten stuck hill-climbing, so what's another way he can address the fact that the topography of the "hill" is mostly unknown to him? He can focus on what is happening right now, and trust his "gut" or his "impulses" to tell him what to do, without needing to understand everything. Se gives him a way to stay grounded in the clearly observable and stave off both the call to enter the Ni abyss and satisfy the mostly unconscious Fi call to orient himself according to living needs and callings as they manifest themselves in every moment.

Lex Luthor is a pretty extreme example. The more common pattern seems to be to for ENTJs to declare that "honesty" requires that they trust their impulses moment to moment. Anything else would be "irresponsible" or "phony". Organizations like Est and the Landmark Forum seem to preach the ENTJ tertiary solution to the fact that life is complicated: act out whatever emotion you have at the time, "share" your true feelings at all times regardless of consequences, "take responsibility" for getting whatever you want by any means whatsoever. If you want it, then you should have it, and it's up to you to do whatever it takes to get it, regardless of publicly accepted morals or other people's well-being or anything else--the inferior Fi way of evaluating goals. In practice, this leads to exactly the subjectivism, irrationality, and destruction the fear of which led the ENTJ to shun Fi and Ni in the first place.

Different Axes?

The natural Ni response of course is, "so what--I could just as easily have crafted a story about an ENTJ in which Ne seems like his natural tertiary defense." When people get desperate enough they are probably capable of throwing the entire typological kitchen sink at reality--Se, Fi, Si, whatever is handy. There is also more than one way an attitude can be "opposite" another: for example, they can be opposite along the "irrational/rational" axis--or "judging/perceiving." One could therefore argue that Fe is just as "opposite" Ni as Se is.

Perhaps the reason Lenore's tertiary defense seems a little odd is that Ne-Ni, Te-Ti, Fe-Fi, and Se-Si are not the fundamental set of axes for her types. Perhaps instead we should be thinking of Se-Ni, Ne-Si, Fe-Ti, and Te-Fi as the elementary functions of type. As with the conventional axes, each of these can be used in an extraverted or introverted way. Each type then consists of a "rational" axis (Fe-Ti or Te-Fi) and an "irrational" axis, along with an attraction to one end of each. This would address two problems: what does Ne have in common with Ni, what does Se have in common with Si, etc (the answer being, "not a lot"), and why does an ENTJ (Te<--Fi, Ni<--Se) reach for Se instead of Ne, Fe, etc in the so-called tertiary defense. It's because he's trying to extravert Se/Ni-ness (when he should be introverting it) to avoid facing his inner demons any way he can.

It would also explain things like why INTJs piss off INTPs more than ISFJs do (it seems like there are lot more happy INTP/ISFJ couples than INTP/INTJ ones)--because ISFJs are at least in the same plane (but different quadrants), so to speak. Of course this change of axes begs an even bigger question: what do Se and Ni have in common, what do Fe and Ti have in common, etc. An answer doesn't seem to immediately fall out of the Semiotic Attitude approach to type. Does anyone want to try squeezing one out?

The extraverted response to "you could craft another story to make it come out Ne" is: try it and see what you learn.

The sense of 'opposite' in the context of "orienting oneself by an attitude opposite to the secondary" is: A is opposite to B if B's interpretations are meaningless according to the way that A grants meaning to things. In other words, A and B completely nullify each other. On their own, they can find no common ground. Attitudes related like Te-Ti or Ni-Ne clash in various ways, but they aren't opposite in this sense.

The real-world issue is: what way of assigning meaning feels trustworthy, like you're on terra firma and what feels like stepping into an abyss? And how did it come to seem that way? Exegetical hypothesis: if you leave these things out of your interpretation of Lenore's stuff, you won't see what she's talking about. In terms of the metaphor on Semiotic Attitude, no matter how carefully you inspect your map, you'll never find them.

Does Lenore frame any of her stuff in terms of axes?